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Jamie Bryson says he requires protection after Drumcree abuse belfastlive.co.uk/news/north…

Sinn Fein is not "grounded in reality" and relies on "populist rhetoric" says Jack Chambers #TonightVMTV

Republic must acknowledge forgetting northern nationalists, Leo Varadkar says irishtimes.com/politics/2026…

Mate, I tried not to use an AI grammar or spell checker😉 As Sun Tzu said, "He who occupies the field first and awaits the enemy is at ease; he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary." You can quote Sun Tzu all you like, but dressing a one-sided rant up with a famous quote doesn’t automatically make it more believable. What you have managed to do here is  write an essay about Drumcree without once seriously acknowledging why the Garvaghy Road became an issue in the first place. People who lived on the Garvaghy Road remember what happened, but you and others have completely dismissed them, please save us the inevitable, yes but " but Sinn Féin" ...................... They remember being hemmed into their own community while a march they didn’t want was forced through. They remember the violence surrounding Drumcree, the riots, intimidation, and years of tension. That history doesn’t disappear because you’ve decided 2026 should be remembered as the year the Orange Order became the victim. You also might want to spare us the lecture about unionism’s newfound devotion to the “rule of law”. Plenty of us are old enough to remember when decisions unionism and loyalism didn’t like were met with protests, roadblocks and absolute mayhem in the streets. We remember Drumcree in the 90s. We remember the violence when Orange marches were restricted. We remember what happened when loyalism decided the law was unacceptable. So this sudden conversion to absolute rule of law shite to every legal decision is a bit hard to swallow, especially as its newly found and given that we haven't seen it before, makes it a bit harder to believeAs for your claim that unionism has shown nothing but “restraint, responsibility and reasonableness”, are you for real? have you actually been online this past week? Some of the language directed at Garvaghy residents, nationalists and the First Minister has been poisonous. People have been called mobs, Nazis, supremacists and worse. There have been calls for loyalists to mobilise in Portadown. Yet somehow none of that makes it into your view on whats occured . Funny that. And this idea that thousands of nationalists turned up because Sinn Féin ordered them to is probably the biggest misunderstanding in your whole post.Maybe, just maybe, people are just feckin fed up, exhausted with the tirade of online gaslighting from people like your good self, trying to sanitise this whole thing and doing nothing but putting yourself at the forefront for clicks and applause from your merry men of online bigots. Fed up being told that equality means accepting something simply because the Orange Order calls it tradition. Fed up being lectured about respect by people who seem to think respect only travels in one direction. Fed up hearing that saying “no” to a parade through your own community amounts to hatred of Protestants.I'm a nationalist. I don't hate Protestants. I don't hate unionists. I don't hate the Orange tradition.But neither do I believe an Orange sash gives somebody a greater right to a road than the people who actually live on it.That's the bit you still don't seem to understand.And if your argument for the Union is now basically “look what these pesky nationalists will do to you in a united Ireland”, perhaps you should ask yourself why equality feels so threatening. Nobody is asking unionists to disappear. Nobody is asking Protestants to abandon their identity. Nobody is stopping the Orange Order existing. A community said they didn't want this parade coming through their area. Twenty-eight years later, you're still struggling with the fact that they are entitled to have a voice.Maybe the mask that slipped wasn't nationalism's at all, it was people like you and your community who were seriously unprepared for what equality actually looked like.  Another very valid point here Moore, what were unionist politicians doing for the last 30 years? Your grievance really should be with them, they were aware that they would have to finally share this place, thats not because of demographics, thats because nationalism would inevitably be able to challenge decisions and finally be able to stand up and say, NO, so what preparation did they make in your community?, preparing for an inevitable change, they have done absolutely nothing, not sure if that's arrogance or simply just plain bad leadership, but your argument should be with them because they have ultimately failed you.

Apparently unionism and loyalism have suddenly become the eternal guardians of peaceful protest, restraint and the rule of law. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of NI knows how selective that version of history is. And this newfound horror at “mobs” gathering on streets is particularly difficult to take seriously from you. You were one of the prominent voices of the loyalist flag-protest FFS , a campaign built around people taking to the streets, demonstrations and road disruption. Some of those protests descended into serious disorder. And let’s talk about Drumcree. When loyalism didn’t get the outcome it wanted, NI didn’t simply witness dignified disagreement. We saw roadblocks, hijacked and burning vehicles, petrol bombs, attacks on police, widespread destruction and even gunfire. In 2000 alone, during protests surrounding Drumcree, RUC figures recorded 288 petrol-bomb incidents, 280 attacks on the security forces, 13 shooting incidents and 88 hijacked vehicles. Fifty-seven RUC officers and five soldiers were injured, while hundreds of vehicles and properties were damaged. People remember roads being brought to a standstill. They remember burning vehicles and barricades. They remember police coming under sustained attack. So spare everyone the fairy tale that loyalism has historically responded to decisions it dislikes with nothing but “great restraint and discipline.” There were occasions when loyalists didn’t merely stand on a road, they helped wreck the place when they didn’t get their way. And here’s the hypocrisy, that history does not make every unionist or loyalist responsible for those actions. You understood perfectly well that individuals were responsible for their own behaviour when protests involved your community. Yet today you take alleged offences by individuals and repeatedly smear an entire nationalist crowd as a “lawbreaking mob”. And now comes the remarkable transformation. After weeks of rhetoric about “Nazi-style” politics, “republican mobs”, “supremacists” and nationalist “hatred”, suddenly everything is about law, dignity, restraint and peaceful protest. It looks remarkably like an attempt to walk back the rhetoric now that the temperature has risen. The internet has receipts. The rhetoric didn’t disappear just because the strategy changed. If somebody commits an offence, investigate them and prosecute them on the evidence. Nobody gets a free pass. But collective guilt cannot suddenly become acceptable because the crowd is nationalist. And perhaps you might consider your own contribution to creating this atmosphere. From the outside, this increasingly looks less like leadership and more like someone who has spent weeks placing himself at the centre of a deeply sensitive dispute, escalating the language and enhancing his own profile in the process. You cannot spend weeks pouring rhetorical petrol on a fire and then arrive dressed as the fire marshal demanding everyone else explain the flames. And perhaps the most revealing words in the entire post are, “It’s time the State…faced them down.” There it is, old mentality that when one community refuses to yield, the State should simply “face them down.” History may be rather less flattering than the heroic role you have written for yourself You may imagine these weeks will record you as some fearless defender of loyalism who stood firm while everyone else surrendered. Others will remember something very different, armchair blogger who inserted himself into a decades-old dispute, relentlessly amplified the most inflammatory rhetoric, turned the temperature up, and then tried to distance himself from the resulting mess by suddenly discovering the language of restraint and the rule of law. That’s not fearless leadership, That’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you get in way over your head The rule of law didn’t suddenly become sacred when the people standing in the road stopped being loyalists.

🚨 Meanwhile, the education department hasn't answered simple questions I asked in July about this proposed £30,000 allocation to a football team called Richill AFC. There was an email sent from the department on April 1, seemingly with the approval of Minister Givan, titled 'allocation of funding' and laying out reasons why Richill AFC should get £30,000. (See pic 2) The Education Authority claims the direction from the department was rejected but can provide no evidence of that. Sources tell me the department was pushing for the allocation. They tell me no more communications exist after May 29 when an email was sent from a DE official to an EA titled Richill AFC pitch and asking for a 'quick call' 'late on a Friday'. (See pic 3) No minutes of that call exist, I'm told. Or anything after. They've blocked Freedom of Information requests. Democracy in action: NI style.