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Cont: Brexit: Now What? Turning it up to 11

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The Don said:
Germany is still reeling from the costs of unification more than 30 years on and the former East Germany still lags the rest of Germany in economic and health metrics.

One of the huge barriers to Korean unification would be the astonishing cost.
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Yes, but NI is the one part of the UK that Brexit isn't currently managing to drag down to the level.of East Germany or North Korea.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Yes, but NI is the one part of the UK that Brexit isn't currently managing to drag down to the level.of East Germany or North Korea.
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It is the least worst from the perspective of the impact of Brexit but it's still been subject the the other aspects of government mismanagement and the UK's endemic lack of investment in improving productivity.
 
Georg said:
Catholics now outnumber the protestants in Northern Ireland (my nationalist friends in Portadown already 30 years ago told me that this would happen, because they are "breeding for the cause" :D), but nowadays it's less clear than then if nearly all catholics are Irish nationalists and if nearly all protestants are unionists.
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My point is I think for the people of Ulster to vote for joining the Republic in a referendum would be the first step toward union. Referendum in the Republic on allowing the six counties to join would be second.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
Two, one in the six counites and one in the three already part of Ireland. But the problem for "unionists" is that demographically they are becoming a smaller and smaller minority every year. And with the nation of Ireland becoming increasingly more prosperous than and increasingly more well run than the UK, what few reasons for nationalist and other communities to put reunification on the long finger no longer exist.

The only impediment to reunification within 20 years will be a Secretary of State for the six counties being stupid enough to risk the wrath of the US once the tipping point on the likely result being reached and refusing to hold a referendum.
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The US government does not give a damn about what happens in Ireland with reunion, frankly.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
I'm just putting as a hypothetical, because some politicians are so bending themselves over backwards to accomodate "unionists" they could conceivably offer a "we'll leave the EU and retie ourselves to the UK in the case of a successful referendum" deal.
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Ah!
Now I understand, what you mean.
Thanks! 👍
 
dudalb said:
My point is I think for the people of Ulster to vote for joining the Republic in a referendum would be the first step toward union. Referendum in the Republic on allowing the six counties to join would be second.
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And the first step in pontificating about relations between countries and regions is to learn what they are called.
Actual pontificating is step two.
 
dudalb said:
My point is I think for the people of Ulster to vote for joining the Republic in a referendum would be the first step toward union. Referendum in the Republic on allowing the six counties to join would be second.
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Once again, the six counties are not Ulster. They're an artificial bantustan created to mollify a bunch of religious supremacist zealots happy. Partition should not have happened in 1920, and that error will be corrected soon enough by the grown up people of Ireland.
 
malbui said:
Rest assured that someone will be along to make reference to “Eire” in the next little while.
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I recently caught an "Irish Free State" in the wild recently.

Person who used it was also confused by me referring to NI as the Six Counties...

I don't know what you can say to some of these folks.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
We haven't gotten a realistic estimate yet. All current estimates include stuff that will remain the responsibility of the UK government after the six counties leave, like the costs of Trident or HS2 appoertioned to the six counties (yes, part of HS2s costs are supposedly covered by them), general armed forces costs, civil service pensions, NHS costs.

A realistic estimate of the cost to the Irish exchequer will be nowhere near the £11bn currently apportioned, and given that the six countiss will then be part of a country that wants them to be successful, will also most likely decrease over time.
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I'd also like to see a proper estimate; I suspect it'll be far closer to ten billion than the current handwaving.
 
Carrot Flower King said:
I recently caught an "Irish Free State" in the wild recently.

Person who used it was also confused by me referring to NI as the Six Counties...

I don't know what you can say to some of these folks.
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Indeed. And it's 'Éire' anyway....
:D

Though 'Six Counties' has the virtue of accuracy. Personally I prefer Norn Iron.
 
catsmate said:
I'd also like to see a proper estimate; I suspect it'll be far closer to ten billion than the current handwaving.
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The best estimate I've seen was somewhere in the £2.7bn mark. Part of the problem is that (for reasons of not wanting to show how financially viable an independent Scotland would be) the UK government about ten years ago stopped breaking down its tax revenues by region. At that stage, once pension costs, military costs and Britain only infrastructure costs were stripped out, the figures were indicating that the six counties were nearly breaking even.
 
I am a big supporter of the 6 counties in the North breaking away and uniting with their neighbour with whom they have far more in common. The distant powers in Westminster have not delivered for the people of Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire.
 
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Lothian said:
I am a big supporter of the 6 counties in the North breaking away and uniting with their neighbour with whom they have far more in common. The distant powers in Westminster have not delivered for the people of Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire.
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Good luck with that. The day after the result of the last Scottish independence referendum was announced the Carlisle fans were singing,
You should have said yes,
You should have said yes,
**** off Scotland,
You should have said yes.
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