And here’s the ‘money shot’…
Paul Faith/PA and the money shot of the day…
Tags: Negotiations
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Have we Learned our own Lessons? Book Review of John Brewer’s Peace Processes
Northern Ireland’s peace process has been promoted as an international success story. The Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs has its Conflict Resolution Unit, which aims to disseminate the ‘lessons’ of the Northern Ireland peace process. And some of the prominent players in our peace process have travelled abroad to other troubled spots to share their [...] read our review »
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What has The Third Man got to say about Northern Ireland?
Short answer: very little, other than he enjoyed the environs of Hillsborough Castle, enjoyed working with the local politicians, and has Gerry Adams to thank for Bobby his dog. Peter Mandelson’s book The Third Man has captured media headlines in recent weeks as the Times serialised the most juicy bits. But what did he have [...] read our review »
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The Earl Bishop
Interesting BBC article on an upcoming presentation and talk [Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre, 17 August] by lecturer and broadcaster Stephen Price on the subject of his new book – The Earl Bishop. The 18th Century ”Earl Bishop” was Frederick Augustus Hervey, fourth Earl of Bristol and Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry. Hervey was also elected [...] read our review »
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Ahh! well worth waiting for!
“Ha, ha! I’m a bigoted old fool, whose every live over 50 years has been shown to be such by this picture”. “Ha ha! I’m the greatest mass murderer in these islands, and now I’m a devolved minister, again – I’ve got away with it!”
Great times, great times. No wonder our lovely, not-at-all-Orwellian BBC couldn’t find a single voice of dissent to any of this obscenity in its round-ups yesterday.
The fat man has sung and its all over thank f”"k,
hopefully new beginnings for all, first step on the road to reconciliation between the green and the orange
Never type in anger, eh? For ‘live’ read ‘lie’, which come to think on it represents a pretty good summary of the “Doc’s” career. It’s too depressing to think of “lives” in the context of smilin’ Mart up there. Just how many did you end Martin? No wonder you’ve got a grin on you like that. Quite right, smirk away., you’ve earnt it.
Papa Doc looks like he has found his prodigal son…..lets kill the fatted calf
Jaysus, Paisley has a fine set of choppers on him for a man on the far side of 80.
Whoda thought it, Bile being good for enamel.
this is some scary stuff i’m telling ye… the old paisley is missing a few teeth alright!
Ha, ha! Shure it’s all a grand joke! Ho, ho! Shure what great fun it all was, and, my, the laughs we can have about it now. A bigoted fool who lied and lied and lied again. A mass murderer without a scrap of remorse in him. The dead are the lucky ones.
Indeed Whatever Next – sure wouldn’t it have been so much better for us all if they’d never started this oul peace nonsense to begin with? All this cooperation – its enough to turn a sane man’s stomach.
That’s right, you get to sleep tonight comforting yourself with that wee smear Circles. Of course *I’m* against cooperation, obviously I’m also opposed to peace too. Yeah, that’s it. You’ve seen right through me. My utterly consistent opposition to a blood stained terrorist killer being made a government minister – all a front. How clever of you to twig. That or, the usual bile from the usual suspects. What a suprise [sic] to see ould Circles there smear, smear, smearing away.
When I was young I used to be as fine a man as ever you’d see
Til the Prince of Wales he said to me: “Come and join the British army”
Whatever Next is Kevin Myers under an assumed name and I claim my ten euros.
Marty McG is a blood stained murderer who has killed and killed and killed and now calls himself a democrat and lets himself be patted on the head by HMG and called a devolved minister at Stormont. The UVF claims umpteen million quid.
What a despicable display of cant. Watching these two and puppet master and war criminal Tony Blair receiving their plaudits yesterday, I thought how willingly we forget and how we do so at our peril.
So whatever next – how would have liked to have seen things happen?
You’re obviously on a rant today and the red mist may well have descended, but I would be very interested to hear what your alternative would be. Obviously you must have one or your knickers wouldn’t be so twisted at the minute.
I mean you wouldn’t just be all rant and no substance would you?
Goodness me, naked abuse on Slugger – who’d have thunk it? Couldn’t be simpler what I want: Martin in prison, not office. The reward for murdering all of those people should be a prison cell, not a devolved minister’s room in partition administering Stormont.
