This weekend saw a tragic statement from a pathetic French president, seeking to hold on to what litttle popularity he has left at home and distract attention away from his own country's shameful selfishness by launching a nationalistic attack at his European neighbours, not to mention blatantly lying in the process!!

Jacques Chirac, personally humiliated by the French rejection of the EU constitution (since it was his unpopularity that caused many to vote against his beloved constitution), took a desperate swing at the UK rebate in order to stir up some good old-fashioned anti-British nationalism at home and portray himself as the 'defender of France'.

He went so far as to say "There is no link between the British cheque and agricultural subsidies" which is a complete lie. These subsidies are almost solely responsible for the huge disparity in what Britain receives from the EU (compared to the likes of France who get loads to spend on lazy farmers), which is why Margaret Thatcher argued that the UK needed the rebate in the first place.

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Life getting you down? Dead end job? Housing executive house crumbling? Kids asking difficult questions - perhaps like "Who's my dad?" Maybe you're just depressed because your fantasy of a United Ireland isn't shared by as many people as you thought. Then you might be interested in a new, largely teenage, craze which is sweeping through Ardoyne - rioting.

In a so called 'peaceful protest' missiles were hurled by nationalist protestors at police and marchers as the Orange Order's Tour of the North passed the Ardoyne shops. While the march doesn't actually pass any nationalist homes, these determined youths don't let that spoil their game, as they made their way down to the shops carrying their traditional 'protest' equipment (apparently stones, bottles, bricks and half a dozen petrol bombs) to 'protest' at some people walking down the road. Some have been said to have emerged from the same bar near the Ardoyne shops where riots started following Celtic's embarrassing defeat on the last day of the season that cost them the Scottish league.

When people see rioting and attacking police as a recreational activity something has gone seriously wrong in their upbringing. What's worse is that by the time they're 19 most of these kids will probably have offspring of their own and instill the same sort of ignorant bigoted attitudes in them!

A teenage girl had her arm broken but it will be some comfort to her that the rioters 'won' the match, suffering only 11 injuries to the PSNI's 18. I ask you, what sort of parents let a teenage girl go 'protesting' when they know the sort of scum that will be there stirring up trouble? Of course the parents will never accept the blame for this, I'm sure they'll blame someone else.

Question: With the Parade Commission ruling that march organisers have to list who is responsible for the parade, so that they can be disciplined of people accompanying the parade misbehave - are they applying similar rules to the protests? If so, what are they doing with the organiser of Friday night's "protest" at the Ardoyne shops?

Predictably Sinn Fein have blamed Protestants. It seems they're just blaming Protestants in general since Gerry Kelly has cited attacks on Catholics elsewhere as the cause of the rioting. So that's ok then!

Police are set to examine CCTV footage as part of their investigation.

The Anti-Racism Network has claimed the Northern Ireland Housing Executive is 'criminalising' the travelling community after a group of travellers were barred from Larne. An Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) was served which bars a number of travellers from entering the town.

According to ARN "This can only lead to increased tensions between the Travelling community and the settled community."

Seemingly ARN weren't too worried about 'increased tensions' when (allegedly) travellers were blackmailing a factory owner in Larne to the tune of £2,000 to get off their land and let them carry out their day to day business. Nor did they seem worried when their WARN branch distributed anti-police propaganda in west Belfast and had the cheek to sneak it into a 'welcome pack' for immigrants.

It's a pity these people seem determined to reduce a very important (especially in Northern Ireland) cause like anti-racism down to random and unnecessary snipes at the authorities.

A rather fitting thought for the day given my earlier post on "1 in 10 Ulster Residents Disabled". This comes courtesy of Value Cabs' complimentary calendar.

"When there's a single thief, it's robbery.
When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation."

The Northwest edition of the Belfast Telegraph ran a story on Tuesday about a memorial for those who died in a First World War battle, Messines Ridge. I hadn't heard of the battle before, but 17,000 Allied troops died at the battle in Belgium on 7th June 1917. The dead included soldiers from both the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Apprentice Boys of Derry both attended the Menin Gate memorial to honour the soldiers who died that day.

Billy Moore, general secretary of the Apprentice Boys said "Those who fought with the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish battalions were remembered. It is good that in this day and age we can jointly remember the sacrifice that was paid in these battles."

Hear, hear!

According to figures from a new Audit Office report, 1 in 10 people in Northern Ireland are claiming the Derry Disability Living Allowance. At the same time, apparently £40 million is being wasted through "financial error," or blunders to you and me.

Anecdotes perhaps aren't the mark of a quality journalist I know, but I'm neither good nor a journalist, so bare with me here. When I was looking to move into a new flat with a mate a few years back, the bloke I was planning on sharing with claimed to know this guy who would rent us a flat for cheap. The reason? He scammed it for free from the DLA but wasn't living in it.

But apparently the money being doled out to fraudulent claimants is falling, so it's all ok.

Thanks to David Andrew over at A Tangled Web for pointing out the publication of the 2004 Northern Ireland Life & Times Survey today. The results, true to form, show only a 22% in Northern Ireland for "Irish Unificiation" (aka the annexing of the remainder of Ulster by the territory-hungry Irish Republic). Even among Catholics, only 47% support unification! Yes that's less than half of less than half the population!

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In a story ominously absent from this morning's Newsline, the BBC reports that police are questioning a man over the Lisa Dorrian murder. The man being held is apparently an 18 year old brought in for questioning yesterday (Tuesday) morning in the greater Belfast area, 2 days after family Lisa's family marked her 26th birthday.

Three men have already been questioned over the murder but released without charge. The police are still investigating possible LVF involvement.

Almost as if they heard me talking about it yesterday, the other EU's Council of Ministers, in a blatant act of self-indulgant waste, yesterday endorsed Irish calls for Gaelige to be made an official language of the union. What this means is that legislation passed by both the Parliament and Council of Ministers will be translated into the Irish language at a cost of some €3.5 million per year.

Irish is the first language to become an official language of the EU that is not the main everyday language of any of the member states. Estimates of fluent speakers in Ireland are 20,000 or less. To quote wikipedia, "the status of Irish as an official language in the Irish Republic seems inappropiate let alone as an official language of the EU."

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The Times reports yesterday that the "first official language" of the Irish Republic is disappearing, even from the gaeltacht (the area of the Republic where supposedly Irish is the majority language).

Gaeltacht teachers get an annual bonus of €1,450 and yet apparently fewer and fewer are conducting all their lessons in Gaelic. Some "gaelscoileanna" are not even teaching in Irish at all, even though they get 20% higher funding than English language schools to do just that.

Around a quarter of pupils leaving gaeleacht schools apparently have either little or no ability in Gaelige (Irish Gaelic) or are only "reasonable" speakers of the language (although I sometimes think the standard of English from some of our own school leavers leaves a lot to be desired).

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