kat, you ask: "What can we do to help the majority of people in Northern Ireland, who do want peace and who try their damnedest to lead reasonably straightforward lives in circumstances which you would find completely unacceptable?"

The answer is to let us do it out of the spotlight.
To not try and find fault at every twist in the story.

To afford us the dignity, and the realisation that goes with it, that we are not objects to be commented upon, or 'pitied', by people who have an over-inflated idea of their own importance, bolstered by a certain superiority complex some of them have, about their own situation in life.

We do not want to be part of the soap opera where the audience tsk tsks, and settles back on the sofa, where it won't intrude any more that they let it.

Because, kat, what they are watching from the comfort of their armchairs are REAL people, trying to get on with life (like everyone in this World does), putting up with a lot of flak from all sorts of different sides, while the rest of the spectators sit, arm stretched, with their thumbs poised to deliver their judgements with.

We don't need that from outsiders.

B.