Published on 12, July, 2020
The weather is crap, the education system is too expensive. It's a pile of doo doo.
Compared to my native Ireland at the moment and since Covid, the U.K. is a good deal better by comparison, where I’ve lived in Manchester for 22 years - I’ve been following the situation in Ireland very closely in recent months and since Covid and there has been another very big protest in Dublin, which is making me very concerned for my family’s safety in Rural Ireland - while it might not have been perfect, I long for the Ireland I grew up in as a teenager in the 1980’s and even more so as a child in the 1970’s - it’s incredibly sad what’s currently happening in Ireland compared to here in the U.K. which is a great deal safer and I sadly suspect that in the next few months, it is really going to kick off big time in Ireland - as an Irish patriot and as an older Irish gay man myself, what is really keeping me going is my Catholic faith, as I’m not on board with much of the narratives and agendas that are tearing our country and my beloved homeland apart - I also suspect that I will not be able to visit Ireland for a very long time, my last visits home being in October 2022, August 2022 and December 2019, with the Irish Covid laws being far stricter and far more aggressively enforced than the U.K., even though I’ve always held and renewed an Irish passport in the entire time that I’ve lived here in the U.K., even though even before Brexit, the Irish government has made it ever more difficult for me to renew my Irish passport - the way that the Irish government treats its citizens living abroad is a total disgrace, while at the same time going on about the “Irish Diaspora” where even in the internet age, where one is expected to apply for an Irish passport online (which in practice is very difficult if not impossible) they still deny Irish people living abroad voting rights in Irish elections and referenda after 5 years living outside Ireland, yet on an Irish passport, I got U.K. voting rights after a year living here in the U.K. - this is a huge international Irish voter base that is being denied a say in the future of our country, as inward migration aside, we first generation Irish people are living all around the world, including here in the U.K., Europe, Eastern Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand
The Northern Shinners are completely oblivious to what they buy into.
The hatred of the English is too strong for them to question the narrative, ditto Scotland. When I was in Ayr, the bin lorries had Government ads about fines for illegal dumping.