Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
The people in NI have been there for multiple generations, and probably also don't want to be relocated to England.
Why is the rest of the UK obliged to cater to their desires?
Well I agree. However I would guess that the people of NI could claim if it suited that they _were_ english, and that the UK government was therefor bound to provide military support, in the same way as for borough of London say when it gets bombed by IRA. That's socialism for you. Say in the south of england (relatively wealthy) we'd be better off if we didn't pay taxes to keep all the unemployed in the north.
What if the majority of the NI population felt that a special L1000 poll tax should be imposed on the English, with the proceeds disbursed equally among the NI population?
That's called democracy you each vote to steal from other voters :-)
Many of these people are English descent and their ancestors where given land by the British government which was stolen from native Irish about 300 years ago. They have also intermarried.
Scottish descent, stricly speaking. Also at the rates the catholics are breeding, they'll be a minority soon.
I did hear that in the UK we'll all be in the minority to muslims by 2000 something for similar reasons. (Don't have figures to back that up, I'd guess it's exaggerated, but the trend is there, some religions/nationalities have 6+ children each, whereas your average honky has 1 or 2).
You should also realise that IRA and supporters are minority in NI today, for a sense of perspective.
If you're such a strong believer in the rule of the majority :-), why should the NI protestants (who are a fraction of the total UK population) force the entire UK to do something that the rest of the UK doesn't want?
State police military is a socialist thing, the fact that they have some claim to be english is enough justification in the eyes of policians to interfere. Obviously it's historical also. IRA isn't at all popular in the UK either, peoples reactions are more extreme than the UK military over there. UK military is on best behaviour, rules of engagement of no fire until fired upon, proof to stand up in court etc. Some soldier got tried and convicted for being too trigger happy. Soldiers don't like it over there, getting sniped at, and not allowed to shoot back. It is claimed that the military know who all the IRA people are, but just can't pin anything on them that would stick. Your average UK person says: if you know who they are why don't we send in the SAS and kill the bastards. The IRA are a nuisance if for no other reason than they recently altered UK law to remove right to silence because IRA suspects were remaining silent, and with lack of evidence getting released. So now, if you're silent, the judge can ask the jury to take this into consideration (presumption of guilt, if you won't speak, you must have something to hide). Previously the converse was true, the judge was supposed to ensure the jury understood that silence meant nothing. You were obviously in your best interests to say absolutely nothing. As Duncan is fond of pointing out, never say _anything_ to a policeman. Your best tactic was clearly not to even get involved in cross examination where you could be made to look bad by clever lawyer even if completely innocent, so no evidence, `no comment', `no comment' x 100, -> case dismissed.
(I forget name, but there is a non-governmental paramilitary group on other side to IRA in NI, occasionally there is rumor that British Army is feeding this paramilitary organisation names of IRA suspects to hit, to save them the trouble).
Is that the guys that Hallam Baker said he had asked to kill me? :-)
Guess so. Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`