Black Friday comes to the UK - People lose their shit.

Black Friday sales hit the UK this year in a big way and already (time of writing - 10am) people are losing their shit.  Police have been called to several Tesco and Asda stores as customers get out of hand trying to get cheap TVs.

In The United States, Black Friday is a holiday that follows Thanksgiving Thursday where retail stores heavily discount outgoing stock to sell to the public.  It has slowly been gaining traction online in the UK for the last year or two but this is the first time that brick and mortar stores have gone out of their way to contribute to the madness.

Many large stores have been open since midnight and selling a lot of items at up to 80% off.  It's set to out do boxing day as the UKs biggest shopping day for the first time since people kept track of this sort of useless statistic.

Even online retailers such a Currys/PC world had to implement a queuing system on their websites from as early as 10pm the night before to prevent their site from crashing under the expectations of eager shoppers.

There have been no reports yet of any serious problems in Norn Iron but if there's one thing we do better than the rest of the UK it's get a bit rioty over nothing so watch this space.

Ulster Scots visitor centre opens in Belfast city centre. People still unsure of what it is.

Ulster Scots, a language that only exists because Unionists are jealous of Republicans having Irish, has got its own visitor centre in Belfast City Centre this week.  With approximately £350,000 of its funding coming from the UK government and around the same from the Irish government, some may see it as a waste of money for what is essentially a dead language that no-one speaks (although the 2011 census has the number of speakers at around 16,000, but everyone has got together and agreed that the figure is probably bollocks). 

Ulster Scotch: What we know

Examples of Ulster Scotch (or Ullan) date back to the 18th Century.  There was large demand for Scots speaking poets such as Burns, Lindsay and Ramsay in Ulster and their work was printed locally.  Scots was also used in the narrative in local literature in the 19th century by Ulster novelists.

Then it sort of died. In fairness, everyone was a bit busy in the early 20th century with risings and global conflict.  

There was a revival in the early 90's and in 1992 the Ulster-Scots Language Society was formed to protect and promote what they saw as a language (but no-one else did).

Ulster Scotch as it is today is basically made up.  A language that has gained what little traction it has because of Unionisms need to have a sense of belonging and identity.

Make up your own language, it's fine. I did it when i was 8 and it never hurt anyone.  The main difference is that i didn't get £350,000 of government funding to open a 'visitors centre' in the centre of Belfast.  Not to mention the missing £400,000 from 2010.

Ulster Scots has received at least a million in funding in the last 4 years.  This would be fine if we hadn't been in an economic decline for the same time.  A decline that is coming to a head in the upcoming budget.  The money that's being given to keep alive a language that essentially only exists to prove a point could be much better spent in our schools, our libraries, on our roads or in our hospitals.

Happy 100th Birthday to us! 100 Years of Norn Iron News

We're 100 years old today. Here's a short history.

Started in 1914, our first story was all about The Great War and distributed about Belfast free of Charge written on the back of cigarette cartons.  Due to the prohibitive cost of printing, our first article was:

"War: Europe at War. More Next Week".

In Norn Iron News tradition, we didn't print another article until June 1916 when 18 year old founder, editor and writer David McNorn accidentally volunteered for the 36th Ulster Division and was sent to war.  He convinced the powers that be that he was a proper journalist so managed to avoid any actual fighting and observed The Battle Of The Somme from the side lines, writing up reports for the top brass and sending them back.  Some of his work was printed in the press at home for morale purposes and he always considered these to be official Norn Iron News publications (they were not).  The bloodiest battle of the great war, The Somme lasted until November and thinking he'd managed to get out unscathed, McNorn was captured by the Germans.

He was released in September 1939 (a paper work snafu saw him classified as German so he was held as a traitor long after he should have been released in 1918) but promptly recaptured while realising his long held boyhood dream of visiting Poland before he came home.

He finally arrived back in Belfast in 1945 and bought some premises to start his new paper, The Norn Iron News. 

