I tell you what though Tierna Cunningham is 
Northern Ireland Thread
- Thread starter Gaz.
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
That woman is comedy gold!
She deserves a gif.
She deserves a gif.
definitely need a gif for that. what a fool she made of herself.
She did it twice too!
Despite all the trouble that happened yesterday it was all worth it for that crazy bigot to brighten up my day.
Despite all the trouble that happened yesterday it was all worth it for that crazy bigot to brighten up my day.
feck me she'd be a noisy one in the sack.
You like them ugly and bigoted then?
feck me she'd be a noisy one in the sack.
Who the feck in their right mind would attack the Alliance Party? The only thing wrong with them is a sore arse from sitting on the fence for years.
Yeah, but they're mostly fenians so, fair game.lolz
feck sake, that's like invading Switzerland.
Scumbags
Now Jake I hope you're referring to this group of Unionists and not all of them in general.
I lurk this thread for obvious reasons but
From some random comment on a picture on facebook:
Obviously. I have some Unionist mates, I like you too.
I know kid, I wasn't being serious. I like some of your sort as well, you included
Never trust them though TN, that's the key or he'll have you saying the Rosary below in Knock before you can say I love the Pope.
Yeah, well that's a given. I'd go for a beer with one but I'd make sure they get the first round in.
You being a transplanted soup offering scottish cnut would need to be the first to buy a round.
Perfection
I'm in tears.
I was the samelmao fecking genius
that's class.Basil McCrea on the Nolan Show saying that Alliance we right over the flag issue. He's a seemingly lone voice for progressive Unionism at the minute and the suggestion is that he may infact leave the UUP for the Alliance Party.
Always though Basil McCrea was one of the most hard-line Unionists going.Edit: he is not the guy Im thing off. I was thinking of William McCrea.
Was just thinking the same thing myself!
Edit: he is not the guy Im thing off. I was thinking of William McCrea.
You all know what's coming.
the 2 unlimited one is pretty funny.
Nothing better to do, saves on the coal if they arent at home.
And in more serious news:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/1208/1224327639170.html
Good article in yesterdays paper.
This week’s protests in Belfast were a sign of a troubled community’s growing sense of disenfranchisement
Angry, frustrated and with a growing sense of disenfranchisement, the troubled loyalist community is struggling to find a place in the new Northern Ireland. On Monday night that rage was translated into violence on the streets of Belfast, after the city council voted to end the long-standing policy of permanently flying the Union flag above city hall.
A 1,000-strong loyalist protest against the removal of the flag degenerated into a riot. Fifteen PSNI officers, a press photographer and two council employees were hurt.
Although Sinn Féin and SDLP councillors have been seeking the removal of the Union flag for years, much of the loyalist ire was targeted at the Alliance Party, which holds the balance of power on the council.
It was their compromise motion – to fly the flag on certain designated days throughout the year, in keeping with the policy at Stormont – that the council adopted.
In the run-up to the controversial vote, the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party distributed 40,000 leaflets in Belfast, accusing the Alliance of “backing the Sinn Féin/SDLP position that the flag should be ripped down on all but a few days”, and urging people to make their views known to the party. The Alliance said it was inundated with “nasty and abusive” messages.
After the vote a young Alliance councillor fled her home in east Belfast after loyalist threats against her. Later in the week two Alliance Party offices and the home of a couple who are Alliance councillors were attacked.
Why has the issue of the flag flying over City Hall produced such an extreme reaction? Jim Wilson, a leading loyalist and community worker from east Belfast, says: “People say to me, ‘It’s only a flag,’ but they need to comprehend what it really means. We have suffered for years at the hands of the Provisional IRA. The intention was to take away our Britishness. They couldn’t do it militarily, so now they’re trying to do it another way. It’s a war of attrition.”
Wilson says that if it was the first concession that unionists or loyalists were asked to make, it would be a different matter. “But it’s not. You have to look at what we have given: the RUC and the UDR disbanded, all the emblems gone, we’ve been hit with inquiry after inquiry. They have pushed us too far. I say to republicans, ‘Try to remember how you felt as a community before you went to war. Now you’re denying my community the very things you fought for.’ Gerry Adams talks about offering a hand of friendship, but he’s got the other hand behind his back and it’s got a very different agenda.”
Self-harm
Jim Wilson acknowledges that loyalists are not blameless. So does John Kyle, a well-known east Belfast GP and one of only two Progressive Unionist Party councillors in Belfast. After loyalist rioting in north Belfast in September Kyle tweeted: “This is self-harm on a communal scale. It does not advance the loyalist cause one inch, not an inch.”
But he, too, speaks of a real sense of grievance: “There is a feeling that we have lost out, drawn the short straw. There is genuine anger, and that can become contagious. Economically and socially, the politicians haven’t done a decent job for working-class people. Those with the least have received the least.”
Kyle says there are few employment opportunities, especially for younger men.
“There is a culture of worklessness, which perpetuates the expectation that there will be no work in the future. Middle-class young people go off to university in Glasgow or Dublin, and it gives them a sense of confidence. Kids from working-class communities don’t have that.”
