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[Wilson]

My assessment of British Prime Ministers solely based on how they handled Northern Ireland, starting with Wilson.

Wilson
Took office at the height of the Civil Rights movement and all the strife that caused it, which must have been a tough thing to deal with. I don't doubt that Terence O'Neil wanted to get things sorted out, but he was having a hard time facing down the hardliners on his side, notably Paisley. When things were getting out of control, Wilson sent in the troops, which probably made sense at the time which was reflected in the way the soldiers were welcomed by nationalists at first. We all know what happened next, however.

Sunningdale was an admirable attempt to get power-sharing going, but it was too far ahead of its time for the Paisleyites. The Ulster Workers Strike and the "spongers" speech alienated the unionists. It was 100% true, but not really helpful in the long run. He also failed to end internment that had been introduced under Heath. In sum, he did his best, but his best wasn't good enough.
Grade: C

Callaghan
As part of the end of internment, his government ended Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners, laying the foundation for the blanket protest and hunger strikes. Pushed an "Ulsterisation" policy, ostensibly to use local security forces and make the army less visible, but in practice it was like arming the Rangers supporters and letting them loose on the Celtic supporters. Made some behind-the-scenes attempts to reach a resolution, but kept SF out of it which was doomed to fail. I don't think he was malicious, he was just another clueless British PM trying to rule a country that he knew little about.
Grade: D-

Thatcher 1.0 (Pre-hunger strikes)
Her doctrinaire approach to prisoners combined with her stubbornness and lack of knowledge about Ireland to deadly effect. She kept up an unprovoked fight with the criminalisation policy and reaped a whirlwind.
Grade: F-

Thatcher 2.0 (Post-hunger strikes)
Started to get the message that a military solution was not on the cards. Signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement and recognised the Irish dimension, albeit had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it by the US. Her stubborn personality came in handy in facing down the Ulster Says No campaign.
Grade: C+

Major
Prioritised the north in a way that his predecessor did not. Seemed to understand the need for a political settlement. Was lucky to have the underrated Albert Reynolds to work with and the supportive Clinton in the White House. Got Peter "Babbling" Brooke to make his crucial "The British government has no selfish, strategic, or economic interest in Northern Ireland" statement, and and got the Downing Street Declaration done, both of which paved the way to the ceasefire. Dragged his feet a bit when the IRA called their ceasefire and had to be reminded to keep it at the top of the priority list, but overall I think he did a reasonable job.
Grade: B+

Blair
Irish ancestry and childhood holidays in Donegal gave him a good understanding of Ireland. Finished the job that Major started. Was forceful when he needed to be with the north's politicians, but understood the sensitivities too. Appointing Mo Mowlam as Secretary of State was a good choice. "The peace train is leaving; I want Sinn Fein on it" is a memorable quote. He was firm but fair. Unlike his predecessors he understood the need to have all parties involved, however distasteful some of them are. His overall legacy is tarnished by the Iraq war, but on domestic policy and his handling of NI, it's hard to fault him.
Grade: A+

Brown
Only lasted 3 years in the top job that he'd waited over a decade for, so it's hard to assign a grade on this one. Power-sharing was restored shortly after he took office. The biggest deal was probably the devolution of policing and justice. Thanks to Major and Blair (and of course Hume, Clinton, Trimble et al) he was dealt an easier hand than his Troubles-era predecessors, but overall he did a decent job.
Grade: A

Cameron 1.0 (Pre-Brexit vote)
Did a decent job in the circumstances. The flag protests were a problem, but not as bad as the bombings and shootings of the 1970s. Completed the devolution of policing and justice that Brown had started. Stormont House Agreement sorted out welfare reform and legacy issues. Fresh Start Agreement dealt with more welfare reform issues and secured funding for cross-border initiatives. I feel like Cameron was well briefed on the north and understood the sensitivities. The apology for Bloody Sunday was appropriate.
Grade: B+

