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Post by Séamus on Nov 10, 2017 3:07:50 GMT
Elizabeth II is officially Australia's head of state. And yet anybody with dual citizenship, even if it's British(and Australian) citizenship, is ineligible to sit in the Australian federal parliament. It's something few people thought about until recently. A curiosity has emerged. Senator Pat Dodson, usually described as INDIGENOUS, doesn't seem to know where his father was born. He always referred to his father as Irish-Australian, POSSIBLY born in Ireland. If citizenship was available and WAS obtained at the time of Senator Dodson's birth, he'll be ineligible to continue in the senate, despite being aboriginal on his mother's side. The original constitutional requirement was approved by Queen Victoria and was unspecific, but was probably directed towards foreign powers unconnected with Britain. It's now mostly English-born Australians that need to 'renounce' their 'foreign' citizenship.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 10, 2017 9:54:51 GMT
Can one be Irish and British? A more honest question might be, "Can one be Irish and NOT be British?".  |
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Post by Stephen on Nov 13, 2017 15:36:01 GMT
Can one be Irish and British? A more honest question might be, "Can one be Irish and NOT be British?". That a very good question? I don't think so! |
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Post by kj on Nov 14, 2017 9:00:31 GMT
As someone who has lived in both countries, I can assure we would be far better off just being Irish and proud of it, within reasonable limits. The British know *nothing* about Ireland and care even less. The fantasy of many Irish Anglophiles such as Ruth Dudley-Edwards etc about our 'union' is complete nonsense. I know many decent English people but I can assure you that fundamentally the English regard us as a joke people with a joke nation. There's no overcoming that in-built sense of English superiority.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 14, 2017 9:09:51 GMT
The sad truth, though, is that we speak their language and take most of our culture from them. That's all I meant.
I love England (as it used to be, anyway) but I would dearly love us to have a more distinct identity of our own. When foreigners mistake us for British, how wrong are they really?
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Post by kj on Nov 14, 2017 9:22:00 GMT
I wouldn't go too far with the self-loathing. The only reason we speak their language and have their culture is because we had no choice. As I've put forward elsewhere, we have very different psychologies and leanings. Beware of developing Stockholm Syndrome.
Contemporary England is the tackiest place I have ever been in in my travels: it's what happens when a society gives itself up to the purely cheap and functional. The American theologian David Bentley Hart captured it like no one else I know in this little take on a moment of ilumination while standing on a drab railway platform in the British Midlands:
"Generally one might prefer grander settings for one's moments of illumination--Wordsworth's lakes, Amiel's azure peaks--but it was, in this instance, the very dreariness of my surroundings that occasioned my awakening. The station's oblong pillars were blackly begrimed; shreds of posters in garish hues hung limply from the walls; in shallow depressions of the concrete floor opaque pools of oleaginous water glistened with a sinister opalescence; an astringent chemical odor of antiseptics vying with various organic purulences suffused the damp air; a scattering of garret torsos farther along the platform bore eloquent witness to the malaise of Britain's post-war gene pool; and nothing was out of the ordinary. But, all at once, two thoughts occurred to me simultaneously, and their wholly fortuitous conjunction amounted to a revelation. One was something like "Boredom is the death of civilization"; and the other something like "America has never been this modern."
Not that this place was conspicuously worse than--or even as wretched as--countless stops along the way in the United States, but anyone who has lived in Britain for some time should understand how such a place might, in a moment of calm clarity, seem like the gray glacial heart of a gray and glaciated universe. Somehow this place was adequate to its age--to that pervasive social atmosphere of resignation at which modern Britain is all but unsurpassed; it was disenchantment made palpable, the material manifestation of a national soul unstirred by extravagant expectations or exorbitant hopes. Admittedly, contemporary England's epic drabness makes everything seem worse; in the Mediterranean sun, culture's decay can be intoxicatingly charming (and Catholic decadence is so much richer than Protestant decadence)."
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 14, 2017 11:35:57 GMT
I wouldn't be quite so hard on the British or quite so easy on us...I thought London was like a giant necropolis when I went there, but other places didn't seem so bad.
Regarding our own culpability...the British have been gone a long time now and we haven't really regenerated our culture, at least in any meaningful sense. I do accept that it's extaordinarily difficult, though, like getting toothpaste back in the tube.
On the whole, I agree with you.
