Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Northern Ireland’ Category

Kyle over at immigration orange always has thought provoking articles and one of the most thought provoking that he has had recently was his piece on the support of terrorists in Colombia by Chiquita Brands.

Chiquita didn’t just decide to support terrorists for the sake of killing people, it justified paying $1.7 million by considering it as protection money for its employees. Does that make it right though? Well, no, it doesn’t but it’s only one high profile example of people making decisions that are expedient at the time.

However, that’s the least of the problems that such support causes. Although the public perception of their aims might be different, terrorist organisations often co-operate with one another and some of that money from Chiquita no doubt found its way back to fund killing of people in Northern Ireland. Would Chiquita be quite so happy if some of their money is found to have been used to fund terrorism in America too?

The fundamental problem is that a number of products that everyone buys are produced in countries where peace is something that might come in the future and the reality of the present day is violence from one or more groups within the country. Doing business in a country like that does entail problems and there is no short-term way around that.

Unfortunately the short-term alternatives aren’t great either. Chiquita and others pulling out of Colombia doesn’t make the problem go away as others will take over the plantations and those bananas will still be sold internationally. In fact, if that wasn’t the case the impact on the Colombian economy could be catastrophic which wouldn’t be good for the cause of peace either: as seems very clear with the recent experiences in Northern Ireland, a strong economy makes the incentive for terrorism dry up very quickly.

We can’t know for sure what Chiquita’s money was used for but $1.7 million is an awful lot of money that would have been much better spent in the cause of peace.

I’m sure that it’s been there for ages but I just noticed that the playground in the ground of the Stormont Estate had been dedicated to the memory of Mo Mowlam.Mo was one of the many politicians who have fallen by the wayside along the path to peace in Northern Ireland. As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1997 to 1999 it was she who presided over the Good Friday Agreement which is essentially the basis that has established peace although, as can only be expected, it did take quite a while after the signing of that agreement way back in 1998 before various pieces of the puzzle fell into place and a few years after that before people in NI and elsewhere finally got around to accepting that peace had apparently arrived.

As befits its status as the largest inland lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is host to numerous water activities in the tourist season.

What’s on offer varies around the circumferance of the lake with some areas being devoted to nature reserves, others to more active water sports and nearly everywhere various boating activities. Naturally, these are combined in various spots and in the area near the town of Antrim there is a particularly mixed bag with quite a reasonable nature reserve running along the coastline, a golf course on one side, a small café, marina and boating activities on offer ranging from a boat trip on a pirate ship to jet skis.

This particular area is quite rich in other tourist sites too with numerous small castles within perhaps 20 minutes of Antrim along with a number of historic homesteads (eg that of the Bronte sisters and a few with links to various American presidents). Well under an hour from here will let you sample exhibitions on the history of the plantation and on the emigration from Ireland over the centuries.

It’s quite an interesting spot to base a holiday and Belfast International Airport (BFS) is just around the corner.

Although Northern Ireland is definitely cooler than the south of France, one surprising difference is that Northern Ireland has icecream vans at just about every possible location that you’d find crowds of people whereas France seems to have none of these.That’s indicative of quite a different attitude towards the climate in general between NI and France which we’ve seen illustrated numerous times whilst we’ve been here.

Seeing as SuperFrenchie thinks I’m “just” anti-French, I thought I’d redress the balance a little and point out one area where the UK is anti-European too.

I was in getting my driving license renewed last week which is something of a hit and miss affair as the explanatory leaflet leaves a LOT to be desired in clarity. Even though the thing was in English and, one would assume therefore that I’d understand it, the opening paragraph on what proof of ID was required was totally incomprehensible and appeared to be totally wrong too.

It opens by saying that if you have a colour photograph on your existing driving license then you don’t need to have someone certify your photograph nor to present a passport. Except, that when my father presented his renewal application complete with his old driving license with colour photo, they wouldn’t renew it without his passport.

It then goes on to say that you always need to have your photo certified yet they happily renewed mine with only my passport.

Then it says “digital photographs are not acceptable” yet they DO accept them, mainly because all of the photobooth machines only produce digital photos these days.

The best bit is perhaps their definition of residency. Despite living in France for three years, I still qualify for a Northern Ireland driving license as, according to their definition, I am still resident there!

However, none of that’s anti-European….

Whilst we were there, one of the increasing number of Polish immigrants arrived to exchange his license for a Northern Ireland one. In theory, he doesn’t actually need to change it at all but the lady in the office reckoned that he had to change it within six months (anti-European point 1). He presented his Polish ID card. Not acceptable: we need a passport (anti-European point 2) which isn’t actually what it says on their website. What she said he needed was to have his photo certified by someone in Northern Ireland who knew him for two years.

Emmm, so he MUST change his driving license within six months and, because you won’t take his valid ID card, he must find someone in Northern Ireland who knew him 18 months before he arrived?