Yes, make him an honorary Paddy, so we can starve him of potatoes, and drown him in shit whiskey, exploitation and self-pity. The we can send him to Liverpool, and the whole world really will despise him....

Baked potatos preferably, and Guinness instead of whiskey please. :)

Guinness. Do people actually still drink that shit?

Guiness might be a bit much for the tame English palate, real men in the rest of the world enjoy it

You mean idiots in the rest of the world?

Enniskillen was a military operation gone wrong. civilians died, they were not the target, but, dead is dead. Cold comfort for the relatives. The Miami show band massacre, McGurks pub, the Shankill butchers, not even s pretenense of a military target. There is a difference.

Yes, we keep hearing that lame excuse about Enniskillen being a "mistake". I suppose we're supposed to believe that Omagh, Guildford, and Birmingham were mistakes too? Or that the IRA exploded a bomb in Manchesters Arndale by accident. Or that the recent attempt to bomb the rememberance parade in Omagh was also a mistake? That the bomber was just looking after the pipe bomb for some one else, just put it down for a moment then forgot about it? He was going back for it, but the police found it first?

Right....

Yes, the Unionist paramilitaries targeted civilians, but that fucking high horse you're riding is looking more like a lame donkey to me.

The Omagh bombing was not the provisional, it was one of the post cease fire splinter groups. I've been clear that I don't support any of the so called dissident factions. The IRA phoned in a warning prior to the Manchester bombing, no fatalities. Had they wished to inflict civilian casualties the death toll could have been in the thousands.

I wonder if peace over there will disintegrate over the issue of a hard or soft border?

The Manchester bomb injured 212 people. I suppose they intended that did they?

There may be a bit of civil unrest if the European Union imposes border infrastructure in the event of a "no deal" Brexit. It is Ireland though, and rioters usually go home when it starts raining.

The official line is that the British government doesn't negotiate with terrorists. The IRA was being mopped up when it came to the negotiating table. The British government won't give them a second chance, and they know it.

The best bet for the IRA, Sinn Fein, and any one else that supports a united Ireland, is to wait it out until winning a referendum is feasible. The big mistake that the IRA consistently made throughout the 20th century was that it murdered working class British soldiers. Things may have been very different if they had stuck to offing local coppers and loyalist paramilitaries.

A lot to answer here. It rains in Ireland more days than not, never noticed it having much of an impact on riots.

The IRA was stretched thin at the end of the troubles, but still was well capable of sustaining an armed campaign for quite a while. The decomission authorities estimated the IRA could have fielded two fully operational infantry battalions.

They were prevented from focusing on" local coppers and loyalist paramilitaries " when Britain deployed 20000 troops plus the SAS and British intelligence.

Having said all the above, there is no chance of a return to a level of unrest seen during the troubles. The IRA, or what FR, calls it, the dissidents are not capable of any serious threat. The provos did Narrow water and Manchester, the dissidents tossed an oversized fire cracker over Gerry Adam's garden wall.

In a post 911 world, Arms smuggling is next to impossible. The American network is gone, as is Quadaffi. The only thing capable of reviving the IRA would be an incredibly ham fisted British government response to some minor dissident activity

Tom, I don't know how it works in America, but certainly on mainland Britain the pattern seems to be that we get three or four days of rioting during a sunny spell, then it rains, and every one goes home. My remark there was a sarcastic one. Of course, some students were silly enough to start rioting during a protest march one winter a few years ago. The police simply boxed them all in and left them shivering for hours.

Troops, as you well know, were originally deployed to protect catholic communities from the so called pogroms you keep crying about. Where was the IRA BEFORE troops were deployed?

You're correct, the IRA failed miserably to protect nationalist areas, I Ran Away was being painted on walls all over the north. This is what led to the split and the birth of the provovisionals. They quickly established no go areas that kept out not only Orange mobs, but the army as well.

Not much to shout about, much of urban Britain had no go areas in the 80s.

The fifth. Loyal Brits the world over will be celebrating the capture, torture and execution of Guy Fawkes tonight. :)

Events have taken place all over the British Isles to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of The Great War, including a memorial service held in Dublin by the Royal British Legion.

The President of Germany laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in what is being described as an historic act of reconciliation between the UK and Germany.

The IRA appear to have been able to refrain from killing any one so far today. Good on yah Paddy, here's your boat fare home.

Meanwhile, in Paris, Donald Trump managed to turn up on time for a commemoration to mark the Armistice, which is a vast improvement on Americas usual tardiness as far as global conflicts go. Also in attendance were such heavy weight defenders of freedom and democracy including Angela Merkel, Emmanual Macron, Jean Claud Junckers, Christine Legard, and I'm some low ranking EU loving British member of parliament or other, though nobody bothered showing them on television.

Meanwhile, back at the Cenotaph, wreaths were laid by those treacherous bastards (I'm being generous here) Theresa May and Vince Cable, as well as IRA/Hamas volunteer Trooper Corbyn.

Sky Television News are currently showing live interviews with women in hats.