Nearly had to kick my radio in listening to the Today programme this morning

[Burney]

Mo might be interested to discover how the original plan for partition was for all nine counties of Ulster to become Northern Ireland, but three of them were too republican to ensure a pro-British majority, so it was reduced to six.

Also, very tempted to link to a certain SLF track at this point.

To be fair, though, the idea behind partition was simply to keep Ulster Unionists from losing their shįt and beating the crap out of the rest of Ireland. There was no particular interest in retaining the province of Ulster for its own sake.

The big mistake everyone makes when thinking about the Troubles is thinking that it was solely about managing the republican problem. It wasn't. It was about the Brits managing the republican problem rather than the loyalists doing so, which would have been much, much uglier.