From The Irish Times (ouch):

[kpete]

https://junkee.com/irish-times-royal-family/289867

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=fquCpNr_JzZ5CUPEU-dqlw

[Irish_Dem]

1. True.

[Tetrachloride]

2. Ireland is not all saints.

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. I don't believe Ireland claimed to be

But they have a history with England that did not go very well for the Irish. I find it rather fascinating that in 1997 HMG gave Hong Kong back to the Chinese, but to this day will NOT give Northern Ireland back to the Irish.

[Coventina]

17. I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of folks in HK who wish they were still a colony.

Ironically......

N. Ireland should go back to the Irish, though, no doubt in my mind about that issue.

[Miguelito Loveless]

39. Oh, that is indeed the irony

Hong Kong residents wanted to remain, but were returned, and NI wants unification and to stay in the EU (with some vocal exceptions).

[paleotn]

25. Offspring of Protestant settlers have much to say about that

[IronLionZion]

33. BREXIT is quietly moving it in that direction

as they now have a hard sea border with the rest of the UK but an open border with the rest of Ireland.

[treestar]

54. In NI they do not want to go back

NI majority Protestant. If they go into the whole, they become a minority. The crux of the entire problem.

[JI7]

59. It's the people of NI themselves that want to remain with UK

[TxGuitar]

6. true

But they didn't deliberately starve millions of people or force millions to leave their homeland after it was stolen from them.

[Tetrachloride]

10. Ireland today isn't too saint like.

and Americans elected Trump.

Didactic posts are not too helpful.

I can be divisive anytime. Or I choose not to be. Restraint.

[PortTack]

15. ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[Warpy]

16. Americans didn't elect TFG

Congress basically did by neglecting to reapportion representation in its own body as well as the EC to reflect the depopulation of rural areas across the country.

IOW, Americans didn't elect him. Dirt did.

[Miguelito Loveless]

40. I would point out we didn't elect him either

A slave-era electoral process did. Trump LOST the popular vote.

[SaveOurDemocracy]

12. Vegetables are not all brussel sprouts. 🤔

Where do you see ANYONE claiming the Irish are all saints?

[Tetrachloride]

14. The original post is too didactic

[pnwmom]

21. The original post is too funny. Apparently it hit a nerve. nt

[kcr]

63. I think you need to look up the definition of that word n/t

[paleotn]

22. I'd say they've got good reason to be less than cordial

to their eastern neighbors, don’t you?

[Tetrachloride]

27. I appreciate the nuances that can be found in replies

such as yours.

its a start.

[arlyellowdog]

3. My grandfather was murdered

He was the father of 11 children. Many went to America. Some stayed to work the land. Queen Elizabeth was ok because I respect an empowered woman, but I can’t take King Charles without gagging. I hope it’s just a tourist thing now.

[hlthe2b]

4. The Irish (and esp.N. Ireland) have skin in the game as far as UK monarchy, symbolic or not.

Americans do not. IMO Americans need to obsess less about their own opinions re: the UK's monarchy but spend their efforts trying to defend the quasi-democratic Republic that forms our own troubled political system, currently under immense threat from fascist forces. Hate the elitism of royalty? Then maybe turn our eyes homeward and work to stop putting Kardashians and other "celebrities in name only" on a pedestal for our younger generations to emulate. That kind of idolatry is a big part of what brought us Trump.

The UK is not an authoritarian monarchy (as a poster recently professed, to much ridicule yesterday). For those that don't know any relevant world history (and apparently there may be a small few here, the British Monarchy is known as a constitutional monarchy. This means that, while The Sovereign is Head of State, the ability to make and pass legislation resides with an elected Parliament. The Sovereign (Queen, now King) is a ceremonial figurehead. They can have influence as respected diplomatic figures serving to provide continuity from one government to another following parliamentary election, but hold no power to influence policy, law, appointments, or elections.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox, but some of the comments here lately... Good Goddess.

That said, I find the Irish Times comment amusing and realistic to how they likely view the situation.

