Loyalist demonstrators burn two Irish tricolours at Belfast flag protest

We will be owned until some one breaks the myth that its all about religion, the excuse used the world over for most conflicts.

Citizen6669 “You talk of ethnic cleansing, aparthied, pogroms & genocide... None of which applied to Northern Ireland” This is comedy gold. “the death and destruction is pretty equal on both sides” Coincidental that one side ended up with most of the property, economic clout, and political power. That same side can STILL engage in violent protest with virtual impunity whereas the indigenous population is subjected to police tactics reminiscent of apartheid SA or the American South during the civil rights movement for even a peaceful protest. Strange also that all of the supremacist rhetoric has been one sided. It looks like Ciaradexy has actually begun to wrap her tiny brain around the concept of irony.

Both sides should worry about raising their families rather than which flay they raise....But, I'm sure the Protestants will be treated far, far better in a united Ireland than they treated the Irish Catholics in the partition years....

The flag issue can rumble on for as long as it takes. The damage to loyalism is done. They have activly hightlighted yet again their Britishness out stripping that of the brits themselves. Don`t remember any fuss when councills and local authoritys adapted what was voted in last week. Simple as.

citizen69 seems to be selective or in denial of the pogroms committed by the orange mobs after 1921. natipnalists were herded into ghetto like accommodation,they wrer also denied a fair go on employment wher the main criterion to obtain a job was to be protestant.Where nationalists wer murdered in the shipyards and elsewhere and the cry of the day was a protestant state for a protestant people. The statelet was founded on racism,bigotry and ethnic cleansing and you are happy to ignore or maybe condone those actions.

First world problems lads. Get a grip.

Curtis Johnson, what a brilliant British name!

@IrelandNorth: It's not that the St Georges flag is any bigger, it's just at the front. When you consider the population sizes of the respective countries then i guess that's fair enough. Talking of the tricolour, that reminds me of a joke Dublin comedian Andrew Maxwell(himself a protestant) told when he played a gig on the Shankill road... "You know when they were designing the Irish flag we prods did alright. We're only 3% of the population but we got a full third of the flag!". Having said that, i often see Irish tricolours flown in the north that are green, white and yellow, rather than orange. Is this a deliberate attempt to remove the protestant tradition? I've never seen any other nation get the colours of their flag wrong so often.

@seamus60: Yes i am under no illusion that was anything other than a dirty war... but then again that is the nature of conflict. I can't think of any war that wasn't dirty, that's why we need to avoid it. Fair play on the King Billy thing.

Citizen69! Let's get back to the respective designs of the two flags, and the intention behind the symbolism. One divides a piece of cloth into three equal parts, and colour screenprints the cotton or linen with colours with a certain significance. I'm not personally aware of who designed the union jack, but I do understand its significance. The larger Saint George's Cross of England superimposes both the smaller Saint Patrick's Cross of Ireland and the Saint Andrews Cross of Scotland. (The Saint George's Dragon of the Welsh is conspicuously omitted, having been constitutioanally snuffed out mediaevally. When it come to constitutionality, which would you prefer, parity of esteem or superimpositionism?

Citizen 69. It was the painting of King Billy that was handed back in Aug of this year. I can find nothing on the other.

Citezin69. We are only getting snippets of how dirty the war was. I am happy that you are acknowledging protestants were allowed to die as well as part of the game plan.

@curtisjohnson: You are typical of the attitude i am talking about here. You constantly talk in the language of myth and propaganda. You are a cardboard cut-out Republican. You talk of ethnic cleansing, aparthied, pogroms & genocide... None of which applied to Northern Ireland. There were no enforced segregation in NI or government enforced genocide. In the first formative years of Northern Ireland you speak of almost as many Protestants as Catholics were murdered, hardly a one sided pogrom. It was civil unrest and part of the reason for that unrest was IRA attacks on the Northern Ireland both from the south and within the north. You speak of ethnic cleansing yet the Catholic population of the north has grown year on year throughout NI's history, it did not decimate. Historically when things are bad and the going is tough for Irish people they emigrate to the four corners of the world in seek of a better life. If things were really so bad in Ulster then why was there no mass exodus of emigrants? In fact over NI's history more Irish Catholics have moved into Northern Ireland from the Republic than moved in the opposite direction. Contrary to popular belief Catholics did have the vote in NI and it was the same system for Protestants & Catholics. NI did not have anti-Catholic laws unlike the Republic which had anti-Protestant laws. If you tot up all the killings in NI throughout it's history you'll see that there was no mass murder of one side over the other, the death and destruction is pretty equal on both sides. Trouble is you've been spouting the propaganda so long that you are starting to believe it yourself.

@seamus60: the collusion process didn't just affect Catholics. Many Protestant deaths could have been prevented by inside knowledge MI5 had of planed IRA atrocities but didn't act on them. Seems to me they didn't have the unionist community's best interests at heart either. In fact it seems the sole person the acted to protect was Gerry Adams. What does that tell you?

@seanmelb & seamus60: I understand your points and i fully acknowledge that the Irish suffered wrongdoings under the British & Unionists. At the same time i'd like to see more acknowledgement of wrongdoing from past Irish Governments and from elements of your community. The reason I highlight them here is because no-one else is going to do it on the Irish Central website, and that includes the so-called 'journalists' . There is also a lot of myth and blown-out-of-proportion propaganda that people feel comfortable with here.