Extremely!

Yes...it’s just that...terrible!

@Marionville It never seems to end either.

@Lilac-Jade Sadly not.

Brexit has been a catalyst for some elements on the nationalist side to call for a border poll, but I don’t know if you can say that this particular incident had any connection to it...probably not. These dissident republican groups have always been in disagreement with the mainstream nationalist opinion. They hated that the provos stopped their terror campaign and morphed into legitimate politicians in the form of Sinn Fein. They have been staging guerrilla style attacks on the police and prison officers, sporadically, ever since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. They have actually managed to kill a few police officers and two years ago a prison officer from my own town. It is completely pointless of course, as it is now enshrined in international law that when a majority wishes it, Northern Ireland will be reunited with the Republic....hence the current calls for a border poll. The marches are important to them as a marker of their nationality....the Orange Protestant tradition is fundamental to their Britishness, as it stems from the reason their ancestors came here from Scotland and England to settle on free land which was gifted to them by the British Crown at the time of the Plantations of Ireland, it was to quell the native Irish Catholics and be a ruling class. The Battle of The Boyne is what they are celebrating on 12th July, the battle which took place on that date in 1690 and at which William of Orange’s troops beat the deposed Catholic monarch James II’s troops. King William then granted land to any soldiers who fought for him. The Nationalists have their marches too, in their case to maintain their Irish identity whilst technically still being British subjects. It is a matter of identity, and it is so important to them that they would die defending it. Witness the DUP in the current Brexit talks, they don’t care about the border in Ireland coming back....it’s the border that may be created down the Irish Sea that is of major concern to them....they already said that it is “a blood red line”. The Irish backstop, should it ever come into play would mean that there would be a barrier between the Island of Ireland and the island of Great Britain....they will never countenance that.

There has always been a small republican element who wish to continue with violence who have continued, they keep changing their names because they are breakaways from the IRA who officially disbanded and decommissioned their weapons. The PSNI say these perpetrators are calling themselves the New IRA, but there are other dissident groups in other areas. The Creggan seems to be controlled by this New IRA lot. They are really just gangsters, and apart from terrorising their own community, they ambush and attack the police from time to time, and prison officers. There was a prison officer from my local town ambushed and killed a couple of years ago on his way to work. In the main things are peaceful, and I don’t feel under threat or feel there’s anywhere I can travel to. Obviously, I would never be travelling into certain parts of Derry or Belfast....but you could say that of most cities in any country, which have undesirable areas.

@Marionville We can only hope this doesn't cause the Protestant paramilitaries to re-form, thus adding fuel to the fire.

@davknight They never went away either, they too branched out into racketeering and drug distribution....they are mirror images of each other in some ways. They don’t go in for rioting and targeting the police, but are sill very dangerous.

It only takes a few to keep fomenting trouble.