Best Of

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

My daughter, who is mixed race, was listening to the news from Belfast and said something that made me quite sad. She said that black and brown people just needed to behave better than white people because every time one of them did something bad it meant that all minorities would get blamed for it. I pointed out to her that her mother was born here over 50 years ago and so maybe people should have got used to the existence of minorities in this country by now and learned to treat every person as an individual. But she's probably right.

That is sad and I have empathy but isn’t that the way of humans? A white balding England football fan throws a chair at a tournament and fights the police and Europeans think all white English supporters are terrible so the good ones have to behave even better to counteract. Britain is hammered by the global south for colonisation and slavery and all Brits are supposed to carry that burden irrespective of the fact that some were bad, some were good, many just taking economic opportunities (in the same way small boats people might be) and so we are judged by the worst standards.

If you are white of Boer descent in SA then you might be treated worse by black South Africans because of your colour and name even if you have lived a sainted life.

The “outsider” in its widest terms is always more noticeable for wrongs and the insiders can’t be “got rid of” in the way that some might want outsiders to be.

Once it was the Irish. It’s not always about colour but purely being an “outsider”.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

Its the way its passed on, generation to generation, very moving.

There'll be a few lads pacing across fields in Fermanagh tonight, wondering how deep their Dads and Uncles buried things.

Sky News reporter getting a warm reception just now 'WILL YA FUCK OFF'.

Best to board up the Europa Hotel until after the marching season is over.

Flashback. Late 90s, we'd hired a car in Belfast, very little ID required compared with England at the same time to go round the Glens, came back, parked up in a whole row of cars near The Crown and just up from the Europa, had our evening, returned to the car, it was the only one left parked on the road as far as the eye could see.

Jesus, I crapped myself at the possible implications of that.

That’s why you should pay the excess then you could have relaxed.

Possibly not the best advice given his declared state.

Bad evening to be an empty bus or van in Norn Iron.

Even after nearly thirty years of the GFA you never forget the old skills. I am sure torching a taxi is just like riding a bike. Once learned, it's something one never forgets.

Its the way its passed on, generation to generation, very moving.

There'll be a few lads pacing across fields in Fermanagh tonight, wondering how deep their Dads and Uncles buried things.

Sky News reporter getting a warm reception just now 'WILL YA FUCK OFF'.

Best to board up the Europa Hotel until after the marching season is over.

Flashback. Late 90s, we'd hired a car in Belfast, very little ID required compared with England at the same time to go round the Glens, came back, parked up in a whole row of cars near The Crown and just up from the Europa, had our evening, returned to the car, it was the only one left parked on the road as far as the eye could see.

Jesus, I crapped myself at the possible implications of that.

That’s why you should pay the excess then you could have relaxed.

So the first 2 people arrested in the protests outside Southampton police station have got 34 and 37 months each in prison

For what, exactly? Looks awfully “Two-tier” unless someone was seriously injured.

No one should be in any doubt by now that the courts take a f*cking dim view of violent disorder and rioting.

Been that way for a long long time.

Twitter seems to think this was the same judge who sentenced Lucy Connolly. Any truth to that?

"Twitter seems to think" = "Untrue with near 100% probability".

Sandpit is basically a conspiracy theorist.

He accepted an alternative position when presented with it - they don't do that.

Sandpit is just one of the billions of people who mistake social media for a news source.