Belfast flag violence: New clashes as police use water cannon on loyalist rioters
Source: Belfast Telegraph
Around a thousand loyalist protesters picketed Belfast City Hall tonight over the Union flag row as violent disturbances again broke out elsewhere in Northern Ireland's capital.
The demonstration at the civic building in the city centre was held as Belfast City Council met for the first time since its controversial decision to limit the flying of the flag on the roof.
While the protest at City Hall passed off without incident, trouble flared again in the east of the city - the fifth night in succession that the area has been blighted by disorder.
Loyalist protests have been continuing across Northern Ireland since early December in response to the decision by Belfast councillors to only fly the flag above City Hall on designated days instead of all year round.
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/belfast-flag-violence-new-clashes-as-police-use-water-cannon-on-loyalist-rioters-16258560.html
Turbineguy
(37,208 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)That's a switch.
bitchkitty
(7,349 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)All over the bloody Union Jack. That was an unnecessary rule their Irish leadership rammed thru with little discussion. Sounds like what happened up in Wisconsin. I read the article to see how they had been flying the flag...didn't say. Why can't they fly both effing flags?? The Union Jack on one corner and the Irish flag on the other, and at the same effing height??? I gather that many of the protesters are quite young! Heck...where's George Mitchell? Send him over there and straighten this out before children are killed! Someone. They all love the Big Dawg...send him over there! Someone has to talk some sense into those people. Holy Moly...
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Or this proposed new flag, which was intended as a banner that BOTH communities could accept:
Isn't it a little absurd, at this point, for Ulster Loyalists to still be THIS obsessed about having "the upper hand"? It's not even as if anything would change all that much if the Six Counties actually joined the other Twenty-Six.
I'm Irish and I'm British. Many of those kids from BOTH sides are my distant cousins and I don't want either group to be killed or injured over a GD flag. The council needs to back the eff down and put it back the way it was before they changed it. That 2nd flag there might even work. Thanks for posting the flags...
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)...if the main thing you use it for is draping coffins?...
ReRe
(10,597 posts)This is the effing 21st century, for God's sake, not the middle effing ages. I'm so sorry I'm foaming at the mouth over this.... I just can not stomach injury and/or killing of any more children. And it took so long to end that conflict over there. This might just spark the whole thing up into a civil war again. (or religious war, whatever it was.)
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)"'An eye for an eye' was all that filled their minds.
And another eye for another eye 'til everyone is blind".
ReRe
(10,597 posts)roses, there were roses, and the tears of the people ran together." I had never heard that song before. How can something so beautiful come out of something so tragic? Thank you...
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Peace to you.