beano,
did you notice anything about the bbc's selection of photos ?
I would suggest an element in the negative ethnic stereotyping of Ulster people includes very much the image of the frowning orange half wit, bowler hat and shudderingly hateful facial expression etc.
when you looked at the bbc photos do you think the selections were consciously made in order to visually reinforce ethnic stereotypes ?
I do think they choose images likely to reinforce (all be it mildly) derogatory stereotypes......

I dunno juan, there were a few colourful, cheerful looking ones - the one of the lady members, the balloons and the one of Lord Laird particularly. Even Sir Reg managed a half-smile (I won't mention Paisley's bake though I don't think it would be easy to find one of him smiling).

I have enjoyed your web site. As an historian I am amazed however at the notion popular among many people in Northern Ireland that the Protestant population thre is somehow more closely linked to Scots roots than are the Catholics in the North. In fact there is a great deal of information that refutes this idea. Many of the original pre-plantation Ulter population were in fact closely tied to Hebridean and Highland Scottish families. This trend probably has roots that are in fact pre-historic, but was part of a continuing sea-path that long linked the region of Alba and Eire well into the Middle Ages and beyond. In the Viking Age this was clear once again,Viking sites in Eire are often linked with the Hebrides and the Highlands and even with the Northern Isles. As late as Elizabethan times the "Great Irishry" of Ulster was thought to include portions of western Scotland(after all Argyll simply means eastern Irish). The language of the Highlands was up until not very long ago so closely linked with Ireland that it was referred to as Irish or "Erse" by English scholars of yore.Christinity was certainly closely linked. The roots of Chritianity in Scotland and indeed in much of Britain as a whole are found in the Irish(Roman) Church. Galloglass migrants having poured into Ireland added another strong west Scottish admixture to the pre-Plantation peoples of Ulster.The settlers of Ulster were in part Gaelic but many were in fact not Gaels but English and Strathclyde Britons more related to the Welsh than the Gaels of Ireland and the Highlands. The Lowland Scots, English and Hugenots that came to settle so called Protestant Ulster themselves carried many Celtic traits. But many of the elements of true Ulster Scottish tradition today, such as whisky and Piob Mor bagpipes were vestiges largely of l Q-Celtic peoples. The Q-Celtic family linked the native Irish to the great Highlands of Scotland and to the Western Isles. In Scotland these Gaelic traditions of Piobroch and Uisge Beatha were usually frowned upon by the Calvinsit Church, and thus were held fast in the disparagingly Catholic band that runs acrrosss the Highaland of Scotland from the southern Hebrides to Locahber, Moray, Inversness, etc. In Ulster these Gaelic traditions were understanably held by the Highlanders kinsmen the pre-plantation Gaelic peoples. The point of all of this is, that all peoples of Ulster have a large dose of Scots blood and an argument can be made that the great Highland clans of Scotland have in fact closer lineage ties with the pre-plantation Catholics in Northern Ireland than do the Ulster Protestants.
Interestingly again the amount of Viking( Germanic blood and affinities with purely English genetic markers such as mtDNA and blood types) have been shown in several recent studies that the largely Catholic population of Eire(Republic of Ireland) has more genetic material in common with English populations than do Protestants in Ulster, who are largely the descendants of Strathclyde Britons and other peoples of the Borders and who exhibit more affinites with peoples of the remote western fringes of Ireland than do the more British-like genetic markers of the largely Catholic Republic.We are all mixed. In my family we have both Orange and Catholc heritage. While in other places in Europe today, like Germany (also about half Protestant and half Catholic) young people fall in love without ever considering a persons religion. The Germans like many other Europeans today are free to be individuals and as a result they have synergy, time, and means to create supersonic railways, engineer the Autobahn and the Aswan Dam and other marvels, while in Ulster people sad to say are still calling names, and throwing stones at each other all because of a perverse, confused, identification with opposing religious views that if Jesus were to walk the earth would not recognize either as his own. It is time for the biggots to GO the way of the DODO Bird!!!

Thomas Martin