Why is July & June a not a good time for a show in Belfast

I like a lot of rebel songs. it's part of the folk tradition.

 

They're even better when you're tanked up. Nothing like a drunken singalong.

 

That's like disagreeing with me that Floyd Mayweather is the WBC welterweight champion. It's fact.

N. Ireland is part of the UK but not Great Britain. Look it up

 

Sorry, misintepreted what was written in the original post. I stand corrected!

 

The war was in Northern Ireland, not England? Some of us played football and liked girls when we were younger. We didn't have aspirations of being this political rockgod/author & journo.

 

They should demolish the so-called peace walls in Belfast - watched a doco a while ago and there were young kids from both sides stating how much they hated Catholics/Protestants.

When asked if they'd ever met any they said ''no, why would I want to?''.

 

Well, I didn't like football, but I always did pretty well with the girls. Not so well with the rockgod, but hey!

It's also just interesting, considering your views on Thatcher, that you weren't aware of the issues with the IRA. That's a big part of her legacy and in assessing her worth as a prime minister.

I'm not criticising you for it, Rob, really. I'm just surprised.

 

Happens in Glasgow too. There are a generation of folks who just preach hate because it's what their daddies preached. Sickening, really, but not like a unique issue in the world.

 

Why has it gone across to Scotland?

Or has it always been there deep down?

I remember listening to Gordon Strachan saying that he was sent hate mail from Celtic fans not long after he joined as manager because he had a blue car.

 

Generally my political views are quite conservative and I am massively pro privatisation. Hence I have a more positive view on Thatcher. You don't have to know every detail to form an opinion, and I only ever discussed her economic polices. It was certainly more informed opinion than most of the scousers cheering her death.

 

I think now allot of it just comes from football. Its imbedded into the scottish culture to care about stuff that happened 100s of years ago.

 

It's in Scotland as there has been mass migration between Ulster/ Ireland and Scotland for hundreds of years. The majority of Protestant in Northern Ireland can trace their roots back to Scotland and when the potato famine occurred then there was mass migration from Ireland to Scotland- Catholic (and Protestant but if you listen to folklore the famine only affected Catholics....). Like any immigrant community Irish Catholics in Scotland tended to stick to themselves in the same areas, so while only 16% of Scotland's population is Catholic- probably around half the people in the central belt are Catholic. It's the central belt where 99% of sectarianism occurs. Catholics formed their own football team- Celtic and have their own education system, so they have in effect isolated themselves from Scottish society in order to protect their identity and church. Nowadays the Catholic Church loves to play the victim card and make wild claims of discrimination against its members whilst all the time perpetrating a school system which divides kids at the age of 4-18 and is protected by law for some reason in its refusal to employ Protestants as teachers in the primary schools or have Protestant in promoted posts in secondary schools- outrageous state sponsored discrimination. The fact the Catholics all live in the central belt means that although they only make up 16% of our population they are all centred in the Glasgow and Lanarkshire voting constituencies and tend to dominate local politics. The claim discrimination so often that non Catholics are scared to complain about their undue influence for fear of being labelled a "bigot".

 

Too early for that

 

A lot of the Catholics in Glasgow are descended from Irish Catholics who moved over to Scotland in the late 1800s. Jobs in Glasgow dried up and the resident protestants, who are still the majority in the city, blamed them for their growing poverty.

From that, you saw gangs forming in the slums and the violence and hatred that spewed forth has continued. Religiously motivated hatred has always existed in Scotland, but now you've got poorly educated folk with no jobs and no prospects looking for a reason they feel so hateful. So it just perpetuates, generation after generation.

Now the sectarian violence is motivated by geographical lines, based on the colour of a football strip and 150 years of violence and history. It's sad.

 

A lot of that's true, not all of it though. I've seen just as much of a "victim" complex in Protestants. The schools thing I understand your view on.