Jim Allister the latest prophet
How fascinating to see Jim Allister paying into rising expectations of a deal. He characterises J&P thus:
I must, therefore, warn unionists to prepare for a catastrophic roll-over by the DUP on meeting Sinn Féin’s strategic demand of ending British control of
policing and justice – the two most potent symbols of sovereignty in any nation.
So Jim has been an integrationist all along! But take a look at Scotland Jim, with its separate legal system lasting several centuries before the SNP devolved government. Scotland was still in the UK when I last looked . And note too that the NI judicial system peaks in the UK Supreme Court in Parliament Square Westminster, and that the Tories are pledging to introduce a Sovereignty bill to reaffirm the supremacy of Parliament he longs to sit in. So relax Jim, life is good.
‘So Jim has been an integrationist all along!’
No surprise there . His political stance re the Irish nationalist community has made that quite clear for anybody who their eyes open and their ears non shut . I’d go one further and suggest he is a closet ‘repartitionist ‘
Unionists /Unionism needs to recover from it’s obsession with P&J being some kind of ‘rubicon’ across which SF may not be allowed to cross . Similarly the Irish Language Act.
They could learn a lot from Scotland but then they could learn even more from a dispassionate examination of their own ‘historical’ experience when they themselves exercised complete control over police and justice .
Arlene Foster should move quickly ahead to lance both these ‘boils’ so that the DUP can go into the next elections with some sense of NI having crossed a rubicon from which their is no return to a failed past .
The TUV have nothing to offer except the past . As for the high falutin words on ‘sovereignty’ , ‘democracy’ blah blah . Load of ould cobblers in this day and age where even the USA has little control over it’s currency value and where half the people in western democracies hardly bother to vote .
Hopefully Arlene Foster will have the, no better not say that
the eh gumption to face down the troglodytes within the DUP 
and keep the show going until at least the next Assembly election by which time the longer term economic and political outlook should be more visible assuming that the Westminster election will have been decided .
One senses, that he realises that his moment has passed …back to the political wilderness Jim.
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One senses, that he realises that his moment has passed …back to the political wilderness Jim.
Posted by Scaramoosh on Jan 13, 2010 @ 02:06 PM
Yes indeed the TUV disnasaurs nothng to offer us no alternative no future whats the TUV going to do about people losing there jobs the credit crunch answer nothing.Because the TUV are a one issue pressure group who want to take us back.TUV= http://www.omrp.co.uk thats whats the TUV no hopers are folks.
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One senses, that he realises that his moment has passed …back to the political wilderness Jim.
Posted by Scaramoosh on Jan 13, 2010 @ 02:06 PM
Yes indeed the TUV disnasaurs nothng to offer us no alternative no future whats the TUV going to do about people losing there jobs the credit crunch answer nothing.Because the TUV are a one issue pressure group who want to take us back.TUV= http://www.omrlp.co.uk thats whats the TUV no hopers are folks.
Posted by Paul on Jan 13, 2010 @ 02:19 PM
So says Paul from the DUP Press office!
Tut tut, Paul. You’re slipping back into Ulster Scots again. Think of us monoglots.
Jim’s no mug whatever else you think of him.
He’s been handed one stick to beat the DUP with in the shape of the Robinson affair (no pun intended!), and now they’re busy pulling another blackthorn out of the hedge with a possible deal with Sinn Fein on policing and justice. A wee bit of work and it’ll be a fair decent oul stick as well.
I don’t think Jim can believe his luck, MP for North Antrim is as good as in the bag.
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So says Paul from the DUP Press office!
Posted by buile suibhne on Jan 13, 2010 @ 02:29 PM
LMAO DUP Press office hey good one that
Jim Allister is like Bob McCartney. Never wrong but hard to take to your bosom. For incisive comment, he’s hard to beat.Not like the rest of the pussyfooters in political life in this part of Ulster.
Stand by your beds (agin no DUP pun intended) the DUP are about to roll over, several MLAs will huff and puff some might even leave but its going to happen and unless their spin is a lot beeter than it has been this last 7 days the DUPs are going to get hammered.
Roll on the election
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Tut tut, Paul. You’re slipping back into Ulster Scots again. Think of us monoglots.
Posted by socaire on Jan 13, 2010 @ 02:35 PM
Tut tut,playing the man and not the ball again tut tut
‘I don’t think Jim can believe his luck, MP for North Antrim is as good as in the bag.’
Even if . One clever crow on a bare tree won’t make the leaves grow or fall any faster . Listen to the sound of one hand clapping against the deaf wall of history .
….. the man’s balls, actually.
Roll on the election
Posted by ding dong on Jan 13, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
theres one today
Go on ahead Paul. You keep toeing the DUPe party line and run down Jim Allister. At least he knows what a manifesto committment means.
It’s all gone tits up for the DUPers since they broke their electoral promises and joined an executive as partners with unrepentant murderers. No amount of spin can get them or you out of that one.