Cameron 2.0 (Post-Brexit vote)
Like the compulsive gambler in the casino who thinks he's on a winning streak, he won his high-stakes gamble of the Scottish independence referendum, and for the craic decided to have another one on EU membership, complacently secure in the knowledge that he was going to win this one too. Ended up riding  a coach-and-horses through the Good Friday Agreement with his reckless gamble. We're still trying to clean up the entirely preventable mess today. Inexcusable.
Grade: D-

May
Also took a reckless gamble, this time by calling a snap election in an attempt to increase her majority, but ended up with a reduced majority, leading to the confidence-and-supply arrangement with the DUP. The Backstop was a plus, but she couldn't get her deal through Parliament and wanted to protect ex-soldiers from "vexatious" legal cases.
Grade: D+

Johnson
Negotiated the NI Protocol. Won a landslide in the election, booting the DUP back to irrelevance and ousting Nigel Dodds from the Commons. New Decade, New Approach Agreement brought power-sharing back with extra funding and a positive approach to the Irish language. Attempted to rewrite the Protocol that they'd agreed to, but all the hullabaloo led to the DUP ousting Snarlene Foster. Tried to unilaterally override the Protocol to placate the unionists but couldn't risk a trade war. Bit of a mixed record overall, and as it has been with his persona since his public school days, it's hard to tell if he bumbled into his successes or if they were the result of some intelligence hidden behind the crazy hair.
Grade: C

Truss
This dozy bimbo didn't stick around for long, but long enough to do some damage with her weird mini-budget. Probably wasn't even aware that NI existed.
Grade: Ungraded

Sunak
Got the Windsor Framework negotiated with von der Leyen, straightening out the Brexit trading arrangements. Held the line on how dual-market access is a good thing for the region, and addressed unionist concerns enough to get power-sharing restored. Had a good relationship with the Irish government. At the time I remember saying that, against my better judgement, Sunak was a decent PM for a Tory. As far as NI is concerned he played a bit of a blinder. Underrated.
Grade: A

Starmer
Too early to say.

This winter lights thing in Dublin looks fantastic. Great way to brighten the place up in the darkest days of the year. Would love to be able to go and see it in person.

How are the scores going to be written now, then?

Say a team scores two goals, five 2-pointers, and three points.

Is it:

A) 2-13
B) 2-5-3
C) 19

I suggest we go with option C and stop this archaic scoring notation (A) that's a hangover from the days when goals outweighed any number of points. You needed to know the number of goals back then to know who won the match, but that went out the door in 1892. You don't need to know anymore. Notation A is opaque and confusing to first-time viewers of the game. There's enough for first-time viewers to take in without having to have someone on hand to explain the mental arithmetic that's involved.

Ozzy Rules, Rugby, Gridiron, Basketball, and all the other sports that have different values for different types of score all display their scores with a simple total, not an algebra equation. Time for the GAA to catch up.

Is it just me or do a lot of young fellas in Ireland get involved in an unhealthy petrolhead culture? I remember ripping and tearing around the roads with my mates as soon as we could drive, and we had a whole language built around the act of unsafe driving. It's like the part of our brain that dealt with consequences hadn't developed yet. I look back in horror at some of the stuff we used to get up to in motors.

Every time I hear about roads deaths in the wee hours of the morning and "single vehicle collision" I feel like it could have been any of us back in the day.

"Thoughts and prayers" are all well and good, but I think we need to talk about the culture that surrounds driving, as well as the lack of enforcement of traffic laws at night time when the roads turn into racetracks.

Big Wave
Guinness
1981

(Please don't post Youtube links without telling us what's in them)

Irish Athletics seems to be having a bit of a moment. Is it just me or is there an unprecedented amount of Irish athletes in the top flight at the minute?

I hear the M7 by Naas got widened from two lanes to three. Did it fix congestion as predicted?

A lot to unpack in the All Ireland Rail Review. Some ambitious goals there, which is nice to see. Plenty of fodder for the "it will never happen" crowd but that's inevitable.