I have a leaflet that the DUP circulated at the 2005 general election in South Belfast for Jimmy Spratt. In order to attack and discredit the UUP candidate Michael McGimpsey, the DUP printed the famous photo of the Gimp and the Gucci Godfather laughing together. (The photo is also in the Trimble biography.) The dog-whistle message was obvious: “How could you vote for a man who enjoys a geg with McGuinness? Vote DUP”.
Less than 2 years later, what do we get? Why, the above ‘money shot’. Anyone from Dundela Road now care to apologise to the Gimp?
To adapt a phrase once used about Gladstone, “Beware an old donkey in a hurry”.
clearly the joke is on us
Whatever Next – We get your point – your entitled to your view but please p*ss off and stop posting the same lines over and over and over again on very single thread.
You’re just ensuring every thread on Slugger is choked with recriminatory bullsh*t instead of allowing any sensible discussion of anything.
Just cuz yesterday wasn’t to your taste doesn’t mean we should have to listen to you ad nauseam.
Personally – I was chuffed – not because I dismiss the dead, but because the best way to honour them is to ensure no-one else is added to their list and so for me yesterday is a very positive step on the road to normality.
Whatever Next wrote: No wonder our lovely, not-at-all-Orwellian BBC couldn’t find a single voice of dissent to any of this obscenity in its round-ups yesterday.
There were, however, plenty of pictures of anti-war protesters rucking with the police. Did Willie Frazer even turn up for the anti-Agreement brigade?
watchman
have you read the scribblings of the young Gladstone on the evils of Rome? Methinks the young Paisley would have found them remarkably enlightening.
Gladstone also spurned part of his natural constituency- the Liberal Presbyterians of North Antrim-refusing to even meet a delegation who had come to warn him not to adopt Home Rule.
Yup, there’s nothing new under the sun…
Gotta love that welcoming and incluive mentality there: ‘p*ss off’ says Baldrick, you’re saying something I disagree with and don’t want to hear. Well tough. The dead, as you so sickeningly put it, aren’t ‘honoured’ by making the man who murdered so many of them a minister.
The positioning of the header of the post below this one makes it look like a caption to the photo – and a depressingly apt one at that.
“3,722 dead between 1966 and 2007…”
Giving SF and the DUP a say in governing those people who elected them stands a better chance than any alternative of there NOT being another 3,722 dead in the next few decades.
As one of those who could be numbered among those dead, I’ll take my chance with Martin in government.
Darth and Watchman,
Don’t you take a certain amount of responsibility for what has happened- encapsulated in the photo above.
You have spent the best part of 4 years ridiculing the party you were formerly prominent members of in this little bit of cyberspace and before this interweb thingy caught on undermining the Ulster Unionist Party by abusing its arcane structures- calling repeated UUC meetings, splitting constituency associations etc. etc. and contributing to its eclipse at the hands of Paisley’s DUP.
This despite your original antipathy to Paisleyism. If Darth is who everyone knows he is, he and (some not all of) the ‘baby barristers’ even joined the DUP despite the contempt they had for that party when they were Young Unionists in the late eighties/ early nineties.
The electoral rise of the DUP in the past 10 years has been matched stride by stride by Sinn Fein, and no one is going to convince me that the two phenomena are not directly related. The hardline but totally empty rhetoric of the DUP has helped SF galvanize a generation of new post ceasefire Catholic voters to vote SF as their community’s best guarantor- to the detriment of the SDLP. So we now have the situation in this bright new Norn Iron of voters plumping for DUP on the Prod side to make sure SF are not the biggest party, and Catholics plumping for SF, in the hope that they might become the biggest party.
Of course what we now have is a sick joke with a 15th century throwback and an ‘alleged’ killer running the place….but Dart and Watchman- you guys helped to create the monster.
Whatever Next wrote: No wonder our lovely, not-at-all-Orwellian BBC couldn’t find a single voice of dissent to any of this obscenity in its round-ups yesterday.
There were, however, plenty of pictures of anti-war protesters rucking with the police. Did Willie Frazer even turn up for the anti-Agreement brigade?
FAIR did turn up along with that Republican ex prisoners group with the unwieldly name, some Republican yoot, Real Fathers for Justice, Water Charges campaigners and striking lecturers. And Cedric.
From what I can make of the BBC pix the protestors had a minor ruck with some cops in high vis jackets before having a very amusing row with each other.
So the BBC did have some dissenters on, but clearly their MI5 masters ordered that the protestors should be made to look like a bunch of risible nutcases.
Whatever next – is there any reason why you don’t want to put your alternative on this thread?
