I received an email recently from SpreadShirt (the crowd who power the Everything Ulster shop) warning their partners about the potential for copyright infringement issues arising out of the World Cup. Basically they sent a cease and disist communication to one Spreadshirt partner who, after being lucky enough to get a ticket to one of the matches, created himself a T-Shirt proclaiming

WORLD CUP 2006
Iran-Angola
I was there

and put it in his shop in case anyone else lucky enough to get tickets wanted one too (as it turned out, nobody actually bought one).

FIFA must have noticed this and responded with a Cease and Desist letter and a four-figure fine for using the phrase "World Cup 2006"! To add insult to injury, the other day on TV I saw an advert for an officially licenced World Cup music CD called Voices.

With artists like Westlife, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, Anastasia, Delta Goodrem, Dido and worse, I can't help but wonder who the f**k they're trying to appeal to with this crap!! 90% of the CDs contents bare absolutely no connection to football and yet they're prepared to cash in on the licensing fee while at the same time persecuting real fans trying to have a bit of fun! What is football coming too when money and lawyers are allowed to get in the way of the fans enjoying themselves? And what is the world coming to when FIFA can get away with cashing in on such sappy drivel?

David Ervine seems (not surprisingly) to support Reg Empey's claims that it's better to involve loyalists in the political process than to have them outside the tent pissing in, having said yesterday that "It will work, if Reg Empey can be left alone to do the job."

The one thing I can say for Reg Empey following the controversial decision to bring a representative of a paramilitary group under his party's umbrella group at the assembly is that it's a brave step. I haven't even seen that much of the news the last week or so but whenever I've seen Reg Empey it's been clear that he's taking a radical approach - the success of which just might make or break his party.

Empey has claimed that the move was, as well as a tactical decision to get the extra executive seat, part of a strategy to bring loyalists in from the cold and work to reduce the feeling of alienation from the political process felt by many in loyalist communities. As noted on Slugger, the Ulster Unionist leader has also been backing this claim recently with the way he has been speaking about his past actions.

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I've been thinking about having guest posts for some time now, and then this landed in my lap (or more precisely my inbox). Everything Ulster's first guest post is a radical conspiracy theory about the potential emergence of a new brand of fundamentalism within Unionism, by Matty from Upper Bann.

With the whole 'Da Vinci Code' hype going on, conspiracy theories are ten a penny. However some things are more than mere coincidence and do point to something real however far fetched it may at first glance appear.

I have watched the shifts and turns within politicised, organised unionism for some time now. Unionism has witnessed a titanic struggle over its long term leadership over the past decade. It now seems that Ian Paisley is the unchallenged master of all he surveys. But he is eighty years old. Even he can’t endure forever (can he?). The big question staring everyone in the face is 'what happens next?' All kinds of rumours and speculation abound. Will it be Robinson? – Probably! Will it be Dodds? – possibly! Will it be Allister? – Probably not! Will it be Donaldson? – not the faintest chance!

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Antrim PSNI have launched a 'Welcome' DVD targetted at ethnic minorities to help them integrate into the community. Produced in Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Slovakian as well as English (no Chinese?) it provides information about accessing emergency services, driving in Northern Ireland, healthcare, education etc. The DVD will be available through local employers, Citizens Advice offices and council/police premises.

At least it will be more constructive than other literature that has been circulated amongst ethnic minorities.

Ironic maybe, that just a day after my "The Lady's Not For Turning" post, (indicating that even with the return of a devolved executive, our overlords in the Labour cabinet won't allow local politicians to take decisions on matters that are actually important) the Maze "masterplan" for Northern Ireland's new stadium was launched. I suspect a restored executive will be just as impotent on this matter, even though a final decision could be 18 months away. It is another of Nu Labour's pet projects after all.

The Irish blogosphere was all buzz this morning with the news that an Irish film had one the about the presentation of the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival to an film about the Irish war of independence. Meanwhile a storm is brewing in the British tabloids. The film, The Wind That Shook The Barley, which was partly funded by National Lottery money, shows British soldiers as indiscriminately violent - a depiction that the film's director Ken Loach claims is accurate, asserting that "Their brutality is legendary - no one would question that."

It was described by Harry MacAdam in the Sun (not available online) as the "most pro-IRA film ever... designed to drag the reputation of our nation through the mud". Ruth Dudley Edwards, writing in the Daily Mail, notes "the portrayal of the British as sadists and the Irish as romantic, idealistic resistance fighters."

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I'm disgusted to learn that the government plan to continue ignoring the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland, who backed retention of grammar schools in various polls. It seems that Maria Eagle, direct rule education minister, will push the Education Order through Westminster before the executive is reestablished, abolishing both academic selection and grammar schools.

Maria Eagle, who has taken over from Angela Smith (another waste of space) said "It will be a matter for the Assembly on recall to determine how it wishes to engage with these matters," - failing to mention that by the time the executive is restored, her education order will already have been rushed through Parliament and that any executive elected will not have the power to undo that. No, they'll just be left with the unenviable task of implementing this hairbrained scheme.

Unfortunately this removes what was possibly the most pressing reason for restoring the executive - it doesn't matter if it's restored or not, it won't have the power to prevent this inevitably catastrophic legislation being imposed anyway!

I completely echo the words of Northern Ireland Conservative Jeffry Peel: "This is a doctrinally based policy – a policy designed to impose a one size fits all flavour of education to ape the failed policy agenda in Great Britain."

Conviction: Possession of a hand grenade
Sentence: 8 years
Went Hungry: 22nd March
Suicided: 21st May

Born in Londonderry in 1957, O'Hara joined the INLA and was sentenced to 8 years in January 1980 for possession of a hand grenade.

O'Hara's grandfather enlisted in the army and fought in the battlefields of Europe during World War One, before turning to the paramilitaries and transporting weapons down the River Foyle into Londonderry. O'Hara's grandmother's uncle was in the RIC until it was disbanded in 1921, something which grated on Patsy, whose own grandmother described him as "a wee bit bigoted about my uncle being a policeman."

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... and 80 not-so-welcomes. It seems the winds of change are bypassing the Windy City.

A mostly young Northern Ireland team was picketed last night in Chicago by a small rabble of everyone's favourite schizophrenics demonstrating their shameless intolerance for the wrong kind of Irish. The Irish FA were attending an official engagement at the city's Gaelic Park, the main GAA club for the area, during a brief exhibition tour in which they faced Uruguay at the weekend and will play Romania on Friday.

The players and officials were reportedly heckled as they made their way from the ground entrance to the clubhouse with protestors wearing "IFA you're not welcome" t-shirts.

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