LongTimeLurker

This Daily Telegraph article provides context on what was being referred to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3610190/So-now-another-estate-has-been-cleansed-of-Protestants.html

I'm guessing you are too young to remember William Wolfe.

In your own little world maybe along with the notion that it is the big clubs in the SJFA that insist on a national all in draw etc etc. The point you were making about the DUP breaking the UUP-LOL link was pretty much on the money, in my opinion,all I was pointing out was that you were pushing things a bit too far on the proles being too thick to see how there was an element of manipulation to it all angle. What you wrote also only really fitted the larger urban areas. There is also the rural and often bible belt type areas to consider as well.

Bet you googled furiously to come up with that reply. You peddled a bit of a stereotype, while reality was more complex, was the point I was making.

Up until the 1960s the Northern Ireland Labour Party often used to be able to beat the UUP in Stormont elections in working class Protestant parts of Belfast, so the "lower orders" didn't always meekly follow the script.

There are also no water cannons needed for the vast majority of Orange walks that are held. If the LOL had intelligent leadership on this, they would parade somewhere non-contentious to protest what's going on as a way to steer people away from rioting.

Does that also apply to the SNP's annual parade from Stirling to Bannockburn to commemorate an even older battle? A parade of some description isn't a problem, it's where they want to parade that's the issue.

Somebody is obviously determined to have an argument with the resident Linfield fan, even when he has just posted much the same line of reasoning. Probably didn't even bother to read what you wrote. What makes it all the more moronic on the part of the LOL was that Stormont was recalled by the DUP and passed a motion more or less supporting them and there was going to be negotiations over the best way forward on issues like this. What more do they expect than that? Have read elsewhere that the LOL leadership in Belfast was replaced recently by hardliners, who thought their predecessors were too accommodating. Maybe the problem is that now there is no career obvious career advancement angle for UUP politicians in being prominent in the LOL, the IQ level of the people at the top of it has dropped by about 30 or 40 points.

It is 30 to 40 years since I was told about that stuff, but I think the perception it was based on was that the traditionally strongly Presbyterian areas in the Foyle and Finn valleys were deliberately split between the two Donegal constituencies in a way that killed stone dead any chance of another independent/Unionist getting in again. From what I have read, FF liked to have lots of 3 TD constituencies in the rural west so they could get more TDs than their vote share really merited where they were at their strongest, while ensuring that there were lots of 4 TD constituencies in and around Dublin to keep the result a lot more proportional in the areas where FG and Labour were at their strongest. Ruling parties around the world get up to tricks like that.

The Donegal Progressive Party was the cover name used for the continuation of Unionism in a Donegal context and still had a councillor on the county council until relatively recently. There was also what was effectively a Unionist TD up until the early 60s until a bit of gerrymandering on constituency boundaries meant the numbers were no longer there to get someone elected. After that the vote went to Fine Gael as the least bad option.

Bo'ness folk used to be very skilled at building tunnels. The miners at Kinneil Colliery had tunnels reaching all the way over to Culross at one point, which made me wonder what planet Alex Salmond was on when he claimed a tunnel under the Forth wasn't a viable option for replacing the Road Bridge at Queensferry. On the territorial thing mentioned immediately above, one way to rationalise it in Scottish terms maybe is that it's a bit like how rival young teams in and around Glasgow defend their local patch and tend to get into fights at pretty much the same locations year after year only with a political angle thrown into the mix and the international media showing up to broadcast it around the world.

I've actually experienced something not completely dissimilar to that when working in Asia. Far right nutters who didn't like foreigners used to hold regular parades around the city where I lived. Easy enough to ignore, in my experience.

You are trying to make me fit some stereotype you have. There is no way you can tell my mood over the internet based on a phrase like that. I am doing something long, boring and monotonous that doesn't require my full attention and am using the internet for light relief at the moment. I'm bored rather than upset.

I don't give a shit who holds a parade along my street. Easy enough to just ignore something like that if you don't want to participate.

Why are you asking me that? I am not in the Orange Order and I don't live in Belfast.

When St Patrick's Day is commemorated in Belfast the city centre tends to be the main focal point rather than a field out in the middle of nowhere. Don't think there is anything hugely out of the ordinary in the LOL doing that as well.

AFJ would be way more clued up on the details than me, but it all revolves around walking in from Unionist areas on the edge of the city to the city centre in the morning to join up with the main Belfast area parade and then back again in the early evening once that's over and done with. Most of the route is non-controversial and through predominantly Unionist areas, but North Belfast has a complex patchwork sort of geography when it comes to who lives where, so at one point they wind up going past rather than through a hardline Republican area. The Crumlin Road is one of the main arterial routes in that regard, so the argument on the Unionist side is that it's a shared space, while obviously the resident groups from the Ardoyne put a very different spin on things. The ruling from the Parades Commission this year was that the morning was OK, but the evening wasn't, which seems a bit bizarre to me.

I don't think it's that simple to solve. There actually is no other viable way to get from Woodvale to the Unionist areas that lie beyond the RC portion of Ardoyne. If there were an alternative route, odds on the Parades Commision would have insisted on it years ago.

Only because you seem unable to move beyond the propaganda line on this. It's not clear cut whether the stretch of road in question is a Loyalist or Republican area because it's one of the places where the two sides live right next to each other. One lot want to maintain the notion that it's part of their area and a natural place for them to parade, while the other lot want it to be seen as an integral part of their area and not a place where the other community should be allowed to enter.

People get bused in from elsewhere to be "offended" in these situations and if they get their way on the Crumlin Road they'll shift their focus somewhere else and create a new cause celebre to moan to the international media about. It's all about slowly expanding their turf.

For one of the possible angles on that try googling Cluan Place or Torrens Estate.

The LOL term is Grandmaster rather than grand wizard. I think Kincardine was joking with that.

...which brings us back to whether something can be banned simply because it upsets a certain group of people, which is something we are clearly going to have to agree to disagree about. What makes some of the antics at this time of year all the more absurd is when you find out what side the Pope was on during the Williamite Wars. People can google that for themselves.

It was an Anglican Ascendancy not a Protestant one. Presbyterians were discriminated against as well and are the most numerous Protestant denomination in NI. From a Presbyterian standpoint the Union of 1801 was a huge improvement on what went before and later on was greatly preferable to a UI run by clericalists like de Valera. The problem was and is that the UK predated the Enlightenment so the sorts of changes that the Presbyterian radicals of 1798 really wanted where a truly secular state along the lines of the United States or France never happened because of the way that the monarch is the head of the Church of England.