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AN INTERIM REPORT on Ireland unification referendums has recommended that they should only be held with a clear plan for what follows afterwards.
The report, compiled out by prominent academics, explores how any future referendum on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status would be carried out.
It made a range of key findings, including that planning for the potential referendums should start in good time before the votes and should be led by the Irish and UK governments.
Unification can come about only through referendums in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement supplies the framework for holding a referendum in Northern Ireland. It stipulates that a majority of 50% + 1 would be required to change the status quo.
The decision to hold a referendum in the North lies with the UK’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The report finds that they must act with “conspicuous care and transparent honesty and so maintain public trust.”
The Secretary of State is advised to weigh up a range of evidence in arriving at the decision to hold a border poll, including election results, opinion polls and votes in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
If the North votes in favour of unification, a referendum would have to be held in the Republic. However, the report notes that the votes could take place on the same day.
The group said it would be for the Irish government to develop proposals for the form of a united Ireland. It suggested that a model could be proposed in advance, or the government could propose a process through which a model would be worked out afterwards.
If voters back unification, the governments of Ireland and the UK would negotiate the terms of the transfer of sovereignty. The report advises the governments to consult widely and seek as consensual an approach as possible.
The working group also warned that the rules for referendum and election campaigns are badly out of date in the UK and Ireland, and they urgently need to be strengthened.
The document was created by a working group set up by University College London’s Constitutional Unit. The group is made up of 12 academic experts from universities in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Britain and the United States.
The group’s chair, Dr Alan Renwick of UCL’s constitution unit, said: “We have embarked on this work not because we think referendums are imminent—we do not—but because the whole process needs to be thought through well in advance.
The years of acrimony following the Brexit referendum illustrate the dangers of a vote called without adequate planning.
“To hold another referendum without a proper plan would risk the legitimacy of such a vote and political stability on the island of Ireland.”
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But schizophrenics are harmless once they take their medicine. He was a very dangerous and wicked individual, a Christian my ass.
It also shows that Unionism has no problem attacking Britain if equal rights for Irish people were contemplated in the North.
Also pertinent to point out that the first RUC men and British soldiers were killed by Unionists who were sending Westminister a message, that Northern Ireland only existed to reward the Orange and supress the Green.
Sadly it worked and the Civil rights movement had to turn in to open rebellion.
“Schizophrenics are harmless once they take their medicine”. How society has been brainwashed. Most people don’t even know what so called “schizophrenia” is.
Most people with mental health difficulties are not dangerous. And are more likely to be a victim of violence that a perpetrator. Unless drugs or alcohol are involved. And I include prescribed psychoactive drugs in that ~ http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/12/violence-and-mental-illness-victims-not-perpetrators/
But when you have a billion $$$ industry that revolves around labeling people and locking them away society get brainwashed into believing certain things.
I will pick out one possible symptom which can result in a person been labelled Schizophrenic and that is hearing voices ~
When it comes to prescribed psychoactive drugs eg major tranquilizers and people who are Voice Hearers (10% of the UK population. Not sure what the statistic is in Ireland) these drugs only suppress voices in 33% of cases. Hearing Voices can be a reaction to / coping mechanism for childhood trauma eg sexual abuse.
So the mantra “take your medication” and you are cured is a fairly inaccurate one. Not forgetting that voices can be positive or sometimes negative.
“Indeed, the term ‘Schizophrenia’ is confusing, stigmatizing, and has probably outlived is usefulness” ~ Psychiatrist Dr Allen Frances, chair of the taskforce that produced the DSM-IV (ie the Psychiatric “bible”).
Adverse Reactions to Psychiatric Drugs: Yolande Lucire (forensic Psychiatrist) ~ 10 mins in she claims that prescribed psychoactive drugs increase the risk of people becoming violent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEoSs6Yo0DA
That was also the case in Irish prisons. Irish Examiner, Dec 3rd 2012 ~ “Cutting jail benzo use reduces violence”
Shows how intelligent Jimmy Prior was.
Uk would be a better country today had he been P.M.
