Robert McCartney's fiancée Bridgeen Hagans and the couple's children had their home attacked at 2:10 AM on Saturday. Rocks and glass bottles were thrown at the doors and windows, and one window was broken during the disturbance.

Local Sinn Fein representatitve Deborah Devenney blamed an incursion by loyalists into the area but, and here's where our story takes a twist, the PSNI have a CCTV camera at the station pointing at Bridgeen's front door which shows no strangers went down the road on the night (let's just say I know who I'd trust).

I find this very odd and it must be a mistake, because we all know Sinn Fein/the IRA never lie (aye, and they never target Civilians either!)

If this happened on Saturday is it any wonder Robert's sister Paula McCartney announced she was leaving the Short Strand area yesterday?

What does London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics mean to Northern Ireland? Within hours, stories were appearing on the BBC and Belfast Telegraph websites proclaiming this a great step forward towards Northern Ireland's new multi-sport stadium. I don't know if they deliberately didn't prominently mention the fact that it's at the Maze or if it was just a subconscious desire to forget that detail - I mean I wouldn't want to spoil the happy mood with a dose of reality either.

Belfast Hosts Olympic Football
Northern Ireland will host three Olympic football games. At the minute they're penned in for Windsor Park but obviously if a modern, larger capacity stadium was available the games would be shifted there. To be quite frank, while I would love to see Northern Ireland football moved to a neutral venue and love to see the sport being played in a modern stadium with a higher capacity than Windsor Park's 14,000, it just isn't worth the though of Olympic football being played beside a shrine to gutless killers and murderers who plagued Northern Ireland for so many decades.

A Day At The Maze Stadium
Picture the scene as the teams and supporters from the USA, Canada, Spain or wherever else pull up in their tour buses. What a great day it will be. A momentous occasion that they'll surely remember for years, nay, decades to come. An Olympic soccer game (obviously we can't call it football, that might upset the GAA) in war-torn Belfast.

And it begins...

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It's getting near the 12th and all the usual issues with the marching season are bubbling to the surface. I'm not overly interested in the Orange Order and I certainly have no love for paramilitary bands that accompany some of the parades so I don't follow the events in too much detail. There are a couple of things I have noticed so far though.

Londonderry
Orange Order lodges from outside Londonderry will be allowed to march in the city on the Twelfth for the first time in 13 years. This came about through what were essentially talks between the Orange Order and the city's chamber of commerce, and between the chamber of commerce and the Bogside residents group. I've yet to find any details of exactly what accommodations were made, the media just hyped up how wonderful it was that they're all playing nice - and indeed it's got to be good news. I guess I'm just curious and would like to hear more than just congratulations.

Ardoyne
Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams would never miss an opportunity to try and gain a political advantage out of any situation and while others have been talking of accommodation he had a rather different tone. As the Parades Commission ruled that an Orange parade could proceed past the Ardoyne shops (but not down the Garvaghy Road) with certain provisos about band music and supporters behaviour, Adams made a 'promise' to the media. He said that republican former prisoners had provided a service in recent years, calming tensions at contentious parades. He then went on to say "The arrest of Sean Kelly means that I for one, and I speak for our group, won't put pressure on any former prisoner to provide this type of service."

Very cunningly worded, but remove the Newspeak and what it seems to boil down to is "You arrested a terrorist so we're going to make sure there's as much trouble as possible come your dirty Orange parade. You'll have to keep us sweet in future, silly Brits."

So you see, now the Ardoyne "protestors," who attacked women and children at the Tour of the North less than 3 weeks ago, get to cause as much shit as they want and really, as usual, this will be Britain's fault. I hope you're all beginning to understand how this works now. I'm expecting an announcement any day now from Sinn Fein explaining how it was Britain's fault that Celtic lost the Scottish League to Rangers this year and thus the riots that followed that incident can also be blamed on dirty Brits.

All these links are from the BBC because while I found links in the Newsletter and Derry Journal, I know the Newsletter (and suspect the Derry Journal) hide their old stories after a while unless you pay to register with them.

