Kojak wrote: [quote="Mille"]
Trailer, not me.
I just wrote "Earth"... Not going into the Irish/ UK political dispute!
[/quote]
With respect, Mille, it's not an Irish/UK dispute: the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom have been on very friendly relations for some years now, since the Republic gave up its claim that Northern Ireland was properly part of the Republic and accepted this was really a matter for the people of Northern Ireland themselves to decide. In recent years the Republic and the UK have jointly been working very hard to try to broker an acceptable solution.
The dispute is of course between the Protestant and Catholic inhabitants of Northern Ireland (which technically
is a part of the UK), played out viciously in the past - eg between the IRA and their Protestant equivalents. The British government's role was essentially to try to enforce the rule of law in the Province and to keep the (literally) warring sides apart.
And with a deadline of I think next Monday the Protestants are still in the process of deciding whether following recent elections they are prepared to share power with the Catholics in a Northern Ireland parliament or whether having no Northern Ireland parliament but instead direct rule from Britain is a less unacceptable option.