Orange Order parade held at north Belfast interface
It assembled at Woodvale Parade at about 08:30 BST before moving along Woodvale Road and Crumlin Road towards Ligoniel Orange Hall.Organisers had said the march represented the "homeward" part of their Twelfth of July parade.The commission barred evening return parades from passing the Ardoyne shops on Saturday.It permitted the Sunday plans, but with conditions such as only hymn music being played past the shops and no accompanying supporters on that part of the route.The commission said it had received some objections to the morning parade which warned it would "harm community relations".A few people observed the march but there were no formal protests organised.
There was a policing presence in the area as the parade took place.Fr Gary Donegan, who observed the march, said there had been a "certain anxiousness" in the area.But he added: "It seems actually what the community has done is ignore it and if it passes by then we can just get on to Sunday."Encouraging dialogue on parading disputes, he added: "The more people talk, the less likelihood there's going to be adverse responses."The area of the Crumlin Road is an interface between mainly unionist and nationalist communities.In the past it was one of Northern Ireland's most contentious parading routes, with years of protests, violence and disorder.A deal was stuck in 2016 which sees a number of morning parades held each year.But the agreement broke down in 2024, raising concerns of further tensions.
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The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
There's a royal reason Trump won't escape Jeffrey Epstein fallout on trip to his Scotland golf courses — Prince Andrew
The Republican-led House of Representatives shut down early for its summer break to avoid Jeffrey Epstein motions. The Senate GOP has been in see-no-evil mode the past week over the controversy swirling around the seemingly vanished 'client list' of the high-flying financier and convicted pedophile who once palled around with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton among many other power players. So it makes perfect sense that President Trump is hoping for five days away from the Epstein fallout firestorm that has landed him in hot water not just with Democrats but his own MAGA base over the Justice Department's stonewalling on the release of all the Epstein files, as Trump and AG Pam Bondi had promised. Well, Scotland may not be far enough for that. Sure, Trump will meet with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer early next week, but the vast majority of his known itinerary consists of visits to his Scottish golf resorts. One, Trump Turnberry and the other Trump International in Aberdeen, where he is set to open a brand new course that will be named for his late mother, Mary Anne McLeod Trump, who was born in Scotland. And that's the problem for Trump, thanks to a particular member of the Royal family who happens to be a golf-loving frequenter of his courses, is Scotland's Earl of Inverness — and who also happens to be tainted by his past close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein... Prince Andrew. Trump Turnberry, in fact, still boasts of its visits from Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, who was forced to stand down from royal duties in 2020 over his links to Epstein. The former Royal Navy officer — currently eighth in line to the British throne — had a long and controversial relationship with with the late sex offender that predated Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting a teenage prostitute but also which continued long after the financier became a pariah in most respectable circles. Andrew's habit of staying at Epstein's residences during travel to the U.S. became fodder for controversy even as the royal claimed there was nothing untoward about the relationship and has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. But the whispers and rumors took on a more urgent character after Andrew became the defendant in a civil lawsuit brought by the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that the Duke once had sexual relations with her after she was trafficked to him as a minor by Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Although Buckingham Palace asserted in a 2015 statement that Giuffre's allegations — which included claims that she'd had sexual relations with the Duke on three separate occasions — were 'categorically untrue,' the Duke and Giuffre ended up settling the lawsuit, with no admission of liability, in February 2022, one month after Andrew's royal patronages and honorary military titles were revoked by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Andrew has always strongly denied the allegations leveled against him by Giuffre. Giuffre, perhaps the most outspoken survivor of Epstein's sexual abuse, died by suicide at the age of 41 in April. 'It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,' Giuffre's family said in a statement to The Independent after she died. 'She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.' Since then, Andrew has largely remained out of the spotlight with his reputation tarred by his association with the late sex offender. But that disgrace doesn't appear to bother Trump or his eponymous real estate and resort company, which as of this week still lists Andrew as one of the 'famous visitors' who have enjoyed the 'refined hospitality' at Trump Turnberry. 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The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
