And On The Twelfth I Love To Update The Blog My Father Wrote

Where's the biggest folk festival in Europe ? Sidmouth ? Cambridge ? Dranouter ?

Try again. Think (assuming you grew up with the Guardian and BBC) bone-headed bigots in bowler hats. Think flute and drum. Think the 12th July in Ulster.

I can't recommend highly enough Ruth Dudley Edwards' book on the Orangemen of Ulster The Faithful Tribe, a book which (combined with talking to Ulster exiles, very few of whom had two heads) changed my views on subjects like Drumcree.

Read it. Visit the Orange Net and see the Grand Masters of Togo and Ghana.

And on the 12th raise a glass of Black Bush to an epoch-making event - the first known Observer column to have a good word for the Rev. Ian Paisley.

"Observing the mayor of London greeting the Qatar-based Imam, I wondered if Livingstone would ever extend the same warm welcome to the UK capital for, say, the Reverend Ian Paisley. Isn't it funny that sections of the British left regard Christian fundamentalists such as Dr Paisley with total contempt but will open the doors to a man who describes suicide bombings of men, women and children as 'martyrdom in the name of God'?

Because for all Dr Paisley's faults and for all his church's illiberalism towards the gay community, the head of the Free Presbyterian Church does not implore his followers to, for instance, go out and murder homosexuals and lesbians."

For years even the 'moderate' left talked of Adams and Paisley as being more or less interchangeable, the 'two extremes' of Ulster politics. It's a travesty of the truth. Paisley has never supported, directly or indirectly, the murders and mutilations carried out by paramilitaries, let alone organising them as Adams and co. have done.

And he's one of the few great speakers left in politics. Read this Hansard debate and you can hear those rolling, judgemental, thunderous tones.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I am sorry, but I am not giving way. The hon. Gentleman will have to contain himself for once.

Let me tell the House that this matter is not about postponing the election. I noticed that many speakers used the word that I used in the first part of the debate—cancelling. This is a cancellation. If it were a postponement, we could have autumn defined. I ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who comes from Wales, a beautiful Principality that I dearly love, when autumn starts and ends in Wales. Perhaps at the end of the debate he will do so through the mouth of the Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office, who comes from Scotland. Then, I, an ignorant man from Ulster, will know when autumn starts and ends.