Maybe you’ll grace us with it next week when the mists have lifted. Looking forward to reading it!
Is there anyone out there (with experience of helping out in adult remedial education perhaps?) who can give me a hand with Circles here? I’VE ALREADY POSTED IT, YOU BLIND IN MORE SENSE THAN ONE $%£^JOCKEY. Murderers in prison, not in office. MIPNIO if that helps. Though I suspect in your case, tatooing it to the insides of your eyelids wouldn’t do much good. There are none so blind blah blah.
Ah, it’s all clear now. Because Darth and Watchers there, along with Peter Brown, Beano, the Karler and all the rest of them opposed Trimble because he put SF/IRA into office, and, er because they opposed Trimble because he thereby also gravely weakened the UUP vis-a-vis the wretched Paisleyites who then waxed at Trimble-led Ulster’s Unionism’s expense, it wuz, uh, them wot did it. They, opposing all the while Paisley becoming politically stronger, and, SF/IRA being in government, cunningly made it so. Not the Turtle. Not the man who kept putting SF/IRA into government, and who kept ballsing up every political opportunity that he had, sufficient even to make Paisley seem the more competent of the apir. Who’d have think it?! Much like it was the footling Eurosceptic backbenchers who lost John Major the 1997 general, and not Major and his Cabinet. Well done Stuart.
I agree Whatever Next.
All Sinn Feiners, and the 20% of the population that support them should be locked up! Internment will work if we just give one more go… We need to show these upity taigs that they can kill all they want but we’ll never abandon our democratic principles. In fact – it would be much better if the peace process had never happened, wouldnt it? Then they’d know we are serious.
..er Stuart
I liked your music in the Skids, and especially Big Country, but your politics are less impressive. Still, considering you hanged yourself four years ago your judgment is bound to be a bit flawed.
Let me help you try to identify me.
I’m not a member of the DUP.
In fact, I’ve never been at a DUP meeting in my life.
I wasn’t a Young Unionist in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
And I do know who watchman is, but for all his insight and erudition, he was never a prominent member of the UUP-more’s the pity for it.
I have been a member of the UUP in South Londonderry and South Antrim in the distant past-well the Clifford Forsythe era anyway.
I’m a lot older than you think as well- certainly not a baby or a barrister-hurtling towards retirement.
I’m not prepared to let the perfectly honourable position of those Unionists who were/are opposed to SF in government go unchallenged or be smeared. I accept that the UUP rejected that argument, and now the DUP have too. Sadly, so has the Unionist electorate.
Political Unionists- as opposed to political Protestants- are quite entitled to say that British standards should apply to our government.This administration is micro-Unionism, battling to establish fiefdoms under joint authority. Nevermind Carson or Craig- O’Neill would have baulked at yesterday’s events. So I take full responsibility for not allowing traditional Unionism to be buried or slandered.
And as you used to sing-
“I thought that pride and truth
were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here
when every single hope you have is shattered”
I’ll get me sash
Stuart Adamson,
I’m so out of touch with modern culture that I wasn’t aware your name is a pseudonym. Anyhow.
Can I assure you that I was never a “prominent” member of the UUP except within my very small (and inactive) branch and I certainly didn’t spend my Saturday mornings at the Ramada trying to save the Turtle from himself. Darth and Whatever Next have already answered your points and I don’t want to repeat them. Except to say, no, I don’t take any responsibility for that dreadful photograph. As one of those who opposed what Trimble did and what Paisley has now done, how could I?
On the other hand, those who backed Trimble in the 1998-2002 years (like yourself, Stu?) undoubtedly paved the way for the present situation – Papa Doc could never have done what he did unless the Turtle had blazed the trail before him. No wonder the ermine-clad purple one has looked very smug over the last 6 weeks. I just wish DUP people would have the damn integrity to admit that they are now doing that for which they destroyed Trimble.
I don’t agree with you that the rise of Sinn Fein was prompted by anything done or said by the DUP. If anything it was the other way round.
If you had read everything I have written on Slugger, you would have detected a certain suspicion of the DUP. Mick might still have on these archives my article “The UUP- Rebuilding from Ground Zero” from June 2005 where I argued that a cleansed UUP could be an impediment to the DUP entering into substantially the same deal as Trimble’s.
