Monday on the Shankill Road underscored one thing; unionism is fragmenting at a bewildering speed. In the Assembly, there's the UUP, DUP, PUP, UKUP (R McCartney), the ex-UKUP (non-R McCartney), Independent Unionists, Alliance Party, the Women's Coalition. That's eight isn't it? At paramilitary level there's further division: the UVF, LVF, UFF/Johnny Adair, the UFF non-Johnny Adair, the Orange Volunteers, Red Hand Commando. Six. I think.
Irish News columnist Jude Collins on the state of unionism
When they're not busy being `Drugs R Us' and putting smiles of the faces of local four-wheel-drive dealers, they are paint-bombing and shooting up Catholic homes and eating their own in gang warfare. And all this supposedly, somewhere down the line, in the name of unionism.
dy Wood in the Irish News on the average British person's impression of loyalism
Peter Mandelson should be wary of suspending these elections, particularly in the light of the disastrous aftermath of the suspension of the executive.
Sinn Féin's Tom Hartley on suspicions that the British government intend suspending local elections in the Six Counties
The lower Shankill no longer represents loyalism or unionism, but rather a pit of anarchy and death.
Roy Garland in last week's Irish News
Social exclusion cannot be tackled in any meaningful way if we do not develop credible national and local housing policies... At a time when price tags of a million plus are no longer cause for comment, we are going to have to work hard to prevent more people finding themselves among the long-term homeless.
Denise Hall writing in the Irish Examiner on the housing crisis
We are betrayed, maligned and our families live in constant fear and misery. We are a nuisance to our so-called allies, and we have no friends anywhere. Once more in the history of our people we have our backs to the wall, facing extinction in one way or another. This is the moment to beware, for Ulstermen in this position fight mercilessly until they or their enemies are dead.
A particularly relevant UFF statement from 1973, reprinted in this week's Sunday Business Post
Nick Bateman has a wonderful career in politics ahead of him. In the event that he moves to Ireland, may I suggest that he stands in a general election for Fianna Fáil. Surely his compulsive lying and selective amnesia will no doubt be well received by the party leadership at least?
excerpt from a letter from Seán McKiernan Junior in the Sunday Tribune, referring to expelled `Big Brother' resident `Nasty' Nick Bateman's prospects of a political career
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