Fair enough and I don't want to enter the bonfire controversy too much. But are we forgetting something - I mean old Guy gets a right roasting each year, wasn't it about some plot to rebel and overthrow, wasn't it to do with some Catholics or other wanting to change the state, wasn't it a good few centuries ago, was it always just fund and japes blah, blah, blah! How come one country's view of what it does is considered so quaint, polite, humorous, jolly good fun and so on. Just that they left the hate and the history behind earlier? Distance, it appears, lends enchantment - the 5th November must surely once have had some ....dare I say it.....sectarian undertones!
I don't want to enter the whole NI controversy and I have made it clear in the past that I think individual communities only can finally solve the problem. Once again, however, there is always that degree of noblesse oblige, hypocrisy and double-standards when the 'civilised' English point out to us in NI how backward we are. Are we? Or are we just more forthright?