Irish Times

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There are 8 million irish citizens in the Uk alone.

[Duncan Gardner]

Do you have a source for that figure Berba? I'm interested how the figures compare with other countries

[anton pulisov]

Ireland's attitude to people like me can be summed up as follows: "We continually fucked up the economy and you had to leave while we kept all the cushy jobs for ourselves, oh and since we caused so many people to leave it would be craaaazy to allow them to continue to vote."

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Do you have a source for that figure Berba? I'm interested how the figures compare with other countries

I doubt that any other country comes close, because I don't imagine that too many countries grant automatic citizenship to people on the basis of their grandparent having been born here. I didn't realize this until NHH asked a question about his eligibility for citizenship to discover that he was one all along. This one suggests a 700,000 irish people in uk, 1.7 million with one irish parent, and 3.4 million with one irish grandparent. but the number is likely higher, given just how open the whole thing is. Then throw in all the nordies, and you're up to 8 million. i mean it's pretty consistent with the idea that there's been a fully integrated labour market between the two countries for 150 years.

[elguapo4]

I'm very pessimistic about how this is going to end up, the,as usual well funded,youth defence and the right wing independents led by the Healy Raes along with half the Fianna Fail parliamentary party are getting most of the publicity, meanwhile the likes of Boyd Barrett and Clare Daly on the left have barely opened their mouths (I think someone needs to take Paul Murphy's pulse to check if he's still alive), if my workplace is anything to go by it's fucked,either they're apathetic "what difference would my vote make "non voters or permanently angry people who'll vote retain just to annoy the snowflakes

[Duncan Gardner]

Thanks Berba. Any idea of the figure for America?

Turnout in your referenda seems to vary a lot, although I suppose some of the issues are of limited interest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amendm...nd_referendums

[anton pulisov]

I doubt that any other country comes close, because I don't imagine that too many countries grant automatic citizenship to people on the basis of their grandparent having been born here.

That's not quite true.

Ireland only grants automatic citizenship to the children of Irish-born Irish citizens.

The grandchildren are not Irish by default, they must register to become Irish.

So you can't say that everyone in the UK with an Irish grandparent is an Irish citizen. If they haven't registered then they aren't.

[Flynnie]

I'd reckon about one in four Irish-Americans is passport eligible, so about 8 million people.

That number probably shrinks a little everyday, there's quite a bit of anxiety in the Irish-American community that the draconian immigration laws are starving the community of young Irish coming over, since it's bloody difficult for them to regularise their status. Plus the numbers fell off drastically once the Hart-Celler Act removed national quotas for immigration, meaning Ireland wasn't provided with more visas than it really should have gotten.

[Duncan Gardner]

Thanks Flynnie- back to the Abortion Ref, what are opinion polls saying?

[ursus arctos]

56-29 in favour as of late January (the beginning of the campaign)

[Flynnie]

I've been mildly surprised at how anxious some of my Irish friends are getting, since some polls for gay marriage in 2015 actually undercounted the yes vote, if you included the "don't know" answer in the situation (I think the assumption is they were all shy no voters).

[ursus arctos]

As you said before, it will all be about turnout.

[Lang Spoon]

Before Brexit, voting in refs was about the only thing that I missed about not being an Irish citizen (I can vote in Dáil elections). Mostly who the Prez is matters not a fuck outside optics and what flavoring of windy speech you get this time.

[Lang Spoon]

Indyref ended 45-55 from yes being in the low thirties at the beginning of the campaign. And the Always Voting elderly swung it for the blasted Union (though scarily 16-18 year olds were marginally pro union while 18-24 were overwhelmingly for Sexy Scotland). I’m a bit scared. How many frog leaning young people are there we are blithely assuming will vote for repeal? I think my proto fash flatmate will vote retain or not bother at all.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Your flatmate sounds like a bit of a prick, Langy. No offence, like.

[Diable Rouge]

I've been mildly surprised at how anxious some of my Irish friends are getting, since some polls for gay marriage in 2015 actually undercounted the yes vote, if you included the "don't know" answer in the situation (I think the assumption is they were all shy no voters).

The difference being that pretty much everyone under the age of 40, whether urban or rural, would have known someone who was gay, and thus just had to work on the older generation, whereas abortion is still very much a private matter, without a similar feelgood factor. And of course, the various gradations in relation to time limits, acceptable circumstances, cast-iron constraints etc, make the moral issues extremely grey.

[Lang Spoon]

Your flatmate sounds like a bit of a prick, Langy. No offence, like.

