A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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The following column may not be universally popular. If you have ginger hair, are a vegetarian or a Guardian reader, please turn the page now. In fact, Daily Mail readers had better give it a miss as well.

Is it too much to hope that now the USA has had first-hand experience of the most appalling act of terrorism, its citizens might think twice before helping to finance a campaign that has cost hundreds of innocent lives in this country?

I refer of course to NORAID, an organization which taps into the second-hand, sentimental Republicanism of significant parts of the population of the East Coast and extracts from them the money to buy guns and build bombs.

A verse or two of Danny Boy and a couple of pints of Guinness creates a fake romanticism that is a million miles away from the brutal back streets of Belfast. Financing “the struggle” is seen as a sign of faith, rather than an act of war.

So the next time you’re in an Irish bar in New York and they come round collecting for the cause, just point to the gap in the city’s skyline. The message might get through.

And another thing. Now that Mr Blah has jumped into bed with George Dubya quicker than an ten-bob tart, does that mean that he’s going to declare war on all terrorism, including the IRA? Because so far, he’s only managed to let Republican and Protestant murderers out of prison and also allowed them to keep their weapons. Which doesn’t seem much of a war to me.

And is he also going to sort out the frothing-at-the mouth Fundamentalist asylum seekers who are trying to stir up trouble in our cities? Is he going to stop the legal aid that allows them to challenge and delay indefinitely the deportation orders they’re under?

Or was his knee-jerk backing for any action the Americans might happen to decide upon the usual mealy-mouthed, sound bite-capturing crap? I tell you, I have enormous sympathy for the dreadful devastation that the USA has suffered, but they’re not exactly the kind of people who you’d turn to first for a sensible and cohesive foreign policy.

There’s more…