He sadly died before launching the first proper issue of The Norn Iron News.  No autopsy was ever carried out however unconfirmed reports suggest he fell into what was to be the Norn Iron News printing press. (This is thought to be the origin of the 'what's black and white and read/red all over' joke).

In 2009 the Norn Iron News editor found the printing press at an auction, pulled McNorns remains out of the workings and relaunched the Norn Iron News.  It flopped spectacularly and was too expensive so he just stuck it online instead.  And here we are. 100 years later*.  Happy Birthday To Us.

*100 posts

News Roundup Part Two - An Irish man in Damascus, Jim Wells is a dick and Ashers Bakery are giant dicks.

Northern Irish man attends training camp in Syria

We love Derry here at the Norn Iron News.  You know who loves it more though?  Eamon Bradley who recently returned home to Derry after receiving fire arms training in Syria.  

Inexplicably, he could not get the training he needed from anyone in Derry or even Northern Ireland.  Given our propensity toward violence, it's clear he didn't look hard enough.

Bradley claimed he used his training to help fight future Call Of Duty bad guys ISIS while in the middle east but did not use firearms or explosives to do so.  Presumably he went for a speed class and just ran around knifing them.

Incoming health minster Jim Wells starts as he means to go on

It was the announcement we were all waiting for. Poots was out.  Who would replace him....none other than Jim Wells.  He couldn't be worse than Poots, could he??

"If you go to a hard bitten social club in West Belfast tonight, you will see six foot tall men with skin head haircuts, tattoos and earrings, standing out in the rain smoking"

Nothing says 'i'm good for this country' like some epic stereotyping in your first month in a high profile post.

Nice one Jim.

Bakery to be prosecuted for hating the gays/sticking to its principles/ being dicks

The Northern Ireland Equality Commission is to take legal action against Ashers Bakery after it refused to make a cake with pro gay marriage slogans on it.

Long and short of this story is:

The bakery are being dicks

The catholic church has sided with the bakery (at least it's local bishop has).

Nearly everyone else supports the Equality Commissions view of things.

Just bake the fucking cake guys...it was to have Bert and Ernie on it. Focus on that.

And Happy 100th post to us.

News Roundup Part One - Budget Cuts, Ebola, Sport and Abortions

Google Image Search For The Word 'News' Gave This Result

News Roundup.  Because we forgot to write anything for three weeks.

First up - Sport!

No men hitting balls with a stick this time around but rather men hitting balls with their feet.  After beating the mighty Estonia and Greece in the Euro Qualifiers, Northern Ireland have risen to 43rd place in the Fifa World Rankings table.  Ahead of ROI and just behind Scotland and Wales.

HOLY SHIT WE MISSED EBOLA IN NORTHERN IRELAND...wait, no. It's ok.

A patient, believed to be a woman, returned from Africa and tested positive for malaria.  Having been to an ebola infected region, they also put her into isolation and the national media flipped their shit, reporting on the lack of news every day until the ebola tests came back negative.    A random woman in Derry also tested negative after going to the hospital feeling "generally unwell" and worrying she had contracted Ebola, despite not being out of the country.  

Stormont Agrees Budget At Last

The NI Assembly agreed a budget at last this October, securing a 100 million loan from the Treasury.  Only the shinners & the DUP voted for the budget with the SDLP voting against and Alliance abstaining (uncontroversial position by the Alliance party? Shocker).  Oh and the UUP abstained too but no one really cares what they think.

Long story short, they need to find savings of nearly £900,000,000 (900 million, yes) so most departments, with the exception of health, will be gouged for cash.  Health will in fact get an increase to its budget of 200 million but somehow they're still cutting services and closing hospitals.

Nice work, Stormont.

Amnesty International Poll Suggests Public In Favour Of Abortion (In Certain Circumstances).

Long and short of this is that the government, being alarmingly rooted in the church, won't even think about it so it's not really news.  Nice try though Amnesty, at least someone is trying to do something.