Northern Ireland and The Open.
by TWO (2019-07-16 12:47:22)
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First time of course in more than 50 years it's been played in Northern Ireland. Watched the Golf Channel show about it last night. They acknowledged that the "troubles" were the main reason they haven't been back in so long. The history of Royal Portrush is interesting, it's an old course with a great history, but fell into problems due to the troubles and lack of any tourist coming to visit and play. Membership declined, etc. The N.Ireland govt gave them the money to fix up the place to be able to meet the standards of a Open Course. They seem to have done a great job, the views they showed last night were spectacular.

While they didn't sweep the "troubles" under the rug, they naturally didn't go really deep into them either. But today's ESPN has an article on the situation today. While there isn't the violence that occured in the past, there are walls in Belfast separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. They call them peace walls.

Is N.Ireland making progress towards having an integrated population or is it still mainly Catholic neighborhoods and Protestant neighborhoods and if you're Catholic don't even think about moving into a Protestant neighborhood?

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