Where is the outrage over the burning of the Tricolour?

To give the Irish people a sense of how loyalists feel at the decision of Belfast City Council to restrict the flying of the Union flag on City Hall to 17 designated days a year, loyalist activist Willie Frazer, in a planned protest by a group of about 150 loyalists due to take place outside Leinster House on Saturday next, will be asking for the Tricolour to be taken down.

To further his point Mr Frazer said he “would be very offended if he was living in Ireland and someone came and asked him to take the Tricolour down”.

Every year on the eve of July Twelfth right across the North, massive public displays of sectarianism and bitterness are routinely and casually enacted as loyalist bonfires bedecked with Irish Tricolours, Papal flags and more recently Polish flags, are set alight with apparent impunity. This burning of the Tricolour has now become such an integral element in loyalist culture and tradition that it does not even warrant comment in much of the media anymore. In what can only be described as deliberate acts of vile provocation, these sectarian bonfires pollute not just the atmosphere but poison community relations throughout the North. I have yet to see Mr Frazer, or indeed the broad loyalist family he purports to represent, take offence at these disgusting display’s of public hatred and flag burning and call for them to cease.