Those of us who think as we do are obviously in a small minority, at least for the moment. I don’t care. I, for one, will continue to point out that a party that has broken its word over and over again is a hypocritical shambles that does not deserve to be trusted. But perhaps not too often – let’s wait ’til the ‘Ra is caught with fingers in the till and the DUP attempts to play it down.
Get@grip: absolutely correct. Evil is evil, and must be punished. Murderers must be in jail, no question about it. Eternal war is nobler and better than peace with any moral compromise. Who cares if bombs are going off and the economy stagnates? It’s not *our* fault, it’s those damn turrists. We can sleep easily in our bomb-protected homes knowning that we did not knuckle in to Bad Guys. There was nothing wrong with NI in 1989 that internment and shoot-to-kill for Sinn Fein voters (and a punch in the face for Paisley) wouldn’t have fixed.
Oh, I’ve got it now: WhateverNext runs US policy in Iraq!
stuart
setting aside whatever roles Darth and Watchman may have played you are right it is now as clear as day that DUP inspired anti agreement unionism was about getting the DUP into power. They had been clearly wrong footed post the 1998 Agreement and they had to claw it back in the only way Paisley knows best by drawing on his reserve of bile and whipping up fear among unionism
That many within the UUP were duped into this strategy must stick in the throats of all except the likles of Donaldson and Foster who will have their careers boosted for their treacherory.
Of course SF played the game as well as the destruction of moderate unionism and the elevation of Paisleyism has helped secure their ascendency among nationalism.
i have to say it turned my stomach to see that awful man Paisley the last couple of days gloating at his achievements. A more vain self obsessed man has never before come from these isles.
What really concerns me is the Union.
I have no doubt that Pro Agreement unionism set off on a path which it would not be deterred from because it believed it was in the best interests of unionism to do so. We sacrificed our own Party for the greater good of the Union. There was no personal gain in it for the UUP.
The strategy was to draw the sting of militant irish republicanism and make NI work by bringing commercial and political stability. By doing that then the arguments for the Union could be made in the future in an atmosphere where the strengthe of the case and the contentment of the future electorate would be the deciding factors.
There is nothing that has happened yet to make me think that strategy is anythging but still on target.
However with the DUP and Paisley in the ascendency I fear the whole plan could be derailed. Paisley has shown that the only priority they have is power. The man has no gut feel for the Union and he simply sees NI as the last bastion of Irish Protestantism.
The extent of the Uturn and Flipflop of this man is clear to all Unionists that he cannot be trusted with the Union.
The DUP have never had a strategy for advancing the Union and their opening the door to Irish language legislation clearly illustrates they have no notion on how to defend it either.
However I hope all those, who from a point of principle within unionism, who basically believed that SF were unacceptable to mainstream democracy for a generation now realise the extent of their betrayal and how they would have been better to stick with honest pragmatists than principled liars.
Well that’s something: ‘Get@grip’ & ‘Ondine’ evidently have suitably guilty consciences, for nothing else can explain the demented nonsense they’ve spouted on this thread.
Get@grip (sarcastically): All Sinn Feiners, and the 20% of the population that support them should be locked up! Internment will work if we just give one more go… We need to show these upity taigs that they can kill all they want but we’ll never abandon our democratic principles. In fact – it would be much better if the peace process had never happened, wouldnt it? Then they’d know we are serious. & Ondine: Evil is evil, and must be punished. Murderers must be in jail, no question about it. Eternal war is nobler and better than peace with any moral compromise. Who cares if bombs are going off and the economy stagnates? It’s not *our* fault, it’s those damn turrists. We can sleep easily in our bomb-protected homes knowning that we did not knuckle in to Bad Guys. There was nothing wrong with NI in 1989 that internment and shoot-to-kill for Sinn Fein voters (and a punch in the face for Paisley) wouldn’t have fixed.
Is that they don’t get it, or that they’re pretending not to get it, in order to make even the water-weak ‘arguments’ they’ve tried on here? Who can say. But let’s kid ourselves that they should be taken seriously, and aren’t just trying on any lie going to defend the indefensible (one human being murdering another for pity’s sake). Get@grip tries the tired trope that people opposed to murderers being rewarded for murdering are opposed to peace. We’re opposed to murderers precisely because they’re the ones who stopped there being peace. Ondine maunders on on much the same theme, and throws in for good measure that people like me – people who have never murdered anyone, nor supported the murdering of anyone – actually were the ones in favour of the murdering, despite not doing any of it ourselves. In a way, I suppose, this peculiar argument of Ondine has Martin as my victim, driven to kill people for his own political and financial gain simply because I wouldn’t – well, I’m not sure what it was that I was doing, or not doing, that Martin so objected to that he had to take innocent life after innocent life, but perhaps one day he will explain. He used to explain that it was to achieve a Marxist 32 County Irish Republic freed of Crown Forces. Evidently that was something of a fib.
