Ireland should pay the cost to the UK taxpayer of the Pope's forthcoming visit to Britain.

I thank Mr. Eggleston for this engaging debate topic. During this debate I will uphold that Ireland shouldn't pay for the Popes visit, and that neither should Britain. Rather, a much different course of action should be taken, which I will discuss later. I will firstly address Brians comment about Britain being a haven for Irish emigrants. While this is to an extent true, the iris were victims of British Victorian snobbery. The British, owing vast swaths of land aroudn the world, thought they were a superior race and the inheritors of the Ancient Roman Empire. However, they did indeed look down upon people from their colonies, including Ireland. A prominent feature in Britain right up until the 50's and 60's was "No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish". The Irish faced huge discrimination, and as a result were confined to menial, low wage labour-based jobs. This led them to a woof heavy drinking, horse-fixing, etc. as Brian mentioned above. The famine itself was worsened by the fact Britain was unresponsive to the fame itself, and decided to curb the crisis by sending Maize but giving absolutely no cooking instructions! Asides from "Peels Brimstone", as the Maize was known, the majority of Irish landowners were protestant, who owned e vast farms of Ireland and decided to continue to sell various foodstuff back to Britain and elsewhere. Food was available, but only to robber Protestant who took land that the Catholic Irish rightfully owned! Now, the context of the Irish of Britain aren't down-and-out scoundrels saved by British with a heart of Gold, they were just discriminated at home, forced to stave, and were then discriminated further in Britain, the source of the problem! The Irish are still a considerable minority, but have in recent times improved themselves, only since the arrival of Pakistanis and Indians which the British have focused their attention on [1]. The Irish do not have any burden to the British to foot the fee required for his Holiness to visit Britain, as the migration was one caused by the British themselves! However, I do not think the British people who are mostly hard workman people who were themselves victims of British aristocratic elitism should have to pay this bill. I feel the appropriate response should be, as Dawkins put it, "Arrest the Pope!" [2]. The Pope should be arrested when he immediately steps foot on British soil for being directly involved in the abuse of children[3], which can be construed as a violation of human rights. He would then be tried like an ordinary criminal, and sentenced to serve his time amongst other paedophiles in prison, where he will quickly have to learn not to pick up the soap, or else he will receive a "baptism" from his fellow man! Should the Pope refuse to comply with the British show of justice, he should immediately shot down by the British Anti-Aircraft Rapier Missiles [4]. The ensuing explosion would hopefully fry the papal paedophilic man, and show the world that we've had enough of their kiddy diddling! I await Mr. Eggglestons response and await a humorous second round. [1] = http://www.bbc.co.uk... [2] = http://www.timesonline.co.uk... [3] = http://www.debate.org... [4] = http://en.wikipedia.org...