rationalskepticism.org

Evolving wrote:I've never been there. What is there to open eyes? (Is it the murals?)

Well, let me give you a rundown. We were travelling by car from the south, immediately on entering the north you see Union Jack flags on a lot of houses and lamp posts (this was motorway too), all the little towns had red, white and blue bunting everywhere. The flag numbers increased as we got nearer the city. I've lived in the UK my whole life and I've never seen so many Union Jacks.

Anyway, my sisters' partner is from Larne (port town near Belfast) so we called and asked him if we should be touring the city as we were aware that the trouble had been increasing due to the council deciding not to fly the Union flag on the City Halls. He said it should be ok, but to be canny. Due to our car having mainland UK plates and occupied by a Scot and an Englishman he recommended extra care around the Falls Road. We decided, due to having Tia in the car that we'd give the Falls Road a miss, especially due to the recent trouble. He said we'd probably just get a bit of verbal but we didn't even want to risk that with a six year old in the car.

We parked up in the city centre and went for a wander, it's a nice city, not the prettiest I've seen but there are some beautiful old buildings. The City Hall is lovely, a very grand building but there was the start of a gathering of people waving huge Union Jacks (just the previous night there had been some rioting in the vicinity). I overheard a conversation between two women and their teen sons, the women telling the boys to be sure to get home today before the trouble starts. It dawned on me as we were walking that Tia was wearing a Dublin hoodie top and that that was probably a silly thing to do so we went back to the car. Later, when telling my sisters' partner about this I said "But it'd have been ok, she's only 6", he said "They don't care".

So we set the sat-nav to take us to the Shankhill Road. Oh my fuck, that was an experience! There are literally thousands of UJ flags everywhere, anything that could be painted was painted red, white and blue! We even spotted a couple of guys wearing Union Jack suits complete with bowler hats, they were carrying those banners they use for marches rolled up, probably on their way to the city centre. The murals were a sight to see, after seeing them on TV my whole life. The police stations are like forts, massive high walls with razor wire and security entrances like prisons.

We took a wrong turn at one point and ended up in a residential street, again every house had UJ flags, railings and kerbs painted red, white and blue. The sat nav was completely unaware of the "Peace Wall" and kept trying to get us to "Turn right" when it was impossible to do so

As I said, an eye opener. I have no idea how people live under the tensions like that.