Goodness, Whatever Next – are you Willie Frazer in disguise? Its ok not to like certain aspects of the peace process. But the reality is that it has saved lot of lives. If it has saved even one life it has been worth it.
John EB,
“The strategy was to draw the sting of militant irish republicanism and make NI work by bringing commercial and political stability.”
You may, of course, be right about drawing the republicans’ sting. But the other way of looking it is that the republicans, for all their abandonment of traditional terrorism, is still nowhere near committed to the rule of law. It’s also true that there is considerable evidence for this and that we can reasonably infer future conduct from past behaviour. Perhaps there’s merit in people like me and Darth sitting back and waiting until our present cynicism is vindicated.
aye ryt lyk
a murderer as a minister
wats the world comin 2
yes im onli 13 but i beleave heas a murderin ….
nd y ddnt thew torys get sum seats
im a member nd they shud ave
Goodness me, how kind of Get@grip to tell me, ‘Its ok not to like certain aspects of’ what he calls, ‘the peace process’. What a wonderfully includive fellow you are to grant me this boon. Many thanks. Or alternatively, patronise someone else.
Yet here’s the thing: ‘the reality is that’, Get@grip bizarrely writes in criticism of my stance, ‘it [the process that has led to minister Martin] has saved lot of lives. If it has saved even one life it has been worth it’. You really don’t get it, do you? The process, and Martin’s part in it, is exactly what took all of those lives. And it’s precisely because I so hate the fact that those lives were so wrongly taken than I’m opposed to the man who took so many of them – Martin – being rewarded for having done just that.
Ok then genius, why dont you share with us all your own personal strategy for bringing peace and prosperity to Ulster? And dont pretend that youve already posted it here.
Murderers in prison isn’t about money, it’s about morality. God alone knows why you consisently affect to find this such a hard point to understand.
So whats the answer then? Im not saying you’re anti-peace, I’m seriously asking you – whats the alternative? More war?
Without wanting to be peevish or snapping at you, you’ve asked this question nearly half a dozen times now, and each time I’ve given the same answer. Guess what? I’m going to give it exactly the same answer again: Martin, a mass murderer, should pay the price society quite rightly extracts from all other murderers. He should be in prison, not in office. You appear to think that were he not in office, but in fact in prison, there would be more murders. I’m afraid I hardly see this as an argument for the present dispensation, as all it boils down to is Martin saying: ‘make me a minister or I’ll kill again’.
Well, Whatever Next, you dont seem to have the intelligence to grasp the wider point of the peace process. So we’ll leave it here. You obviously have no answer to the question that has been asked by me and other posters here. I hope you manage to find some counselling for the grief or whatever it is that clouds your confused judgement.
“That many within the UUP were duped into this strategy must stick in the throats of all except the likles of Donaldson and Foster who will have their careers boosted for their treacherory.”
To be fair to them both John, they have been consistent to a degree in that both argued that they favoured powersharing on terms different to those of the GFA ( perhaps deliberately vague on the detail but at least they were on message on the main plank- unlike anti-powersharers like McCrea etc who have moved light years from their position)
Can’t disagree with you that the DUP exploited anti-Agreement sentiment but then that’s politics. What politico doesn’t jump on a passing bandwagon? Oh, of course, a UUP one. But even the UUP beats its feeble wheezing chest about water charges and rates bills that it knows need to be imposed.
get@grip
my “own personal strategy for bringing peace and prosperity to Ulster” is forcible conversion to hyper-calvinistic presbyterianism, a government run by the Grand Orange Lodge, the Twelfth to be a three week long festival in Barbados subsidised by the GAA (for the cross-community angle). But you see, your question isn’t about politics-it’s denouncing those who have been consistently right about the consequences of every wrong decision at pivotal points in the process.
To set the record straight in the fascinating parlour game “Guess the Darth” I should correct my earlier post, for anyone sad enough to care. I think I was Young Unionist in the 1980s, though it’s so long ago now. Mind you I do recall a now very prominent newspaper editor who once advocated Ulster Independence from that era as well- a mile away from his current paper’s stance
Watchman
SF are on an unstoppable slide to being a fully pledged democratic party.