Aye, it’s great when he’s working. But this is just to get us over from Jan-May until eviction for refurbishment and much needed insulation not for us. Last flatmate had a nervous breakdown (fuck all to do with me or my flatmate, more her mad skills with the Guinness and gin and MaDMAn) and fled to hospital and family home, we needed someone quick (and he works with my dozy flatmate) we never realized he was a 25 year old Nazi when he moved in.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Indyref ended 45-55 from yes being in the low thirties at the beginning of the campaign. And the Always Voting elderly swung it for the blasted Union (though scarily 16-18 year olds were marginally pro union while 18-24 were overwhelmingly for Sexy Scotland). I’m a bit scared. How many frog leaning young people are there we are blithely assuming will vote for repeal? I think my proto fash flatmate will vote retain or not bother at all.

A big part of the reason that there's no rush to give the vote in constitutional referendums to irish residents overseas, is because overseas is where most of our voting old people live. That's why our population pyramid looks like that.

Flynnie raises a good point. The weird thing is that Teddy Kennedy was the one who killed our open door to the US. This is a point I raise with my aunt when discussions of american politics come up, and she'll say something about her going to America legally, and everyone one else should, and I'll casually mention that I'd take American complaints about illegal immigration more seriously if they weren't using them as a slave underclass. and then I'll point out that she was lucky to emigrate in 1961, and that it was almost impossible for her not to get a visa if she asked for one, while virtually every Irish emigrant to the US that came after her was illegal, like my cousin's husband, not because they were bad people, but because the law changed. I only do it when she annoys me.

Her and her buddies are basically the last of the mass migrants, and when they pass on, the number of Irish people in the US will be at homeopathic levels compared to the past. I also don't see too many irish people in a mad rush to move there.

[Lang Spoon]

I see the Merchant Prince is making sure FG don’t leave the idiocy field clear to FF and the mad Indos. Abortion on demand but scans first or something. Is it a state secret what exactly he was expelled from Clongowes for?

[Diable Rouge]

In another hoary old reliable that pops up about once a year, Colum Eastwood has stated that the SDLP may disband to facilitate FF organising in the North. With their local elections occurring in mid-2019, around the same time as our locals and Europeans, Martin's party would need a slate of candidates by now to conduct any feasible campaign, but there doesn't appear to be any movement on that score:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...-36772364.html

[Diable Rouge]

An interesting event today, as President Higgins grants a pardon to a man wrongfully convicted of murder in Connemara in 1882. It was largely timed to coincide with the broadcast later tonight of a TG4 documentary on the Maamtrasna murders:

http://www.thejournal.ie/myles-joyce...39995-Apr2018/

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

also in the news lately, the Office of the director of corporate enforcement is rooting around inside Independent News Media, and woooooo, well.....

They were originally asked in because Denis O'Brien (a 30% shareholder,) was trying to get INM to buy his commercial millstone radio stations NewsTalk and I think Today FM from him for a scarcely creditable €35 million. The Chief executive thought that Newstalk was worth maybe €10 million, the Chairman told the board that offering €10 million would be an insult to Denis, who had saved the company, the chief executive thought this was a clear example of horrendous abuse, resigned, and referred the matter to the ODCE, Who descended on INM. Because as far as I know, this is a crime, even in Ireland.

While rooting around they discovered some interesting things about O'Brien. He's been involved in an insane courtcase where he seeks vengeance on his enemies from the INM takeover battle. He's suing a PR company with connections to the O'Reilly's because they were engaged in a campaign against him, (I.e. putting together collections of clippings of publicly available information) and this has got to the high court, where they seem to think this is very amusing.

Anyway, it turns out that Denis handed over basically all of the companies E-mails to a company he knows to turn them into a searchable archive, and they came out with a list of 19 individuals that O'Brien had been particularly interested in, including all the journalists that weren't massively keen on him taking over the company. Even in ireland this is considered a bit much. Even for someone as nakedly twisted as O'Brien.

This could get very messy, very quickly, if only someone would cover this in the media.

This is quite a good summation of the story so far.

[Lang Spoon]

If I were the richest man in the world I’d bankroll Top Top hacks to dig into every corner of that fuckers life (please god be some Yewtree stuff that even he couldn’t writ away) and publish the fucking lot. He’s a cancer, a two bit Murdoch, a fat rugby faced fuck. Die die die ya cunt yi.

[Lang Spoon]

I’m sure Ivan Yates and that Hook cunt will be covering this with the objective detachment Newstalk is known for.

[Diable Rouge]

And there was great weeping and gnashing of teeth as Miriam O'Callaghan ruled herself out of the presidency:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MiriamOCa...35956974960640