The bog trotting, semtex planting terrorists bastids!

Would you like a chicken supper Bobby Sands................

You've got to get the phrase 'Offending Muslims' in there too.

I was amazed to see in a card shop in town a stand with loads of st patricks day cards for sale...... WTF?!?!
Fair enough, use it as an excuse to get pi55ed if you want but buying someone a card for it???
Do they even in Ireland?

Archie the Irish bred greyhound will most definitley be celebrating St. Patricks Day
with half a Guinness in his dog bowl..... I might even buy him a card
I have actually already got him a St. Paddy prezzy tucked away and he ain't gettin' it
until March 17th t' b' shore

aaahhh, the crack at the mick !!

To be fair, I spent 18 months in the badlands of Northern Ireland working around Fermanagh fishing for info. I gained two things from this; a intense hatred for all terrorists and a deep respect for the normal Irish folk.

March 17th is my daughters birthday,so we celebrate that & St Paddys craic is irrelevant in our house.

The better half usually receives St Patrick Days cards each year, but it is also her birthday.

is it chicken or sausage???

make yer mind up boss!

btw, dlighted to see the back of that bigoted c u n t* Paisley


*not a word used lightly

Got bad news for you they have moved it to the 15th. No shit.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mal ... trick.html

Can't see it making any difference like - except it will be a much longer weekend. I don't know if the Irish Govt. has moved their national holiday or not (neither do I care).

It was just another obscure saints day, Ireland excepted, till the card/booze industry decided it would be a nice little earner a few years back, cue hard sell. Now every gullible daft lad and lass who've had even a tin of 'Oirish Stew', are celebrating their Oirsh roots...

My Granny was Irish, born and bred in Lisburn and she celebrated St Patricks day - fair enough. But then all of my aunts, most of whom were born in Hartlepool get excited every March and dress up in Green. Why? They're friggin English!

I was on leave once and really upset them. They were all belting out 'if you ever go across the sea to Ireland' and I added 'make sure you check underneath your car' then added upset to injury by singing the Bobby Sands 'Chicken Supper' song. They really had no idea what was going on over there, they had heard the stories about Catholics being done down and the IRA were still seen in some quarters seen as saviours. I think they were confusing the provos with the old stickies that my granny talked about as good guys who 'looked after their own'

Then you have the people who go to Dublin on the weekend of St Patricks day. Easyryanjet bump up their prices hugely and the hotels charge an extra 1000%, the pubs all increase their prices and everyone gets ripped off.

It's just another ploy by valentines day marketing plc.

Any idea why he was never assasinated?

Simply because he is known in Republican circles as the best recruiting sergeant the IRA ever had.

but he's a peaceful quiet man of the cloth...........................

Nah...St Patrick you're thinking of

it has to be said that until the killings stop forever, and all the people who have been affected personally by previous killings, have passed into history (i.e. 60-70 years from now) then there is a chance that people will be able to live alongside each other without need for hatred based on presumed nationality/religion.

I'm not sure Mr P, talk to any Irishman and its not very long before they start talking about potatoe famines, black & tans and Oliver Cromwell. Mind you, the way they were treated by the latter two makes it understandable. They've got long memories these bogtrotters.

it's like anything else, if the stories stop getting passed down as a means of justifying hatred of British, and instead passed down as something that happened long ago, then the hatred might actually stop.
I didn't vote for any Government in my lifetime to send in any troops with the intent of shooting them, or to make them starve, and nobody in living memeory did I'm sure? How many more times can future generations of British citizens have to answer for something that happened long ago? Slavery is another one - yes it's a shameful part of British history but the British people alive NOW didn't have anything to do with it!!!
Why won't this go into their heads???

Did the civil rights marches of the 1960's and 1970's occur before you were born? When the Catholic minority of Northern Ireland was denied basic housing and employment rights and found electoral wards gerrymandered so that even ones with a Catholic majority fell into Unionist hands? When Catholics without any affiliation to the IRA were interned for seemingly no reason? They have a reason to be bitter.

It's not that long ago in terms of history that English and Scots were doing battle. Now I'm married to a Jock!

It'll be interesting to see if Sectarianism in Glasgow will change. Our lass had a friend at school whose dad was an Orange marcher. Every Friday night he would do a mile detour on the way home from the pub, just to spit on the door of the Catholic Church. Crazy to my mind, but they take things quite seriously up there and have long memories.

Mr PIN, have you had that baby, yet?

didn't do a bad job for the UVF either




aye, they got long memories...I was affected indirectly and am still bitter as fook

so what i mean is, if lil old me is still bitter and i had no family members killed or owt, what are those that did gonna feel like?!

but have those wrongs not attempted to be put right?? Modern Governments have done more to bring people together than ever before, and under pressure from both the British and Irish people to end the trouble, not to mention the broader international community. The people who perpetrated the sectarianism have no place in today's world.
Like I said, and I repeat, the everyday British people of today and of the future should not have to be repeatedly subjected to hatred and revenge for something they weren't responsible for in their lifetime.I defy you to say that it would be correct to do so.

But is directly having nowt to do with it enough? Not if we are still enjoying the fruits of ancient abuse it isn't. I'm not saying that's our case but as an example I can think of plenty of instances now of people living on lands their ancestors stole.

but 99% of British people aren't living off those ill-gotten gains, that's for sure!! I was born in Britiain through no other reason than geographical accidsent, why should I be held responsible for something I had no part in? And my kids? And their kids? Surely there are others in possession of such ill-gotten gains who should be held to book - i.e. the aristocracy!!!!

