There's a huge push in the UK not to use GB abbreviation unless necessary, because it excludes Northern Ireland.
Similarly, since last year international car plates bear UK sign, not GB as it had been for a hundred years before.
Similarly, since last year international car plates bear UK sign, not GB as it had been for a hundred years before.
In political terms it doesn't include NI ... or the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, and the Channel Islands.
(Also, in event of Scottish independence, using "GB" for the nationality would cause confusion because post-independence there'd be two separate nations on the GB land mass. See also [minor] confusion over "Ireland".)
Politically, IoW is part of England and so GB, albeit geographically a separate island.
I swear they're just messing with us. Who comes up with these things...
Skip to 5:00 for a beautiful diagram outlining the mess.
It often does - for example someone from NI can join the GB Olympics team.
[1] https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm#_c052 - For clarity, Zone 7 is cross-country for the most part, Zone 8 is mostly "Non-contiguous" (Alaska and Hawaii), and zone 9 is "Foreign but US Sovereignty" (Military bases, Embassies, Minor Outlying Islands). The maximum zone by distance in the UK would be Zone 4 - (Almost) All points within the British Isles are < 600 miles from each other.
Smaller companies often don't want to take a hit on the non-contiguous - but depending on what you're buying the places that DO charge shipping may actually be the cheapest overall.
The fun really comes when you have places in the USA that the post office doesn't even deliver to (in very VERY rural areas, every address is actually a PO Box; you have to drive into town to get the mail and that can be many, many miles). Often UPS and FedEx will think they can deliver, and then determine they can't. Fun times.
*Puerto Rico not Porto Rico
The UK is to a great extent a set of special cases that have accreted from the feudal era. No wonder we invented Mornington Crescent.
All of the compatibility issues and awkwardnesses that derive from this get glossed over as much as possible, but are starting to force their way to the surface as the power and competence vaccuum in the center loses its grip.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_15...
King James then began to try to create a unified state, merging first the churches. Of course there was then that little Cromwell bustup, but after that James VII of Scotland was on the throne and causing religious grief, his daughter and her Dutch husband then took over.
The United Kingdom also allows some regions to issue bank notes that are considered currency but not legal tender (i.e. then can be refused for payment of a debt in favour of currency issued by the Bank of England).
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterl...
And I'm not sure if they actually have 'dual citizenship from birth', but South Korea has an open door policy to North Korean.. immigrants/refugees.
In general if you’re born in NI and your parents are settled (that is they have permanent residency or are EU citizens with derived status) or are UK/IE citizens you are both British and Irish.
Edit - oops incorrect.
Rugby - one team for the island
Soccer - one federation for each polity on the island, but Derry City plays in the League of Ireland (Republic of Ireland). Two international teams.
Cricket - one team for the island
Etc etc. There is some tiresome hand-wringing every time an athlete has decide on their allegiance.
Basically, Ireland is a political Mandelbrot set.
I don't think that's technically correct. Anyone in NI has Irish citizenship (who wants it), so any NI athlete can represent Ireland.
"Team GB" is the official team of the whole of the UK though, including Northern Ireland.
Of course, those of us that don't think Northern Ireland should continue to be colonised would like GB used everywhere.
I objected to your use of the word 'colony' as it does not describe Northern Ireland. The social injustices you are referencing, and there have been many, do not make that word any more appropriate.
There is already a framework affirmed by the voters of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that the a plebiscite on unification can be held. There is no occupation, and your language does nothing constructive.
It is also incorrect to say 're-unified' as there never was an all island Irish state.
Technically most of the residents of NI were British citizens at the time this was happening.
Additionally, it wasn't just the British engaging in violence, there were at least three sides (nationalist/loyalist/government).
> The north is still under British occupation
I'm pretty sure that I could find a lot of people (almost certainly a majority) of NI residents who'd disagree with this statement.
> When that ends and the island is re-unified,
I hope (as someone from the Republic) that this happens, but we'll need a bunch of planning and time to make sure this doesn't turn out like Brexit (a close result leading to lots of problems over the following few years).
