“It is important that our new Assembly is given the best possible start..”
After her recent ill-judged comments, the PUP leader Dawn Purvis is continuing in her efforts to get someone, somewhere, to say something to give political cover for the heavily-trailed statement from the UVF. The IMC report obviously didn’t prove to be as optimistic as some may have hoped.. the Secretary of State for Wales etc wasn’t particularly helpful.. and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern clearly has other concerns. Today she’s trying Chief Constable Hugh Orde – he did after all have a very public meeting with the ‘good’ UDA. There’s also an echo of a recent statement from another source in Dawn Purvis’ reported comments on nothing being “allowed to destabilise” this new beginning.. [will she answer 'stupid' questions though? - Ed]
“It is important that our new assembly is given the best possible start and that nothing is allowed to destabilise that, therefore it will be helpful to hear from the chief constable his plans to deal effectively with dissident republicans.”
She could, as an independent member, have asked Hugh Orde through the Policing Board..
Front page of Mirror: ‘UVF involved in Tiger Robbery’.
Maybe she should get her own house in order first before being spectacularly hypocritical in pushing the police on their response to dissident republicans.
Northsider (Catholic civilian and therefore potential target of Dawn’s buddies)
Yeah it was the North Belfast UVF who perpetrated the armed robbery. They threatened the lady employee at gunpoint in her own home and threatened to assasinate her 2 young daughters. (Being the brave loyalist “heroes” that they are…).
I find it amazing that the likes of Pete Baker can completely ignore starting a thread on something like this, yet he is out of the traps like a greyhound when posting the nonsensical story about McGuinness’s brother-in-law yesterday. A story confined to only minimal column inches in most of todays papers…)
Has Dawn purvis anything to offer to society other than being a ‘Bagman’ for the UVF?
macswiney I’m always pointing out inherent bias’s of the blogging team, but then I’m told to deal with the thread
speaking of which, peteb I wonder if Dawn feels she has to say that about dissident republicans in order to placate her supporters, in the same way as Paislely recently acknowledged the difficulties SF have with the McCartney killers, ie they are high-ranking republicans !
Parcifal,
I agree entirely. It seems incredible that Pete Baker can fail to mention (in any way) the UVF robbery when he compiled this leading thread.
Pete will deny bias, I am sure, but I have noted that he is usually lightning-quick (to his credit) in identifying breaking news. Either Pete failed to see the lead story in this morning’s Mirror (which i find unlikely), or else he simply felt that a UVF robbery coupled with their threat to assasinate 2 children, didnt actually have anything to do with this item on Dawn Purvis…!
Either way, an explanation would be nice…
But lads – it is always the fenians – they force us to do it.
When the dissidents go away the UVF will.
When the assembly stabilises the UVF will stop
When the fenians stop going to Mass the UVF will decommission
When the fenians become good loyal subjects we will stop killing them
et cetera
Sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a suspicion that some commenters just don’t bother reading, and/or understand, the original post before typing a response..
Reading that post I can see in no way how Pete Baker could be accused of bias in favour of Dawn Purvis or the PUP, it is basically a poorly thought out hatchet job and excludes all positive and some negative elements that could be connected to this story.
There was plenty positive in the IMC report in relation to loyalism and the UVF in particular
“Looking at the full range of the organisation’s activities and indicators of its behaviour, more things have moved in the right direction than have moved adversely or have stayed the same. We welcome such efforts as there have been to restrain illegal activity. We recognise too that the leadership is positively inclined towards taking the organisation in a different direction.”
“We are entirely confident that the PUP is committed to the democratic process and to the representation of its electorate as well as to playing a full and constructive part in helping guide the UVF away from crime and towards activities which benefit local communities. We do not doubt that there are senior people in the UVF who would like to make positive changes of this kind.”
I dont understand how we can get all this speculation about UVF statements and movement (which has incidentally taken place without any political pressure/isnt tied into the political process or attached to political power (IRA) or money (UDA) and yet people still think this is somehow negative and/or not going to happen.
She could have course spoken to Hugh Orde as a Policing board member however that would have brought 2 problems, the first being that we would have been first to attack her for abusing her position and not being ‘independent’ and also I am sure all these meetings serve a purpose, if it reassures the UVF into making a positive move ASAP – so be it -it not like the IRA didnt need 10 years of hand holding and bribes, if the UVF go half as far without any of that we will all be better off whenever Purvis finishes this work.
Will you boys all stop whining about bias. If Slugger isn’t covering the stories you want, please go elsewhere. Otherwise, do the rest of us a favour and shut the hell up.
