Biggest Geopolitical Border Problem - Northern Ireland's Border 

"Every solution is offensive" - not sure why but that really made me laugh, really sums up the whole shitshow

I love that The Republic of Ireland is more north than Northern Ireland.

"Split into 4 provinces that don't really mean much anymore" You've clearly never met an Irish rugby fan

Then of course there's the people in NI who hold Irish citizenship and not UK citizenship under the Good Friday Agreement

You just open a map and can make me listen for hours. Thank you

I was born in '86 and was too young to understand the full spectrum of what was happening in North Ireland, but I can tell you that word "Belfast" was synonymous to a bomb attack to us. It was a minor shock one day in geography class when I learned that Belfast was a city :P

As an American who never hears any in depth discussion of foreign issues like this, I like hearing s regular persons opinion.

Being from Northern Ireland I really expected this to be a trainwreck on par with every other time someone from "outside" tries to offer their opinion on our situation. But you gave a really good overview of the situation here and didn't fall into any of the traps that people usually do. This should be required viewing for all politicians trying to negotiate the British/EU border situation.

This is one of the most accurate (not 100%, in my estimation) and instructive explanations of the Ireland/UK border that I have seen or heard and is well worth viewing.

And the 🌏 and stuff

Fun fact, my grandad was at that base in Derry when it got raided by the IRA. He slept through the whole thing lol

Just a quick correction, healthcare is mostly free in Ireland. There are GP cost, prescriptions costs and certain hospitals charges but in general medical care is mostly free. You dont pay for surgery or hospital treatments for example. But you may have to pay an ambulance charge or for your bed in a hospital.... unless you earn below a certain a amount of money. Then everything is free. The confusion comes from the fact that Ireland has a two tier system where private hospitals exist and they generally give you faster treatment, access to private rooms etc and a perceived better standard of care (not sure how true that is though). This of course you must pay for. In saying the no Irish person would disagree that the NHS is far superior to the Irish HSE and we are very jealous that we can't get or healthcare system together.

I want to see a video where you talk about the fact that more people live in a certain place than in the country of origin

28th of october will be 100 years from creation of Czechoslovakia. Will you please make video about Czechoslovakia or Czechia and Slovakia? You may also include other countries that were formed in 1918 from Austria-Hungary.

Yet another ex-girlfriend, Toycat?! Were they into half hour videos on one border? (Seriously, Toycat, half an hour on ONE border?!) :D

To answer the question at 8:40. you are using the newer boundaries rather than the older counties, Ulster had 9 counties and N Ireland went for only 6 to prevent an Irish majority in the old Ulster out voting them. There was also a border review that was never carried out, in which the border would have been amended to put people on the correct side of the border.

I think it's pretty stupid that nobody raised these points during the Brexit debate. This is one of the main reasons the EU was created in the first place, to avoid conflict around borders in Europe.

1:45 toycat narrowly escaping carb bombing

The Good Friday agreement was truly a beautiful peace treaty. If only all conflicts could be resolved with something so fair and reasonable.

I'd love to see a video on biggest diasporas in the world. Ex-Yugoslav diasporas could make an hour long video on their own!

It's called "Derry" because that's what it's original name is (or, rather, that's the Anglicised version of the original Gaelic name). The "London-" part was slapped on by Unionists because colonialism. I know you're trying (sort of) to be impartial, but when you tell about Irish history, if you do so simply stating that facts, it may make you sound like you're taking the side of the Irish, but that's only because the British are objectively the bad guys in this situation. It's not partisan, that's literally just how it is. You're attemptimg to sound impartial so hard that you are just straight up misrepresenting the facts.

Finally a video from My Country Edit; OMG he just summarised my last year of History Also for those of you wondering I.P.P is called Irish Parliamentary Party

A bit of information: all the territorial waters belong to the Republic. Lough Foyle is part of the Republic but they are afraid to resurrect the conflict. The territorial waters were left to Ireland after the Government of Ireland Act and the Anglo Irish Treaty. They are trying to hide this fact but it cannot be done.

