
Big Cajones
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Canadian PM Mark Carney: “It’s my strong personal view that the international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.” Because of Trump, the U.S. is no longer seen as the leader of the free world

Canadian PM Mark Carney: It’s my strong personal view that the international order will be rebuilt — but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.




DUP minister Gordon Lyons wipes out project funding vital for Irish-English street sign plans irishnews.com/news/northern-…

Ali Gurbuz digging deep to try and get the win in the opening rounds of Turkish Oil Wrestling at Fethiye today



Yes, we have less cards 😎


Today, in 1921, the Government of Ireland Act came into effect, carving this island into two jurisdictions, Northern and Southern, each with its own parliament and administration, its own uneasy claim to legitimacy. We call it Partition and it's been a disaster for our people. The idea of Home Rule had been corroding British politics for over three decades. The First Home Rule Bill was proposed in 1886, defeated in the Commons by thirty votes, the killing blow delivered not by Ulster unionists alone but by a faction of Gladstone's own Liberal Party who broke ranks rather than risk what they saw as the dismemberment of the Union. Ulster's Protestants cheered the result. For them, Home Rule meant Rome Rule, a Dublin parliament run by Catholic majorities, threatening their faith, their industry and their identity. It was a fear they would carry, and weaponise, through every compromise and conflict to follow. The 1920 Act, often called the Fourth Home Rule Bill, was Westminster's latest attempt to square an impossible circle, placating nationalist aspiration while soothing unionist anxiety. The solution was blunt: two parliaments, one in Belfast for the six north-eastern counties of Ulster, one in Dublin for the rest of the island. A Council of Ireland was bolted on as a constitutional fig leaf, promising future unity with a view to the eventual establishment of a parliament for the whole of Ireland. Even at the time, few took that promise seriously. Fewer still noted that the nine county Ulster originally proposed by Westminster's own Long Committee, which would have balanced the religious demographics more evenly, was quietly dropped at unionist insistence. Six counties it would be, enough to guarantee a permanent Protestant majority, not enough to be troubled by the three Ulster counties left behind. Both entities remained within the United Kingdom. Southern Ireland's parliament never functioned, boycotted by Sinn Féin and drowned out by the fire and fury of the War of Independence. Only in December 1922, with the birth of the Irish Free State, did the constitutional map shift decisively. On the 7th of December, Northern Ireland, just a day into a new world, formally opted out of the Free State and reasserted its place within the United Kingdom. The border, once theoretical, became permanent. Partition was a bitter compromise, resisted in Dublin and Belfast alike, and for very different reasons. De Valera, speaking in the Dáil in August 1921, warned his colleagues that if they failed to recognise the rights of northern unionists, they would be making the same mistake with that section of the population that England had made with Ireland. He went further, suggesting that if the Republic were recognised, he would be in favour of giving each county the power to vote itself out. Consent, not conquest, was the Republican way. And yet what followed was not peace but a century of tension, conflict, inequality and cold borders. The legacy of the 3rd of May 1921 still reverberates, from the smoke and blood of the Troubles to the cautious hope of the Good Friday Agreement, which revived the same questions first posed by that Fourth Home Rule Bill. With courage and vision, we will be a 32-county nation once again. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…


Jeffries Derangement Syndrome.













