So
– what colour’s your passport? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Mine’s
is red, which doesn’t necessarily tell you a lot. But big news this morning is,
if I were a university-age student and had an Irish passport, there’s a good
chance I’d get a place in a Scottish university without paying fees. Why? Because
students from the EU get exemption from fees in Scotland. Except, that is, they’re from England,
Wales or Northern Ireland….Hold on. Shouldn’t that mean students from here,
regardless of whether they carry a British passport or an Irish one, will have
to cough up the fees? They kicked this one around on Radio Ulster/Raidio
Uladh this morning for fifteen
minutes at least and were as far ahead at the end as the start.
But
as so often is the case, it’s not what’s happening that is revealing, it’s how
people react to it. They had some people on air from my own alma mater, St
Columb’s in Derry, and not surprisingly the students there are clutching their
Irish passports and hoping they’ll be able to swing it. More interestingly,
they talked to people at Grosvenor
High School in East Belfast , and they were talking in very similar terms :
hoping to God this thing comes off
because it’ll make a huge financial difference.
I’ve
been in Grosvenor High School a number of times over the years. I can’t speak
about now but then it was an impressive place. Well-organised, friendly
principal, hard-working staff. In
the entrance area, they had if I remember aright, signs in every language
saying “Welcome to Grosvenor”. Did I say every? Um, not quite. No “Cead mile
failte” in Irish. Not even a “Failte”. Tells you something, that, I think: the
school was prepared to identify with any language in the world except Irish. In short, it was making clear it
had no Irish identity. Now their students are busy filling in forms to get
Irish passports.
Sort
of astonishing, isn’t it? Students from a unionist background applying for
Irish passports so they can study in Scotland, a country that looks as though
it just might go for independence and shatter the Union. We do indeed live in
interesting times.
I expect this means about as much as St Columb's students declaring themselves UK citizens to get their student loans ie nothing.
ReplyDeleteBut it's allowed you to flaunt your sneering contempt for the unionist identity, and that's the main thing.
Come on Jude, you're not that old and naive surely?
ReplyDeletePeople do what will benefit them, doesnt mean they're about to start voting SF or learning Irish, its simple Maths.
Spend about a hundred quid on a bit of paper, or spend 30,000. Come on.
Loyal to the half crown as opposed to the Crown perhaps? Some things never change.
ReplyDeleteThis isnt the story here as I would swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen if it made me 30000 better off. The real story is the usual reaction from our idiot MP's, step forward as always Gregory Campbell who never misses an opportunity to make himself look foolish. He is calling the Scottish parliament to give Northern Ireland some sort of special exemption to try and prevent good unionist boys and girls aquiring a ''foreign'' passport. The sooner those boundaries are changed and this dinosaur is voted out of one of his many jobs the better.
ReplyDeleteThanks for finally writing about > "Pass the passport, please..." < Loved it!
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