My colleague Brian Feeney writes that “regardless of Parades Commission determinations, or what have you”, there won’t be an Orange parade on the Garvaghy Road.

But the most important thing he seems to be saying is that the rulings of the commission, the High Court and the Court of Appeal – all of which gave a nod of approval for the parade – should simply be ignored.

What if, over the past 28 years, the Orange Order had ignored the annual decisions banning them from parading at Drumcree and then tried to force their way down the road anyway?

They didn’t. They merely handed over a note of protest to the waiting PSNI officer, disbanded and went home. No protests. No stand-off. No day after day of tension.

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Yet this year, legal permission for the parade to go ahead was granted – 35 Orangemen, no bands and done and dusted between 8am and 8.30am. Yet this, it seemed, was still too much.

There was no way that the PSNI was going to be instructed to beat protesters off the road to facilitate the parade.

Even Carla Lockhart and the Orange Order knew that the PSNI would not be deployed to do that; and I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have wanted to deal with the province-wide consequences........

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