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St Patrick's Day in Dublin last week Niall Carson/PA Wire
Mistaken Identity
Russian thugs beat up St Patrick's flashmob after mistaking it for gay activists
Police said the fight was based on a “misunderstanding”.
1.04pm, 24 Mar 2014
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A GROUP OF thugs in Russia’s Siberian city of Irkutsk beat up members of a St. Patrick’s Day-themed flashmob, mistaking them for gay activists, Interfax news agency reported Monday, citing police.
A fight broke out after students at a language school held a belated St Patrick’s Day flashmob in a mall in Irkutsk, a police spokesman said.
“On Sunday evening, members of Easy School held a St Patrick’s Day flashmob in the mall. Some youths came up to them and expressed displeasure at the proceedings. A conflict took place that grew into a fight on the square outside the mall,” the spokesman said.
A law enforcement source told Interfax that the fight was based on a misunderstanding.
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“The Easy School members were wearing historic costumes, particularly kilts and their opponents mistook them for representatives of non-traditional sexual orientation,” the source said, using a Russian phrase meaning gay.
The school posted a video of the flash mob on the social networking site VKontakte showing many wearing checked kilts and confirmed its students and teachers were hurt in the fight.
“Yes our students and teachers were among the injured but it could have been any young people who weren’t to the taste of these grey masses,” the school said in a statement.
Police said a teacher at the school suffered mild concussion.
@shuttleJohn: 3% for 7 years.
My tracker wasn’t great 2.25% due to a tracker portability mortgage a year previously where I acquired an extra 1% for the luxury of it. 15 years left and €135k owing so felt like the right thing to do.
Mortgage is a long game my tracker has served me well. I’m willing to hold out. knee jerk is exactly what the banks want us to do before it crashes again. Look at the scaremongering that went on with the energy now we are all fixed to those prices for the next 18 months. Even though the cost of production has more than halved since winter.
Don't be alarmed if it gets pretty dark around 11am - there's a partial eclipse of the sun
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