Sir, - Ruth Dudley Edwards admits that the Northern malaise is a "chronic ailment", but, apart from sympathy, seems to have no positive suggestion as to how the sickness should be treated.
May I with the greatest diffidence (since Northerners naturally would scorn advice from the much pitied handful of Southern Protestants) suggest that the Parades Commission should encourage each and every Orange Lodge in Ireland to hold an unrestricted, stern, bowler-hatted, be-sashed, noisy, happy parade on its traditional route along the Queen's Highway on the same day, i.e. the Glorious Twelfth (thus expressing their culture), and that everybody else should go to the cinema if wet or to the seaside if sunny. To hold a parade at any other time should be illegal.
As a member of the Church of Ireland, which is a pan-Ireland institution, I suggest that no C of I church should ever fly a flag or sing a national anthem: to do so is a scandal. Let us pray for the Queen in the North and the President in the South, and that is as far as it should go during the present political framework. I don't imagine the Queen would mind two hoots. I feel sure she would like the second great Commandment to prevail. - Yours, etc., Helen Skrine,
Butlerstown,
Killinick,
Co Wexford.