The DUP

[Jacksgranda]

Nobody said it was perfect.

[Jacksgranda]

The republicans signed up to the Belfast Agreement, too. They threatened violence if there was a land border as a result of Brexit. Are you allowed to threaten violence on something they signed up to?

[NotThePars]

Nobody said it was perfect.

Some people are definitely looking back more fondly on it than others!

[Jacksgranda]

Not me, not defending what went on.

Not worth 30 years of murder, mayhem and bombing, though, with the resulting bitterness and division.

[welshbairn]

There are no good sides in war, just stupidity and murder.

[LongTimeLurker]

14 hours ago, WhiteLight said:

That maybe, but the nationalists/SF are hitting very near the criteria in the GFA. They get the majority MLA and its goodnight Vienna.
I think its called democracy.

SF won't get anything even close to a majority of MLAs at the next election and will likely be in the 25-30% range. If they get the highest number it will only be because of how fractured the pro-Union vote is between the DUP, UUP, TUV and Alliance right now.

Combined SF and the SDLP will only be at 40% or so on a good day for them (they were below that at the most recent Westminster election) given they are also bleeding some support to Alliance & co in the centre ground that reject both Nationalist and Unionist labels.

Boris's Brexit was bad for Ulster Unionism long term but I wouldn't get too excited about a Border Poll and UI being just around the corner. 

Edited July 20, 2021 by LongTimeLurker

[LongTimeLurker]

12 hours ago, welshbairn said:

There are no good sides in war, just stupidity and murder.

Not a huge fan of the late Seamus Mallon's politics but he was a thoroughly decent individual who summed up the sheer futility of what unfolded from1968-1997 with the phrase "Sunningdale for slow learners". Think people in this thread who are talking about large scale violence from the Unionist side in future need to get a grip. The RoI in 2021 is a very different place from what it was like in the late 1960s and early 70s or from what the Free State was like in the 1920s and 30s.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

SF won't get anything even close to a majority of MLAs at the next election and will likely be in the 25-30% range. If they get the highest number it will only be because of how fractured the pro-Union vote is between the DUP, UUP, TUV and Alliance right now.

Combined SF and the SDLP will only be at 40% or so on a good day for them (they were below that at the most recent Westminster election) given they are also bleeding some support to Alliance & co in the centre ground that reject both Nationalist and Unionist labels.

Boris's Brexit was bad for Ulster Unionism long term but I wouldn't get too excited about a Border Poll and UI being just around the corner. 

They may not get a majority but they might well be the largest party.

Nationalists & Republicans got 44% of the seats, and 41.9% of the vote, at the last Stormont election, I can't see that going down by much.

[LongTimeLurker]

I assume you are including People Before Profit to reach 41.9%? They don't actually sign up to the Nationalist label at Stormont as far as I'm aware although there's a reasonable enough case to be made that they are in practical terms. SDLP + SF had 39.8% of first preferences combined in 2017.

[Jacksgranda]

9 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

I assume you are including People Before Profit to reach 41.9%? They don't actually sign up to the Nationalist label at Stormont as far as I'm aware although there's a reasonable enough case to be made that they are in practical terms. SDLP + SF had 39.8% of first preferences combined in 2017.

Yes

[Jacksgranda]

On 15/07/2021 at 10:16, welshbairn said:

In two minds about this, not sure about the value of jailing a 70 year old for what they did as a teenage squaddie when the officers always get off scot free. If there's an amnesty it should definitely apply to paramilitaries too though.

Stormont says "No".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-57892882

[GordonS]

On 19/07/2021 at 18:30, Jacksgranda said:

Apparently it wasn't democracy when the unionists had the majority.

This...

On 19/07/2021 at 18:36, NotThePars said:

Probably because of all the gerrymandering, discrimination, and cracking heads you were doing

 

... is absolutely the right answer.

It's not democracy when the majority remove fundamental rights from people they don't like. It's not a democracy when discrimination is enforced by law. That's a tyranny of the majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority 

[LongTimeLurker]

On 19/07/2021 at 19:37, Jacksgranda said:

Nobody said it was perfect.

...but there weren't many places that were at the time. Nationalists were being elected to Stormont and controlled certain local councils where Londonderry style gerrymandering was impossible and the Northern Ireland Labour Party were often able to beat the UUP in parts of Belfast with cross-community support. 

