I was reading a news article on the BBC website regarding foreign investors avoiding Belfast, costing Northern Ireland jobs, because of the riots when a thought struck me. The rioters may not be overly concerned about a few hundred (or even thousands of) potential jobs disappearing south to Dublin because Belfast isn't safe enough, but are loyalists actually destroying their own culture?

These 'protests' that have been going on are driving everyone up the wall, we know, but the violence that comes with them could actually be damaging the Twelfth as well!

Follow up:

The Orange Order were said to be trying to turn the event around in terms of family appeal and it seemed to be working. This year's 12th July (or what I saw of it) seemed to be a good day out with music, family events and colourful parades (and let's face it, the rare good weather helped too). The celebratoins were even attracting more tourists who had allowed their curiosity to win out over any residual fear of Marching Season in Belfast and people flocked in from the States, Canada and some even more exotic places.

But both the economy in general and tourism especially will be hit by recent events. Given the fact that this last week's riots, destruction and violence have been so clearly linked with an Orange Order parade, and with members of the order filmed attacking police, it doesn't take a genius to work out when tourists will be most put off coming to Northern Ireland? They're going to avoid the marching season, and going by what a good summer we'd had up until last week, that's a shame.

It won't take the Parades Commission or republican protests to 'destroy our culture'. Loyalist violence is doing that for us.