There is a sense, too, that middle-class unionists view loyalists critically, and with distaste, and that politicians are selectively attuned to the wishes of the better-off.
“This is a big part of the problem,” says Kyle. “The DUP know that, electorally, it’s no good for them to be seen to be too closely linked with loyalism. And that again makes people feel marginalised.”
Lacking substantial political leadership of their own, many working-class loyalists feel disconnected from the mainstream unionist parties and are deeply mistrustful of the so-called peace process. Peter Shirlow, professor of conflict transformation at Queen’s University Belfast, says the loyalist community is incredibly fragmented.
“There’s a kind of fatalism within the Protestant working class, a pattern of nonparticipation, social detachment and general hostility. They’re asking, ‘Where is this peace process, in terms of dividends?’ The world is a confusing place for them.”
The removal of the Union flag from Belfast’s main civic building is a particularly bitter blow for loyalists.
There is no doubt that loyalism suffers from a poor reputation. Shirlow sums up the stereotype as “muscles, tattoos and sectarianism”, part of a “perpetual mantra of wrongdoing and flawed behaviour”.
Impassioned protest
Billy Hutchinson, current leader of the PUP, recently wrote an impassioned protest against this perceived injustice: “I said many years ago that the term Loyalist was becoming a pejorative one; that Unionist representatives who fell foul of the law quickly found themselves defined as Loyalist representatives; that Unionist parades led to Loyalist violence. That belief is more acute today.”
Hutchinson believes that working-class Protestants have been made “scapegoats for the wrongs of the past”. It’s true that loyalist bands, in particular, often get a bad press, sometimes deservedly. One, Young Conway Volunteers, caused outrage on July 12th, when it was filmed marching in a circle outside a Catholic church in Belfast, playing The Famine Song, an anti-Catholic song judged racist by a court in Scotland.
John Kyle admits that sometimes the criticism is the bands’ own fault. “But bands do provide young men with something to belong to,” he says. “There’s discipline and camaraderie; the girls come out to watch them. It gives them something constructive in their lives.”
There is clearly an ongoing problem with criminal behaviour in the loyalist community. Yet Peter Shirlow believes it is important to distinguish between two loyalisms: “one that is regressive and the other which aims to emancipate itself from its own destabilising past”.
In the latter category are those who have worked behind the scenes to foster peace and reconciliation and to ease tensions with republicans. Jim Wilson is one. His sense of hurt is unmistakeable.
“We work hard, but we don’t get the credit. There is huge frustration: we know we are doing the right thing, but we’re still being lambasted as thugs or gangsters. I turned 60 last week, and I said to my wife, I’ve had enough of it. But if we step back, who’s going to step in?”
Wilson says working-class Protestants feel the world and its dog are against them. And he has a warning for those who seek to exclude, demean or condemn his community. “We have a fragile peace here. This is a really serious situation . . . People need to be careful. They are pushing loyalists beyond the pale.”
Good article in yesterdays paper.
This week’s protests in Belfast were a sign of a troubled community’s growing sense of disenfranchisement
Angry, frustrated and with a growing sense of disenfranchisement, the troubled loyalist community is struggling to find a place in the new Northern Ireland. On Monday night that rage was translated into violence on the streets of Belfast, after the city council voted to end the long-standing policy of permanently flying the Union flag above city hall.
A 1,000-strong loyalist protest against the removal of the flag degenerated into a riot. Fifteen PSNI officers, a press photographer and two council employees were hurt.
Although Sinn Féin and SDLP councillors have been seeking the removal of the Union flag for years, much of the loyalist ire was targeted at the Alliance Party, which holds the balance of power on the council.
It was their compromise motion – to fly the flag on certain designated days throughout the year, in keeping with the policy at Stormont – that the council adopted.
In the run-up to the controversial vote, the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party distributed 40,000 leaflets in Belfast, accusing the Alliance of “backing the Sinn Féin/SDLP position that the flag should be ripped down on all but a few days”, and urging people to make their views known to the party. The Alliance said it was inundated with “nasty and abusive” messages.
After the vote a young Alliance councillor fled her home in east Belfast after loyalist threats against her. Later in the week two Alliance Party offices and the home of a couple who are Alliance councillors were attacked.
Why has the issue of the flag flying over City Hall produced such an extreme reaction? Jim Wilson, a leading loyalist and community worker from east Belfast, says: “People say to me, ‘It’s only a flag,’ but they need to comprehend what it really means. We have suffered for years at the hands of the Provisional IRA. The intention was to take away our Britishness. They couldn’t do it militarily, so now they’re trying to do it another way. It’s a war of attrition.”
Wilson says that if it was the first concession that unionists or loyalists were asked to make, it would be a different matter. “But it’s not. You have to look at what we have given: the RUC and the UDR disbanded, all the emblems gone, we’ve been hit with inquiry after inquiry. They have pushed us too far. I say to republicans, ‘Try to remember how you felt as a community before you went to war. Now you’re denying my community the very things you fought for.’ Gerry Adams talks about offering a hand of friendship, but he’s got the other hand behind his back and it’s got a very different agenda.”