Still alive and 86 ~ one year younger than Paisley ~ now you have me watching this ~
Tory! Tory! Tory! – Ep 1: Outsiders – BBC 2007 ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auPDcTrsW5k
James Prior got that one right
I see I wrote about hearing voices above. I do not hear voices but I have spent some time trying to understand the concept, because of my interest in mental health. I have even done a short course with Jacqui Dillon in NUI Galway.
In some cases Hearing Voices can be a reaction to / coping mechanism for childhood abuse (including sexual). There is a hearing voices movement where people learn how to manage the voices. Jacqui Dillon and Eleanor Longden does great work in this area ~
Jacqui on RTE radio ~ http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-sounds-mad-hearing-voices-psychology.html
2.5 million views on this TED video. She has spoken with people like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates in the audience.
http://www.ted.com/talks/eleanor_longden_the_voices_in_my_head?language=en
There is lots of talk about reducing STIGMA in mental health in this country and not forgetting World Suicide Prevention Day last Wednesday. For example., Pat Kenny and Caroline McGuigan / Suicide or Survive had a very good morning discussion on Newstalk and interviews.
Then when someone tries to explore the label “Schizophrenia” you get to see what people really think! To be quite honest I haven’t really seen much improvement in people’s attitudes on the ground in the last number of years. The discrimination too can also be pretty subtle or even direct.
But then I have to just look back a few years to remember my own narrow views of this label. Some of that comes from the mainstream media. Some of which is controlled by mainstream Psychiatry. But also by how certain stories are reported in print.
I do have to praise RTE Radio for that good documentary they made on Jacqui Dillon’s work.
PS ~ Never stop or change prescribed psychoactive drugs without talking to your doctor, due to the dangers of withdrawal. Granted your doctor should be telling you that anyway..
Never take advice from someone on the Internet especially when it comes to your well-being . Do take my advice ;) Talk to your counsellor / doctor or psychiatrist . Also don’t be made to feel guilty ..
At the time James Prior was working for Margaret Thatcher, so what room did he have to talk about Paisley. I am not a fan of the belligerent reverend but his roll of creating the DUP was the first time anyone had challenged the official Unionist Party and succeeded in breaking the Tory hold over unionism. If that is schizophrenia then I take my hat off to him.
@Thomas Mac It wasn’t “advice”. It was a discussion and a challenge of stigma. Something that’s not easy to do in Ireland, which is quite insular. But where I can have pretty normal discussions with people in another country. Not sure where the guilt is that your talking about.
You also assume mainstream Psychiatrists have a person’s best interest at heart. Not always the case. Some have “conflicts of interest”. And very few are trained therapists. So they mainly prescribe drugs. With the exception of people like Prof Ivor Browne.
Another great Psychiatrist who is no longer with us was Dr Michael Corry. Interview here ~ http://theenchantingvalley.ning.com/video/dr-michael-corry
Thanks for that Aine. I skipped through but at the end Peter Jay tells how he thinks he might have been the first person to explain monetarism to Mrs Thatcher which makes him feel now like the geography teacher who first showed a map of the world to Genghis Khan! Laughed out loud at that.
That was about the Tory!Tory!Tory! link btw.
That Michael Corry interview, which it is a few years old, discusses modern Psychiatry which is in crisis. Even though some of them refuse to face up to that ~ 19 mins on. Mainstream Psychiatry may have bullied him in life before his death, but his memory lives on.
Dr Corry and his partner Dr Aíne Turbridy inspired the setting up of “Critical Voices Network”. Their annual meeting is in UCC in November. (12th and 13th). It is at the CVN annual meeting in 2012 that I first became away of the work of Eleanor Longden and Jacqui Dillon, as they were keynote speakers.
@Big Yellow Crane It’s last December since I looked at that. Will have to look again sometime. On a rainy day.
@Aine .
I’ve had members of my family go off their medication and they end up regressing back to a much horrible place than when they were taking the correct medication . All it did for them was a trip back into an institution for a month or so and a lack of confidence for the next year . Drugs play their part and so does the talking therapies ..
Not attacking you personally as you’re entitled to your well informed opinions .
Here’s a woman that you might be interested in .