Policing and Justice should NEVER be devolved to the sham executive – they can’t agree on the so-called ‘small’ things like Education, so God help us if they ever get to adjudicate on Justice.
msg 7 martin
Sunny Jim will not win many assembly or westminster seats, but he will do the NI electorate a big favour by getting enough votes to prevent seats being won by duppers, and that can only be a good thing for people tired of dup baiting , jeering and general bigotry and sanctimonious lecturing.
socaire ,
‘ the man’s balls, actually.’
If what you meant to say was ‘the man has balls’ I’d have to concur . However the attachment of said pendulants to the corpus in question , may not be indicative of the political ability to negotiate a permanent political future for NI.
NI needs ‘brains ‘ It has long demonstrated it’s capacity in the matter of ‘balls’ although not of the soccer or rugby ilk .
I could be wrong but I can’t see SF forcing an election with Arlene Foster in the top seat . The woman is simply not hated enough by her political opponents to ensure a high SF/nationalist turn out .
Sorry, Greenflag. Still reeling from msg 12
Jim Allister would be a good parliamentarian. I think he might bring a lot of added value to the Commons, even though I don’t agree with him. He has a great eye for detail and a passion for opposition. It would not upset me if he won North Antrim.
Yeah Paul and the DUP were too scared to stand – even before this all blew up
If you all can forgive me, I’m having difficulty understanding this whole policing and justice issue and so I would like to make sure I have my facts straight.
Security was part and parcel of the pre-prorogued Stormont government. Under current policing arrangements in Northern Ireland, there is an independent ombudsman, a policing board and various district policing partnerships all overseeing the police. Sinn Fein and the SDLP want a new department of policing and justice at Stormont, working in conjunction with the ombudsman, board and partnerships. The DUP are opposed to this because they have determined there is insufficient confidence in the Unionist community for such a department to exist. The UUP would like to see which way the wind is blowing before they declare what they think. Jim Alister is in a mode which says anything the DUP do is wrong, and is looking for any issue that he can exploit to lessen the DUP mandate.
Am I very wide of the mark?
Pretty spot on Kev. Except the DUPes are so fond of their ministerial trappings that they are working towards ‘becoming’ content to set aside their reservations and agree the devolution of Policing & Justice.
The bald fact is that the whitewashing by our politicians of the squalid sectarian murderfest of 1966-date, as if no-one was to blame, means that they as a collective are not in any position to properly manage P&J. When will someone wake up to this fact?
Pretty spot on Kev. Except the DUPes are so fond of their ministerial trappings that they are working towards ‘becoming’ content to set aside their reservations and agree the devolution of Policing & Justice.
The bald fact is that the whitewashing by our politicians of the squalid sectarian murderfest of 1966-date, as if no-one was to blame, means that they as a collective are not in any position to properly manage P&J. When will someone wake up to this fact?
Oops! Damn this iPhone ‘submit’ button.
So good I said it twice!
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Yeah Paul and the DUP were too scared to stand – even before this all blew up
Posted by ding dong on Jan 13, 2010 @ 03:58 PM
Well sorry to disapoint you sir I voted alliance at the last election.I would vote in todays election for the UUP candidate. if I lived in that area to give the TUV a bloody nose the TUV offer us nothing.I predict the UUP will win the seat and beat the TUV quite easily and I would very much welcome that.Nobody in there right minds should give the TUV the time of day they offer us nothing and are a secetarian party.The TUV can spin the result all they like they would of lost a seat and that would be three elections contested by the TUV and three defeats lMAO.allister lost his MEPs seat the council seat they will lose and the Dromore by election which they also lost.Fact they are losers.
Don’t tell, me tell the DUPers they are ones scared of them.
personally i think your analysis is spot on but the DUPers are running a mile away from any contact with them.
Except for the DUPer MLAs who are looking to join them!
Thanks, Blue, for taking the time to reply (repeatedly ;o)
You state the politicians are not in any position to properly manage policing and justice. Well…
They manage to serve on the policing board. They manage to serve in these district partnerships. I’ll leave out the ombudsman because they seem to prefer that spot go to an outsider.
My point, which I’m doing such a dreadful job of making, is I can’t see what benefit this new department brings to the task at hand, especially with politicians making it such a big deal. There already appears to be 2 or 3 levels of local control of the police and the final authority would still rest with a supreme authority somewhere in England.
What’s the point?
Except for the DUPer MLAs who are looking to join them!
Posted by ding dong on Jan 13, 2010 @ 04:37 PM
I would say to DUP MLAs and any other person or persons or what ever go and join the TUV if thats what you want and feel go and join all the other rubbish in the TUV which should be confined to the waste paper basket.As for the DUP not wanting any contact with them elections soon.On the Pro union side people have a clear choice a vote for the UCUNF or the DUP for a future or a vote for a dinasaur motley crew of no hopers TUV = http://www.omrlp.co.uk who have no alternative no vision and no future to offer any of us.Is that what people want.???????If so go ahead vote TUV
I think the point is that creating this local level of Quasi-judicial authority and vesting it in a local politician is so totally unworkable.
