Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Who are ya??!!

According to my most recent readership stats, 48% of this blog’s readership come from the UK, 15% from the Republic of Ireland, 11% the USA, 10% mainland Europe, 8% Canada, 6 % Australia...with the remaining 2% from everywhere else!
The UK figures breaks further down into 54% England, 37% N.Ireland, 7% Scotland and 2% Wales.

Being nosey sod that I am, I was curious to see how you’d all further classify yourselves in terms of your national identity, hence my latest poll directly on the right there. It gives you (or at least everybody born in the UK and the ROI) the opportunity to choose which identity you feel most comfortable with; so, if you’re perfectly comfortable with more than one (eg English/British, Scotch/Irish etc) then ignore what the various brands of Celtic/English nationalism might tell you and you go right ahead and click more than one option!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd be careful on trying to read too much into the sub-national stats for UK visitors. When I was with Tiscali I would show up as being from Manchester and I know of some people who work in large companies with offies UK-wide show up as coming from London despite the fact their PC is in their office in Belfast.

These statistics are a lot less reliable than the national ones (so your UK/RoI/USA etc. figures should be relatively safe).

O'Neill said...

Ah, that maybe explains why the % figures from Wales and Scotland are so low...just going on folk who've commented before, I think it's a bit higher than 10% combined of the full Uk total.

Owen Polley said...

Yeah btconnect has classified the connection I use (from Belfast) as Perth & Kinross, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Ballymena at various times.

Northern Irish, British and Irish for me btw.

Anonymous said...

O'Neill

What do you make of those figures so far. Are double entries detected and discarded ?

Seems your pretty popular in the ROI!

Looks like you will need to work more to catch the Welch, Scottish and English readers ;)

O'Neill said...

What do you make of those figures so far.

Shocked and disturbed.....nah,only joking, it's interesting, doesn't really tie in with my reader stats, could simply be the fact that Irish folk both side of the border have more of a poll fetish than our brothers across the water;)

Are double entries detected and discarded ?

You can vote for more than one national identity, but only once from the same computer. I suppose if people really wanted they could vote on the work and home computer...but I think they would be slightly overestimating the importance of this poll!!

Seems your pretty popular in the ROI!

Or there's a few NI Unionists out there reclaimimg their Irish identity back from SF :)

Looks like you will need to work more to catch the Welch, Scottish and English readers ;)

I like to think that they're all content to label themselves as "British":)

Wyrdtimes said...

I'm English living in England.

Who are you?

O'Neill said...

I'm British-Irish with a dash of Ulster and European, living in Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe.

Wyrdtimes said...

How do you feel about a united Ireland? Seems like it would solve a whole load of problems to me.

O'Neill said...

And create a whole lot more.
Economically, politically and socially it would be a disaster for the Republic.

For Northern Ireland,I'm a conviction Unionist, I believe in the concept of the UK, so I'd see a UI (or indeed Scotland or wales breaking away from the UK) has the death of my nation. It's like saying to a Canadian "why don't you unite with the US it would solve a lot of problems". The main reason he doesn't want to join up wiht the US is because he's a Canadian

But putting my ordinary citizen's non-political hat on, if I were to wake up tomorrow to find myself in a United Ireland, would I find myself economically better off- what would have happened overnight to my pension, my employment, the health service and other social services
Would they all be better than what I've got at the minute? Quite clearly no, so why should I vote for change?

Anonymous said...

I hear that Ireland's economy is doing pretty well!

And one bonus would be at least you'd get to vote on membership of the EU. Something the despicable UK government won't let us do.

Anonymous said...

And create a whole lot more.
Economically, politically and socially it would be a disaster for the Republic.


Id go along with that thinking. Being from the ROI, for me it would always be more about uniting the people then grabbing land. Its clear that there would always be a sizeable portion of the public in NI who would be opposed to a UI under any circumstance.

The ROI is a stable democracy, its economically and socially relatively stable.

The last thing it needs is the problem of trying to integrated a large disaffected population. The Irish political landscape would require massive upheaval to undertake this integration. Reform would be required in all areas of public life including the constitution, the Dail itself, education, etc..

Im not saying that its impossible, I just doubt that any politician would ever admit that its not as simple as pulling down one flag and raising another.

For me I can only ever see one possible solution that comes close, and even this is stretching it. Its possible that at some stage, a loose federation between the ROI and NI might occur, where cooperation occurs on defence, policing, education, economics etc.. the common variables. However for this to occur id think NI would need to have become and independent state having left the Union. I doubt thats likely.

I do believe though, that were the people of NI generally behind a UI or a federation, that the ROI would step up to the plate, but I doubt the public would swallow trying to go down this route when faced with large opposition in NI

O'Neill said...

Its possible that at some stage, a loose federation between the ROI and NI might occur, where cooperation occurs on defence, policing, education, economics etc.. the common variables.

Kloot
Another theoretical scenario- a much closer relationship politically and economically between the UK and ROI would reduce even further the division between those of us who are Unionists living in N.Ireland and the rest of the island. At the minute, I'd say a pretty remote possibility...but 2 years ago Ian Paisley welcoming Bertie Ahern to Ballymena would have been even remoter a possibility!!

Anonymous said...

Another theoretical scenario- a much closer relationship politically and economically between the UK and ROI would reduce even further the division between those of us who are Unionists living in N.Ireland and the rest of the island.

Indeed, and that is the path that were are currently on.