Belfast at the moment looks like a tawdry, post-revolutionary theme park.Someone must have thought that the piece of iron work pictured here was a really good idea. Still it’s much more tasteful than the dinner plates commemorating the hunger strikers that an American group commissioned at Sinn Fein’s behest.

Sinn Fein has erected hoardings all over the city declaring itself the revolutionary party, with no obvious irony. They aren’t using the photographs of Martin Mc Guinness handing over PFI cheques to nuns or Gerry Adams meeting George Bush, preferring more traditional imagery.

Still to be fair to the Provies they are only following the traditional Republican arc of armed struggle through to capitulation. Much more entertaining is the development of the Ulster Scots industry. My sister’s extreme reluctance to stop the car long enough in loyalist areas to allow me to take photographs means I don’t have any pictures of their murals, flags or arches. You will have to take my word that loyalist Belfast now flies more Scottish flags than union jacks.

An unknown culture is emerging into the light and it is entirely the creation of the the Northern Ireland Office. They’ve invented a multi-million pound gravy train for loyalist gun men and their hangers-ons called Ulster Scots. The website is http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com.

It’s a “culture” without art, literature or music. Hearing it spoken is like listening to a Glasweigian impersonating a Belfast person with a speech defect. Those who have seen its “cultual” events say that it is Scottish music and Scottish dancing performed in the north of Ireland. Examples of the “language” include “wee dafties” – a person with learning difficulties, “wee women’s clique” the defunct and unmourned Womens Coalition and “fenian bastard” which means “catholic” I’m told.

If the British stay long enough in Iraq and Afghanistan you can bet that we’ll see the invention and subsidisation of lots more “cultures”. On the plus side the possibilities of getting grant money are endless. Belfast once had a Manx quarter and if anyone out there has the patience to invent a dialect and persuade three friends to speak it at an interview with a civil servant you’ll probably get a cheque for a couple of hundred grand.