The fear or perception of community bias is just too hard to overcome. The ability to escalate to Westminster will likely be significantly constrained by the outworking of the new Dept’s creation and terms of reference.
I do not believe it works for health or education, so how much less will it work for P&J?
It is difficult, as you might imagine, for someone like myself, thousands of miles away. to comprehend the level of fear (a word I can’t imagine a unionist accepting) and loathing (a word that doesn’t present the same difficulty) on the street.
But is progress possible? It appears to be a Catch-22 to me. The only way people will build confidence is to witness acts of good authority. But those acts require the authority to be in local hands.
So it goes…
Jim Allister is just a naked opportunist intent on fueling his own ego-mania.
Its time bloggers and journos starting giving him and his party of hunchbacks some serious scrutiny.
What is Jim’s position on Torrens Knight anyway?
What is Jim’s position on Torrens Knight anyway?
Posted by Sam Semple on Jan 13, 2010 @ 05:13 PM
The TUV member who petioned for the release of torrens knight the loyalist sectarian killer is still a TUV member.How appalling is that.?One can only conclude that jim allister dosnt think what he did was serious enough to warrant any action.any other party memember would of being thrown out but not the TUV it seems.jim allisters leadership is very questionable.This is not the first time a TUV member in public has acted in such an appalling way
Irresponsible or just plain stupid behaviour doesn’t seem to matter much today, Paul.
You might as well ask why IP Junior is still in the DUP.
Paul
Do you not agree with the terms of the GFA>? Or is it only in respect of Knight.
This is where the whole GFA stack of cards falls down – “your mass-murderer is worse than our mass-murderer”.
None should have been let out and this conversation wouldnt be happening. But all you fools who voted for it got what you wanted – murderers out of gaol and into government.
My conscience is clear.
I don’t get the torrens knight thing at all. Who the hell wants people like that released. There should be a petition to have him hanged.
< << I don’t get the torrens knight thing at all. Who the hell wants people like that released
Posted by Conquistador on Jan 13, 2010 @ 05:50 PM >>>
That would be the “YES” voters from 1998 I think.
That would be the “YES” voters from 1998 I think.
A point I’ve seen made time and time again here on slugger, and not one I disagree with.
But it seems there was a line drawn, in which it was ok to kill people on one side of it. Society would forget about it, “move on” and we’d all live happily ever after in a peaceful, post agreement, NI.
Blue Hammer,
A small but important point. They weren’t simply freed but were released on parole. A number who broke their paroles have been returned to complete their sentences.
And Knight killed “his” innocents before that line. So he’s ok then.
Apparently.
but Knight did naughty things after the line so he must be locked up .
Out of curiosity, if the GFA hadn’t let people out of jail, who would be missing from the Executive?
Could someone please answer: legally does devolution of P&J need the UUP’s support?
I don’t recall that being one of the three locks.
So why the worry about UUP not supporting it? Parties rarely have an advantage supporting their rivals’ initiatives-the world over.
Will be interesting to see what price if any Alliance extract–this is their moment after all, they ARE needed to get the ball rolling.
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Could someone please answer: legally does devolution of P&J need the UUP’s support?
Posted by slug on Jan 13, 2010 @ 07:16 PM
No the UUP dont have to legally support P and J.
The last time Alliance was asked to do anything of significance that I remember was when they had to put on a unionist hat (for a short while). I don’t believe that got anything significant out of that little dance.
Maybe they learned something.
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Irresponsible or just plain stupid behaviour doesn’t seem to matter much today, Paul.
Posted by joeCanuck on Jan 13, 2010 @ 05:47 PM
good post Joe i agree but I think most people were appalled that Jim allister preaches one thing and then we find out a party member of the TUV in which Jim allister is leader activitly and very publicly petioning for the release of one of the most ruthless loyalists killers in the troubles.Allister refused to take any action yet allister shouts and rants from the roof tops about other parties antics quite right to do so but when it is in his own back yard the TUV its some how ok.Well its not the TUV member should of being expelled its not the first time a TUV party member has acted in such a way in public
No response to my question Paul? I’ll restate it just for you!
“Do you not agree with the terms of the GFA>? Or is it only in respect of Knight.”
No-one in any political party totally agrees with every other member. Your criticism of Jim Allister on that basis is ridiculous – he leads a party, not a junta (he leaves that to the SF/DUPe politbureau).
My conscience is clear.
Posted by Blue Hammer on Jan 13, 2010 @ 05:50 PM
Oh your consceience is clear is it from the fact that a TUV party member petitions for the release of one of the most ruthless sectarian killers of the trounles and the TUV member went on to say he thought torrens knight was and I quote a good lad and no action was taken against the TUV member by Mr Morals himself Jim allister.You should take a long hard look at your self sonny.
“Could someone please answer: legally does devolution of P&J need the UUP’s support?
Posted by slug on Jan 13, 2010 @ 07:16 PM”
The DUP stated they would not do a deal on Police and Justice without UUP support.