Lumpy Talbot
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2015
- Messages
- 29,617
- No
I'll swerve the bicycle of relevance velocipedally back towards Brexit in a way, but one thing I have been encouraged and impressed by is the way our political representatives have handled themselves throughout on the international stage with the eyes of the political world on them.
This is a new thing, make no mistake. For a famously sociable and gregarious people we have been remarkably silent as a people on the international stage and predictable if anything. I don't think the confidence was there, previously and I have heard from people in the know that Irish representatives were remarkably quiet and seemed to make much more noise about their influence levels at home than they did abroad.
There's a visible and welcome change there. This approach shown during the Brexit issue is much more what I'd like to see. It plays to our absolute national strengths. We should be diplomatic experts with our culture, in fairness. We don't have many enemies. Bit more confidence and bending of the natural ingenuity to steering the ship in international waters is a good thing.
We have the ability to be honest brokers between other nations as we aren't involved in military alliances and are comfortably neutral in most of the world's war zones. We have a remarkable and known facility with dialogue, we speak the world's language used the most at international conferences in academia and many professions including politics. We have a deal of goodwill as fuel. We could develop these things as a national asset and advantage. It could be a much more powerful 'weapon' for us than any missile system if nurtured.
The pen is still mightier than the sword and we mastered the pen long ago.
This is a new thing, make no mistake. For a famously sociable and gregarious people we have been remarkably silent as a people on the international stage and predictable if anything. I don't think the confidence was there, previously and I have heard from people in the know that Irish representatives were remarkably quiet and seemed to make much more noise about their influence levels at home than they did abroad.
There's a visible and welcome change there. This approach shown during the Brexit issue is much more what I'd like to see. It plays to our absolute national strengths. We should be diplomatic experts with our culture, in fairness. We don't have many enemies. Bit more confidence and bending of the natural ingenuity to steering the ship in international waters is a good thing.
We have the ability to be honest brokers between other nations as we aren't involved in military alliances and are comfortably neutral in most of the world's war zones. We have a remarkable and known facility with dialogue, we speak the world's language used the most at international conferences in academia and many professions including politics. We have a deal of goodwill as fuel. We could develop these things as a national asset and advantage. It could be a much more powerful 'weapon' for us than any missile system if nurtured.
The pen is still mightier than the sword and we mastered the pen long ago.
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