Order snubs McGuinness talks offer

Head the Ball. The last thing I am is anti protestant. I was born and raised in Ardoyne but my mother’s family are protestant and that makes me half protestant. I have a great many protestant relatives in Glenbryn and Ballysillan and stacks of protestant friends. The protestant communities in Glenbryn and Ballysillan consist of decent hardworking Christian people. They would never dream of insulting their neighbours. The Orange Order doesn’t represent them. The Orange Order doesn’t speak for them. The Orange Order speaks only for itself. You are confusing protestant with Orange. What you have confirmed however is that the unionist government here discriminated against the catholic minority. Thank you. I agree with you.

@ seamas , yet again your blind sectarianism and hatred towards the protestant community shows you for what you are , lets get something straight , the OO according to you is run by those who held a position of power in unionist party's and they used this power to promote the issue's of the OO , where does the OO in it's rule book state anything you have mentioned ? yet again your running your mouth off without foundation , do you know any secret dealings that the rest of the world dont know about ? wee meetings by OO/ unionists to strike these silly silly quotes you have mentioned ? i think not seamas , coincidence yes , that they where both unionists and OO members , it's not the OO these discrimination remarks you state where made by , but unionist politicians as the OO dont have any rules on anything political . they where acting as unionists not OO members . seamas this story is about a member of a catholic death squad wanting to sit down and talk to protestant christians who have never taken life nor do they want to sit with the likes of mcguinness , the problem might be mcguinness , have you ever thought of that ? @stevie , who ?

@ On the ball. Alright Ernie, hows it going?

On the Ball. Every member of every unionist cabinet since partition was an Orangeman. The Orange Order was the de facto government here. All the institutionalised state discrimination faced by Catholics was put there by the Orange Order. That didn’t happen in the South so the people there don’t have the same experience of the Orange Order that we do. Tomc. You are correct there is no such thing as the absolute right to parade. Or rather there shouldn’t be. But that’s what the Orange Order has enjoyed here for years and that’s what it continues to demand. The government has stopped the Orange Order from parading down the Garvaghy Road. Has the Order accepted that? No. Does the Order accept that the government has a right to restrict its right to parade? No. It continues to demand a march and continues to protest at being rerouted. That protest continues to poison relations here. It continues to build resentment in the protestant community at the denial of a mythical right it doesn’t have in the first place. Outside of the Order itself how many of the people to claim to support its right to march actually know where the traditional routes are? As for cost you know as well as I do that the vast majority of policing costs associated with parades come from the parades themselves. There are over 4000 parades a year here. Every one of those requires police involvement. I drove along the Dublin road at lunch time on the Twelfth this year in the immediate wake of the main parade. There were hundreds of police officers and council workers and dozens of official vehicles. Not a protester or rioter in sight. How much did that operation alone cost the taxpayer? You also refer to my human rights. My human rights have nothing to do with this. I believe that I’m not treated the same by the state as an Orangeman is. That’s my opinion and unless you are inside my head you can’t tell me it isn’t. Strange that you think I’m claiming to be treated less favourably than other nationalities. Are Protestants and I a different nationality or was that just a Freudian slip?

@Charlie... Maybe he's a 'wannabe' orangeman... Pity they wouldn't let him join because he is a catholic.... or maybe he's a figment of your over-active imagination, because I'm sure as a fine upright orange/black man you wouldn't tell a lie???