Tam, that's not crap, it's a perfectly reasonable question. I've been spending a fair amount of time in the Balkans in the past year or so, where people were at full-scale war with their neighbours less than 10 years ago - and I mean real, full-scale war, not the kind of disruption that the Provos called a war. Yet the progress they've made toward reconciliation is amazing. Spend a few weeks there, and you'd soon think that all the present bitterness in Northern Ireland was based on very little.

Curator, after a cracking start in this thread you seem to have slipped into childish gloating. It comes across like someone whistling for confidence, but I can't for the life of me see why you should be feeling so defensive.

Ard, I can't remember how much I've said to you so I'm not sure what you mean by the reference to my Irish friends. If you mean the Jimmy Stewarts and Roy Johnstons, I'm happy to admit that all factions made mistakes, including those that I supported. On the plus side leaders like Andy Barry always tried to oppose sectarianism, and the Stickies and CP tried to steer NICRA on a course that would not antagonise working Protestants. On the other hand, opposing the EEC as it then was, to conform with Soviet foreign policy was sheer stupidity. Well we live and learn.

You too, Ard, or you're going to find a united ireland, if it happens, a very uncomfortable place to be. On the one side there'll be all those Paisleyites you hold in contempt, and on the other, the free-stater Catholics, the ones who backed Michael Collins, whom you loathe even more. Start giving ground a bit, like everyone else is going to have to do, or you'll be overtaken by a younger generation that has no truck with petty hatreds harboured from way back.