Today was super. Played all morning in a local park with the older afterschools, swam all afternoon with the wee ones. But the best was the bit of detached we did. A few years back the police in NI changed from the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland). Policing has been a major issue here since the RUC was largely a Protestant force. Popular opinion was that they weren't very fair and had their own agenda (to put it mildly). Recently, many old cases have been reopened in the hopes of airing out the collusion (A secret activity undertaken by two or more people for the purpose of fraud investorwords.com) that occured between the RUC and the Loyalist movement. So, basically, the police have had a tough time gaining any sort of authority. Positive changes have come; they recently have been given authority over neighborhoods that were paramiliary strongholds, they have strict new "positive discrimination" policies that require specific numbers of Catholic recruits, and a group called the District Policing Partnership has been created to encourage (require?) the PSNI to be accountable to its constituents.

Anyway...there's an effort to survey yp in Belfast to get their opinions on the PSNI. So we set out with the list of questions and ended up having really great conversation with some of our yp about their opinions and experiences with the police. While some were ranting just to rant, most had really intelligent things to say, and did bother to put a bit of thought into it. It was very cool to talk with them about something "bigger" than their plans for the night and how many fegs they smoke. And to top it off, they almost seemed to enjoy our company.