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?pagewanted=all
@Thomas ~ I have come across Marsha Linehan, DBT and a book called “Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Put You in Control” ~
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Let-Your-Emotions-Life/dp/1572243090
I don’t really agree with such a label as Borderline Personality Disorder (she ‘came out’ as having BPD). But each one to their own. As someone once said to me a label is only useful if it serves a purpose eg helping a person become self-aware of any symptoms and therefore putting them in the driving seat of managing those symptoms.
And you can see what someone who would be regarded as a top Psychiatrist in his field has said about the label “Schizophrenia” up above, Dr Allen Frances. Even if he would not be one of the Psychiatrists I would normally quote. He was the head man in writing the DSM-IV after all but is also very outspoken when it comes to the damaging pitfalls of the latest revision of their Diagnostic and Statistics manual (the DSM-V) / “bible”.
I’ve never suggested on here that someone should stop prescribed drugs. But there are other viewpoints when it comes to such a heavy label as “Schizophrenia”. Any changes or stopping of drugs needs to be managed by an expert doctor in the field, as withdrawal symptoms are quite difficult. But there seems to be an assumption that the major tranquilizers work for everyone when they don’t.. I also know that these drugs are sometimes over prescribed, leaving a person very sedated and affecting quality of life.
It is people like Psychiatrist / Psychopharmacologist David Healy who I can relate to when it comes to prescribed drugs ~ http://davidhealy.org/dr-munchausen-pharmacophile/
@Thomas ~ seeing as you have a family member with this label you might be interested in an article written by Psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff (London) ~
A critique of genetic research on schizophrenia – expensive castles in the air ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://joannamoncrieff.com/2014/09/01/a-critique-of-genetic-research-on-schizophrenia-expensive-castles-in-the-air/
“Despite thousands of studies costing millions of dollars, and endless predictions that the genetics of schizophrenia would shortly be revealed, the field has so far failed to identify any genes that substantially increase the risk of developing schizophrenia…
We will likely never be able to fully account for why some people experience extreme mental states, but we know that poverty, unemployment, insecure attachments, familial disruption, low self-esteem, abuse etc. play a role for many. We would be better concentrating on how to eliminate these from our society if we really want to reduce the impact of mental disorder, rather that pouring more money into the bottomless pit of genetic research”.
There is also the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry ~ Rachel Waddingham ~ Recovery story ~
http://vimeo.com/87660875
He is a spacer. An evil man.
The blood of many innocent people are on the hands of this hate-monger. I suppose it’s a good thing he finally saw reason but how many young protestant men did he motivate to go out & kill.
The 30 year rule at least refreshes the memory. The more recent image of an nice auld man is just wrong. Blood on his hands much more appreciate.
Ger- why do you go on and on about Gerry Adams?
And also how many young catholic men were motivated by his actions to go out and kill?
Ian Paisley is the most horrific bigot there has ever been…. A man of God, aparently…!
Very true. Friend of mine lives in an old orange lodge (south of the border) and was in correspondence with him some years ago about the history of the place. Letters back and forth for some time and then it’s mentioned that the family are catholic….no more responses from IP! He’s tolerated now because he knows his time is up and wanted to taste the high life before he shuffles off.
Spot on about Paisley and the DUP!
So much blood on his hands no remorse no guilt only ever wanted the other side to acknoledge what they did there was 2 sides to this conflict
Same as Gerry so!
Well said David Gray.
Well said Fluich it.
Fluich if you knew anything about the the PIRA you would know that Adams was trying to bring them to peace from the 1980′s. Maybe have a read of a few books of the PIRA and you will understand this but I suppose there is no talking to people like yourself, ignorance is bliss as they say!
All nordies regardless of background are a bit mental.Just look at the carry on at the moment with flegs and marching.
Could be worse, they could all be heroin addicts like in Dublin v
Martin that’s not apples v apples in fairness!
New Battle of Boyne:
Dublin Heroin Addicts versus Northern Ireland Flegs
I think Ballymena is the smack capital of Ireland, if not Europe.
