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Power-Sharing Talks Collapse At Stormont

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mikey4444 | 20:04 Wed 14th Feb 2018 | News
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-43064009

Someone needs to go over to Belfast and knock some heads together......Mo Mowlem would have done it.

Perhaps we should ask for our money back....you know, that £10B that May bribed them with last year ?
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The problem is politicians discussing matters of culture and identity.
This has no place in politics: there is no way Sinn Fein and the DUP will ever come to an accommodation on this.
The only resolution I can see is for the Irish language question to be put in the hands of an independent body and for them to report back. There are other issues too of course but that is the main one it seems.

Do you seriously think Theresa May is going to threaten the DUP?!
Mikey,
Your comments are niave and ignorant.

From appearances the DUP seem to have scuppered an agreement on a flimsy pretext. They will not recognise the Irish language in Northern Ireland. Despite the fact that many in the community speak it.

In the rest of the UK, Scottish, Welsh and even Cornish gaelic are recognised, used and promoted.

The DUP Will not make an agreement to share devolved power in Northern Ireland because it feels culturally threatened by people speaking the Irish language.

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Gromit...thanks for your kind comments !

I am getting a bit fed up with that lot over there....there are quite happy to take any extra funding for NI, but seem unable to get their heads around a simple problem.

My comments about knocking heads together still stands. If the politicians at Stormont want to be taken seriously than they should start behaving like normal, civilised people.

Is it any wonder that the province is being ruled by Civil Servants ?
it was £1bn

That's ^^^^ what Mikey said in the OP

//you know, that £10B that May bribed them with last year//
It was actually Sinn Fein who collapsed the government in the first place it has to be said, rightly or wrongly.
And much as I am a fan of the Irish language having dual language signage everywhere is plain daft. I do sympathise with a lot of the objections.
However as I said earlier the language should not be an issue here. Somehow it needs to be taken out of the discussions.
It was hilarious early seeing Owen Jones reminding us Labour was the party which brokered the Good Friday agreement. It seems the evil Tony Blair still has his used although the name wasn’t mentioned. IRA sympathiser Corbyn to go to sweet talk the Shinners in the name peace? Even Owen saw that that was a nonstarter
It isn’t a simple problem in fairness Mikey.

Oops, misread that, off to Specsavers ;o)
Owen Smith!
I live here and that Irish language business is a total farce. All nincompoops as far as I can see. Sinn Fein are tearing the a&se out of it. We have other matters that need to be attended to.

No I don't want Irish language and anybody I know don't want it either.
They have gone more than a year without an Executive, makes you wonder if a government is needed at all there.
Northern Ireland is similar to what East Germany was up to around 1990, an artificial state without real legitimacy.
I would like to know what % of the population of NI can speak Irish and what % speak it as their 1st language. Anybody know?
I'd like to know too. Michelle O'Neill talks double dutch to me when she speaks in English - don't know how fast she would be in Irish - that's if she does.
From Wikipedia, "In the 2011 census, 11% of the population of Northern Ireland claimed "some knowledge of Irish"[12] and 3.7% reported being able to "speak, read, write and understand" Irish.[12] In another survey, from 1999, 1% of respondents said they spoke it as their main language at home"
The Belgians were worse a few year ago. They went 589 days without a government in 2010-11 because the Flemish and Walloons couldn't agree on policy issues and form a governing coalition.

They argued amongst other things about "francophone cultural imperialism seeking to impose the Gallic language in Flanders."
I have long thought that it is Sinn Fein and the DUP's best interest for their to be chaos, some serious crises and the threat of a return to violence in Northern Ireland.
If it was all peace and prosperity they would lose out to the more moderate and saner parties.
It was in the paramilitaries interests for there to be decades of crazily high unemployment and desperate poverty, because they wanted an angry, disgruntled population they could exploit for their own ends
Dual language signs where only a tiny number speak the 'native'tongue can lead to some funny results. This reminds me of Swansea council about ten years ago. They erected a sign saying, " No access except for lorries or heavy goods vehicles". To comply with bilingualism they emailed the translation branch at the council. Back came a swift reply: Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfeithu. This was duly put underneath the English sign. Unfortunately none of those involved could speak Welsh so did not realise that the message read: I'm not in the office at the moment. Please forward any work to be translated.
Completely wrong.
A return to violence is not in anyone's interests, least of all the politicians.
You might think that the more "moderate" parties would prosper in a peaceful environment, but the fact that the two main parties are Sinn Fein and the DUP is living proof that they haven't. Only when those two parties were forced to cooperate was the Good Friday agreement finally cemented. The reason this is the case is because certain issues in N Ireland are so divisive. Like the ones currently dividing the parties. Those issues won't go away no matter who is in power.
"completely wrong" was to fiveleaves
In some places there are actually three languages: Ulster Scots as well, and even fewer people speak that.
The only solution: larger signs :-)
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Jack...we have had bilingual signage here in Wales for many years. Only about 20% of the Welsh population can speak Welsh but we just get on with our lives anyway.

The people of NI should realise that they have far more in common, than they have that divided them, and they should also just get on with their lives.

I had the good fortune to meet Mo Mowlem many years ago. I asked her if she wouldn't mind confirming the story about her, that when, in those endless meetings she had with the two sides, when she got really peed off with them all, she would take her wig off and throw into the corner and tell them, in very Anglo-Saxon language, that they could go and get stuffed !

She happily confirmed the story and went on to tell me that she did indeed tell the Reverend Ian Paisley that he could f-off once in a while.

Because Theresa needs the DUP to be a quiescent as possible, she is unlikely to be as firm as Mo was.

We need another Mo, IMHO

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