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Post by Séamus on Jul 9, 2018 2:14:11 GMT
I would love to generally discuss being Culturally British and Irish. There was certainly a particular type of Irish that were Irish and British. My father actually grew up on the old Phoenix Park racecourse where his father worked for the Peard family. He still recalls the hilarity that grew around Mrs Peard's "To the Manor Born accent". One example from today's WEST AUSTRALIAN:(concerning an old bush property bring restored) "(the Walebing buildings were) established by Irish brothers Anthony O'Grady Lefroy and Gerald deCoursey Lefroy as a sheep farm. Most of the buildings... Were built by convict labour in the late 1840s" A lot of these convicts would have been Irish -I wonder how they were treated? "the main homestead was built by ticket-of-leave labour in the 1870s" So they weren't beyond paying wages to ex-convicts anyway. "...a large building of granite and brick with hand-sawn jarrah roof singles. Local granite was used for the walls of most of the property. Anthony Lefroy held numerous positions of importance in the WA government including colonial treasurer. His eldest son, Sir Henry Bruce Lefroy was the premier of WA from 1917-1919" The article goes on to mention that a Lefroy Cricket Team was founded from students from the Benedictine mission. This doesn't mean that he Lefroy family were Catholics, Australian colonies were a bit more ecumenical than most parts of the world at that time. There is also a photo of some of their direct descendants still named Lefroy who seem to live in the area-this is quite rare in West Australia, where most country towns change greatly through the decades or, indeed, disappear altogether. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2018 22:05:59 GMT
Peter hitchens was asked on Twitter what the Irish had contributed to the English language. My reply :
Set it to music and drowned it in beer against the day their rights reappeared. What else is owed to “abusive language” from mouths with big battalions attached?
In fairness, I may have read a skeptical tone into an honest inquiry. I know many Americans of Irish descent but no Irish. My impressions of genuine Irish opinion may be amiss but I’m of the view is that they are not afraid of beer.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 18, 2018 22:39:06 GMT
Well, this Irishman can't stand beer, but I am in the minority!
We have the English language its greatest poet, W.B. Yeats. No small thing, I think.
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Post by assisi on Jul 21, 2018 15:10:37 GMT
I would love to generally discuss being Culturally British and Irish. We are so physically and historically close, Ireland and Britain, that there are bound to be shared cultural influences. It might sound quite superficial but there is a fluidity as well as a constancy in the ebb and flow of the cultural influence. For example the current progressivism of the Irish government and media is an anti-Irish movement, a push towards globalism and a flight from the nation state. I can relate to the vague idea of Irish nationhood which was spiritual, literary, poetic, musical, Christian, Irish speaking and immersed in the land. It had its flaws which progressives are very quick to emphasise. But, ask yourself, can you love or feel affection for progressivism? Is it not based on hating tradition and humanity. Its ultimate goal of uniformity is surely anti-human. So, while always an Irish nationalist, I find myself retreating from the 'post abortion referendum Ireland' significantly. At the same time I know I ought not to allow progressivism to appropriate the history of Ireland and therefore I will not surrender my view. The British, particularly the English, are different to us. The tended to have empires, we tended to be the ones who were colonised and that definitely has affected our respective outlooks for the last four or five centuries at least. We tend to have that empathy for the underdog which was borne out of our own suffering and insight as a result of being second class citizens. One of the things that so annoys me about the current Irish identity politics is that the genuine empathy we had for other unfortunates has been twisted and converted into a politicised faux empathy with particular identity groupings. But I can't dislike a country that has produced people like Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Chesterton, Tolkien, Orwell, Muggeridge and many more. Even the old idylls of an English village, cricket played on the green, old mansion houses, Church bells, the village pub are all attractive, even if they are slightly picture postcard. Currently, both Irish culture and British culture (and western culture in general) are under threat by multiculturalism and globalism. In the midst of the threat there is also an opportunity. Most conservative, traditional, Christian, right wing and sensible people could once again look to the great 3 institutions that have underpinned western society, God, family and community (from local to national) and use these to consolidate society again. Then there would be a commonality of basic culture on top of which the culture of each nation could develop its own flavour based on the past present and vision for the future. |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 21, 2018 15:45:54 GMT
