So after midnight. And bonfires are burning.
You may think that this is all about HATE. Turns out its ….CULTURE.
What exactly can Society do about it?
Well …nothing. Because its loyalist CULTURE and we are contractually obliged by the Good Friday Agreement (aka the Peace Process) to accept that loyalist culture is a good thing.
Priorities change. Serial LetsGetAlongerists agonise about the Environment. They burn tyres on these bonfires and thats very bad apparently. And apparently some of these bonfire builders actually put layers of grass downon the road so that the road surface wont be damaged while they burn Irish Flags and symbols and election posters and pictures of the Virgin Mary.
Thanks to Social Media, we now have a new tradition…photographing these symbols of HATE and putting the pics on Facebook and re-tweeting the pics on Twitter.
You have all seen them….the pics from Cavehill overlooking the City of Belfast. And the bonfires look strangely beautiful. But of course you cant actually hear the “F@@k the Pope” or see your National Flag in flames.
You have seen this years pics….from Bangor, Killyleagh, Portadown. The LetsGetAlongerists never seemed to mind too much when the posters were just SDLP and Sinn Féin (thats traditional) but they got worked up in 2014 when Anna Lo posters appeared on bonfires. This year, SDLP, SF, Alliance, Labour and very oddly “Cannabis is Safer Than Alcohol” posters have been burned like medeival heretics.
All par for the course. Offended as I am by the burning of my National Flag, Offended as I am that election posters of democrats are burned, Offended as I am that posters with images of good decent people I call friends are on burned…the most disappointing thing is LetsGetAlongerists falling over themselves to find an excuse for this crap.
Can there really be a more depressing image than moderate Danny Kinahan MP (UUP) being photographed accepting a cheque for charity while standing in front of a bonfire with an Irish Flag on top.
A lot of people have a lot of time for Danny Kinahan but he lost friends today.
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I think they need stiffer penalties for tyre burning. That endangers lives.
The whole UUP is moderate is a joke, yeah moderate compared to the nutters on the extremes. I’ll bet if Danny was honest, he didn’t see anything wrong with standing in front of a cheque to buy Meningitis? Not even a recognised charity, so keen was he to be seen in the unionist family. Unionists dismiss their own sectarianism readily as a few on the fringes but Danny exposes the truth. The most cutting remarks in my work place were from Protestants, complaining about the bonfire eyesore and at the absolute mess of beer bottles and fag butts left on the Lisburn Road behind walls that aren’t cleaned up by the council. You could conclude that paramilitary flags fly from lampposts and hate crimes are rife because of paramilitary threat but the truth is that unionists don’t see the wrong except when made to face it. Well social media is good for something.
I have met Danny Kinahan. His family employed a lot of people in my part of West Belfast and highly respected.
THis is the kinda stunt I expect from nutters but during the month of July, a lot of people seem to lose it.
The odd thing is that everyone is saying “oh what a great peaceful Twelfth” but somehow it has shown up what actually is “normal” here.
I think danny kinahan apologised
Do you think he would ever say ‘Stop burning tricolours’ with any conviction or is he sorry he was dumb enough to get caught? Nesbits ‘strong line’ on paramilitaries including unionist ones fell very short of doing anything bar puffing his chest out and blurring the line between DUP/UUP.
He did….but he should have known better.
FJH,
See link below for more on Danny..
http://www.judecollins.com/2016/07/danny-kinahan-ulster-unionist-mp-just-a-bit-of-a-twit-or-something-more-sinister-by-sammy-mcnally/
Jude is right.Kinahan’s “moderate” credentials went up in smoke.