This was the case since at least the Belfast Agreement and acceptance of the police, the rule of law and decomissioning were all inevitable post then.
It is clear the DUP realised that too but to put themselves back in the driving seat they used the anti agreement tactic and also cynically used the principles of certain unionists to achieve that aim.
SF used the situation as well to destroy moderate unionism and elevate the nationalist bogeyman to the pinnacle of unionism so as to help themselves.
Moderate unionism and nationalism have been the real victims and the patsies have been those who were used to deliver the DUP.
SF played on unionist fear and DUP vanity and I have to hand it to them as one brilliant srategy to date.
Of course whether it delivers a United Ireland is their real battle but I have no doubt that they know that is easier achieved with Paisley as the opposition.
Which of course is why you should not be sitting abck and waiting for things to fail – the game has moved on so there is no point wishing it different.
Incidentally I share your detestation of late 20th cemtury Irish republicanism – our generation will quite rightly take it to our graves.
This was never some corrymeela thing for me about beating spears into plough shares – it was a cynical compronise with our enemies. The only condition I asked was that they were on meaningful ceasefire and were moving imexorably towards where they are now.
If nationañilsts choose to vote for them there was little I could do about it.
Indeed contrast the icey coldness but business like attitide of Trimble towards Adams in 98 compared to the jovail Paisley with ex PIRA Chief of Staff a couple of days ago to see the difference in attitude.
For all our mistakes and cock ups the UUP ultimately had the Union as its aim but the DUP, which cannot even depose its own Leader if he says he is going to be there for another 10 years, is all about power. Indeed NI Unionism under the DUP will be akin to some African State like Zimbabwe or Milawi with a tribal leader in power until he departs the planet.
Give me the dysfunctional but free thinking democracy of the UUP anyday.
Darth
“Can’t disagree with you that the DUP exploited anti-Agreement sentiment but then that’s politics.”
Yes but if you had realised that at the time would you have played things differently yourself ?
No John
A cause being advanced by an opportunist is still a cause being advanced. The GFA was dead in the water by 2001 but constant attempts to tweak it instead of wholesale renegotiation preserved the illusion (at that time) that a Vichy tendency would work any arrangement with SF. So the DUP took the easy option by Leeds Castle of joining the tweakers, but it was only by St Andrews that it had left itself no escape route.
If the UUP had caught itself on in time it would have listened to the people, ditched the GFA, and saved itself. It might stick in your throat, but the only future the UUP had – and I say this as an indictment of the party, not an endorsement of the indvidual- was in an agreement-sceptic stance and led by Jeffrey Donaldson. Petty rivalry and an out of touch leader killed the only way back for the UUP. Admit it- you’d have him- and his baby barristers- back in a shot. Or are you really happy with the mogadon men at the top?
Why did I bother even hoping that Get@grip could rise above his usual low level? I, he generously avers, ‘dont seem to have the intelligence to grasp the wider point of the peace process. So we’ll leave it here’ – how very good of you. Modest and truncating in equal measure. Personally, dumb as I no doubt am, I think I’ve got the measure of what you insist must be called, and revered as such, ‘the peace process’. It’s end point, at this stage, has been to mkae a mass murderer a government minister. Good to know all those people Martin murdered didn’t die in vain. There’s a British government pension in this, for him, after all. Not that he’d claim, living the Monkish life of seclusion that he and all other SF/IRA leaders do [eyes roll 360 degrees].
‘I hope you manage to find some counselling for the grief or whatever it is that clouds your confused judgement’ – aren’t you the charmer? Thanks for your good wishes. But thank you most of all for helping me demonstrate that there are NO convincing moral arguments against a man like martin being raised to a dignity built on the graves of all those he murdered.
“SF are on an unstoppable slide to being a fully pledged democratic party.”
John EB,
That’s where you and I disagree. It’s the same argument David Trimble came out with in (I think) p. 48 of Frank Millar’s book in 2004. Just a few months later, the IRA did the Northern Bank. This nasty virus isn’t suddenly going to become benign – what’s the point in that – but is mutating into something else. I don’t see the IRA relinquishing social control over nationalist areas, no matter what spin is issued to hide it.
I also agree with Darth about the only way that the UUP could have rescued itself, although we differ as to when it passed the point of no return. The UUP has certainly done so now, John EB, and the New DUP is about to hoover up what is left of your party.