They dont have fluoride in the water there do they …
Mucky dirty inbreed redneck u wish u were a Dub
Excellent Andrew !!!! Worthy opponents !
Paisley “ULSTER SAYS NO I MEAN YES..WHO SAID THAT”.
Osama Bin Ladin was a man of God. Lesson – Keep well clear if men if God
Men of God
Schizophrenia doesn’t explain that level of bigotry, hatred and evil
who even cares about paisley?
Haha where is knowyourplace/Kenneth to defend the sanity of his idol
Jaysus the way he goes on it’s probably his oul fella
Calling the man a schizophrenic would suggest he had a physiological disorder which is unfair to people who have , but to call the man a fear mongering,sectarian bigot would be closer to the mark
As a non believer sometimes I wish that the stuff Paisley and his bible thumping idiots profess is in fact real because if it was, he will burn in hell. I suspect he is afraid to die because he’s not stupid and he knows this as well.
He shouldn’t worry, he’ll just be dead, atoms redistributed for reuse. Only the appalling legacy of his badness will survive for his community to deal with
A rotten c-unt if ever there was one. IMO mind!
He was angry. Anger is a genuine emotion.
I despised him, but in the end he did the right thing, and without him in his later years, we’d be looking at a very different landscape in NI.
So inciting loyalists to burn catholics out of their homes was the “right thing” to do was it?
He relented in the end as he saw his own mortality coming and realized that decades of pushing for Irish people to be killed and denied basic human rights were not going to get him in to heaven.
Pity he didn’t cop it 20 years ago. His funeral will be interesting. Hell awaits if his beliefs are correct.
Ulster says No!
But the man from Del Monte said Yes.
And he was the richest Orange man of them all!!!!
(The old ones remain the best).
Ian Paisley achieved nothing by hatred and inciting young loyalists to attack Catholics. Like Sinn Fein nobody was winning but a lot of innocent people on both sides lost their lives through senseless killings. The people of Northern Ireland should decide their own future for the future generation so that they can all live together in peace and harmony. Ian Paisley I’m sure would have done things different because the hatred was destroying the people of Northern Ireland and he knew his way was not working.
The people of Ulster haven’t been happy since the Brown Bull incident.
Leave them to their own devices, and tell them to stop bothering the rest of us.
Should’ve used a ruler to underline that, sloppy work. Tsk tsk
Everybody’s comments are from december??
Did you sleep in Mark? :-)
Mark , the funniest comment of the day !
Schizophrenics have a right to be offended by this description here. Paisley was a sociopathic bigot, a psychopath possibly, an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur who heard voices which he believed to be Divine and he displayed multiple personalities. None of which would qualify him as schizophrenic. The accurate diagnosis there would be that he was a Northern Irish Politician and, indeed, the best kind of chap to do business with SF in the end.
He was sound enough..serious at backgammon nd underwater darts and bog snorkeling..he swam up a waterfall..won the tour de France on a unicycle with no tyre..he was a farmer before he became famous..he had a magic tractor that turned into a field..he produced, filmed and starred in animal farm..he could hear sign language and speak braille..nothing this freemason would not do..
Not short of the truth!
Surely not!!!!!!
RIP Ian Paisley Jr
Is Paisley dead ??
Muriel, just ignore Bundang. He doesn’t be well. Hasn’t taken his medication over the Christmas.
Paisley was basically a shrewd politician who used bullying and hatred and religion to his own ends. When he saw the tide was turning in Northern Ireland he changed. IMO there is nothing to admire or respect in this man. A true leader of integrity would have taken the position of peace from the beginning. The world would have been a much better place without him.
Of course there were leaders of violence and hatred and bigotry on both sides of that crazy divide. Paisley, Thatcher, Haughey, McGuinness etc as leaders all chose the path of violence and hatred in their respective ways. Thousands of innocent lives were lost and a society was traumatised in their wake.
RIP the victims most especially the many innocent children.
‘Brits Out’ the irony!
The man said to Sinn Fein, do Abc and I will agree. He did, man of his word..
@Hyon Bundang stop commenting about what does not concern you.You are not Irish.
Oh really? ??? (Sarcasm)
have your say