US President Donald Trump arrives in Scotland
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The Sun
24 minutes ago
- The Sun
It's easy to sneer at Corbyn after farcical launch of his new party but here's why Starmer should be very, very afraid
IT is easy to sneer at Jeremy Corbyn and his new political party. As Labour leader Corbyn took his former comrades to their biggest defeat since 1935, winning just 203 seats. 2 2 As leader of a fringe party he will have zero chance of becoming Prime Minister. We can all be thankful for that. The launch of the party was itself farcical, with Corbyn already apparently falling out with his co-founder, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana. It appears to be called 'Your Party', and even has a website by that name, yet within hours of the launch Sultana tweeted in protest 'it's not called that!' and insisted that a name will be chosen at the putative party's first conference. When challenged on the row, Corbyn announced that Sultana was 'in Coventry' (where her constituency is), failing to spot the euphemism. All very Corbyn-like. If I were Keir Starmer, however, I would be taking the launch of the new party very seriously indeed. While Your Party, or whatever it is called, has no chance of forming a government, it has every chance of contributing to the downfall of the current one. Just look how Reform UK ate into the Conservative Party vote in last year's General Election, helping reduce it to a rump of just 120 seats. Corbyn has every chance of inflicting as much damage on Labour as Reform UK did on the Tories. Add to Labour's misery Corbyn and Sultana haven't announced much in the way of policy yet — you wouldn't expect them to have done — but their declaration on Thursday included two positions which absolutely hit the right buttons for Labour's increasingly disenchanted band of supporters on the Left. First, they want to end arms sales to Israel, and second, they propose to take all utility companies into public ownership. Inside UK's 1st Reform pub with £2 pints, boozers drinking 'Remainer tears' & even Corbyn's allowed in, on one condition As for the first, just look how Labour suffered at the hands of independent pro-Palestinian candidates in the last election, with Jonathan Ashworth losing his supposedly safe seat in Leicester and Wes Streeting, now Health Secretary, scraping home by just 528 votes in Ilford North. Shabana Mahmood, now Justice Secretary, saw her 28,000 majority shrink to just 3,421 in the face of a challenge from a pro-Palestine candidate — and that was against the backdrop of a national Labour landslide. A nationally organised General Election campaign which focuses on Gaza — even one organised by Corbyn — can surely only add to Labour's misery on this front. Whatever the rest of us might think of Hamas, and worry that a Palestinian state — if created now — would simply become a terrorist state, this is a touchstone issue on the Left and has the potential to cost the party a substantial number of seats. As for nationalising public utilities, that would be hugely popular among voters — and not just Labour ones. According to a recent YouGov poll, the public favours public ownership of energy companies by a margin of 71 per cent to 17 per cent and of water companies by 82 to eight per cent. Where Corbyn would find the money to renationalise utility companies is, of course, another matter, but my guess is that many voters will not be bothered by that little problem. At the next election, Starmer will in one sense be in an even worse position than Rishi Sunak was in last year. Starmer will have two upstart parties chipping away at his vote. While Corbyn's party will be attracting votes on the Left, Reform UK has already started eating into the traditional working class Labour vote as Nigel Farage adopts an agenda that is more economically left-wing. To add to this, Labour holds a very large number of seats on small majorities. It won a landslide only because its unimpressive 34 per cent share of the vote was very efficiently spread. It won't take much for Labour's majority to evaporate. Not for the first time, you have to wonder at Starmer's political naivety in chucking Corbyn out of the Labour Party. It may have seemed a good wheeze at the time, five years ago, to make a statement that Labour really had changed. There was also a good reason for it in Corbyn's claim that accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been 'massively overstated for political reasons'. But Corbyn had been saying ridiculous things for decades and had never been thrown out by Labour. Vanished without trace Tony Blair correctly worked out that Corbyn had a huge following on the Left and it was best to tolerate his presence. Starmer seems to have a poor political brain by comparison. Mastering a political start-up is notoriously difficult in Britain's first-past-the-post election system. Who now remembers ChangeUK, the anti- Brexit party which was launched with eight MPs who had defected from their parties but which quickly vanished without trace? Even Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams' SDP only lasted eight years in spite of some impressive early by-election wins. But Starmer should remember how the SDP nevertheless helped keep Labour a long way from power during the 1980s. His fate may just have been sealed.
