Glow up!

Visiting Belfast today, Éire President Mary McAleese told Shankill schoolchildren: "I think one of the great sadnesses is that we can... almost live next door to one another, and yet we do not get the chance for the kind of friendships that would make our lives really, really glow".

Hear, hear. When we get more personal friendships across the divide, we'll be half-way to a solution.

That's the great thing about Irish political blogs (or "Bloglaigh na hEireann" as Chris Gaskin puts it with a smile on his face) - that we can have the kind of open exchanges our segregated education and social systems stop. Long may it continue, and may mutual respect flourish.