Getting the basics right

Language, of course is a wondrous thing. I heard on the BBC news today that armed Israeli commandos has "peacefuly boarded" the Rachel Corrie.

I was thinking of the brave human rights champions on that boat as I ran along the coastal path out from Holywood, past Cultra and towards Bangor this morning. Ships plied their way along Belfast Lough to Belfast Harbour, a magical part of any great city port. And yet in Gaza, we have ports which haven't received a trading vessel in 40 years. One suspects that this issue will be the red-hot human rights button of the entire world, with peaceloving people everywhere finding themselves on one side and Israel on the other.

Of course, in Ireland it was the ordinary citizen who pushed the governments to action — witness the Dunnes Stores workers strike against South African produce — and we are seeing that again with Irish peace workers spearheading the efforts of Amnesty International and the United Nations to have the abomination of the torture of Gaza ended. All of us who believe the only solution to the plight of the Palestinian people is through peaceful means can only feel great pride in our Irish emissaries.

Meanwhile, back to that coastal pathway, where I met the Chairman of Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the redoubtable Howard Hastings out taking his constitutional, it's impassable in parts, a disgrace in others; in short it's not a tourist product. My heart went out to a pair of hardy tourists who took their bikes onto the pathway, pressing further along towards Bangor in the hope that the rock and gravel beneath their feet would give way to a, well, to a coastal pathway. Not a chance, the further you go, the worse it gets.

On Thursday night past the great and the good gathered for the annual tourism awards in City Hall, Belfast — and An Chultúrlann picked up one of the big awards of the night. The last time I attended that bash, it was at the Folk Museum in Cultra, a 100 metres from the perilous pathway. Perhaps the bigwigs would be better served taking time out to explore what should be one of our greatest tourism trails rather than gorging themselves on free dinners.

By the way, this web pic shows one of the passable parts of the pathway though there's a barrier erected by workmen who have been toddling along on the reconstruction of the pathway for several months now, preventing you accessing even this part. Yes, I did dodge past the fence barrier.