The little bugger doesn't want to budge, so Karen is getting induced on Friday night.

I would love to try to get the Italian Government to issue an apology to the British peoples for several hundred years of Roman rule on these islands.

Problem is, everyone kind of admires what the Romans did now.

A sensible voice from the wilderness people only want to see and hear what the BBC tells them the IRA did horrible things to there own people and proddys but remember they were the under dog in there own country.

Internment was the single most crazy idea the British government ever had in relation to 'the troubles' Overnight it created queues at the door of the local Provo commander with young lads wanting to fight the bastards who had taken away their Father/Brother for no reason. The same can be said of 1 Para's crazy day out in Londonderry, better known as Bloody Sunday. Bizarrely, Para Reg still try and justify it.

My dad came over from pomeroy in county tyrone when he was 6 and lived in Consett were there was a big irish community working at the steel works before moving to Gods Country Hartlepool when he was 12 and i will never forget as a kid my dad sitting in England calling the english every name under the sun but as i got older and the storys that he told me i could understand his hatred but he would never condone what the IRA did in any shape or form.
I to this day follow Celtic and The Republic of Ireland but love England with a passion.

Nah, what did the Romans ever do for us.....

There's only two things in this world I truly hate; secretarianism and friggin Catholics!

Thats me off your christmas card list then.

That nun really scarred you for life like didn't she

Internment was barmy. As Frank Kitson said, 'it was done at the wrong moment in the wrong way for the wrong reasons’.

Of those interned...

1 was blind.
3 were drunks picked up off the street.
5 had not been active since the Irish Civil War.
1 had not been active since the Easter Rising (55 years previous!)

Numerous other people were interned due to mistaken identity. Of the people on the Army's hitlist, 4 were dead. The Army Councils of both the Provisionals and the Officials had been tipped off by a sympathetic government worker enabling them to flee across the border and ensuring only a token number of paramilitaries would be caught.

Unbelievable!

As far as I know Mr I, only one of the Paras there that day has came out and made any sort of apology (in Peter Taylor's Provo's book). A black day, a day in which the Paras should never have been there.

me too, but I hate the Prods!!

I'm not sure that they shouldn't have been there, Para Reg is trained to be very aggresive and thats what you need to break up a riot. I'm guessing that a red mist decended when the first shots were fired. Wilford (Commanding Officer) should have been in control and doesn't seem to have been.

Its an ironic joke

Bloody Sunday definitely took the sport out of bricking the Brits though.

Yes an armourlite against half a builder will win every time.

No, Mr Dough.

THEY had the Armalites, murderous tank busting rifles, and we had the Belgian FN 7.62s, great in the field to a point, but useless in urban engagement.

They also had bombs, grenades and home made shit you can't even begin to imagine, whereas we had rules of conduct in the form of the yellow, blue and green cards.

But it was never certain that there was going to be a riot; Bloody Sunday stemmed from an anti-internment 'peace' march led by local politicians and luminaries such as Lord Brockway. Trouble only kicked off when the authorities decided, at the last minute, to not allow the march access to the Guildhall. The Royal Anglians, the Coldstream Guards and Green Jackets had plenty of experience dealing with riots in Derry, so surely they could have dealt with any trouble? The Paras were out of their comfort zone, largely operating in Belfast at this time, and had shown what they were capable of at another anti-internment match the week previous in which they had batoned some marchers into the sea. The Commander of the Green Jackets at the time had even sent a message to Robert Ford telling him it was madness to send in the Paras. Is sending in, as you say, a very aggressive unit to watch over what was meant to be a peaceful protest really the best idea? Wilford did seem to lose control for it like, and paid for it afterwards.

sorry, it had to be done...

Well it was five years before I got there, but in my experience there was no such thing as a 'peaceful' march. They always went via a couple of 'interfaces' where it kicked off and the Army got the brunt of it through the back door. It was always tactical and quite well planned.

I don't think its a case of it has to be certain that a riot is likely, if there's the possibility then you have to prepare for it. I wasn't there so I can't comment on the performance of the Anglians, C/Guards or the Green Jackets. The Paras are essentially shock troops so to have them in reserve does seem sensible and to say that there were no IRA weapons there just seems bloody ridiculous. Given the circumstances at the time the Provos simply had to have been there. I don't know if shots were fired or not but something caused 1 Para to start firing. The whole Irish community is very good at tidying up after themselves, any weapons or empty cases would have been cleared away very quickly so it was always a long shot that anything would be found. We'll probably never know the truth but I'm not accepting your version of events any more that I accept the Widgery report because both are biased.

Where did I state there were no IRA weapons there? The Provisionals had moved their weapons out of the Bogside and into the Creggan on the day of the march and participated in the march as both marchers and stewards but were not on active duty that day. On the other hand, the Officials were operating and did shoot at the Paras (one single high velocity shot that hit a drainpipe and sporadic pistol fire).

As for the Irish tidying up after themselves; the Widgery Reports details numerous Paras talking about the heavy gun fire, acid bombs and nail bombs that came their way when it kicked off. I accept the gun casings could be picked up easily but surely it would be very difficult to clean up after a nail or acid bomb in the short time the locals had to re-organise before the army moved into the area? The Widgery Report itself accepts there was no evidence of the like.

Very considerate, considering that they were an outlawed bunch of civilian murderers.