People have got to understand that a lot of these dormant routes remain untouched. Most of the tunnels, cuttings, embankments, viaducts, and even a lot of the bridges are still intact. A lot of the cost of building a railway is flattening the land, and this was already done for us over 150 years ago. Reopening lines like Portadown-Armagh and Portadown-Derry via Omagh are entirely achievable. It wasn't so long ago that there wasn't many miles of motorway in the south, now there's a whole network of them. Governments are well able to deliver big infrastructure projects when they put their minds to it.

Time to think big again, and this time do it for rail. There's not enough room in cities for cars and the days of building everything around them need to come to an end.

Right lads, little bit of help needed here with another bit of research, if you don't mind.

If you currently live on the island of Ireland, lived in town before, but have since moved to the country, I want to hear from you. I'm taking soundings about country living. Survey here:

https://forms.gle/9h89NPQQicripTBZ6

Many thanks!

Hi Gang,

Hope you don't mind me asking for a bit of help with a little research project I've got cooking.

I'm looking for examples of small towns or villages in Ireland (north or south) with a public square, i.e. a place that looks like it was originally designed as an open marketplace. If it has a historic town square that's been given over to car parking I'll take that too.

Examples of what I'm looking for:

• Donegal Town has a triangular "square" that's surrounded by traffic, but still a space that could in theory be used for public gatherings.


• Boyle in Co. Roscommon has what seems to be a historic town square that's been mostly given over to car parking.

Examples of what I'm not looking for:

• Lack Co. Fermanagh - just a straight road through it and nowhere to gather with your mates.


• Dromahair  Co. Leitrim - Seems like a nice village, but again I'm not aware of a clearly defined "public space" that's designed for just being there as a pedestrian, or could be utilised as such.

If you can find a place with <2000 people in it that has a public square, that'd be great. I'm struggling to find any.

And if you can't think of any, let me know because I'd find that helpful too.

Thanks!

Question about housing policy in Ireland. I get the impression* that there's popular opposition to build-to-rent housing schemes. Why? They're common in the US and they're just another part of the housing mix. What have people in Ireland got against them?

* Impression is just from anecdotal observation of social media comments, which are probably not representative.

48 teams. 3 extra slots for UEFA. Will it make much of a difference to Ireland's chances of qualifying?

Well-put-together piece here on the famine* and the long term effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wViBPPjEdD8

Some fascinating alternative history possibilities here.

Without the famine, the population of the island could be as high as 36 million. I've seen some estimates as high as 40 million. Since there's about 42 million around the world claiming Irish ancestry, that sounds about right. That'd be far bigger than Australia (26m), far more than Netherlands (17m), not far behind Poland (39m). 36 million people living on the island would mean the place would be a lot more crowded, much more urban. Pick a town, any town, multiply its current population by about 4 (roughly speaking), and that's what you'd be looking at. 5 million in Dublin, 2.5m in Belfast, 0.8m in Cork, etc.. Even the small towns would be dramatically different. Lurgan would have 92,000 people living in it.

The country's influence on the world would be a whole lot bigger. Being more urbanized, it'd be more feasible to run public transport with all the big cities, so the railway network may well be bigger than it was in the 1950s instead of smaller. The place would look more like England or Japan in terms of how people live.

Without the famine, would there have been so much enthusiasm for home rule? Would the push for independence have looked more like what Scotland's trying to do now? Would we have left the UK regardless? Even if famine relief had been allowed, if mass starvation had been averted, there were still plenty of policies dating back to penal times that would have been fueling Irish resentment, so I'd say the push for independence would have happened regardless.

The famine was devastating to the Irish language. Without the mass starvation and emigration, I'd say Irish would have hung in there and today the Irish would be speaking English as a second language just like they do on the continent. We'd have a completely distinct sense of ourselves and probably less likely to be following English soccer teams, Scottish soccer teams, or consuming English media.

