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What’s up with the whole Northern Ireland thing?

So some time last year England finally told the Northern Irish government that if they couldn’t fix things Dublin and London would get together and do it for them. To that end, they told the folks in Northern Ireland to meet the accords of the Good Friday Agreement or their positions and salaries would be dissolved.

Well, now Ian Paisley (Northern Irish church and state leader vehemently opposed to catholicism and homosexuals . . . and kind of SCARY lookin too, ain’t he?) is saying the November deadline won’t be met.

You know, before moving here I used to wonder what was up with the North of Ireland. I got a lot of vague anti-British “If you knew what I knew you’d understand” speeches from my father (wonderful circular logic, that), but never anything I could make any sense of, sure wasn’t our family part English? I never really understood what the problem was. Most folks from the states with Irish roots and have a similar sense of the thing:

There’s been bombings.
Women and children have been killed.
People are upset.
U2 wrote a song about it.
Nobody you ask can tell you exactly what’s up.

Well, since moving here I have learned something . . .

Date: September 14th, 2006 | 4 comments