It's a long process to breed fear and distrust out of people.... it has been bred into them for generations..... don't trust him he's a catholic / prostestant!!!! but the process is starting and I pray it keeps going .............

when I was home in August, there was supposedly peace, admittedly there weren't bombs going off, but the punishment beating and killings and people being forced out of their homes was still going on... the evening news looked no different than it ever was....... the difference was that it wasn't over religion so much, but over drugs....... gang warfare..... "you can't sell drugs on my patch"......

susan2 ..... I do think my life in Belfast was normal (I was 4 when the troubles started.. I don't remember peace) ...... wouldn't mind reading the book though (publisher etc please).......

and the sussing out of people's religion early on still goes on........ even over here in Australia when you meet an Irish person it happens....

"Where are you from?"
"Belfast"
"Yeah but what part?"

the answer you give will usually tell them all they need to know................ but I don't think that people do it out of malice over here... its more so that they don't say anything to offend you........

the most usual way to find out your relgion was to ask you what school you went to, of to ask you to recite the "Lord's prayer", or spell something with an "h" in it.... the most devious time someone tried to suss me out was in a Belfast Hospital... they pretended to need an answer to a crossword puzzle.....

"Alison, how do you spell Johannesburg?" (a catholic will pronounce 'h" as "haitch", a protestant will say "aitch", and a catholic will often say "a" as "ah", and a protestant as "ay"......) they didn't find out I spelt it with a combination of both......

it's easy to say give the 6 counties back to Ireland and get the Brits out..... but its not that easy in reality.... and in my opinion would lead to more bloodshed.......

slainte

alison