[Maeve]

8. To you and the Times....

[TxGuitar]

9. The royals don't care about influencing politics

as long as the cash keeps coming in.

[hlthe2b]

11. They DON'T. That is the point.

[Celerity]

49. God save the Queen 'Cause tourists are money And our figurehead Is not what she seems

Label: Virgin – VS 181
Format:
Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Single, Made In England text
Country: UK
Released: 1977
Genre: Rock
Style: Punk

[BlackSkimmer]

18. Thank you.

Well put.

[BuddhaGirl]

23. Propping up any uber-wealthy, elitist

institution like the british monarchy holds society back. The world needs to evolve past this silliness.

We can criticize the US AND Britain and the same time LOL

[hlthe2b]

26. When you become a British citizen, then YOU will have a vote.

Until then, not at all--as it should be. We have enough of our own problems to solve and ignoring that while being arrogant towards one of our most important allies-- who are fully capable of making their own decisions-- is the epitome of the "Ugly American." Respect. It isn't just a platitude.

[Martin68]

36. England is not very deserving of respect right now. Along with Brexit their energy bills

have skyrocketed, supermarkets are providing free food for the hungry, and racism is at an all-time high.

[BuddhaGirl]

47. When did an opinion become a "vote?"

Anyone can express an opinion about the elitist, entitled anachronism that is the british monarchy.

[hlthe2b]

50. Uh huh..

Not very self-aware are you?

[BuddhaGirl]

51. Lecturing people about their opinions

like you're doing about what is appropriate and not appropriate to express about the british monarchy is revealing, really.

[hlthe2b]

52. Nah.

Not worth it... I can't educate those who lack self-awareness and who really don't care. Those who can't even recognize how arrogant it is for an American (especially now and after the past years with Trump) to be exploiting this death to lecture our British DUers. Unbelievably tone-deaf at a minimum, ironic and arrogant more to the point.

[BuddhaGirl]

53. LOL

Okay! You're entitled to your opinion. Lecture on

[paleotn]

28. Mighty expensive figurehead.

Maybe the Republic idea would have grown legs if Cromwell hadn’t been such a god bothering ass.

[lark]

7. If I lived in Ireland, I'd hate England as they have thoroughly earned it over the centuries.

[Kaleva]

44. I don't waste my time hating anyone

I don't think highly of some, a few I feel disdain and contempt for, but I don't hate anyone or group.

Wars and conflicts can never end as long as their is hate.

[treestar]

55. The immigrant descendants would have more reason

but it's too long ago.

I recall researching to try to figure out what was happening in the Balkans during the era of ethnic cleansing. The issue went back to the 14th century. Life's too short. Fuggedabboudit.

[malaise]

13. Perfect

and by no means tasteless- sometimes the truth needs to be spoken or written.
Rec

[flying_wahini]

19. The British 'Monarchy' is on its last legs.

Colonialism is an antiquated idea who’s time is up.

[BuddhaGirl]

24. I think the British Commonwealth

will see more desertions over time. Liz was holding it together.

[paleotn]

29. Yep. Something Chuck Cubed will never be able to pull off.

[cbdo2007]

20. The English band IDLES did a moment of silence last night at their concert......

for the occupied nations of Ireland (others), India, all the occupied countries in Africa, all the occupied countries in Asia, Canada… and every abomination our empire have ever committed. Genocide after fucking genocide… let’s move the fuck on.”

Then they led the crowd in a chant of "Fuck the king, Fuck the King" lol

They were in Toronto

[Layzeebeaver]

30. Love it!

[Warpy]

31. It's also a little more complicated than that

During WWII, Ireland was nonaligned but a lot of Irish went to Britain to work in a little bit of everything, much of which supported the British war effort. The same couldn't be said of Irish in Germany, there weren't that many who wanted to work for Hitler.

It's like having a third cousin who's a bully and a blowhard. If that cousin gets into trouble that he didn't cause, the rest of the family will support him because kinship.

However, if he caused the problem, it's "fuck off" and nothing more because he's a bully and blowhard and deserves what he's getting.