You mentioned there is no official border on Lough Foyle, that is also the case on Carlingford Lough, where you started, which has a de facto border down the middle. This is because county borders stopped at the sea and when the Irish Free state was formed, no agreement was made on where the border goes. Which wasn't such a big deal since the Free State was a dominion of the U.K. The Foyle is more complicated since the navigation channel ships pass through, is on the Irish side, meaning official permission would be needed for the Royal Navy to enter the lough, were the border to be drawn down the middle. Therefore the U.K claims the whole lough, while Ireland claims half of it. Although when the Free State was formed they claimed the whole thing as well. When Ireland became a republic in 1937, a lack of international borders tecnically mattered but was basically ignored since Ireland had no bargaining power in a potential treaty negotiation. This basically became irrelevant when both countries joined the then EEC on the same day in 1972. Since the Belfast agreement, the two lough's are coverved by one of the six All-Ireland Implementation bodies that cover the "- Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission: The management and development of Lough Foyle and Carlingford Lough and coastal lights through two separate agencies, the Loughs Agency and Lights Agency." Now Ireland is in a club of with 27 mates, while the U.K is striking out on its own, causing the power balance to shift. The EU, as a rules-based organisation, is a stickler for things like borders because of the common market and after almost one hundred years of letting things slide, the new nature of the border must be set down in a legally binding agreement. Although I haven't seen any mention of the border on the two loughs in the Brexit talks and I suspect will not be solved in the near future. On why the old county borders where kept, part of the deal around the formation of the Free State was a border commision to redraw the border, and it was presumed by the Dublin government that the border would be redrawn to put Irish/Nationalist's/Catholic's out of N.I. It turned out that the supposedly neutral person in the commission was pro-British and in the end, their report was swept under the carpet, because the Free State would gain little and loose land to N.I.

From what I understand the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland is even touchier than what has happened here in Germany. It's still like there is a border right in the middle of our country in some people's heads and you will get hate for simply being born on one or the other side of the country. We never had such a bloody history but damn the hate is still real.

I used to live on the US-Mex border when it was so easy to cross back and forth ... ugh ... now it's just such a pain (depending on locations for sure) but yeah it's not as easy as it was before. I only mention this because I can imagine a worse situation between a Brexited UK +NI border with the Republic of Ireland ... but maybe it won't be as I imagine? I'm watching this from within "the belly of the beast" (middle of the USA) (just having the craic)

Why didn’t they call Northern Ireland “Northeastern Ireland”? Would be more accurate

The important thing to know about the border is that it was a new border created specifically in order to produce an artificial majority for a group that was in fact a small minority in the country. The British added and subtracted specific areas in order to arrive at an entity that would stay in the UK and enable the new artificially created unionist majority to continue ruling without needing any support or consent from the Catholic population. This resulted in the continued denial of rights to the Catholic minority which led to the "Troubles".

Well done! An excellent demonstration of why the Irish border is not like the City of London boroughs. Boris are you paying attention!

I don't really notice the switch from north to south when driving across the border. The only noticeable thing is the vehicle toll bridges.

It’s not like the English ‘compromise’ on the border stopped a Civil War in Ireland . A civil war still happened in Ireland about the pro-treaty (Michael Collins) and anti-treaty (Eamon de Valera)

Oh, this can be solved quite easily UK continues the ID requirement for crossing between GB and NI, and about 10% of all non-UK citizens are processed for crossing an international border when crossing between GB and NI Eireland and NI put up customs posts along their effective borders, a so called hard border, BUT - all NI citizens get a new RFID card, which is scanned when approaching the border facilitating an open boarder for them - there are no customs checks for EU citizens crossing into NI Though about 1% of all cars and people crossing the NI/Irish border gets checked

When travelling along the A30 from Shaftesbury ( New Forest before that ) to watch Yeovil Town play at home , my dear elder brother couldn’t get his head around why at one point we found ourselves in Dorset then Somerset then Dorset then Somerset. If I wasn’t driving , I would’ve scribbled down a rough map to show how this can easily happen ! He’s not entirely to blame for not noticing this concept as the south western border between Dorset and Hampshire where we live probably only signposts the border at 60 % of the crossings ( Walkford Rd railway border un - signed for example. ) And at Roeshot Hill on the A35 I believe the Regional Border should be recognised instead of the cringingly tourism themed “ welcome to Dorset - home of the Jurassic Coast.” . Thanks chap , my fascination with boundaries etc started at 7 yrs old in 1971....love from wessexshire

None of this would be a problem if May didn't go into a coalition with the DUP. The DUP is the entire reason there is a problem with the northern Ireland border. If the DUP wasn't in government then the UK could go back to the way they forgot Northern Ireland exists like they had do for decades.

