At Christmas, I was sitting in the car park in Sainsbury's and watched a police car come in, park, and a lone uniformed officer get out. As he walked towards the supermarket I tried to put my finger on why I found it so out of the ordinary and realised that - only a few years ago - you would never have seen a marked police car or a lone uniformed officer walking the streets of Northern Ireland.
It struck me as a very positive thing that such a mundane sight was now the norm in our wee country, a sign of how far things had progressed in 10 years. Only last week, the main bone of contention reported by the BBC news website was that council workers were unhappy that their department name was written in both English and Gaelic on their uniforms. The kind of relatively mundane dispute that troubles companies the world over - like the National Express "see through blouse" debate a few weeks earlier.
Coming home from the pub last night, my heart sank into my boots with the sight that greeted me when I turned on the TV. I had to double take and make sure the booze wasn't addling my eyesight. But no, there it was, a map of the town I grew up next to, with the wording along the bottom reading "two soldiers shot dead". Growing up, as inappropriate as it may have been, this kind of headline barely registered with me, a by-product of being born and bred in the heart of the Troubles.
But now, after a decade of normality, the sickening realism of the situation is all too apparent. It's awful enough seeing pictures from the other side of the world of terrorist atrocities, but when it happens in your own backyard it really hits home. That said, whilst the events in Antrim overnight have been rightly dominating the rolling news coverage today, the 2nd story was of 28 people dying in a suicide attack in Baghdad. A much worse disaster, but one that the western media report more from a sense of obligation rather than any particular interest, such is the regularity of the attacks and - let's face it - the fact that Iraq seems very alien and far away.
I remember getting wound up with the coverage of the Pakistan attacks last week, as every headline led with the fact that 3 Sri Lankan cricketers got injured - mentioning halfway down column two that 6 local policemen were killed. Surely this was a much bigger tragedy than a sportsman being wounded?
My girlfriend had just texted that apparently one of the innocent bystanders seriously injured last night was Polish - one of the many people from that country in the UK doing low paid, low prestige jobs (in this case delivering a pizza on a Saturday night) to try and make a better life for themselves. And what thanks does he get? A fight for his life, hundreds of miles away from home, in a strange country with probably few friends and family to comfort him.
The whole thing terrifies me and makes me feel sick. Northern Ireland claims to be a civilised democracy, and yet, unlike the vast majority of people in the "developed world", part of society feels it has the right to go round killing and seriously wounding kids doing their jobs (be it soldiers or pizza delivery men) because the democratic process has come out and said that the vast, vast majority of people they claim to represent have told them in no uncertain terms that they're not interested in what they have to say.
How can you justify having support for your cause if no one votes for you at the polls? What's more, if you're that deluded that you don't make this connection, how far will you go to try and achieve your ends? It's encouraging that Sinn Fein have joined every other elected party in condemning the attacks - hopefully 99.9% of the population being united in pursuing peaceful change after 30 years of bloodshed will mean that the whole thing doesn't kick off again. Please?
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