April 1st 2019 – London, England. I write to you with this important news: that Bitesize Irish has relocated to London (just opposite the Oliver Cromwell statue in Westminster, to be specific).

This might be massive news for you, as a person who values the Irish language, so let me try to explain why we took this drastic decision.

View over the garden wall form our new home in London.

As many English people do not know, their sovereign country is called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK offers freedoms to us that we could only imagine back in Ireland. We’ll benefit from:

No longer being embarrassed to speak the Irish language in public, instead being greeted by curiosity of a different culture

No longer seeing our native language of Irish in small italics next to the dominant English language

No longer being asked “But why would you want to learn Irish?”

Escaping from the establishment of Ireland which emphatically keeps a foot down on the Irish language, including main-stream RTÉ programming, and Fine Gael / Fianna Fáil political party biases that are killing the Gaeltachts. As Kneecap from the UK bastion of Belfast have told us to, Foc RTÉ.

Joining the UK which is rich in multi-cultural post-Celtic culture from the Irish language in Belfast, Scots Gàidhlig, Welsh and Cornish. It’s a more multi-cultural Celtic nation than Ireland can offer us.

Super easy UK passport application process, since there are currently no queues in this process. The fools queuing up for an Irish passport!

Man painting British border between Newry and Dundalk in Ireland.

We savour the principles put forward by Brexit, including you don’t need permission from anyone else to follow your passion.

Ticket office where we bought our Pedal Boat tickets to the UK.

I bring you this news as it may directly affect you if you are a Bitesize Irish member. We should now probably call you a Bitesize British member from now on. Rather than accepting payments in Euro and Dollar, we’ll in the future accept payment of one whisky bottle per month. (The only catch with that is the customs border at the British border in Ireland, we may have to review this policy)

Our going-away party in Limerick. Sad times.

What does the future hold for Bitesize Irish? Funnily enough, it will probably be back to the European Union with us. Our two options for future relocation will be:

To move to independent Scotland. Scotland is welcoming of many nations, and offers an intriguing bridge to Viking heritage. By the looks of things, they’ll be an independent Celtic nation before we manage to change our logo to “Bitesize British”.

Or move back to united Ireland. This country will offer strong human rights for minority movements, probably elevating the rights of Irish language speakers and British Protestants, who will hold voting sway in the new federal republic. I think that’s why Unionists are so called in today’s Northern Ireland, I could be mistaken.

… But we probably don’t see our future in the upcoming United Kingdom of England and Wales. The Anglo Saxons have been slightly bothersome in the long run for the Irish language.

If you’re currently taking the Bitesize Irish program, and you don’t want to be transferred to be a member of Bitesize British, please fill in this form.