Nice video, and I can see why you're cautious about committing to a position given the controversial nature of the topic. However, I see you're doing a fair bit of tap dancing around the gerrymandering of the border in its inclusion of counties with a majority nationalist vote - I didn't realise this was controversial but let's be clear; they didn't include them to "make things simpler", they tried to include as much territory as possible whilst just about maintaining a unionist majority, that is unequivocally why they did that.

From a irish person : You're Bang on point and if everyone was as educated on the matter brexit would never of happened

Ireland should reunify Ireland for the Irish!

I think high school musical comes to mind with “stick to the status quo” hahahaha

The UK has two other land borders with the EU: Gibraltar and Cyprus. Fun fact: Akrotiri & Dhekelia in Cyprus is the only British territory where the Euro is the official currency.

Found this very interesting to watch, it’s fascinating to learn more about the history of how countries and borders have formed. Keep up the good work!

“There is no Irish border, only a British border in Ireland”

I am from Ireland so I see Irish maps a lot in school and I have to say *wtf why is down[ a county ] called down if it's in the north like it is up not down what is this madness*

The UK government agreed to the 'backstop' in December 2017, which is to say that a hard border cannot be allowed between Ireland and Northern Ireland. But if Northern Ireland is outside the single market and customs union then WTO rules require border checks. So there is literally a paradox. Meanwhile Brexit threatens great economic damage to both Ireland and Northern Ireland due to trade barriers. It's one thing for the UK to vote to economically harm itself, but it's even worse when you consider that we're causing economic harm to people in other countries who never had a say in the matter. There is still a way out of this - if Parliament is deadlocked and a no-deal Brexit is on the cards (as currently seems likely), the choice should be given back to the British people to find out what kind of Brexit they actually want - including the option of no Brexit, if people feel that the deals on offer don't live up to what they were promised in the original referendum campaign. There is a march in London on Saturday 20th October to call for such a vote.

He forgot to mention the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.

I actually like the way you comment on how it is now. Facts are cool things. Also - yeah, there are A LOT of us over here (in the US), who are Scots-Irish/Ulster Scots descendants - I'm one. It seems like very other person I meet is one lol. I know my 3rd and 4th great grandparents had a pile of kids (particularly my 3rd great grandfather lol - pretty sure he's left DNA in both continents). Prolific breeders, that bunch. Big families mean tons of descendants. So, here we are :).

The name Derry is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name Daire(modern Irish: Doire) meaning "oak grove"

33:05 hopefully I come across this video as I binge through all of them.

15:11 The road is called... *_Church Hill_* nice.

Small corrections on the flags, the flag there was the official flag of Northern Ireland up until the early 70s since then there has been no official flag of Northern Ireland, the Union Jack is the flag of the UK which n Ireland is part of. There is an older flag for the province of ulster with a yellow background and no crown above the red hand or star.

As someone who was born after the troubles and didnt grow up in either the UK or Ireland, hearing an actual not boring explanation of what the situation is was really nice lol

3:54 it's actually most of Ulster is in northern Ireland.

You can’t justify the border and talk about Irish history without talking about the brutal violence and oppression from the English

Yep, there are so MANY more people of Irish and/or Northern Irish descent in the U.S. Ditto for Norwegians and several other nationalities. About the same number of Jewish people in the U.S. as in Israel, too.

Your wrong. The flag of Ulster is yellow and red. The flag you shown is a unionist flag.

How about a video on the lack of border between Guatemala and the ex colony or usurped territory of Belize. If you look at Google maps there is no border. The Hague will deal with this issue soon I believe.

