Comments by "Taint ABird" (@taintabird23) on "Brexit minister: EU and UK must find solution on Northern Ireland Protocol" video.
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@Timsvideochannel1 That's not my experience of Eastern Europe, my experience of working in Poland, the Baltic States and Hungary detected no ill-will towards Germany but a deep mistrust of Russia. I find East Europeans, particularly in the Baltic States and Poland, have a very low opinion of their own government, and the educated ones value the opportunity to travel to Western Europe to work for a few years and return with a nest-egg for a good start in their own country or, or for the opportunity of a new life.
It is true Eastern Europe is denuded of the young and educated, but that will change over time as their economies are lifted.. Many of them are copying Ireland's economic model. I heard zero complaints about Germany, but plenty of complaints about the UK and its attitude to their citizens working among them. Some towns and villages are populated only with middle aged or old people. These are the ones who have nostalgia for the certainly that communism brought them and they have not adapted well to the real world. The young are quite different, having no experience of communism, and possessing higher expectations.
Yugoslavia was created as part of a settlement after the First World War. Every single state created by the Anglo-French empires after the Great War has been at best a mistake and at worst a disaster that led to conflict, whether in Northern Ireland, Europe or the Middle East.
I understand that Brexiters seek validation from abroad, but the fact is, there is no other country anywhere with the kind of phobia for Germany that the English have. This is particularly odd, as it is also one of the few countries in Europe did not have the jack boot of a foreign power on its soil, giving them a real experience of what actual oppression is like.
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@Timsvideochannel1 Well, Europe has been a peace since 1945, with the exception of the Balkan Conflict. It was one of the purposes of the European project - to make war impossible because member states had economies that were too intertwined to make it viable. It was also intended to be more than just a trading bloc. I'm Irish and Ireland knew it was intended to be more than a trading bloc when it made its first application for membership in 1961. Somehow, the British feel that political union is a new thing foisted upon them, but it seems to me like the British people did not understand what they joined. In the 1980s, I noticed that the EEC was always referred to as the Common Market on the BBC - in Ireland it was called the EEC, but we knew that the Common Market was part of it. I think this is significant.
When I was growing up in Ireland, everybody was white, Irish and most were Catholic. The exotic people were born in England, usually to Irish parents and they stood out only because of their accents from various English cities. Today, 17% of Ireland's population was born outside of Ireland, about 45% of them from either Poland or the UK. This percentage is higher than that of the UK, which is about 13% foreign born. Most immigrants are from Europe, but there are people from every continent living in Ireland today. Immigrants have settled in well and we have none of the problems of poor community relations that are present in the UK. They have integrated quite well.
Ireland is also an island, but we do not have an island mentality. We feel connected to the world, to Europe, the United States, Australia - everywhere. From 1973 to the early 1990s, Ireland was what Bulgaria is today, or certainly Poland: poor, underdeveloped, with a large emigrant population. We didn't join the EEC out of a sense of defeat and reluctance, we joined with optimism and a belief that the best days for Ireland were ahead. This has turned out to be the case - Ireland is a good place to live and other people want to live here, just like the UK. Irish people are different to English people though and have a different attitude to outsiders living among us. Perhaps it is because we are an emigrant people ourselves. Key to Ireland's success was finding an economic counter balance to the UK in the EEC/EU and finding that sweet spot has brought prosperity previous generations could only have dreamed of.
Based in the Irish experience, Bulgaria will be fine. It only joined the EU in 2007 and is one of the poorest of the post-communist states. Its economy is still adjusting, just as Ireland's was after 14 years of membership. It is in the process of joining the Euro, and if you want to find out what the EU has done for Bulgaria, look it up. It is a net recipient of transfers from the EU which will help modernise its infrastructure and develop its economy in due course.
The UK is a country very much ill-at-ease with itself. The English, many though not all, seem to be very angry and resentful at whole of Europe, Germany in particular. The behaviour of some English fans during the Euro 2020 tournament is an example of that anger and resentment. Ireland has no issues with Europe, we know what we get out of it and we know the limitations of hoarding sovereignty in an ivory tower, we tried it as official policy from 1923 to 1959. You can't eat a flag.
I'm sure there are innovative people in the UK, there always has been, but the UK has already one of the least productive workforces in the OECD. While you state that British fruit and veg pickers were forced out by racists East Europeans, today there are fields of cauliflower rotting in Cornwall. No local Cornish people will pick them and the migrants are gone.
Other ethnic groups earn more than the British do, with the Irish at the top of the salaries ladder in the UK. As the UK is seeking to defy economic gravity by focusing on trading with countries far away rather those on its doorstep, innovators will have their work cut out for them.
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