The dole is 210 a week in Ireland. You can easily get disability which is more like 270 a week, by saying you're an alcoholic or have anxiety. College and university is really cheap, almost free, although you will have absolutely no chance of getting accommodation. You will by no means be able to find, let alone afford, a rental property.
On the flip side, healthcare, prices, roads, transport are sh1t. When I say sh1t - often non existent. For one example, from many: my son needed some physio as a child - he was around four. Last year, we got a letter - a physio appointment came up - he was 13. We had forgotten about it altogether. In some ways, it gave us a bit of a laugh. However, when you think about it, and particularly if you are in pain, it's just not funny.
To sort things here, we call Joe Duffy - kind of Ireland's answer to Esther Rantzen. He's a radio presenter who shames the government into action. It's people's last resort. It's not even funny.

Red and Blue Army!

Just to let you know that the Plantations were a Tudor policy first:

[Link]

To balance some of the rhetoric and alleviate any collective guilt, proper research - rather than any Nationalistic stuff that Ireland is full of - has factually demonstrated that there were around 50% Irish living on the plantations (so not quite a little bit of England in Ireland) as apparently obligations and tenancies were often more favourable in English law than in Irish law. So all is not quite as it might seem at first sight.
For Cromwell and Drogheda, above, I could counter that most of Drogheda were Anglo-Irish, or even Old English in Cromwellian times. Their main issue was choosing the wrong side and being of the 'wrong' religion. I could also temper that by saying that, once again, research has shown a large amount of Catholic Irish in Cromwell's army. He paid and fed people, after all, which was not as common as one might think.
It's a funny old area Irish history. I'm not talking about revisionism, I'm talking about factual research - rather than the mythological history many people enjoy.

Red and Blue Army!

in the language of today :

Plantation = Colonization, Ethnic Cleansing or a War-Crime.

However, the history of Ulster can no more be undone than giving Manhatten back to the Native Americans.

So lets let the Skyscrapers stay on 5th Avenue, and the Scottish-Prods stay in Antrim. NI is now British. The real irish don't want it.

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And anyway, the Prods in Ulster all identify as Brits. Loyal and true to the Crown. They regard the Southern Irish as 'foreigners' and the South as a Popish Banana republic.

The Prods feel more affinity with the Indians of Southall, the Afro-Caribbeans of Notting Hill or the Jews of North London.....the last fact being their hardcore support of the State of Israel.

And as they are British, they must surely stay in the UK ? Ideally without many 'irish' neighbours living in the next street.

The original creation of NI did never envisage a Catholic majority. And that presents some new problems.

Edited by PalazioVecchio (23 Sep 2022 12.27pm)

Kayla did Anfield & Old Trafford

One of my favourite moments of political malarkey was the night the R.O.I parliament voted through the bailout for the Irish banks. Like something out of a surreal, f***ed up, dark as f*** comedy of errors.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

It is the cost of living that stuns me over there. My sister tells us horror stories of the cost of doctors visits, how much she had to pay for things such as my nieces sitting exams (and then having to pay extra to have them marked).

The R.O.I has no military to speak off (The RAF do all its air-defence), there is no NHS along the lines of the UK. Is all the money just spent on hand-outs? My sister runs the HR for a hotel chain and has a shocking time trying to get any Irish to work there. Its almost all Europeans applying for jobs.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

Those houses tend to go to our refugees now, rather than the people on the waiting list for years, don't they?

Red and Blue Army!