I wake up from my first night of sleep with the plywood panels under my mattress. The support is much better! There’s only a slight tightness/soreness in my lower back when I get out of bed.
The weather is still cold, with highs in the mid 40s F / high single digits C. There’s another short sleet/hail shower in the afternoon, but then the sun breaks through the clouds, so I take the opportunity to head out for a walk since I didn’t get out at all yesterday. I head out eastward down Pearse on my well-trodden Docklands loop. I wear my headphones so I can listen to some podcasts and my friend M’s Saturday internet radio show later on.
Clouds reflected in one of the high rise buildings along the Grand Canal:
A new exhibit on the front of Trinity College Dublin’s modern business school building:
Tensions in Northern Ireland remain high. I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances involved with the recent protests, but I know the political landscape is more faceted than just Catholics vs. Protestants. I came across this article that explains differences between unionist/loyalists vs nationalist/republicans albeit in very simplified way. Honestly these terms have been muddled in my mind, so I had to do some fact checking myself…
Pro-Northern Ireland taying in UK (usually Protestant):
• Unionists — more mid/upper class
• Loyalists — more working class and extreme
Pro-Unification of all Ireland (usually Catholic):
• Nationalists — more inclined towards political/peaceful solutions
• Republicans — more extreme (think IRA)
I’m not really sure if loyalists really want to see a hard border as a solution to current situation so much as they’re just lashing out about the perceived/real problems of the last minute Brexit negotiations and Northern Ireland Protocol. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, brokered with help of Senator George Mitchell during the Clinton administration, provides for a pathway to a unified Ireland… basically separate referendums would have to be successfully passed by voters in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Over the last couple of decades, Northern Ireland demographics have been trending more Catholic, and this could be fueling some of the discontent on the loyalist side that they are being left behind. One refrain I’ve heard echoed by many in the press is that there is a lack of leadership.
Here’s a map of Belfast (I’ve never been there myself) — the Shankhill Road area is where a bus was hijacked and burned out earlier this week:
Until next time….
