Posts by Adam Maguire

Oscar Wilde voted top Brit wit

WikiGospel

For a start the Wikipedia is not an authority on anything, just a point of reference, and secondly if you were to read through the entire article on it and not just pick from it selectively you'd see that the term 'British Isles' has no set definition, neither geographically or politically, and changes depending on who you speak to.

It is not an official term in any respect which is why it's inter-changable with things like British-Irish Isles.

The official political description of Ireland during the 19th century is that it was part of the United Kingdom, as was Britain (and Great Britain).

The official geographical description of Britain is the island containing England, Scotland and Wales. The official geographical description of Great Britain is the island of Britain plus the islands of Jersey, Guernsey, The Isle of Man etc. The official geographical description of Little Britain, Lesser Britain or Britain Minor is the region now known as Brittany (give or take).

I'm not on a high-horse about this, it's just the reality. Ireland has never been part of Britain, even when it was part of the United Kingdom.

@JonDoe

You're actually quite wrong about what Britain is.

Britain is the island containing Scotland, Wales and England; Great Britain - or Greater Britain - is the term used to describe the large island (of Britain) coupled with the smaller islands such as the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey etc.

The term Britain, nor British Isles, does not refer in any way to the island of Ireland which is not a part of the geographical region of Britain and never was, even when it was all under the British throne's control.

The geographical region of 'Lesser Britain' is actually Brittany in France.

That is why the UK was always called 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland' and is now called 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

And a comment to the guy who seemed to think that working or learning in a certain country makes you a citizen of it, it doesn't.

I'm not going to get into a squabble over what Wilde was - frankly I think he would have prefered to be seen as British than Irish - but to say that he going to Oxford makes him British is bizarre.

Sick to death of the bloody iPhone? Click here

It's alive!

Did anyone else notice the death-rattle of that iPhone as it was turned into dust?

If you watch the slo-mo replay, you can hear it cry out in agony just as it starts to break up.

So it's made from magic pixies after all...

Irish kids' literacy hit by txts

Yeah, it's the phones

Yeah, it's the phone's fault, not teachers, the department of education or the parents themselves.

As I said elsewhere, maybe we should now tax handset providers and operators for the extra burden they're putting on our education system. Or maybe we should cop on and realise that children with bad spelling are such because they haven't been properly shown otherwise.

Muppets.