Flute bands?

[Knitjob]

I heard a flute band today for the first time in years. I grew up in the West coast and the catholic/protestant/orange walk issues were huge and divisive.
It was really weird to hear one today.
Do other people find them mildly offensive or is it just some weird thing left over from my particular village growing up? Are they just nice music?

I just don’t see how you can protect the first and second generation kids thrown into the mixed schools

I'm Catholic and live in Glasgow and have worked at both major football clubs.

Imho through experience it's the kids and woman who are worst for the abuse - yeah guys are gobby about it but woman get under the skin and teach their kids all the hatred.

All orange order, republican marches should be self funded and banned from Glasgow- tell them to pick a field outside city boundaries and they get NO police help and must provide all the needed hygiene and safety requirement.

June and July are fucking nightmares here for this shite and what's worse is the biggest March is from Bellahouston park the same weekend Trnsmt is on at Glasgow Green and they tried to get it cancelled!!!

It’s actually something that made me leave Scotland for two decades. Like you it was such a relief for it not be an issue. I would never move back to my home area for this reason - which is so sad, I really feel utterly rootless because of that wholesale rejection - and I’m not sure I’ll stay in Scotland forever because of it. I really thought things would have changed, but they haven’t, unfortunately.

Oh dear, I can see this is bringing up unresolved issues for me! I suspect I’ll never really get over it. Pity. Bigots.

If they got rid of catholic schools you'd leave? Encouraging separation from early in life

Yes because I don’t want my children undermined and insulted constantly the way I was. Why is that not allowed?

Until I see marches stop and people facing sanctions for anti-Catholic abuse then we need safe havens to allow children to learn and flourish in safety.

There were lots of Catholics at ds' non-denom primary - as well as lots of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus (60% ethnic "minorities").

There was a Catholic primary about 800m along the road (full of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs - an even greater proportion of the ethnic minorities) but ds' primary was more popular as it was by far the better school.

But because the school was used to diversity, it did exactly what "mixed", all-inclusive schools should do, which was both ignore and celebrate the differences.

Pretty bird that would be ideal but my home area is not exactly diverse!

You can't get much more diverse than where I live (there are 55 languages spoken at ds' non-denom secondary )

Dh is a lapsed catholic and he was the one who had to tell me (brought up atheist but if anything from an episcopalian heritage) about the relevance of "Which school did you go to?" and why it mattered I had known about the Celtic/Rangers thing (wasn't born in Scotland; we emigrated here when I was three) but the fact that it was more ingrained than that still was and to me.

I did know enough that coming across the walks always, from a young age, gave me the heeby-jeebies.

That reminds me - my mum did tell me that the original headmaster at my primary school (Bearsden Primary, so a "naice" area ) had turned away an American Catholic family (he'd come here as a manager at the Singer factory) saying, "We don't want your sort here"

He was about to retire, which was the only reason that my parents didn't put in an official complaint. (this was the same headmaster who'd threatened to report my parents to Social Services, because they had supported the experiment of staying on British Summer Time )

I think the sectarian issue is definitely shrinking in significance in Scotland and is now confined to pockets. In the "posh" part of Glasgow where we are it's not a thing at all. All the boys at DS's non-dom primary school are Celtic fans, not because they're Catholic but because Celtic are the better team. DS isn't aware of the whole celtic/rangers catholic/protestant thing. Also in this area the catchment catholic secondary is miles away and the non-dom secondary is right next door to the local catholic primary. So very, very few parents choose to send their children off in the bus to the catholic secondary and 95% of kids move into the non-dom sector.

It's just not an issue in my part of the city but then again we're surrounded by mainly educated professional people who aren't the demographic attracted to the orange order. Even my very staunch, very protestant "wee free" type friends having nothing to do with that side of glasgow protestantism.

It wasn’t a thing in the posh part of Glasgow in my day either

I think you’re missing the point

All non catholic schools (and the one Jewish primary and I think there is one Church of Scotland school) are by definition "non-denominational"

That's been the case since 1928(?) when the Education Act brought all schools into state control. The Catholic Church didn't want to give up control - hence the parallel system, but the Church of Scotland did give up its schools (with maybe one exception that I have a vague recollection of )

All schools were/are still supposed to reflect the Christian "established" church (not the correct word in Scotland as we don't have an established church but the "state" religion is Protestant): that was why schools still had to have assemblies that were "broadly Christian - although in practice, at least at my schools, that amounted to trips once a term to to services at the local Church of Scotland (at least Christmas and Easter - I don't remember a summer visit).

Even ds' secondary school still has Easter and Christmas services at the local Church of Scotland but with such a high Muslim (and other) population, it doesn't enforce attendance - and doesn't seem to even do registration on those occasions, so I never forced ds to go. Come to think of it, with 60% of its population Muslim, ds' primary school didn't even go to any services - but it did have Nativity, Eid and Diwali Assemblies which incorporated education for both pupils and parents about the respective religions

I would hope that the headmaster in the "posh" area of Bearsden who was explicitly prejudiced against Catholics was a dinosaur - and it was 50 years ago () - but I do remember at my last workplace (a nice office environment, full of educated people) still a few dinosaurs who demonstrated prejudice I was that it could still exist.

Hugely offensive. they show the deep sectarianism and bigotry still rife in Scotland.

Oh, it still exists. It is alive and kicking where I live. Mostly it involves "Protestant" numpties who have never set foot in a church in their lives. Most church folk I know are the opposite of bigoted, we are very accepting and ecumenical in the main. It's the gomerels who don't know any better who keep it going. It sickens me.

In my old house, we woud be wakened every Saturday morning from the end of May till September at about 6am by the bands. They would then parade about the village all day, stopping outside the homes of Catholics and banging louder. Our local pub hosted Sash Bash "cultural evenings" and the ridiculous union flag bunting would fly along the main street all summer. y mum still lives there and it's still like that. I have moved to a different village attached to the same town and we are a wee bit off the marching routes, so it only happens a couple of times a year now . It's the best bit of living here!

The hate is perpetuated by clowns who train their kids. I know one family where the kids are taught to say FTP as soon as they can talk and the bands are always followed by hordes of tiny kids twirling the wee baton things. none of the people involved can tell you anything about Roman Catholicism, though, or why they hate Catholics and the Pope. All they can do is bang on about King Billy, whom they actually know nothing about. It's disgusting. Proper education would help, but RC isn't really taught about in RE because there are very few RC people living here.