Indeed. We have guns for competitive target shooting and would absolutely support the idea that your gun is a privilege and you should have to be responsible to keep it.

Well, we own a gun in a country which has very strong gun control legislation and protections, primarily for sport purposes (my partner competes in target shooting and is one of the organisers of the national target shooting body.) Homes have to be inspected and wall safes examined before we were granted a licence. …

It's particularly effective in a North Dub accent.

Indeed (as is Cork), but I think Dublin wins for pure imaginative uses of feck.

No one can outswear a Dub. NO ONE.

I never cursed until I moved to Ireland. Then it was "feck" this and "shite" that.

It's also crap - Fellowes clearly thinks it was pointless and that carries over into Branson. To the point where my Irish best friend can't watch it anymore.

Thanks for supporting us! And yes, a disproportionate percentage of late abortions in the UK are Irish women desperately trying to scrape together the money.

I'm a gun control advocate and I own a gun. I'm perfectly happy to go through a background check and keep my gun in a wall safe - otherwise, it'll be taken away from me. If you're really a responsible gun owner, you should be happy to comply with safeguards.

Yes - and this is in a country with strict gun control policies (mandatory checks at to the safety of our wall safe). I'm baffled why some supposed "responsible" American gun owners balk at similar controls, as I'd never leave mine lying around. EVER.

Irish names outside Ireland are disasters waiting to happen, unfortunately...

It's because Maeve is actually the Anglicised spelling (changed to a more English phonetic pronunciation.) Traditional Irish spelling is Medb.

Heh. Depending on what they say about abortion, you can get some of those banned under the Abortion Information Act. Mick Nugent from Atheists Ireland did that for a book which encouraged people to hate mail English clinics.

Ugh, Youth Defence are actually horrible - to the point where they're insisting that Irish laws which would allow a woman whose life is in substantial and immediate risk to access an abortion is "a culture of death"

Yes, apparently they beefed up the role because they enjoyed Richard Madden. I personally don't know how the son of someone with a Yorkshire accent and a Southern accent would end up sounds Scottish, though....

Just to correct that they're graduates of St Andrews, not Edinburgh.

I would guess, however, that those people are gooey and overly pressuring in real life. I know a couple who alternate between "love isn't real, it's all a lie" statuses and "I love you SO MUCH" depending on where they are in the make-up/break-up cycle. But they are both total drama queens in real life - Facebook…

Amen to that.

Well, if you're going to be forced to spend time with your mother in law, why not on a private tropical island?

Indeed. I could believe "I'll give it a few months and see if we can work through things" but this is WAY too specific.