My wife is a Catholic, I am a christian. My Catholic relatives live in Derry, my protestant relatives in Donegal. We are all saddened by deaths.

My wife's protestant cousin had to oversee the opening of several shops in NI - there were several insurance charges every week which had to be met, none of them to be visible to the Inland Revenue. I'm fed up of hearing about these people, their distinctions and their trivial statements about nationalism. They are nothing less than akin to the Cosa Nostra, and work by the same methods. Nationalism just leads to fighting. Ireland and the UK both belong to the EEC, and the breaking of the English yoke is a meaningless activity nowadays. All NI citizens have had, until recently, the option of taking either nationality, and the restriction of such choice merely reflects the fact that the Irish government is fed up of the squabbles. Many of the IRA songs have a certain beauty, and are totally inoffensive to those unaware of the implications of their lyrics. Such songs should be posted with a rider comment to explain this. This is analagous to the fact that the music of Wagner is anti - semitic, but still has sufficient merit to be regarded as worthy of attention.