I'm half Irish by blood, yet my grandparents are all from the city I am

Geopolitics has to be the next career move

I'd love to see that video on populations that live outside of their country of ancestry! Especially for Italians and Irish.

Don't forget the future border between the UK and Scotland.

i love the irony of the island being divided to prevent a civil war & the next thing to happen was a civil war a few years later. and a second one in the north around 40 years later. fuck the history of the wee country i live in is fun. Edit: also there is a flag of ulster which has orange on it used for the province in the republic. & slight differences with symbols. Edit 2: i don't like hearing londonderry derry. it should be said derry londonderry (the usal way i hear it) i am not picking no fights just sounds wierd in that order.

The flag for the Provence of Ulster is similar to the one you showed, but with yellow instead of white, and no crown

The concession road at 16:20 is so called because it was "conceeded". I´m not sure who conceeded what, I think maybe it was conceeded to the people of the south. When the troubles where happening, We could pass over this road without the army or customs checkpoints (both sides) stopping you. The deal was, you couldn´t stop your car, you had to keep going. During the troubles, they reduced the number of roads to police, by simply bombing them, leaving them impassable. Locals would come together to fill in the roads, but then the army would blow it up again. I remembered that there was a footbridge in Co Armagh around Caladeon, where there was no customs or army, and we would buy our electrical goods in the north, and get someone to meet us from the south at the other end of the footbridge, and take the car around through the checkpoint in Authnacloy. Where that footbrige is exactly, I can´t remember.... Somewhere around Caledon. From a google search, maybe it was the Dredge Bridge II. Anyway, a tip on the pronunciation of Clones, it rhymes with Lough Ness, so CloooNess, but faster. Notice the perfect circles in North Monaghan, these are ring forts. They are mostly within sight of each other, in order for the locals to protect themselves from cattle raiders in the past etc. One fort could communicate with the other. www.google.com.br/maps/@54.395968,-6.9998852,320m/data=!3m1!1e3. Crossing the border nowadays, the you´d mostly only notice is the quality of the roads, different types of houses, and the road signs, mph in the north and Km in the south .

BUS IRAN😂😂 sorry toycat “ayy-ren”

20:54 You say that the U.K has free healthcare and the Rep. Ireland does not. This is not true, both countries have free public health care, funded through taxation. Edit: I made a mistake, I was wrong.

I went to Dublin last year and I was surprised to see how much it felt like UK. Literally no difference except for the currency and the feelings towards the UK.

Using roads as borders isn't really that uncommon. For example, almost all border towns between Brazil and Uruguay are divided like that (because Cisplatina declared independence and became Uruguay), and quite a few border towns between Brazil and Paraguay that aren't split by the Paraguay or Paraná rivers do the same thing.

You did a great job there,mate. Well done

Intelligent piece of feedback: the earth is flat

The very last statement in your thoughtful piece is what is known in Republican circles as the partitionist mentality. Even life-time residents of both political arrangements get into trouble for calling the two Irelands countries. They are seen as temporary arrangements by a lot of Republicans. There is also a tendency for Unionists to refer pointedly to the Dublin government as a foreign government knowing that by doing so they will upset the sensitivities of the Nationalist community who regard the entire Island as their homeland. The language used by both sides is interesting: Mainstream Irish media refer to Britain and Ireland as "these islands" or, rarely, the North Atlantic Islands but never the British Isles. Mainstream British media still use Eire for the republic but this was changed in 1937. The Good Friday Agreement is called the Belfast Agreement by those of a Unionist persuasion and their supporters in Britain. Our government leader is known locally as the Taoiseach ( Tee-Shock) but some British commentators refer to him as the Prime Minister, an English usage not applied in common use in Ireland. While most Irish residents regard such usages as a minor quirk other residents of a more extreme political stance can view them as deliberate insults and get annoyed by them.

