Surely I'm Not the Only Gay in the Province

This may come as a shock to many friends and friends of friends in the LGBT Sector in Northern Ireland, or a relief to Iris Robinson, but apparently the LGBT community doesn't exist in Northern Ireland.

How do I know this? Because Pink Paper tells me so. Well not so much Pink Paper as their nominations survey for their readers awards. I recently opened it to find I had 8 choices of geographical location:

• Scotland
• North West
• North East
• Wales
• Midlands and the East
• South West
• London and the South
• South Coast

Conspicuous by its absence is Northern Ireland. This is from a Paper that on its website does cover UK news. I that it by that they mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Indeed they have covered some Northern Irish stories in their coverage.

However, when it comes to nominations it become all colloquial and only covering Britain. Its one of those things that often happens. In the early days of Heat I had a letter published that complained that the film offers never included a Northern Irish option to view. It seems that UK wide publications don't bother or don't care about their Northern Irish readers, and ignore their existence in this way.

When the LGBT community in Northern Ireland is still fighting for inclusion within the Northern Irish community we'd like a little support from the UK-wide LGBT community to acknowledge that we exist first of all.

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