The north/really good looking fellas

Did I see that Brolly is taking a case about it??

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Ffg are little better down here.
At least they are consistent

What happened to that guy who was on with Danny Dyer? Sammy McCrory? Still alive?

Some good seeth from Big Jim today and some lass giving out about Sally Rooney.

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She’s right but then again Martina was scorned

Consistent cunts FF/G

Jim in flying form there. He’s the only one doing anything to save the Union.

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He’s a lunatic though

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Crawley is a themmun now

You’d nearly tune in to hear him just to hear how much of a bollox he is.

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@flattythehurdler you need to take @cowpat 's attitude here Look at them as an amusement.

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They are dangerous. They are vile. Too vile to laugh at.

Jim is a terrific orator. Nobody can lay a glove on him in the debating stakes. He was a heavy hitting Queens Counsel at the Northern Ireland Bar before duty called and he devoted himself full time to saving the Union.

Exactly why, if you live in the benighted 6, you have to laugh … otherwise …

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All you can do is laugh at Allister digging his heels in. How many voters does he answer to even…

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https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2021/1015/1253914-trial-soldier-adjourned/

Not one of these bastards will ever see the inside of a jail.They’ll pull the old bad health card every time.

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Wonderful spot.

Recommended Brown’s in Town (posh), Pyke’s n Pommies (more casual) and The Pickled Duck (breakfast/lunch).

Walk the walls and peace bridge, spin out to Malin. Great part of the world.

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B Specials re-enactment ‘offensive’

Brian Hutton

Eamonn McCann: said the plan is ‘politically and historically ignorant’

EAMONN MCCANN: SAID THE PLAN IS ‘POLITICALLY AND HISTORICALLY IGNORANT’

A “re-enactment” of drills by the auxiliary police force known as the B Specials at an event to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland has been described as “offensive” and “just wrong”.

Both the cross-border Ulster Scots Agency and the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council have put funding towards “centenary celebrations” in Coleraine, Co Derry, today.

Part of the event at The Diamond will be a “B Specials Historical Re-enactment”.

Joanne Hunniford, secretary of the Coleraine Festival Committee and one of the organisers, said it will involve men dressed in B Specials uniforms staging a “checkpoint” using a vintage car as well as a “drill demonstration”.

She said: “I think people are interested in the fact that they did play a part in the history of Northern Ireland, and bringing us to where we are today.”

She added: “They had a role to play. Unfortunately, there was a terrorist threat since Northern Ireland was formed. They were trying to keep that threat under control.”

The B Specials, formally known as the Ulster Special Constabulary, was almost exclusively Protestant, much feared by Catholics, and was involved in numerous controversial episodes, including an infamous attack on civil rights marchers at Burntollet, Co Derry in 1969.

Formed just before partition, it was disbanded in 1970.

Ms Hunniford said it was “a force that was drawn from a large part of the community in Northern Ireland, so I think there is positive feeling towards them, as I’m sure on the nationalist side of the community there is a negative feeling towards them”.

She said the re-enactment should not have any impact on cross-community relations and that “there are different interpretations of all history.”

Gillian McMaster, director of development at the Ulster Scots Agency, which is jointly-funded by Stormont and the Irish Government, confirmed it awarded £2,359 (€2,798) to “a two-day festival of Ulster-Scots language, heritage and culture.”

She said: “It will provide people with a range of opportunities to embrace their Ulster-Scots identity.”

A spokeswoman for Causeway, Coast and Glens Borough Council said it provided £3,796 (€4,503) for “a range of activities” at the Coleraine centenary celebrations but council funding was not going towards the re-enactment.

“The applicant group have confirmed that the re-enactment element of their Northern Ireland centenary event is being funded through their own resources,” she said.

The event also includes music, dancing and children’s art and craft workshops.

Veteran activist Eamonn McCann, who was among those attacked at Burntollet, said it was “inappropriate to celebrate” the B Specials and questioned the “propriety” of the Ulster Scots Agency in particular associating itself with the event.

“The idea that the Ulster Scots tradition and the history of the B Specials are interwoven is simply not true,” he said.

“The B Specials were very controversial from the outset, the paramilitary wing of a particular unionist cause that didn’t represent all unionists, and certainly didn’t represent all Protestants.” The re-enactment “is just wrong”, he said.

“I think it does nothing to improve [cross-community] relations. In effect, this is presenting the B Specials as being an authentic and legitimate expression of the unionist cause back then, and implicitly since then . . . it is not actually.

“It is like taking the most jagged edge of unionism and saying this what it was like and what we adhere to.” It was unfair to unionism, he said.

“No matter what your historical perspective, the idea that the Catholic community in the North can have a shared experience or shared history with the B Specials is politically and historically ignorant, apart from being offensive.”

Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin), also a leading figure at march ambushed at Burntollet, said: “Fondly remembering the ‘good old days of the B Specials’ can only be an exclusively unionist event, but that is their business.”