Self-harm
Jim Wilson acknowledges that loyalists are not blameless. So does John Kyle, a well-known east Belfast GP and one of only two Progressive Unionist Party councillors in Belfast. After loyalist rioting in north Belfast in September Kyle tweeted: “This is self-harm on a communal scale. It does not advance the loyalist cause one inch, not an inch.”
But he, too, speaks of a real sense of grievance: “There is a feeling that we have lost out, drawn the short straw. There is genuine anger, and that can become contagious. Economically and socially, the politicians haven’t done a decent job for working-class people. Those with the least have received the least.”
Kyle says there are few employment opportunities, especially for younger men.
“There is a culture of worklessness, which perpetuates the expectation that there will be no work in the future. Middle-class young people go off to university in Glasgow or Dublin, and it gives them a sense of confidence. Kids from working-class communities don’t have that.”
There is a sense, too, that middle-class unionists view loyalists critically, and with distaste, and that politicians are selectively attuned to the wishes of the better-off.
“This is a big part of the problem,” says Kyle. “The DUP know that, electorally, it’s no good for them to be seen to be too closely linked with loyalism. And that again makes people feel marginalised.”
Lacking substantial political leadership of their own, many working-class loyalists feel disconnected from the mainstream unionist parties and are deeply mistrustful of the so-called peace process. Peter Shirlow, professor of conflict transformation at Queen’s University Belfast, says the loyalist community is incredibly fragmented.
“There’s a kind of fatalism within the Protestant working class, a pattern of nonparticipation, social detachment and general hostility. They’re asking, ‘Where is this peace process, in terms of dividends?’ The world is a confusing place for them.”
The removal of the Union flag from Belfast’s main civic building is a particularly bitter blow for loyalists.
There is no doubt that loyalism suffers from a poor reputation. Shirlow sums up the stereotype as “muscles, tattoos and sectarianism”, part of a “perpetual mantra of wrongdoing and flawed behaviour”.
Impassioned protest
Billy Hutchinson, current leader of the PUP, recently wrote an impassioned protest against this perceived injustice: “I said many years ago that the term Loyalist was becoming a pejorative one; that Unionist representatives who fell foul of the law quickly found themselves defined as Loyalist representatives; that Unionist parades led to Loyalist violence. That belief is more acute today.”
Hutchinson believes that working-class Protestants have been made “scapegoats for the wrongs of the past”. It’s true that loyalist bands, in particular, often get a bad press, sometimes deservedly. One, Young Conway Volunteers, caused outrage on July 12th, when it was filmed marching in a circle outside a Catholic church in Belfast, playing The Famine Song, an anti-Catholic song judged racist by a court in Scotland.
John Kyle admits that sometimes the criticism is the bands’ own fault. “But bands do provide young men with something to belong to,” he says. “There’s discipline and camaraderie; the girls come out to watch them. It gives them something constructive in their lives.”
There is clearly an ongoing problem with criminal behaviour in the loyalist community. Yet Peter Shirlow believes it is important to distinguish between two loyalisms: “one that is regressive and the other which aims to emancipate itself from its own destabilising past”.
In the latter category are those who have worked behind the scenes to foster peace and reconciliation and to ease tensions with republicans. Jim Wilson is one. His sense of hurt is unmistakeable.
“We work hard, but we don’t get the credit. There is huge frustration: we know we are doing the right thing, but we’re still being lambasted as thugs or gangsters. I turned 60 last week, and I said to my wife, I’ve had enough of it. But if we step back, who’s going to step in?”
Wilson says working-class Protestants feel the world and its dog are against them. And he has a warning for those who seek to exclude, demean or condemn his community. “We have a fragile peace here. This is a really serious situation . . . People need to be careful. They are pushing loyalists beyond the pale.”
Bar the old bitch there none of them are old enough to remember the troubles.
I love that they are burning the part of the Irish flag that represents them. I doubt that is symbolic, just "yucky" to touch anything green.
I doubt they actually know what the colours represent.
Mint, vanilla and orange. Yum!
Green for Ireland, white for peace and orange for William.
I don't agree with the burning of the Irish flag. It incites hatred, it's incredibly immature and juvenile. I get people wanting to stand up for what they believe in, but resorting to rioting and burning flags is just animal behaviour IMO. It's utterly appalling and shameless.
I don't believe these cretins really know what they're supposed to be standing up for, they just want to stand there with ridiculous scarves covering their faces and wanting an excuse to fight (although some of them don't need an excuse!).
A lot of people feel that they (unionists / loyalists / the Protestant community) are always having to make concessions and generally get screwed over.
Neither Peter Robinson or Ian Paisley have been members of a paramilitary organisation.
Martin McGuinnes, Gerry Adams, Gerry Kelly, Sean Lynch, Fra McCann, Jennifer McCann, Conor Murphy, Pat Sheenan and Raymond McCarthy have all been members of the IRA, and are now MLA's. Some of which have been jailed for murder and bombings.
They were members of Ulster Resistance.
Generally Unionists didnt need to be as they had the RUC/B-Specials/British army to do their dirty work.
Also tomorrow the results of the sectarian head count are out from the census in 2011. It aint going to help the situation given that the gap between the communities will be small.