h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The riots today in Dublin have upset me greatly. Watching those thugs on TV throw bottles and paving stones against police and bystanders, all the way from Parnell St to Nassau St, looting and burning out cars, it was just disgusting. I hope the police get every single one of them.

I'm Irish, and relatively happy to be Irish, but if this is what Irishness is meant to be all about, no thanks mate. These people are a disgrace to our country. Or any civilised society.

Well, they've made me realise once again why my vote is important.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4750576.stm

Whole world seems to be going mad lately, doesn't it?

I was thinking about you as I watched those riots and hoping you and/or your loved ones weren't caught up in it

I live nearly 200 miles away, but I know that part of Dublin fairly well. It wasn't something you expect to happen there.

*sigh*

No, it isn't something you expect to happen in the Republik at all. One of the most humanic let live countries on earth. Those riots totally alien to the place. And so it was, i hear, instigators came in from somewhere else, right?

Yesterday a group of uniformed neo-nazis decided to parade though a predominately African-American neighborhood in Orlando, Florida.

300 police and a number of helicopters were on hand to separate them from the counter-demonstrators. Despite the police presence, numerous fights broke out and police made a number of arrests.

Sound familiar? I know next to nothing about Irish politics. But isn't it a characteristic of them for trouble to break out when one group decides to parade in another group's neighborhood?

Yes. But the republicans do not own Dublin. It belongs to us, the reasonable people of Ireland, who are quite willing to let Orangement protest if that's what they want to do.

This was a small group of thugs who appear to have been organised and pre-planned. What the purpose of it was, I don't know.

- To let the orangement know they are not welcome? Possibly, but how attacking guards and smashing cars of Dubliners helps this is not clear.

- To increase the amount of anti-republican feeling in Ireland? They've certainly done this.

Irish people can no longer look disparagingly on England's football hooligan problem. We have our own home-grown thugs, who, if you change the colours from white and red to orange and green, would be exactly the same.