Stormont started off with an STV PR system in the 1920s that would have made that a recipe for competitive elections with scope for changes of power. The UUP should never have been allowed to move away from that as Westminster style FPTP from 1929 onwards was what allowed an effective one party UUP state to emerge. Having a single dominant party that never loses power is never healthy for democracy anywhere.

Edited July 21, 2021 by LongTimeLurker

[Jacksgranda]

1 hour ago, LongTimeLurker said:

...but there weren't many places that were at the time. Nationalists were being elected to Stormont and controlled certain local councils where Londonderry style gerrymandering was impossible and the Northern Ireland Labour Party were often able to beat the UUP in parts of Belfast with cross-community support. 

Stormont started off with an STV PR system in the 1920s that would have made that a recipe for competitive elections with scope for changes of power. The UUP should never have been allowed to move away from that as Westminster style FPTP from 1929 onwards was what allowed an effective one party UUP state to emerge. Having a single dominant party that never loses power is never healthy for democracy anywhere.

I worked for a fella who had 3 votes under the old local government system. He was a Roman Catholic, but because he was a ratepayer those were the rules. I know people, who are in their 70s now, who didn't have a vote in local elections because they weren.t ratepayers. They were protestants.

[Jacksgranda]

5 hours ago, GordonS said:

This...

... is absolutely the right answer.

It's not democracy when the majority remove fundamental rights from people they don't like. It's not a democracy when discrimination is enforced by law. That's a tyranny of the majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority 

Lets bomb the place to smithereens and shoot our neighbours, that'll fix it.

[Jacksgranda]

5 hours ago, GordonS said:

This...

... is absolutely the right answer.

It's not democracy when the majority remove fundamental rights from people they don't like. It's not a democracy when discrimination is enforced by law. That's a tyranny of the majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority 

 

On 19/07/2021 at 19:06, Jacksgranda said:

Not me, not defending what went on.

Not worth 30 years of murder, mayhem and bombing, though, with the resulting bitterness and division.

 

[GordonS]

4 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

Lets bomb the place to smithereens and shoot our neighbours, that'll fix it.

I'm honestly not sure what you think I said.

4 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

 

 

The civil rights protestors didn't kill anyone. But when peaceful civil rights protestors are murdered by state forces in the middle of the street in broad daylight, there will always be hot-heads who'll respond in kind. When people are oppressed some of them always resort to violence, and it doesn't make it any more legitimate whether the oppression was done by a majority or not.

In any case it was only a majority because of the creation of an arbitrary thing called Northern Ireland. It wasn't a majority in Ireland and it wasn't a majority in Ulster. It wasn't a majority in the communities where most Catholics lived and still live.

And I shouldn't need to say it but apparently I do - I don't excuse anything the IRA did to civilians in any way and I've always regarded them as child-murdering scum. 

[GordonS]

4 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

I worked for a fella who had 3 votes under the old local government system. He was a Roman Catholic, but because he was a ratepayer those were the rules. I know people, who are in their 70s now, who didn't have a vote in local elections because they weren.t ratepayers. They were protestants.

Oh well, that anecdote proves there wasn't systematic oppression of Catholics then.

[GordonS]

On 19/07/2021 at 19:36, welshbairn said:

There are no good sides in war, just stupidity and murder.

In the vast majority of wars throughout history I would agree with you, but it's obviously not always true.

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, GordonS said:

I'm honestly not sure what you think I said.

The civil rights protestors didn't kill anyone. But when peaceful civil rights protestors are murdered by state forces in the middle of the street in broad daylight, there will always be hot-heads who'll respond in kind. When people are oppressed some of them always resort to violence, and it doesn't make it any more legitimate whether the oppression was done by a majority or not.

In any case it was only a majority because of the creation of an arbitrary thing called Northern Ireland. It wasn't a majority in Ireland and it wasn't a majority in Ulster. It wasn't a majority in the communities where most Catholics lived and still live.

And I shouldn't need to say it but apparently I do - I don't excuse anything the IRA did to civilians in any way and I've always regarded them as child-murdering scum. 

 

On 19/07/2021 at 19:06, Jacksgranda said:

Not me, not defending what went on.

Not worth 30 years of murder, mayhem and bombing, though, with the resulting bitterness and division.