The BBC reports that Robert McCartney's sister Paula is planning to leave her Short Strand home where she has lived for 40 years. She's quoted as saying that if she had the means, she'd leave the country altogether.

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London have won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Only moments ago I posted that they were down to the last 2 with Paris and as soon as I can find a link to support my story I'll post it - for now you'll just have to take my word for it.

Update:
There you go, first with the scoop is the Wembley and Kingsbury Times but the BBC weren't far behind.

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Favourites Paris only have the challenge of London left now as New York, Moscow and Madrid have been ruled out of hosting the 2012 games. London were originally thought to be 3rd in the running behind Paris and Madrid, but in recent weeks have come to be second favourite to Paris.

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At it's July monthly meeting, Belfast City Council agreed to provide £70,000 funding for next year's St Patrick's day carnival in Belfast. The move follows complaints in February when the council voted not to overturn a decision refusing to grant funding to the carnival this year, basically due to the fact it was going to be a blatant republican rally.

DUP councillor Nelson McCausland has said that the council will be hoping that with its involvement, next year's carnival will be "an event free from that plethora of tricolours we saw outside the City Hall this year." Somehow I get the feeling that might be a touch optimistic and the council don't seem to be positive either. They've agreed to run the event in Custom House Square as a pilot that will be independently evaluated. This will help the council to judge whether future funding is appropriate.

In that spirit, I found some interesting history on the Cross of Saint Patrick (pictured above). If organisers really want an 'inclusive' event, perhaps replacing the sea of tricolours outside the city hall with St Patrick's crosses would be a good place to start?

Gay couples registering for civil partnerships at Lisburn Council will not be allowed to use the wedding room following a move from Alliance councillor Seamus Close. While gay rights groups cried 'discrimination,' Close claims the move simply draws a distinction between marriage and civil partnerships.

Close said that confusing language has been used throughout the passage of the Civil Partnership Act, as people referred to 'gay weddings'. Rather than weddings, these ceremonies will be same-sex registrations under the Civil Partnership Act. Therefore the registrations will not take place in the council's wedding room, the Cherry Room, but instead take place in the registrar's office.

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Alasdair McDonnell is meeting with the police today regarding his favourite issue - flags. McDonnell, still trying to tie the flags to loyalist paramilitarism, said "The police have been left in no doubt that loyalist bunting and flags are extremely unpopular with local residents."

Well they're not 'extremely unpopular' with this resident. In fact, this resident quite likes them.

Do you know what is extremely unpopular with this resident though? The football stadium come terror-shrine proposed for the old Maze prison (or "Long Kesh" if you prefer the terrorists' terminology, Alasdair) site. In fact, it's so unpopular I've written to Big Al about it - twice. On neither occasion did he see fit to reply to this constituent, despite my pointing out that nearly 500 people (a number of whom live in Alasdair's South Belfast constituency) have signed the same petition against the Maze Stadium/Terror Dome.

Representing everyone, eh? That's a laugh.

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Paris Hilton sees herself as "the closest thing to American royalty" according to a quote on Digital Spy. Speaking about her impending wedding she said that she'd always wanted to be a princess on her wedding day and that "only a wedding in England can make that happen."

She wants to get married at St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey but, not being royalty (sorry to break it to you Paris), she doesn't qualify and has written to Prince Charles to ask for dispensation.

Regardless of Prince Charles's decision, it seems that it won't change Paris Hilton's over-inflated ego. She said, "the actual event is going to have a royal theme and London is the only place to do that. I'm the closest thing to American royalty anyway."

Sounds like a ringing endorsement of a constitutional monarchy to me.

Hilton was later accused of being out of place at Live 8. Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters was quoted as saying "That woman is representative of everything that's wrong in the world. She has no business being here, all she wants is to get her name in the papers - her and her minging fiance." At this point in time, I'm not sure if this statement was made before or after the Scissor Sisters went on stage promoting their new material.