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What are they on?
Blogging's been slow for the past couple of days, I've had a lot of work to do and haven't been able to attend to EU as much as I would have liked. I thought I should highlight a couple of quotes from this article in yesterday's Belfast Telegraph though.
A bar in North Belfast was raided the other night in a police operation against the UDA in the area. The police received a tip-off that a rehearsal for a "show of strength" would take place in the bar, possibly involving several leading loyalists, and they moved in to make arrests.
Apparently police had landrovers on standby in the nationalist New Lodge area nearby. You might think they'd be happy for the protection should any loyalist violence get out of hand but you'd be wrong.
According to the article: "Sinn Fein members were concerned that the presence of the police vehicles could attract young people wishing to attack them ..."
You see it's actually the landrovers fault for existing in the first place (and those big signs on the sides of them with 'Attack Me' in bold red letters). Obviously it has nothing to do with the inability of parents in the area to engender any kind of tolerance for the rule of law in their offspring. This is really taking the 'perpatrator turned victim' mentality a bit too far.
Follow up:
Anyway, back to Tiger's Bay. For some reason or other, the police were met by an "angry crowd" jeering them after they arreseted 'up to 15 leading loyalists'.
"At one point, a crowd of up to 100 people, including women and children in their pyjamas, surrounded the Alexandra Bar and shouted abuse at the police who were attempting to seal off the area."
WHY?! I'm really sick of all these unionists/loyalists bitching and moaning and generally acting as if they've been attending Sinn Fein MOPEry classes. There's no place in today's society for any unelected group who wants to use force to impose their will on the wider community. I'd be glad they were carted off.
On a serious note, a north Belfast councillor (presumably Sinn Fein, with the trademark unpronouncable name) said "It is ironic that years into an IRA ceasefire, months into a declaration of the end of its armed campaign and since decommissioning was completed, that loyalist paramilitaries are still involved in shows of strength."
On that front she's right, there's no need for any paramilitary group in Northern Ireland and I wish the police well in shutting down any of them who refuse to go out of business voluntarily.