Would partition still have happened? Northern protestants would have been a much smaller minority in the early twentieth century. If the Brits were to partition the place, they probably would have carved out a smaller territory (say, Antrim and Down) that would still have included more than enough resentful fenians to oppose partition, particularly in Belfast which they were never going to cede. The unionists, being who they are, probably still wouldn't have been able to help themselves and would have discriminated against the catholics, so you'd see an alternate version of the Troubles playing out in a smaller area.

The diaspora would be a lot smaller. I wonder if the Irish would be as influential in Washington if they hadn't moved across the Atlantic in such big numbers.

Defence policy would be very different since we'd be 3 or 4 times bigger than Sweden where they build their own jets. We'd be bigger than Austria and Hungary combined. Energy policy would be very different since we'd be 4 or 5 times bigger than Norway.

Would the GAA still exist? I'd say yes, since soccer, rugby and cricket were making in-roads in Ireland when their respective bodies were founded regardless. The push for a Gaelic revival might be a bit more muted than what we got since the language would still have been going strong, but the influx of foreign games would still have motivated people to codify Gaelic games and get them organized. Counter-intuitively, Gaelic games would have probably made its way into foreign communities in a more widespread way since the Irish communities abroad wouldn't have been so large and self-contained. The same dynamics that spread English sports around the world (small number of people traveling abroad, inviting locals to play to make up the numbers) would have come into play, so Gaelic games would probably have a higher profile on the world stage, probably as big as Rugby is today.

I think it's fascinating to think about, and what was robbed of us. What might have been if we were allowed to control our own destiny.

*Some people find this term "famine" objectionable because they think it implies that it was a natural disaster, which we all know it wasn't. The word means a scarcity of food and does not refer only to natural disasters. Famines are almost never natural disasters, so I hope we don't get derailed into a semantics match.

Who here still makes voice calls on the phone? I've always hated it, and I'm delighted to see it disappearing. If I need to ring someone I've been known to put it off for days. There's just something weird and unnatural about taking to someone you can't see, it never sat right with me.

Is it just me or is she uniquely painful to watch?

Just starting a thread to see how much (or little) interest there is in this. Apparently 1.5 billion people watch it globally. I doubt if Ireland contributes much to that figure though...

Some of the commentary has been giving out about the GAA using penalty shoot-outs to decide a drawn game, which is understandable. You might as well toss a coin. I agree that shootouts look out of place in the GAA. But then replays aren't much better, they get criticism for being the "Grab All Association" when they do that.

So what's the best way to decide a drawn game?

In the states they do another period of extra time, and if it's still drawn then it's sudden death; next score wins. Would something like that work at inter-county level? Just play extra time and then go to sudden death?

I've rented cars from Dublin Airport before, but they fleece you in there. I've heard about Shelbourne car rentals, based in Newry and Portadown. Apparently they'll leave the car for you at a hotel at the airport (walkable from the terminal) and you can pick up and drop off there with less hassle and at a fraction of the cost of the likes of Hertz and Europcar.

Has anyone used their service? Is it reliable?

Help me out here. This is a genuine question. But what the hell is the big attraction to tea?

As far as I'm concerned it looks awful, tastes awful, smells awful, and burns your tongue so it hurts for days afterwards. So why do so many Irish people worship the stuff? Why do they drink it like water?

I was at my auntie's a few months ago and of course I went through the usual ritual of explaining that no, I really, honestly don't want any tea. Yes, water's fine. She said "that sounds awful that, a glass of cold water." Later when she topped me up, she topped me up with hot water from the kettle. I had to pour it down the sink and pour me a cold glass of water. She could not believe the evidence in front of her eyes that this, the most ordinary thing in the world, was all I wanted to drink.

When I'm thirsty I just pour a glass of water and drink it. Job done in a few seconds. When my dad gets thirsty he seems to go through this big elaborate ritual involving a kettle, a tea bag, milk, a teaspoon, and having to sit down for five minutes to drink the stuff. Even on a hot day.

I just don't get it. What is it about this beverage that people find so alluring?