To the point in hand, I interpret this comment :
It is important that our new assembly is given the best possible start and that nothing is allowed to destabilise that
.. as a veiled threat given the background here. The most serious threat to stability here is the collective potential for violence emanating from loyalists. Why isn’t it Dawn providing the rest of us with reassurances ?
nonsense:
if the UVF go half as far without any of that we will all be better off whenever Purvis finishes this work.
“work”, is that what you call it ? I call it grandstanding, self-publicism all topped by a clumsy effort at sleight of hand. We’re being hyped up about a big earth-moving UVF statement which in all probability will say “we’ll try to be nice for now” and very little else.
In all I have seen and I am a regular media watcher in Northern Irish terms I have never seen the PUP as ‘grandstanders’ or ‘self publicists’, they are rarely in the media and if they seek it – they dont seem to get it very often – hardly media hungry like some of our other politicians.
“It is important that our new assembly is given the best possible start and that nothing is allowed to destabilise that”
Doesn’t read at all like a threat to me, seems like a fair analysis, the DUP and Sinn Fein are going to have enough issues dealing with each other and will engage in continual one upmanship which will probably test all of us, so the more loose ends that can be tied up before that the better…dissident republicans (the few there are) and Loyalists included.
“Sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a suspicion that some commenters just don’t bother reading, and/or understand, the original post before typing a response..”
Pete,
I both fully read and TOTALLY understood the original post. I would have little doubt in saying that Parcifal did exactly the same.
To originate this post with NO reference to the aforementioned incident seemed highly unusual, that’s all. In particular you had made reference to Dawn’s earlier comments about “nothing being allowed to destabilise the new beginning”. Surely the fact that the UVF had held people hostage, threatened to kill their children and committed a robbery on the same day that you originated this post was a tangible and very important link?
If you ignored this, how can you possibly justify the “McGuinness’s brother-in-law” story then? In that instance there was NO political link between the two individuals, whereas here there is a very clearly defined relationship between the UVF and the PUP…
PUP/UVF remain an obscenity on the face of this land. I am disguted at the current PR attempts to spin them away from what they really are, which is a gang of blood-sucking parasites, feeding off working class people who do not want or need them. The fact that our brave new Dawn scraped into the Assembly, even in the wake of the sanctification of her predecessor, speaks volumes. The PUP and the UVF offer us nothing, and yet I suppose when they see how the IRA has been elevated and sanitised, there poor little hearts must break.
David,
Surely there is a big difference here. What you would describe as the “sanitisation” of Sinn Fein came primarily from within the ranks of that party.
Like them or not, SF did actually decommission, they did take a major step forward when supporting policing, and (according to the IMC) virtually all criminal activity linked to the IRA has totally ended. Sinn Fein also have a huge democratic mandate (over 26% voted for them in the recent Assembly elections).
This is in complete contrast to the UVF (or indeed the UDA for that matter). These organisations are still FULLY armed and are imvolved in multi-million pound drug-dealing activities, particularly within the greater Belfast area. This is not to mention racketeering and the continued extortion of funds from many Protestant business owners.
Sinn Fein’s move towards being a fully democratic party is light years ahead of their loyalist counterparts. Perhaps the DUP and UUP must share some blame for being exceedingly ‘soft’ in their attempts to persusade Loyalist Terrorists to both disarm and also to cease their widespread criminal activities.
David Vance
Purvis hardly ‘scraped’ into the assembly, she got an increased vote and was elected ahead of both the 2nd and 3rd place DUP candidates.
“Purvis hardly ‘scraped’ into the assembly, she got an increased vote and was elected ahead of both the 2nd and 3rd place DUP candidates.”
I suspect though a lot of that was her inheriting the Ervine sympathy vote.
Would Ervine, had he lived, held the seat?
As ever comical.
It is interesting to see how Purvis scares these people. They seem to oppose progress or is as is more likely they are opposed to anyone who didn,t go to Grammar school getting a place in society.
macswiney two superb questions.. but don’t hold your breath. In an ideal world you’d be respected.
dodrade
Even if that is true, which is not really something that can be proven, in fact arguements against it would be that she got only slightly higher than Erine’s last vote so simply held what the PUP already had.
Even if it was as you call it an ‘Ervine sympathy vote’ – what does that mean? perhaps that people liked him/thought he would be missed/was underatted while alive and decided to give his successor a chance….that is still a vote in her favour and is actually more substantial than the reasoning and motivation behind most peoples voting
Still just as disgusted with Purvis’s appointment to the Policing Board as when it was first announced – wrong wrong wrong!!
PUP/UVF remain an obscenity on the face of this land. I am disguted at the current PR attempts to spin them away from what they really are, which is a gang of blood-sucking parasites, feeding off working class people who do not want or need them.
David, the UVF are a well-supported organization. If nobody supported them they couldn’t exist.