Also remember that the a large part of the Irish diaspora before, during and after the Potato Famine ended up in England, especially around the Liverpool area.

There are resentments and hard grudges at work, but there is also a degree of kinship. It's complicated.

However, nobody can skewer the high and mighty like the Irish Times.

[Martin68]

35. Of course the Irish famine was created and supported by the English. They didn't lift a finger to

Last edited Sat Sep 10, 2022, 01:43 PM - Edit history (1)

help the starving Irish, either.

[Warpy]

38. Again, it's complicated

and has more to do with the Parliament of the time than with the English, themselves. Landlords, whether English or Irish, had to pay their taxes, which meant they had to export the food which should have gone to feed the Irish. Since Parliament, in its infinite wisdom, decided to tax landlords per tenant, landlords had no choice but to evict tenant farmers, increasing the problems.

The English didn't exactly cause the famine, a couple of wet years plus the appearance of potato blight did that. Parliament exacerbated it by viewing Ireland, along with other colonies, as a cash cow to be milked for revenue but unsupported.

Here's a bit on the origin of the HERB-1 blight that devastated Ireland: https://www.history.com/news/after-168-years-potato-famine-mystery-solved

[Martin68]

45. The fact that they exported food from Ireland during a famine was a crime against humanity. That's

not very complicated.

According to Wikipedia: "The refusal of London to bar export of food from Ireland during the famine was an immediate and continuing source of controversy, contributing to anti-British sentiment and the campaign for independence. Additionally, the famine indirectly resulted in tens of thousands of households being evicted, exacerbated by a provision forbidding access to workhouse aid while in possession of more than 1/4 acre of land...One historian calculated that, between 1801 and 1845, there had been 114 commissions and 61 special committees inquiring into the state of Ireland, and that "without exception their findings prophesied disaster; Ireland was on the verge of starvation, her population rapidly increasing, three-quarters of her labourers unemployed, housing conditions appalling and the standard of living unbelievably low"..."According to the historian Cecil Woodham-Smith, landlords regarded the land as a source of income, from which as much as possible was to be extracted. With the peasantry "brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation" (in the words of the Earl of Clare), the landlords largely viewed the countryside as a hostile place in which to live. Some landlords visited their property only once or twice in a lifetime, if ever.[37] The rents from Ireland were generally spent elsewhere; an estimated £6,000,000 was remitted out of Ireland in 1842

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

[Warpy]

46. Then, as now, there were stingy fake Christians who said

that handing out food to the starving would make them morally weak, and that's who Parliament and the English listened to. Ireland was their cash cow and they weren't going to give it up, no matter how many died.

[FakeNoose]

37. The potato famine of 1880's brought a lot of Irish immigrants to our shores

During the 1800's, the Irish people grew their own food and it was confiscated by the English landowners as rent and taxes. At that time most of the Irish properties were owned by English lords. All that was left for the Irish to eat were potatoes, and maybe an occasional rabbit or small game. The potato blight of that time was a disaster and many people starved to death or suffered severe malnutrition. However the British went right on confiscating all the food. As far as I know, nobody in England starved during that time.

The survivors were the lucky ones who got out on ships to the U.S. If they couldn't pay for their own passage, they entered into an agreement and worked as indentured servants for 7 years until the contract was satisfied. After that they were free to stay in America and work for whomever they wanted for pay, and most had no family back in Ireland to return to. The Irish-Americans always had a sadness and nostalgia for the old country, because they had left unwillingly, but they also knew there was nothing to go back for. The English had taken their lands and made their lives miserable.

[Warpy]

41. The English had also introduced the potato

which evolved to grow in the rocky soil of the Andes, in cold and humid conditions. It grew so well that it caused a population explosion in Ireland, especially in the west of Ireland where it was extensively cultivated on land the English hadn't wanted, although most estates also grew it.

The potato is the one foodstuff that will supply every nutrient the human body needs with the exception of Vitamin A, something that could be obtained through other vegetable foodstuffs.

