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turbinetree

(24,632 posts)
Thu Jan 30, 2020, 06:16 AM Jan 2020

AP PHOTOS: Irish border residents watch for Brexit fallout

By DAVID GOLDMAN
an hour ago

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — The border was drawn in 1921, splitting communities and sometimes property, as the British government sought to create a home for the majority Protestant population of Northern Ireland at a time when the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland won its independence.

Today, that 310-mile (500-kilometer) frontier is largely invisible. The only way motorists know they have crossed into Northern Ireland is from the speed limit signs, which use miles per hour measurements, rather than the metric system used in the south. Keen observers might notice a slight change in the pavement as well.

As Brexit takes effect Friday, residents on both sides of the border are concerned about protecting the relative peace and prosperity after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That accord helped end three decades of sectarian violence between paramilitary groups that wanted to reunify Ireland and those who insisted the six counties of Northern Ireland should remain part of the U.K.

Lisa Partridge, a 28-year-old tour operator raised in a British military family, remembers how it was “completely normal to check under the family car for a bomb every morning before you went to school.?

https://apnews.com/80d9449bc6956e5324dabaddd3e3fe2a

Call m a pessimist but this is not going to end well...................

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