> residents of NI were British citizens at the time
That's how it works for every independence movement - a smaller entity asserts it's right to exist outside the boundary of a larger one. Fighting smaller entity is self-harm by the larger entity.
Look at the Chechen war in Russia, it was the same.
For a start, the Ulster Protestants were the majority in NI until this year (100 years after partition).
And while I (as an Irish person) would love to see a united Ireland, I completely condemn the violence that was used to attempt it.
Again, I understand why it happened, but 3.5k deaths over 30 years was not an acceptable price to get to the negotiation table (essentially repeating a deal that was shot down by the Unionists in 1972).
Why are you trying to force 2 million people to live in a country that most of them explicitly don't want to?
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Irish_Unification_of_20...
This isn't happening.
Personally I'm all about self-determination. If the people of NI want to return the land to Eire, then nobody should stand in their way. But that doesn't seem to be the case right now, even though support for reunification has been increasing in recent years.
I'm not even Irish and certainly have no skin in this game but what the UK did to Ireland over the centuries is disgraceful, and it clearly is struggling to come to terms with it.
Much of the infrastructure there reminded me more of post-communist Eastern European countries than western Europe, but then so do many parts of England (no offense).
I wonder if NI wouldn't be better off part of the Republic and the EU, now with Brexit and everything?
It used to be the case that the roads would get noticeably worse as you crossed the border into the republic, now the situation is reversed.
NI receives a disproportionately large amount of money from the UK gov compared to other UK nations.
The place needs to be actively developed, not repeatedly patched up and sent on its way to hobble along.
NI is a little better-off than much of England in that regard, outside of Tory towns and villages. My home town never recovered after Thatcher.
Unification will happen when the advantage of receiving such money will be clearly be offset by the disadvantage of having a broken political system (NI regional government is boycotted by unionists, while the national government is boycotted by republicans). As money reduces further and further while annoyances get bigger and bigger (because of an entrenched "England-first" government pursuing policies like Brexit), that threshold gets closer and closer.
Those subsidies don't seem to be enough to save it when the infrastructure is crumbling and everyone is moving abroad for jobs. Also, many countries don't need subsidies, they need opportunities. Subsidies are like paying a crackehead to buy more drugs instead of getting him a home, warm meal, a shower and schooling for job applications.
>money they likely wouldn't get from Dublin
They would get it from the EU then, and probably a lot more, as the UK gov is now struggling financially to stay solvent. The EU can very generous if you can play the game right. Just look at Poland 20 years ago and Poland today, the difference EU funds and the EU open market made, is night and day. It has also benefiter the Republic of Ireland. I doubt they would have been in the same state today without EU membership. For all its faults, the EU has been a force for good many times. Another English speaking region joining the EU could be a mutual benefit.
The UK government didn't have a lot of choice, the Ulster Protestants would almost certainly have fought a civil war if the full island was granted domininion status.
The boundary commission was problematic, but the real issue post partition was the removal of PR by the NI government. I think that if the ballot box hadn't essentially been stacked against Catholics we might not have seen the Troubles.
India, Pakistan, I am seeing a pattern.
Even if you get independace from england, you won't leave in one piece.
So which one was that then? Was this before the Representation of the people act or were women and working class men still banned?
> It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.
In the 1918 election in Ulster 66% voted for unionist parties.
Can you point to a vote by the Irish people in favour of independence?
I'm pretty sure you can't given that no such vote has ever taken place.
The IRA derived their 'legitimacy' from it.
And to be quite frank, you are probably thinking of the Provisional IRA when you put legitimacy in quotes, where as this was the original IRA, who basically have nothing in common with the Provos (as they were called when I were a lad) except the name.
We can split hairs about what is and is not democratic until the end of time, but the debate takes place in a historical vacuum: the creation of Northern Ireland was a response to a very specific set of circumstances, and I don't think yak-shaving about democratic niceties casts any light.
It is moot anyway, because there is no prospect of changing Northern Ireland's status without democratic sanction. Which vote of course takes place at the pleasure of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The Brits left split polities in quite a few places as they decolonized. Almost as if it was policy.