PS also nothing to do with Eire , I thrilled to find a uk map dividing the south east and south west by means of Postcode Districts instead of County Boundaries ..this puts BH25 ( logically as Bournemouth is in the SW ) in the SW and SO41 in the SE ( which is correct because Southampton is in the SE ) but this big boundary instead of being 2.5 miles away at Dorset / Hants , is now at our local pretty little brook called Danes Stream , at the bottom of our slope. When I walk our dogs I can have one leg in the SW and one in the SE. Very cool if you love Boundaries or Borders , Yes ? Love from Hordle. 🏴😇❤️🍄

Northern Ireland is one of my favourite fantasy realms!

Thanks for bringing awareness to the boarder

I’m Scottish & I just wonder how many will migrate to the uk if the north is returned? Wasn’t brexit about unwonted migration?

Bus Iran? Its pronounced with a e

Do that video on places with more people from a country than the actual country, please! You can already mention São Paulo both for Italians and Lebanese!

It's *The Constituate Country of Northern Ireland's 100th Anniversary* & no one seems to be celebrating, hmmmm.

Funny how they call what was essentially a civil war "the troubles". So British. Also, geez, how many girlfriends has toycat had? 😂

More history!! Really enjoyed this one :)

I love your videos but I have to play them on 0.75 speed. Lol.

why we let Gerry Adams live i dont know...

Yes please make that Diaspora video you were talking about in the end. More Northern Irish people living in the Stats than in Norther Ireland and so on ..

Must bilt a huge fence.

Regarding the Irish Americans there was a time when Dublin had a smaller ethnic Irish population than New York or Chicago. On the foundation of the Irish State much monetary support for the nationalist Sinn Fein party came from donations from Irish Americans. A similar situation exists for Ulster Scots, known in the US as Scotch Irish in terms of population. Unlike the southern Irish, the scots Irish largely were rural and did not make a move to cities in as big a way as the people from the south. There were many reasons for this. Catholics in general and Irish Catholics in particular were not welcome in US rural areas and were not encouraged to settle in rural areas which were the reserve of mostly protestant ethnic groups, the main ones being Anglo or Germanic etnicities. Both groups share the same type of music and dance and both have some affinity to making hard liquor, the Irish version is called Whiskey while the Scots version is called Whisky.

Beautiful video, thank you!

I suspect those "peace walls" only make the petrol bombs etc. worse.

Derry City play in the league of ireland They are also called derry in the gaa so most people call it derry down here in the Republic but unionists call it londonderry

Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, are part of a northern border-free agreement, but they are outside of the EU. Same story for Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco, the Vatican... Why UK should be a big issue?

Family in Newcastle, County Down and I’ve been 2 ireland 3 times

I live in the northern ireland

Irish map may be blurry due to EU privacy laws or just Google got lazy

As an Irish lil bits of this is wrong with the most pro Irish people were from connocht but the British took the plantations to the north because there was the most valuable land and not because they were the most pro Irish part of the island

You got it the wrong way round. All of Northern Ireland is in Ulster, but not all of Ulster is in Northern Ireland. (2 of the counties are in Southern Ireland) Also at 30.07 u said the Unionists are Catholics. XD

:30 seconds in and already you have made a mistake about Ireland

This is a turning point for Britain it won't be called the United Kingdom anymore as Scotland will soon be Independent, N Ireland will soon join Ireland so Wales and England will have to be called rUK (rest of the UK) or little Britain.

Clones is not a villlage

Irish sea is the border between Ireland and Britain. Very simple

They could make an agreement with just Ireland to have a open border agreement with just Ireland.

North of the liver LOL One of your most interesting videos and yes, for someone so far away from these issues, you sounded quite neutral to me. IMHO, if I were the Irish govt, in case of No-deal Brexit I would impose a hard border, so as to exacerbate the people in northern Ireland. With time they will consider to call themselves out of the UK and join Ireland. However, if this were to happen, the only fair deal would be for Ireland to become a federal state, giving autonomy to Northern Ireland and to the capital city of Dublin, so that it represents fairly the unified Ireland. Otherwise, a hard border in the North Sea would be the only other option left.

Border control between the Irish Ireland, north or south, doesn't matter is the only solution in my opinion to put the border once going oversees.

Yes, do one on the Scotch-Irish expats in the U.S. - and comparison to the Catholic Irish expats in the U.S.