OV9

Pete_ wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:31 am Being from the leafy suburbs of East and South Belfast the segregation and violence, mostly in inner city West and North Belfast, for the most part seemed very distant to me. Sectarian decisions have very rarely entered my experience of living in the city - there's only really one stand out incident when I was in a car with two colleagues and one asked me about my trip to Rome and if I'd seen the Pope, then the other with no irony at all said "I fucking hate the Pope, I hate Catholics." The guy was a teenager from a segregated protestant area and I guess it didn't even occur to him that he might have known any Catholics, even though the colleague who asked me the question was a ginger guy called Mick.

There's still a lot of segregation in parts of the city and a lot of the people who live there don't have many opportunities and see their identity as being primary unionist or nationalist. Every few years something happens that makes either side feel that their side is being disadvantaged or ignored, and it boils over into protests and violence. The images last week of the double decker bus on fire were particularly shocking though - I can't remember anything that visually striking in a long time.

Kneecappings / punishment beatings and internal fall outs within paramilitary groups still happen quite regularly. Bomb scares are still not uncommon but mostly hoaxes, although here's an example of a small one that exploded in Newry a few weeks ago. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co ... 455770.amp