Thread by @fascinatorfun

“In August 1969, the nine-year-old was killed when the RUC fired into his home during rioting in Belfast, the first of at least 186 children to die in what would become known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland.”

Brexit is not academic in NI irishtimes.com/culture/books/…

“the teenage striker who scored two goals in the schools’ cup final, to the boy who loved animals so much he “saved every little creature around him”, and the five-year-old who wrote in her copybook on the day she died, “I am a good girl, I talk to God”, these are their stories.

“When 14-year-old Philip Rafferty left his home in west Belfast to go to band practice, his mother, Maureen, made sure he was wearing his new winter coat. The next time she saw it was in a plastic bag at his inquest, saturated with blood.”

“On January 30th, 1973, Philip was on his way home when he was abducted from the street by loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries. He was taken to the Giant’s Ring, outside Belfast, where they hooded him with his coat, beat him, and then shot him several times.”

Yes.
Yes I do feel a towering contempt for politicians and journalists alike that treat this bitterly hard won peace, fought over issues of identity that U.K. occupation of Ireland fertilised, as merely technical trade issues.

They are not.

These are children.

Using the “other people would say” that the Irish can choose to kill one another or not -as Boris Johnson’s father did - rvpeveals the shallow intellect and heart right in the centre of the Tory BXP (& some Labour) establishment

inews.co.uk/news/politics/…

“(Thatcher) would have said 'look if the Irish want to shoot each other they will shoot each other whether there's a hard border or whether there is a soft border, that is something the Irish will do if they want to'."

CHILDREN don’t choose. Governments do choose.