My own family were shippers and merchants with little taste for farming, so they survived. A great grand uncle came over as a musician in the late 1850s to play gigs for the immigrant population. He was just in time for the Civil War and accepted $300 to take the place of a rich man's son in the Union Army. He survived, prospered, and started to bring people over, including my great grandmother and grandmother. It needs to be remembered that Ireland has always exported her children, that the migration began before the potatoes gave out and continued long after the famine.

[electric_blue68]

43. Interesting - both the potato & your family history...

While I knew about the famine from my teens as a NYC'r being around Irish-Americans...I didn't know until my later '30's that the English exacerbated it by exporting food that could/should have gone to Ireland.

I've visited the Irish Hunger Memorial that's NW of The World Trade Tower area. Somberly well designed.

[Tree Lady]

56. I visited Famine Village in Ireland

3 years ago and came away almost hating England. During the famine they made the people pay their taxes in food and when they couldn't they burned their homes, all while England had plenty of food. It was sickening.

No wonder they did a article like this.

[Martin68]

57. Part of the reason for the famine was the fact that Ireland was a one-crop economy.

The farmers were all tenants whose landlords could kick them off the property if they raised any other crop or livestock. That would result in starvation for the family.

[Warpy]

58. That was true of poor folks in the west of Ireland

but not so much in the fertile south and east. A wide variety of crops were grown on the estates, and the estate owner and his managers would certainly have directed tenants to diversify in order to have enough to sell to pay their taxes.

Tenants were kicked off when Parliament passed a law to tax estates per tenant farmer. It became cheaper to hire a few workers to grow what the tenants had done rather than keep families in place, often families that had been there for generations.

[bringthePaine]

32. monarchy is bullshit entire

[Martin68]

34. I second that!

A Murderous Clown Show.

[oioioi]

42. +1 for indigenous Australian genocide

Special report: Shootings, poisonings and children driven off cliffs – this is a record of state-sanctioned slaughter

[link:https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2019/mar/04/massacre-map-australia-the-killing-times-frontier-wars|

The truth of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight.

The stories of “the killing times” are the ones we have heard in secret, or told in hushed tones. They are not the stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to go away.

The colonial journalist and barrister Richard Windeyer called it “the whispering in the bottom of our hearts”. The anthropologist William Stanner described a national “cult of forgetfulness”. A 1927 royal commission lamented our “conspiracy of silence”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/04/the-killing-times-the-massacres-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confront

[sl8]

48. Here's the full piece, from March, 2021:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-meghan-the-union-of-two-great-houses-the-windsors-and-the-celebrities-is-complete-1.4504502

Harry and Meghan: The union of two great houses, the Windsors and the Celebrities, is complete

After Harry and Meghan, the monarchy looks archaic and racist. Well duh.

Patrick Freyne
Mon Mar 8 2021 - 23:00

Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.

Beyond this, it’s the stuff of children’s stories. Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state. What’s the logic? Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.

We cut sporadically to the couple’s own property, where they wander in hoodies, jeans and anoraks, as if to say, ‘We’re just regular rich folk, Oprah, no different from you or Tom Hanks or Jeff Bezos’

The contemporary royals have no real power. They serve entirely to enshrine classism in the British nonconstitution. They live in high luxury and low autonomy, cosplaying as their ancestors, and are the subject of constant psychosocial projection from people mourning the loss of empire. They’re basically a Rorschach test that the tabloids hold up in order to gauge what level of hysterical batshittery their readers are capable of at any moment in time.

[...]

[treestar]

60. "sweatless?"

what are they getting at there?

[sl8]

61. "Prince Andrew Asked to Provide Medical Evidence That Shows He Cannot Sweat"

https://www.newsweek.com/prince-andrew-asked-provide-medical-evidence-that-shows-he-cannot-sweat-1664675

Prince Andrew Asked to Provide Medical Evidence That Shows He Cannot Sweat
BY EMMA NOLAN ON 12/31/21 AT 10:21 AM EST

[treestar]

62. thank you

I had not followed that story enough!