I pray that the Conservative Party never gets a foothold in NI. The decimating pestilence they call a 'budget' hurled at us from London is bad enough. And just about every party up at Stormont is way too politically narrow-minded already. Can you imagine if there were actual, bona fide TORIES up there as well? Unthinkable...

Low, Lindy. Much, much too low...

I'm left-handed married to a black girl. Those used to be sins. Hang on... Our understandings of what is and is not sin can change over TIME?! My gosh, That kind of wrecks your pronouncement. Sorry, William. Thanks anyway....

AMCK, flags and other national symbols are a very divisive issue in NI. The Union flag is the official flag of the UK, of which NI is a part, but the Irish nationalist and republican community on the whole see it as the flag of a government for which they have no real cultural allegiance.

Conversely, the Irish national flag (the tricolour) is the favoured flag for them, but the unionist community tend to see it (at best) as a foreign flag that should have no official standing in NI or (at worst) the political symbol of an Irish Republican campaign of violent upheaval and an Irish republic to the south that they want no part of.

The Northern Ireland flag which you refer to came about at the time of partition in 1921, an act that many Irish nationalists see as an illegal severing of their country by a colonial power to appease an intransigent unionist population who were prepared to violently oppose the bestowal of Home Rule status in Ireland. It is now mostly flown by the unionist/loyalist population- and never by the nationalist/republican population.

To refer to the Northern Ireland flag as in some way the flag of 'all' of us and are we all not proud to be from Northern Ireland (a term that, incidentally, nationalists and republicans tend not even to use) led me to believe that an understanding of the deep social divisions and ongoing sectarian dynamics within NI had in some way eluded you.

It was just a hunch...

AMCK, your comment is so devoid of understanding as to be almost pristine. You need to do a LOT more reading before you presume to comment on this place or its people...

I see. Well, thanks, John.

What happened exactly? I have only the Belfast Telegraph's reporting, and they patently refuse to report the issues involved...

Just what Northern Ireland needs- another conservative party...

I thought they didn't recognise the Parade's Commission. So... why keep asking the Parade's Commission for permission to march? What's the strategy? Do they honestly think that, if they make a big enough nuisance of themselves and keep saying rude things about the Parade's Commission they will eventually cave and give them a parade? Does NO ONE in the Orange Order have children?!

Seriously, mate, watch out for foreign country's flags. I was bit by one four years ago. No matter what anybody says, I think they're vicious...