I would love to generally discuss being Culturally British and Irish. We are so physically and historically close, Ireland and Britain, that there are bound to be shared cultural influences. It might sound quite superficial but there is a fluidity as well as a constancy in the ebb and flow of the cultural influence. For example the current progressivism of the Irish government and media is an anti-Irish movement, a push towards globalism and a flight from the nation state. I can relate to the vague idea of Irish nationhood which was spiritual, literary, poetic, musical, Christian, Irish speaking and immersed in the land. It had its flaws which progressives are very quick to emphasise. But, ask yourself, can you love or feel affection for progressivism? Is it not based on hating tradition and humanity. Its ultimate goal of uniformity is surely anti-human. So, while always an Irish nationalist, I find myself retreating from the 'post abortion referendum Ireland' significantly. At the same time I know I ought not to allow progressivism to appropriate the history of Ireland and therefore I will not surrender my view. The British, particularly the English, are different to us. The tended to have empires, we tended to be the ones who were colonised and that definitely has affected our respective outlooks for the last four or five centuries at least. We tend to have that empathy for the underdog which was borne out of our own suffering and insight as a result of being second class citizens. One of the things that so annoys me about the current Irish identity politics is that the genuine empathy we had for other unfortunates has been twisted and converted into a politicised faux empathy with particular identity groupings. But I can't dislike a country that has produced people like Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Chesterton, Tolkien, Orwell, Muggeridge and many more. Even the old idylls of an English village, cricket played on the green, old mansion houses, Church bells, the village pub are all attractive, even if they are slightly picture postcard. Currently, both Irish culture and British culture (and western culture in general) are under threat by multiculturalism and globalism. In the midst of the threat there is also an opportunity. Most conservative, traditional, Christian, right wing and sensible people could once again look to the great 3 institutions that have underpinned western society, God, family and community (from local to national) and use these to consolidate society again. Then there would be a commonality of basic culture on top of which the culture of each nation could develop its own flavour based on the past present and vision for the future. Brilliant post, Assisi. I agree with every word, emphatically. I particularly like this: "But, ask yourself, can you love or feel affection for progressivism? Is it not based on hating tradition and humanity. Its ultimate goal of uniformity is surely anti-human." That's what I hate (and fear) about progressivism the most. Conservatism (or traditionalism, or nationalism) is based upon the love for something THAT ACTUALLY EXISTS, or that existed-- even if it is idealized. No matter how idealized it is, it's something particular. But progressivism, to me, seems to be inherently negative-- it's all about what it's NOT, rather than what it is. I realize that progressives could use language in such a way to make it seem as though they have positive ideals, and they would even believe that, but the ideals are always vague and abstract. And I know that progressives might be able to point to some culture they admire, like New Orleans, and hold that up as an embodiment of their beliefs. But places like that seem exceptional by nature. The thing about a nationalist ideal of Ireland or England, or any country, is that every little village or street can be an embodiment of the national ideal. |
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Post by Séamus on Feb 20, 2020 12:08:56 GMT
Can one be Irish and British? A more honest question might be, "Can one be Irish and NOT be British?". The recent seperation of Serena,Countess of Snowdon makes the highly unlikely possiblity of an Irish-born queen consort an even further impossibility (the second Earl Snowdon is currently 21st in line,pending any mutual renouncement of succession on the Sussex's part). Considering Margaret and Anthony's legendary status as the first royal celebrities,with lifestyles to match,is it not surprising that the Earl and his Limerick-born wife have stayed quietly wed for 25years before this? And they could have named the proposed Antrim to Scotland bridge after her,as a compromise name. Perhaps recently deceased adventurer Mad Mike Hoare,born of Irish parents in British India,once played by Richard Burton in a 70s film, would be a candidate,although I'm sure there's a sufficient Seychelles Islander community in Britain and Ireland to complain of his interference in the politics of their former country,besides 'Wild Geese',title of his mercenaries and Burton's film, would seem to have been an uncompromising nod to the Fenian brotherhood. As the £20 billion construction could in all likelihood end up at Mull of Kintyre,perhaps they'll have to settle for McCartney Highway? |
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Post by connacht4096 on May 20, 2022 16:31:59 GMT
no, one cannot, being both German and Israeli is more possible, Germany has truly admitted and condemns the wrongs they committed against the Jews, and even still pays reperations; Britain actively celebrates their crimes against Ireland;
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Post by cato on May 21, 2022 10:35:50 GMT
no, one cannot, being both German and Israeli is more possible, Germany has truly admitted and condemns the wrongs they committed against the Jews, and even still pays reperations; Britain actively celebrates their crimes against Ireland; I hope this is not a renewal of your tedious trolling. I noted with approval your recent disavowal of the term on another thread. As an intelligent person you know very well a significant minority of people on this island identify as British and some as Irish and British. Perhaps being English and Irish is incompatible but that hasn't stopped many sucessful Irish celebrities and entrepreneurs in the UK. |
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