"And there, my case rests, M'Lud."
Don't know where you are B. but I wonder how long and how hard the British would fight if say, Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex and Kent were annexed by France and became French - perhaps you'd care to speculate?
The 'troubles' will continue in Ireland until Britain takes a giant step into the 21st century and acknowleges that the days of Empire are all but gone (despite reports to the contrary from The Last Night At The Proms'.
Bloody Sunday, the violent suppression of the Civil Rights Marches, The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four fit-ups, internment without trial, the bombing campaigns, the hunger strikes...... are not 'the Irish problem' they are often claimed to be, but merely the symptoms - and pompous arrogance such as "people (especially the people of Ireland) get their heads out of the past" only confirms, to my mind at least, how just far in the past British thought is lodged.
"In which case hold a referendum in Northern Ireland tomorrow"
Are you referring to Northern Ireland proper or the gerrymandered one created politically in 1922 to produce a Protestant state?
"Why not abide by the result of the 1922 referendum?"
Isn't this what Backwoodsman describes as "Living in the past" - the partition of Ireland clearly has not worked and is never likely to.
Northern (sic) Ireland was a political creation which never worked, and never will - that is the lesson of Bloody Sunday. Leave things as they are at present and you are passing the problem on to the next generation.
Jim Carroll