Dúirt Siad

Protests cannot be controlled and there is no option other than for the Parades Commission to ban all parade protests.

Ulster Unionist MLA David McNarry believes the parades season would pass off peacefully if nationalists were denied the right to protest the thousands of Orangemen who march pass their homes every year. The News Letter, Monday 20 June.

He told me to f*** off and go away in and shut your f***ing doors. He said the parade would only last ten minutes.

The PSNI obviously agree with McNarry, going by the account of a nationalist woman's run-in with an officer during the recent Tour of the North Parade in North Belfast. Andersonstown News, Tuesday 21 June.

I don't think he's going to walk away from an arrangement [with Sinn Féin]. He wants to be First Minister. The only way he can be First Minister is with a Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister.

Gerry Adams on Ian Paisley. UTV News, Friday 17 June.

New Secretary of State Peter Hain's stock with unionists will have risen considerably after a difficult week when he had reminders of his Troops Out past thrown up in his face. Handy that.

Daily Ireland questions the timing of Seán Kelly's arrest last week. Tuesday 21 June.

The decision to elevate Irish to an official language of the EU is a gross waste of public money for the basest of political reasons. What we have here is the outworking of a Gaelic ego-trip by those who thrive on a pretence of being deprived.

DUP MEP Jim Allister fails spectacularly to represent all his constituents. The Irish Independent, Saturday 18 June.

Let's be honest: if the Irish language died, we wouldn't really give a damn.

Columnist Eilis O'Hanlon is with Jim on this one. The Sunday Independent, 19 June.

In any normal political society, people espousing this sort of cant would be lunatic fringe material, condemned to spending Saturday afternoons on soap-boxes entertaining passers-by and their dogs. But it is all a tragic measure of how far off the Richter scale unionist politics in the North have moved that such a person is now the undisputed unionist leader.

Journalist Tom McGurk on the ravings of DUP leader Ian Paisley. The Sunday Business Post, 19 June.

The display of flags to mark out geographical areas or to promote sectarianism or intimidation is wholly unacceptable in a peaceful and tolerant society.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland speaking at the launch of a no offensive-flags initiative in April. This week the PSNI refused to take down UVF flags and banners from lamp posts on the Beersbridge, Cregagh and Newtownards Roads in Belfast. Daily Ireland, Tuesday 21 June.