Do British people know that the Irish people living in Boston support a United Ireland completely free of British rule? (Quora)

I should not be surprised to find a few Irish people living in Boston, Lincolnshire, since there are Irish people living happily all over the UK. So long as their opinions do not involve harming other people, what they think about the desirability of a united Ireland is their own business. Like everyone else in the UK, they are free to choose any peaceful political point of view.

The same applies to Irish people living in Ireland. If and when the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Irish Republic both desire a united Ireland, and each group expresses that desire in a referendum, then a united Ireland will come about. This has been guaranteed in law.

Northern Ireland is no more under British rule than Yorkshire is under British rule. Neither are colonies. Both are part of the UK, and both elect representatives directly to the UK parliament on the same basis as anywhere else in the country. The UK government is made up of members of parliament.

I should be quite surprised to find there are more than a few Irish people living in Boston, USA. By US law, people born in the USA are US citizens. The person currently occupying the White House erroneously believes himself to be Irish. If he were Irish, he could not be President of the United States. Being descended from nineteenth century Irish immigrants does not make you Irish, any more than being descended from Vikings makes me Danish.

The opinions of US citizens on what should happen in either part of Ireland are of no great importance, since they are not Irish voters. The people who live in Ireland are the voices that matter.

Quite often, the way US views are expressed suggest they still view Irish affairs through the prism of nineteenth century politics handed down from immigrants. History did not stop when their ancestors left Ireland. The problems they may think they are helping to solve were actually solved years ago, and no sane person wishes to be dragged back to the bad old days. Ireland has moved on, and they should move on with it.

I am quite sure that if US citizens wanted to come and live, work and invest in Ireland, the people there would make them welcome. Failing that desire, however, they should not seek to impose their views on those who do live there.

The Ultimate Irish American

An appeal to my US friends. If there is anything you can do to prevent Joe Biden ever visiting Northern Ireland / Ireland again, please do it.

 
Bull, meet china shop. Whoops, I probably shouldn't have said that.

I don't suppose there's anything anyone can do to stop him saying the sort of things he's just said back in the USA about how he had to go there to stop the Brits reneging on their agreements, but it went over like a lead balloon with the people whose agreement is still needed to get the Stormont parliament back up and running.

The theory is, American intervention is needed to hold the centre ground between two groups that can still barely talk to each other.

 
It is not all that helpful to endorse one side and shout "Hoorah!"

No, really, not even a little bit.

If at all possible, and in full awareness that foreign relations is not really at the top of US priorities, could you not find someone a tiny bit more worldly-wise?

Pretty please.

Passage of Time

When I first began writing short stories, I made several entries in the Aeon Award Contest run by Ireland's Albedo One Magazine. One of these stories made the quarterly shortlist and I promptly jumped to the erroneous conclusion that I had cracked this short story writing business.

In fact of course I still had an awful lot to learn; there is a considerable gulf between the literary demands of novel writing and those of short stories.  It took a year between my first published piece of flash fiction Elementary Mechanics and my first published short story, Spatchcock. There followed another ten months before The Old Man on The Green.

Of the four acceptances that I received earlier this year, two have so far been published and two are still awaiting publication. The queue awaiting a public airing have now, I am pleased to say, been joined by another story, Passage of Time which will finally take me back very close to where I started when it is published in Albedo 2.

This is my first acceptance outside North America, so with luck I am getting closer to being published at home, though of course the market in the UK is small and opportunities far fewer.

Passage of Time will be my first published story set (at least partly) aboard a space ship. I wouldn't really call it a space opera, since most of the conflict portrayed in the tale takes place upon Earth. However it does feel as though I'm getting closer to my ideal of being an all-round speculative writer.

By the way, I do write non-speculative stories too. So far none have made it to publication, but a couple have been competitively placed and I hope may yet see the light of printed day.

Bailing Out Other Countries

Some people perceive double standards between the UK's bailout of Ireland in 2010 and its disinclination to accept a sterling currency union that would include an obligation to bail out an independent Scotland.

The economic logic is actually straightforward. Ireland belongs to the Eurozone. In 2010 the UK contributed about £7b of an EU rescue package of around £85b, in the process extracting the concession that it would not have to bail out Eurozone members again.

In a prospective sterling currency union of two, the whole of the burden of bailing out one partner would fall upon the other. There would be no obligation on EU members to contribute, any more than they contributed to the £46b UK bailout of RBS.

There is one other big reason for the UK not wanting to share sterling. The Bank of England cannot operate two monetary policies. For example, it could not simultaneously create a stimulus in Scotland and apply restraint in England. Money would simply flow between the two.

It is Scotland that is proposing to leave the UK, not vice versa. There are ten times as many UK Citizens outside Scotland as inside. There is no reason for them to let us take away with us a piece of their economic independence.