Obie, you might like to look more carefully at your history. Hong Kong was only ever *leased* from China. Rightly or wrongly, Ireland was conquered by the British by force of arms. Sure, we could revert to the shape the countries were before that - but that would be to deny that hundreds of years of history have happened between. In a similar vein, would you like all of northern France to be handed back to the British? because historically that was part of England and was only won by France through force of arms.

As for solving the "Irish problem" by giving the choice to the Northern Irish - the UK government has given them two clear tries at self-rule (once in the 70s and once recently), and each time the only thing the Unionists and Republicans could agree was that they didn't want the responsibility and wouldn't sit down together. Maybe once Trimble, Paisley, McGuinness and Adams are all safely dead then we'll see a generation that can make rational decisions, but this lot simply can't.

Graham.