"Jim, from some angles, it does seem that the 1916 Easter Rising was a waste."
Keith has just demonstrated perfectly in his contempt for the Irish people and their achievements why it was not.
Ireland is at present celebrating the major step in achieving independence - it will spend the rest of the year in discussing, examining and celebrating what Keith has just described as "a contemptible joke" - that sums up Britain's attitude to Ireland and to anybody who dared to challenge the Empire's authority
then perfectly and in writing what he did, it sums up the Empire Loyalsts' hatred and contempt of their former subjects now.
Would you accept that The Boston Tea Party of 1771 "a contemptible joke"?
Within three months of the Rising Britain had about turned on the Home Rule Bill and added a clause that would guarantee Ireland a century of division, inequality, unrest and bloodshed which has lasted to the present day - permanent partition.
That's how definite The Home Rule Bill was.
Keith has not responded to that fact.
Had the rising not taken place, Irish youth would have been compulsorily whisked off to be slaughtered on the killing fields of Europe and, given the death toll there, would have been an unsustainable country - we had lost a third of our population to famine and enforced eviction half a century earlier, thanks to British greed and misrule.
Even as late as 1918, Britain tried to introduce enforced conscription - Easter Week had given the politicians the balls to say "no".
I have put up Lloyd George's statement about Home Rule - Keith chooses to ignore it.
If Ireland had "a fair amount of self-determination already", what was the Black and Tan Period about, or the fight for Independence, or the Civil War, or the further half century of struggle against injustice or inequality in the North, another "contemptible joke".
Easter Week not only eventually brought about Independence for Ireland, it set the Empire dominoes falling and was the beginning of the emd of the contemptible British Empire, that's how much of "a contemptible joke" it was.
I'm delighted that Keith finally came out of the closet and said what he said about Ireland and its traditions - long overdue.
I would love to be present if he came over here and told us that we are making fools of ourselves by celebrating "contemptible joke"
Jim Carroll