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The train goes beyond Gare du Nord, sometimes subequent stops like Saint-Michel Notre-Dame or Luxembourg are useful for hotels nearby or for changing to metro lines.

Do we need to book train tickets for the airport to city before we go or are they easily bought when we get there?

They are easily bought there from the machines in the RER station, (€9.50) although when I was there recently some of these were out of order.

It is interesting how this debate brings out the full extent of the cultural cringe, not only do the proverbial Larne catholics hang their heads low but a bigger section of the community seems to have a stoop (if you pardon the pun). People seem to regard normality as a radical aspiration and something they are not entitled to aspire to, never mind expect. It is a testimony to the power of colonial conditioning, even in an age of the Internet, third level education etc.

Anyway, it gives a better appreciation of the residents' position. I know I wouldn't be happy if I effectively lost the use of my back garden.

Would it not have been feasible to try and buy up the houses on one side of the ground and then have a bigger footprint, shift the stadium a bit to one side? From Google maps, there looks to be around 15 houses on the stadium side of the street to the west of the stadium - two houses are already on sale on Property Pal at £220k and £140k -buy up those houses for sale and offer others a good price - say £250k - total cost less than £4m (small in the scheme of the development). Obviously it could only work if people wanted to take the offer - there wouldn't be power (or desire i'm sure) to vest.

In another European country, or even in America, the City would vest these houses, it is not as if vast areas of Belfast have not been vested in the past. But in Ireland a stadia to be used by large numbers of the public seem to be deemed a private good.

However, Snatter has a point, the present location is mainly down to sectarianism.

You could buy the houses, halve the gardens and probably biuld new houses there and sell them to people happy enough with a short garden. The cost would not be that great.

If you plot health on one of these maps, you see that Tyrone has a great deal in common with Mayo, this may be too much even for Nally Stand.

Taigcount  see http://airomaps.nuim.ie/flexviewer/?config=AllIslandAtlas.xml

The border is real, the cultural difference is mostly in people's heads.

Really? I've travelled through Bratislava on a few occasions and it's always struck me as very grey and drab. I must have a good luck around the next time I'm there.

The historic quarter in Bratislava is not that big, but worth a day or two.

Defining Irish culture is neither here nor there, it is an evolving thing. But without elaborate definitions there isn't much difference between people in Belcoo and Blacklion and they have more in common than Belcoo has with Blackburn.

T-shirt?

So you think Monaghan man who has been blessed with a life free from living with the outworkings of sectarianism and hatred, governed normally (for the most part) by a state he owes allegiance to,where the flying of flags and parades are of no issue etc, has exactly the same culture and outlook on life as a Tyrone man, who lives in close geographical proxmity, but whose life from a young age has been blighted?  I don't think so.

Well the cure for that difference is not to perpetuate the dysfunctional arrangements that gave the Tyrone man a different outlook.

Nally Stand asks for differences between him and a Monaghan man:

1) Monaghan man spends euros.

2) Monaghan man's affairs are dealt with by his Government which doesn't regard him as a foreign affair

3) Monaghan man doesn't live in an area of competiting sovereign allegiances.

4) Monaghan man doesn't have to put up with sectarian parades/ commemorations.

5) Monaghan man lives in a neighbourhood happily alongside neighbours of difference creeds/nationalities etc

6) Monaghan man can get RTE.

7) Monaghan man has been hit hard in the pocket (if he's not in Australia) this last few years due to government cutbacks, job losses.

4-7 would also apply to Crossmaglen man as would 1 to a large extent.

But the general point illustrates a tendency to justify partition by reference to the existence of partition. People are "different" because of currency, colour of number plate etc, when of course these "differences" are due to partition and would disappear when partition is ended. 

I see Jamie Clarke is back in the country. A bit strange that he lands home a week after Cross are put out? Is all not well with him and big Joe?

I'd say the duration of his trip may have as much to do with US visa regulations as anything else.

The rest of the footage could be used for an online show like this and it wouldn't cost them any more money. Then again, the will to do it needs to be there. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24987212

Let's hope they don't geo-block the programme so that it cannot be seen in sundered counties of Ulster.

In what way does my culture differ so much from somebody who lives 15 miles down the road in County Monaghan?

Don't be stirring the pot and disrupting the UK, Nally, you have more in common with Middlesborough than Monaghan.

Whatever about accepting what Mairead says,you can hardly deny what she says.A united Ireland is further away than ever

This isn't objectively true. In the 1980's say, when nationalists were in a substantial minority and the Republic much less prosperous there was no prospect at all of a United Ireland. Now it is coming down to the detail, people are realistically looking at it.

Reducing the fragmentation in NI society is very desirable in itself, but unless this also removes the fragmentation on the island it is incomplete.

sport, music, literature, the arts,agriculture, and the fact that we are all mopes filled with paranoia.

These don't stop at the border, with the exception of the OWC team and the mopery.