Letter: Regardless of a border poll, the global financiers and their cohorts will rule either way

Not a day goes by without another media story about a possible border poll. We're being conditioned into accepting this reality.

Benevolent in some ways, as in preparing the ground and maybe offsetting a knee-jerk reaction from the loyalist community, but malevolent in the sense that it's essentially top down manipulation as it's something the shadow rulers have decided is the right time for whatever purposes they might have. Would it be to distract us from something more insidious than what we have already?

The fact that Catholics now outnumber Protestants within Northern Ireland means nothing as many Catholics want to maintain the Union and therefore this isn't a reliable method of choosing when the right time has arrived. Might we require a referendum to decide if we want a referendum on the border? Polling can be so manipulative, you see, as with question wording bias, etc. But I think a lot of people just believe a referendum may result in the ‘wrong answer’ and we'll get what was decided on high, anyway. Brexit and the two referenda needed for both Denmark and the Republic of Ireland to accept closer integration with the European Union, stand as testament to that argument.

In other ways, a change in border is the equivalent of changing the arrangements of ornaments on a mantlepiece. The global financiers and their cohorts will rule either way and we'll just be left waving alternate flags with all the significance of a thumb suck at a welcome baby party.

Louis Shawcross, Co. Down