Flying the flag

Those who spotted DUP assembly members Gregory Campbell and Jim Wells selling Ulster flags on Dublin's Grafton Street before the rugby match last Saturday couldn't believe their eyes. But it did happen. Campbell told Quidnunc that because he knows a wholesaler he has been in the way of supplying flags for parades in recent summers. When Ulster reached the final against the French club Colommiers, the excitement began to mount as friends and associates asked him for flags. He realised there was a new market so he brought his flags to Dublin, carried them up Grafton Street and without any great sales pitch he and Wells disposed of several dozen at £5 - punts or sterling, it didn't matter - apiece. Thus, the red hand of Ulster with the crown on top - waved not just by the thousands of northerners of the majority tradition, but by many from the depths of the other provinces as well - greeted the NI First Minister and Deputy First Minister David Trimble and Seamus Mallon as they went out on the Lansdowne Road pitch.