Google| Subject | Re: Queen mother (of Britain) has died |
| From | Jay Random |
| Date | 2002-04-13 08:02 (2002-04-13 00:02) |
| Message-ID | <3CB7C9E4.3040809@bondwine.ca> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | alt.fan.tolkien |
| Follows | Jette Goldie |
| Followups | Jette Goldie (7h & 11m) |
Jette Goldie wrote:
Jette GoldieWhich has nothing to do with knowing what the _official_ name of the UK is. Official names are often stupidly incorrect. Byzantium endured for some 700 years after losing the city of Rome for the last time, but never stopped calling itself the Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, as Voltaire pointed out, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. And for centuries, every English king was officially styled King of France as well -- starting right about the time the French permanently kicked the English out. Even an Irish nationalist can acknowledge that `United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland' is what is written on the documents, & write it off as one of those silly legalese things.
No, we don't *forget* - we know that *some* N Irish don't want to be British, and some do - so until we know which way the Irish person in question feels about the question, we leave it up to them to claim or not claim their "Britishness".
*I* am Scottish and British - I leave it to the various Northern Irish to speak for themselves.
2002-03-30-
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