I enjoy thinking of songs to play as a soundtrack to my life. There’s always something to fit what you’re seeing. This past week that song has been Thunderclap Newman’s There’s Something in the air.
As I hear the helicopters circling over head, gun shots in the distance, rising smoke and traffic lights littered across the streets of Belfast I’ve been thinking
Call out the instigator because there's something in the air.
We've got to get together sooner or later because the revolution's here.
And you know it's right.
And you know that it's right.
We have got to get it together.
We have got to get it together now.
Pent up aggression and frustration with the peace process has boiled over, the catalyst was a re-routed orange order march. The loyalist community took it as an excuse to go on a bit of riot. It’s not all political. If you’re making a statement by bulldozing down streetlights, you don’t take the ATM machine with you. If you hi-jack a bus to burn it, you don’t rob the passengers before letting them off.
And what does the orange order say? They’d do it all again. Change nothing. Apparently it’s all the fault of the police.
An English woman, Libby Purves wrote in the times a very insightful piece entitled, provocatively enough, Orangemen: why they suck. She says Ulster's hypocritical Protestants are too one-eyed to see the obvious benefits of Christian humility. Worth a read, whether you agree or not. Read it here.
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