It’s that time of year again: the Silly Season.
It’s an annual affliction endured by most countries, manifested in very different ways.
Take, for example, where I am — Marbella. We’re in the middle of a week-long fiesta called La Feria, or more correctly: El San Bernabé Fair Marbella 2026.
I quote from the website:
“The San Bernabé Fair in Marbella 2026 is one of the city’s major local celebrations, featuring tradition, music, gastronomy, fairground booths, concerts, family activities, and religious events in honour of Marbella’s patron saint. The main fair will take place from June 8th to 14th, 2026, The fair combines a vibrant daytime atmosphere, local tradition, live music, dance academies, rides, children’s activities, an inclusive fair, sporting events, processions, and special events linked to Marbella’s identity.”
What in reality it involves, is Johnny Spaniard taking a week off work (this applies to the very small number who actually are regularly engaged in a productive incoming-inducing activity… drug dealing and money laundering don’t count) and engage in activities such as singing, shouting, setting off fire crackers and, of course, drinking.
Put simply, it’s best avoided.
But unlike the next seasonal celebration I’m going to tell you about, it’s generally harmless and good natured. Fights don’t break out because someone has occupied a VIP table you thought you’d reserved in a nightclub. And neither do people set fire to houses and throw petrol bombs at the police.
Now, the observant reader may well have discerned that I’ll alluding to the current spate of civil unrest in my homeland, Northern Ireland.
The Troubles may have been formally concluded with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, but the famous victory which set the wheels of sectarian hatred and violence in motion, will never be forgotten.
On the 12th July, in the year of 1690, the Protestant King William (Billy) defeated the Catholic King James ll on the banks of the river Boyne. And that glorious victory is celebrated every year by sash and bowler hat wearing Orangemen, who delight in marching with their fifes and drums through Republican settlements, such as the Ardoyne and the Garvaghy Road. Oftentimes there are violent clashes, but mostly in these days of relative enlightenment, the Republicans take it on the chin.
The Irish have never been good at bad weather rioting. When winter sets in, and the weather transitions from bad to terrible, they prefer to sit at home watching Corrie or go to the pub and relive memories of great past riots… of Ulsterbus’ set alight, of armoured police vehicles petrol-bombed, because such is the stuff of legends.
But this is the time of year for getting out there and doing it. The nights are long, the rain is generally light, and there’s even a public holiday to celebrate it.
As a rule of thumb, the more the sun shines, the more alcohol is drunk, and the more blood is spilled.
But a wind of change is sweeping in from Africa, and this year we may be looking at a very different landscape around the Glorious Twelfth.
And that’s because Kier Starmer has achieved something that neither monarch nor politician has had a flicker of success with since the Plantation… we’re talking about the early 1600s here. He has managed to unite Loyalist and Republicans against a common threat: young Muslim men, illegally in the country, who see no evil in a spot of beheading.
On Monday, A 30-year-old Sudanese man attempted to behead a 40-year-old local man and to gouge out his eyes, in an attack in Kinnaird Avenue, Belfast. The victim of the attack (and to be clear, we’re talking about the local man here) is in a serious condition in hospital.
As a consequence, houses in immigrant areas of Belfast were set on fire… as were cars, and a bus, in what the police (PSNI) referred to as “sporadic pockets of disorder.“
In addition to this, lawful protests were conducted across Northern Ireland, as well as in Dublin and also in various cities on the mainland.
Now, while I may have a certain amount of sympathy for a generation who — thanks to the peace accord due to the aforementioned Good Friday Agreement — have missed out on a spot of seasonal rioting, burning of Ulsterbus’ and the sport of hurling petrol bombs at armoured police vehicles, this isn’t the best way to evoke change.
All that they’re going to achieve is to give dogs with very bad names even worse names.
I was discussing this with an American friend last night, and he voiced the opinion that it would blow over in a few days, but I don’t think so, because people have had enough.
The young man who perpetrated this atrocity clearly comes from a lawless culture where it is absolutely fine to cut someone’s head off in the middle of a street on a Monday night. The streets of Belfast had been awash with blood for more than thirty years, but it was green or orange blood, and behind the tribal hatred (let’s be clear… it was never anything to do with religion) there was always sufficient belief that someday it would end. This is different… very different. This is a problem that we Europeans have sleepwalked into, and there can be no end to it until we’re all under Sharia law. Unless you live in Poland.
Perhaps it is too late to change it… too late to stop the boats… too late to stop the ingress of young men who come to these shores with no intention of either living lawfully or assimilating, and for whom a good beheading or the rape of an inebriated woman on an English common is not something for which remorse should be shown.
Perhaps it is too late, but the rioting class in Belfast don’t think so. Dogs with bad names don’t retreat meekly to their kennels. Once they get their teeth into something, they don’t let go, and I cannot see this fading away with the setting of the summer sun.
Expect this to continue, in my view, until autumn hues fade to black, the weather transitions from bad to terrible, and a line is drawn beneath the rioting season for another year.
Post Script: my expression of sympathy for the generation who missed out on rioting was written in jest. Obviously.