Why do elements of ABOD supporters go out of their way to insult and offend?

brown and blue concrete building

Hughie Beag is a West Belfast native and recovering legal scholar who spends lots of time in his spouse’s native Basque Country We’re coming up to the Apprentice Boys of Derry Relief of Derry parade, held annually on the second Saturday in August in the old walled city of Derry on the West Bank of the Foyle. The ABOD march was previously contested when, as a result of the 1994 ceasefires, the city walls became fully accessible to the public and …

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Paras have at last told their grim stories of the Falklands War. With strong public support behind them, perhaps Troubles combatants would do the same

This week’s showing on BBC2 of the gripping  Our Falklands War: a front line story  will have forced comparisons and  contrasts with the Troubles. When I reported the Falklands War from afar in Buenos Aires I used to wonder how those spotty youths in ill fitting uniforms would fare against the elite of the British Army like the Parachute Brigade. Not well as we saw when 1000 of them surrendered to less than 100 paras at Goose Green, although the …

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The killer identified Margaret as a young girl in a dress and then he deliberately shot her…

I normally don’t write posts about the Troubles. I try to look forward and not dwell on the past. That’s easy for me to say because I never lost anyone close to me. I don’t have the raw pain of the missing person at Christmas and family events. But sometimes you come across something so shocking that you just can’t but write about it. Kevin Myers recently wrote on his blog about the notorious activities of the Paras in Northern …

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Today is the 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Lord Mountbatten and the Narrow Water Attack…

The recent BBC Documentary ‘The Day Mountbatten Died‘ is well worth a watch. Our family used to go on holiday every year to Mullaghmore,  County Sligo. It is an area I am very familiar with. Was it bravery or arrogance that Mountbatten would holiday in Ireland every year at the height of the Troubles? Whatever the case may be, there did seem to be remarkable complacency around his security. Leaving his boat unprotected in the bay did seem remarkably lax. …

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