The Metro publishes a scare story about the Irish border. It shows an image detailing a no man’s land on either side of the border. Scary, eh?
Proposals for a post-Brexit ‘DMZ’ at the Irish border would be ‘catastrophic’, says the man who created a map of what it could look like. It follows reports of UK government plans to create customs posts with a gap of five to 10 miles between Northern Ireland and the republic. Digitial mapmaker Richard Cantwell says more than 600,000 people would live inside this economic no-man’s land. He asks how difficult the plans will make the lives of the 30,000 people crossing the border every day for work, school and medical treatment. He told Metro.co.uk: ‘Some GPs cross the border multiple times on their rounds, will they have to declare the contents of their bag of medicine every time they cross?
It’s bollocks of course. A scare story in the Greta Thunberg style of hysterical bollocks. Indeed, it even acknowledges this in the article…
Johnson has since dismissed the reports and said they were part of preliminary ideas thrown around before formal proposals were tabled. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘There are very good reasons why that would not be a good idea. ‘I think everybody familiar with the situation in Ireland can understand why, both for practical reasons and for reasons of sentiment that we totally, totally understand.’ He said while the UK would have to have a single customs territory, ‘there are plenty of ways we can facilitate north/south trade, plenty of ways in which we can address the problem.’
So…er… What’s the problem here?
To be sure, the Irish don’t want a hard border. The UK government doesn’t want a hard border. The Northern Irish don’t want a hard border. So who is going to enforce one?
However, the “crayon on the map” that is described in this article is a non-starter and was only a preliminary discussion, consequently the Metro is engaging in scare stories. So, nothing new there, then.
Milligoon, thou shoulds’t be alive now.
Google• Puckoon, Youtube.
Or better still read his marvellous tome.
•There are other search engines.
The border scene in Puckoon had me in tears laughing many years ago…
Many years later I bought the DVD which was shite.
The Irish may not want a hard border, but the EU will build one in Eire, regardless of their wishes, on their territory.
If they don’t like this, they should complain to their owner.
That’s why we are leaving.
…Who’s next?
Well, quite. Let the EU enforce it. Maybe it will bring the Irish to their senses on the matter.
Just suppose there was a ‘hard border’ and on either side there were significant differences in prices and taxes.
Such a border would be very hard to police outside of the ‘regular’ crossings making it very attractive to make some money on the side.
Now who might these people be that would seek to exploit this black market? Probably the same people who do it now, the people who ‘run’ this ‘bandit country’.
It seems to me that if any of the trouble-makers that our ‘European friends’ are imagining actually started to kick up a fuss they might be ‘discouraged’ by the ‘bandits’ – permanently.
We have ports on this side of the Irish sea. Passport checks there.
It would work in exactly the same way and any other border port – non UK citizens would need to show their passport on arrival. The border would effectively be moved to the mainland. I currently have to show my passport or other photo ID when travelling to Northern Ireland even thought they are domestic flights. Ferries tend to be more loose, but there’s no reason why they can’t adopt the same principle.
That would be absolutely no difference to what happens now or anywhere else in the world, frankly. There will always be those who game the system and the Irish border has always been porous. Unless you want to build a wall and good luck with that one.
It won’t. And you appear to have missed my point about UK nationals and non UK nationals. Nothing would change for UK nationals to what happens now. The only change would be passport checks for non UK nationals at Holyhead, Stranraer and Pembroke. This would, of course, include people from the EU – with the exception of the Irish as we have a common travel area and I would expect that to continue.
The biggest problem with illegal immigration comes from Africa and the Middle East, not the EU. They are here legally and are unlikely to be trying to get here en masse illegally. The illegals will continue to do what they are doing now – cross outside of ports and border controls. I mean, they hardly turn up at passport control at Dover…
Not really. If this was going to be an option for illegals, they would be using it now. The common travel area is incredibly lax. They ask you what your nationality is at the ports and if you say Irish or British, they wave you through. Yet, despite this, there are no floods of migrants. It really is a non issue. The EU have made a monster where none exists.
Those EU citizens who want to come here are currently here legally and many are now leaving. It is highly unlikely that we will see floods of EU migrants attempting to get in illegally. Those from the Middle East and Africa aren’t coming through the ports anyway as I said earlier. And let’s be fair, they are the problem here. They are the ones camping at Calais and storming the beaches of Spain.
As for flying – for domestic flights you do not need a passport. Nor should there be a requirement for one – it being a domestic flight after all. Belfast is no different to Glasgow or Newcastle. That won’t change post Brexit.
Will some people try to game this using fake documents? Undoubtedly. They probably already are. Are your worries about Holyhead becoming the new Calais a likely outcome? No. Because they still have to cross the sea, so why would they cross the sea to get to the Republic and then cross another one to get to the UK mainland? Doesn’t make sense.
When the Metro started out I found it quite reliable. Latterly it’s full of celeb-fawning and is a waste of paper
And pixels.