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The 'Strange Eating Habits' thread reminded me of a 'diversity in the workplace' project I worked on a while back. Part of it entailed challenging prejudice and listed some of the ways in which different parts of the community identified each other.

Some of my favorite characteristics were:

Toasting the bread on one side (Fenians like it on one side)
Pole vaulting (apparently the Prod schools didn't do vaulting)
Haitch / Aitch
Length of hair (Proddy girls always had it short)
Looking for the (RTE) aerial on the roof
Evenings out (Sat / Sun)
Beer - Harp or Tennents
Fish on a Friday


Any others?

Am hearing from some people that worked on the new movie about Bobby Sands that it has been accepted into this years Cannes Film Festival. Should be officially announced at the main press conference in the next week or two.

Any of you bucks know of any or do you even have them down there? Just looking one thats the price of a local call. No contracts or oul bollocks, just dialup and in.

Just a discussion point. What living person born on our island most reflects your views of where we came from, where we are now and what we should strive to be? I know it's difficult but restrict your answer to one person only. Feel free to give explanations why this person personifies our island to you.

Unionisms direct line into the global economy 

http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=6881.0

I was going to vote for it but now I'm not so sure 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1lIdd3VDBs&eurl=http://sluggerotoole.com/

By showing 'Far and Away'.

Could be a bit of fun for the OWC defenders over at Windsor Park and put an end to some of the more tiresome threads sustained by indefatigable windbag contributors on the Board. As I'm sure all genuine proponents of the six county soccer teams 'Football For All' publicity drive are aware, their next game coincides Ash Wednesday when all Catholics will be giving public witness to their repentance before God by having the cross of ash placed on their foreheads.

To be honest nobody really believes these assertions about your Kaflick mate who goes to all the games, so now you can even take photographs to prove that the GAWA army aren't the mono-cultural, bigoted, sectarian, white supremacists grouping as is often alleged in the student cafes and bars of downtown Belfast.

Recently acquired a new iMAC in work primarily for testing a few things but have been bowled over by it. I switched to PCs sometime around 1996 and never really went near a MAC again until the new one came last week. I've been stunned by how user friendly and ergonomic it is. When it comes to application based development work I'm able to get a job done in half the time it would take me on a PC. So what do the rest of you reckon?

Frazer hits out at 'Irish' passport
By Rebecca Black
23/01/08

Victims' campaigner Willie Frazer hit out angrily last night at what he described as a UK passport written in Irish.

However a spokesperson for the Home Office in London, which issues passports, said that passports include some Welsh and Scots-Gaelic as well as English, but the Irish language was not used.

In a statement Mr Frazer, pictured, described the passport as "diluting his Britishness".

He said: "We believe that UK passports issued elsewhere in the United Kingdom are different and do not carry any regional minority languages.

"This is clearly a dilution of our Britishness and forever denotes UK citizens resident in Northern Ireland as different and lesser than their counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales."

http://www.irishnews.com/irishnews/2008/1/540/5860/578357_334496818450Frazerhit.html

Whether it be throwing bags of faeces or pipe bombs, no one does protest as classy as your embattled unionist.
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Police intervene in council row

Police have been called to Limavady Borough Council's offices after a meeting had to be abandoned.

Officers were called to attend to reports of a disturbance and assault at the offices on Connell Street at about 2200 GMT on Tuesday.

It is understood a group of up to 50 protestors turned up for the meeting, where the issue of neutral spaces in council areas was being discussed.

Two Sinn Fein councillors said they were abused as they left the building.

The councillors, Anne Brolly and Marion Donaghy, said they were confronted by a crowd outside the council offices.

"There was a particularly nasty mood among the young men who were there," Ms Brolly said.

"They spat on us and they were very vitriolic and made obscene comments and threats to us.

"When we got into the car one man threw a Union Jack over it and shouted obscenities at us."

Was absolutely disgusted today to see that on opening the Irish News, one of those fake scratch cards fell out – the ones were everybody is a winner so long as you ring a premium rate number (calls cost £1.50 per minute plus network extras) and have supersonic hearing in order to scribble down a claim number no doubt that will be impossible to make out. The cards are produced by some firm in England called 'Mediaprom', which when you throw into Google it turns out they've been repeatedly cited for pulling similar scams:

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adjudication+Details.htm?Adjudication_id=41326
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adjudication+Details.htm?Adjudication_id=40364
http://www.cap.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adjudication+Details.htm?Adjudication_id=37995

My gripe is that these things prey on the naive and desperate, the people who can least afford to be pulled in by these scams. Of the 50k odd copies of the Irish News that were sold today you can be sure that there are going to be hundreds of old ones, children and others who have been suckered into this scam. An absolute disgrace on behalf of the Irish News that they allowed this to happen – completely on a par with the British gutter press, which in my view is where they belong after this.

Was saddened tonight to see the Queen's Students Union have raised the price of a pint but what was even more disappointing/hilarious was to see that our best and brightest need a times table behind the bar to work out the price of a round.



Still though, not as dear as the £2.10 a pint they were charging in the South Belfast Northern Ireland Supporters Club



The tails of corruption I (Lesley Whiteside) heard in there tonight was shocking altogether 

Bit of a slow day but I found this funny. Gerry Anderson has been receiving a bit of stick this week for playing this clip of Wendy Austin singing 'The Man from the Daily Mail' on his radio show. The funny bit is not so much the eejits ringing in claiming to be offended but how truly awful Wendy's singing voice is. Here it is anyway, 53 minutes in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/foyle_aod.shtml?foyle/ga_tue

Not that it's been mentioned on any of the news services yet but the great British pound has fallen to 75p to the Euro recently. Normally I would glory in HRM taking a kicking in any sphere except that I'm in the process of booking flights around Central and South America for this summers sojourn with her good self and the carriers I'm using, Air France and Iberia, are pricing their fares in Euro. Have also a number of very substantial Free State invoices to settle soon. So should I hold out as long as I can and wait on the Euro dipping again, or has sterling finally given up the ghost?

I see that six years after the scrapping of Rule 21, GAABoard has embraced the new dispensation and accepted sponsorship from the PSNI. Could out recent blackouts be as a result of retaliatory dissident action?

Smalls steps at first but no doubt things will gather pace as the FFers plan their northern invasion...

North politicians to make historic appearance in Dáil Committee
22/11/2007 - 08:24:22

Politicians from the North will be allowed for the first time to take part in the workings of the Dáil today.

Westminster MPs from the North have been invited to take part in a new committee of the Dáil parliament set up to help implement the Good Friday Agreement.

While unionists are not expected to accept seats on the committee, nationalists have welcomed it as a further step in developing all-Ireland relations.

Its inaugural meeting will be held in Leinster House, Dublin.

Representatives to the committee will include the SDLP's south Belfast MP Alastair McDonnell, south Down MP Eddie McGrady, Sinn Féin's Fermanagh/south Tyrone MP Michelle Gildernew and Pat Doherty, MP for west Tyrone.

They can take part in debates on the 1998 peace pact signed by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but will not have a right to vote or to move motions and amendments.

When established last month, it was heavily criticised by Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) as being unnecessary.

Today's meeting is expected to see the election of the committee's chairman and deputy chairman.

Anyone there with (very) good Irish that could translate three lines for me?

Great show on Radio Ulster now coming live from Mullabawn. Jarlath Burns has already given us a song and Benny Tierney is giving us a few tall tales at the moment. Should be streaming live from their website.

Teenager drinkers and druggies hanging out in alleyways or near your house? - anti-climb paint. Plaster it everywhere and they are no more. 

Maybe this should be in the meanest man in the world thread...