The Blanket has re-published Newt Emerson’s piece on his attendence of the local police liaison committee. Despite his usual droll style, Emerson finishes with a serious dilemma facing the police in Northern Ireland:
Everybody talks to terrorists, and that�s brought tangible improvements to communities far more blighted than mine. We don�t have the luxury of splitting our world into �criminals� and �law-abiding people� divided by a thin blue line because that line has been blurred by recent history then deliberately blurred again to help undo recent history. This is a society with a lot of problems to solve – too many, certainly, for the police to handle on their own – and it seems that in Portadown, at least for a little while longer, we�ll have to accept that some things are still the UVF�s department.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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