Wednesday, November 7, 2007

FIFA Pushes for a Federation of the British Isles

Not in so many words, but if a player born in the Republic of Ireland with no family connection with any part of the United kingdom is to be permitted to play for one of the United Kingdom's teams, then...the logical next step is that such a player should also be permitted to obtain a United Kingdom passport, citizenship and indeed, be entitled to vote in UK Elections. It would extremely be harsh to say to such a player, "Yes, you can play for our team, but you are denied the same human rights as your team-mates to declare yourself as Irish or/and British."

And of course, it would be discriminatory to limit such theoretical rights to sportsmen, all citizens of the Republic must now be given the right to the self-same right to British citizenship.

And, of course, this right of two-way citizenship can only succeed in pulling our two countries constitutionally together, forward( or is that back?) towards a British Isles Federation.

Thank you FIFA. Thank you FAI. Thank you Darron Gibson

5 comments:

JD said...

Eh? No.

That's a spectacular piece of spinning and underscores further the extreme paranoia in Unionism.

A simple common sense approach by FIFA and you're warming the imperial time machine up...


Priceless...

O'Neill said...

Watch yer head there jd...duck...
*WHOOSH*!!!!

Quite possibly I was being ironic...

JD said...

ah right!

us mexicans aren't great with irony.

jd

Anonymous said...

what would the view be in ulster of an island of ireland football team, like rugby ? one of other of us might actually qualify for something at that rate ?

O'Neill said...

"one of other of us might actually qualify for something at that rate ?"

You mean "unite" together and achieve the same great success as "our" rugby team?

No, is the simple answer, for the same reason that Spain doesn't combine with Portugal to form an Iberia team or England join with Scotland and Wales to form a joint Britain team- just because we share the same island, it doesn't make us the same country.

If anything, I'd say it's more likely that there'll be a separate N.Ireland rugby team within the next ten years, the IRFU have treated those of us living north of the border with contempt especially with their shameful behaviour over the Italian friendly. There are more than a few "separatist" rumblings....