When I said "For the ignorant" I was using the word it is ordinary sense of "not knowing" because clearly there are plenty of posters who weren't aware that using the word Eire in English to refer to Ireland is regarded as offensive by Irish people.
Julian made a typically gracious apology and I don't understand why other posters have to launch off into an argument about it.
I didn't want to get into politics on this site (although this is a rather political thread in any case) but the "agenda or slant" to which I was referring is that decades of usage of the word Eire to refer to the Republic of Ireland by the British right wing press and by some extreme unionists in Northern Ireland, often in anti-Irish (or anti-Éire) articles and commentaries has severely discoloured the word's meaning for Irish people when used in English.
It's also worth noting that there have been 162 uses of "Ireland" in posts on this site and never, before the post on this thread, a post that used the term "Eire". I think that shows just how out of the ordinary the word is in mainstream discourse.
I also want to say that TODAY is a particularly sensitive day for Irish people in London given the hate-filled attacks from some quarters following the death of Martin McGuinness which bring to mind the dark days of the 1980s when we were routinely abused, discriminated against and fitted up by the Met. Only a couple of weeks ago Hollywood actor Gabriel Byrne described how he was the victim of an anti-Irish attack by British soldiers in London during that time.
http://irishpost.co.uk/actor-gabriel-by ... don-irish/
The ignorance displayed by the usual right-wing Tories in Parliament and the media is in sharp contrast to sympathies displayed by the unionist community in Northern Ireland:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38685158When I said "For the ignorant" I was using the word it is ordinary sense of "not knowing" because clearly there are plenty of posters who weren't aware that using the word Eire in English to refer to Ireland is regarded as offensive by Irish people.
Julian made a typically gracious apology and I don't understand why other posters have to launch off into an argument about it.
I didn't want to get into politics on this site (although this is a rather political thread in any case) but the "agenda or slant" to which I was referring is that decades of usage of the word Eire to refer to the Republic of Ireland by the British right wing press and by some extreme unionists in Northern Ireland, often in anti-Irish (or anti-Éire) articles and commentaries has severely discoloured the word's meaning for Irish people when used in English.
It's also worth noting that there have been 162 uses of "Ireland" in posts on this site and never, before the post on this thread, a post that used the term "Eire". I think that shows just how out of the ordinary the word is in mainstream discourse.
I also want to say that TODAY is a particularly sensitive day for Irish people in London given the hate-filled attacks from some quarters following the death of Martin McGuinness which bring to mind the dark days of the 1980s when we were routinely abused, discriminated against and fitted up by the Met. Only a couple of weeks ago Hollywood actor Gabriel Byrne described how he was the victim of an anti-Irish attack by British soldiers in London during that time.
http://irishpost.co.uk/actor-gabriel-byrne-reveals-attacked-british-soldiers-1980s-london-irish/
The ignorance displayed by the usual right-wing Tories in Parliament and the media is in sharp contrast to sympathies displayed by the unionist community in Northern Ireland:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38685158
