A probe is under way in an Austrian ski resort after a British toddler was crushed by a giant snowman, police have said.

A hospital spokesman said: “The boy was scared as it was a big snowman, but there were no real injuries and he was discharged.”

TUV beware.

In the interim period would you advocate direct rule?

If so what would be your prediction on the ‘health’ of the union in this intervening period?

How would the TUV ensure the link and unionist confidence, would remain strong or increase in strength using as an example recent periods of direct rule as a marker?

just gathering opinion….

“It’s an insult to the souls of the Famine dead”

Christ,give it a frigging rest. getting John Terry back as our captain is a bit more important.

Exactly my point. You are seeking to project your personal undoubted urbanity onto a frontier tribe for whom the word is simply irrelevant. Dimmed and undimmed are often used metaphorically.

I wish you a pleasant night also.

Marcionite makes a very strong point which is so important to Unionists at this point.

There is no war more bitter than a Civil War. Where families are torn asunder by their loyalties.

You are student of history. You know what Civil War means. The Troubles were not Civil War. They were faction fighting, the Gangs of New York.

Real Civil War was 1922 – 1924 in the South. Michael Collins murdered by his erstwhile comrades.

You guys are going to tear yourselves apart. Thank God no-one will die but you will destroy yourselves. Once you get Jim Allister mocking Gregory Campbell you must realise that the gig is up.

We are always hearing about these catholic unionists. Could you tell why any person of a catholic and/or nationalist background would support union with a state that has sponsored murder gangs in this country, bombed Dublin and Monaghan, murdered Pat Finnucane and Rosemary Nelson, and run agents like Robin Jackson who murdered children in front of a mobile sweet van? If these people exist are they mentally deranged?

David Crookes,

Most Protestants in the north do not drool over British culture and British countryside and Jerusalem and all the other claptrap you are spouting for one simple reason: they see the British as much as an other as Irish nationalists do. They do not come from an urbane metropolitan society, they come from a frontier one. 2 more different things there cannot be.

Turgon,

I see that encroaching age has failed to dim your infantilism, and pathetic sectarian drivel.

When did you stop bring Irish? 1921?

What are you depriving me off. Unionist parties in their current for deprive me off:
1. Considering becoming a unionist. I cannot bring myself to consider voting for parties who insulted my religion (I zm lapsed and I have grave reservations of the RC church but insults from outside it are cobdemnatory of it’s adherents and not from a point of view of loving evangelism)

2. It deprives me of living in a society based on equality where normal politics exists and segregation ceases. Even when Unionism was unassailable in the 40s and 50s you could have evolved into left and right politics. Such an evolution of politics could have led to a political ruling class nio based on religion but no. The UU scared the working class Protestants from the NILP when NILP was seen as gaining ground. Why? Unionism as an explicit political theory in Ulster is based on fearing RCs. This was insulting
when Captain ONeill saw what was happening, I believe he was big enough to have changed Unionism but no room for the visionary.
3. Unionism in it’s confessional form is guilty of the very things it accuses Eire off ie church interference in State affairs. Ballymena has become a by word for intolerance and imposition of Sunday observance.

4. Unionism and NI deprives me of being able to support NI in sporting events. This sounds petty but I cannot support a team that plays under an English flag with a Union Jack in the corner. To me, seeing that flag in Ireland is an insult to the memories of the real people of the Displacement or comonly known as the Plantation.
It’s an insult to the souls of the Famine dead. These were millions of real people. Real lives. Cut. All done under the
banner of an English and then Union Jack. It’s the flag of the Irish joke, the flag of the no blacks and no Irish B&B, the flag of Paisley insulting RCs and saying we shouldn’t have rights because we weren’t loyal to the Queen ( and why on earth should we be considering all done in her and her ancestors names? )

4/ Ironically, Unionism has foisted governance by SF, a party of thugs and the illiterate on me. Unionism intransigence drove RCs to vote for the extreme. The logical endgame was forced coalition with a party of bigots and psychopaths. A united Ireland would spell the end of SF and would guarantee that no Irishperson of any religion would ever be ruled by terrorists or their apologists again

So yes, I am vehement in my opposition to the union as it implies that the English are better than us and have a right to rule over not only us but the Welsh and the Scottish. I’d even countenance an independant NI if we reformed our politics along left and right. I don’t care how many Irelands there are as long as each is soveriegn and socially progressive.

Tell me which rights do I as a Protestant have which you do not have? Indeed which things am I discriminated in favour of whereas you are discriminated against over? I can of course think of one example of discrimination the other way round.

Your claim that SF has never insulted Protestant theology or espoused omitting Protestants from the civics of a united Ireland sits a little ill with their military wing’s campaign of sectarian murder. Indeed the IRA never insulted Protestant theology: they merely murdered people for practising it and SF themselves now merely glory in supporting those who committed the murders.

but what kind of union or society do you want? Are just happy with how things are? Are you waiting for the Fenians to become Uncle Toms and help you unfurl Union Jacks?
Why is there no revolutionary inclusive zeal in espousing the UK?

You simply don’t care or don’t want Catholics to part of or support unionism.

I know many Catholic people who do support the union but would never vote for the UUP or DUP because your parties have a sorry past and present insulting RC religion and Irish culture. Let me remind you we are not immigrants. We are descendants of the indiginous Irish and do not ever dare call our culture foreign

SF and SDLP for whatever faults they have never got on their hindlegs and insulted Protestant theology or espoused omitting Protestants from the civics of a united Ireland

Unionists at your dark heart still think you are superior to your RC neighbours and that power is rightfully yours. You refer to civil rights as concessions. Let me remind you that civil rights were and are and never can be in the gift of a group of people to be doled out or rescinded to another group of people.

The sorry sick truth is that we only got this Frankenstein semblence of equality and dignity by the guns and bombs of the IRA. I despise the Provos for their flagrant sectarian evil killings but sectarianism against RCs existed here in Ireland since the plantation but when the SDLP were top nationalist dog, you still didn’t think they were good enough to share power with.

Like the Afrikaaners, you believe you are better and ordained to rule over the natives. Like the ANC, nationalists want to put the past and the structures that uphold and encourage division and inequality behind us all and embark on nation building on cast iron democratic secular guarantees of inalienable rights for everyone. This is our vision. What is yours? A Tory government in England ?

This is a not an indicator that all those engaged in political life are charlatans or rogues, though we may safely assume that some indeed are, it merely reflects the reality that in political life as in all other areas of life things change. There will be changes in economic conditions, population shifts and resulting demographic changes, scientific advance in technology and medicine which greatly affect public attitudes and people’s relationships with each other, changes in mass popular culture effecting fresh attitudes on subjects previously considered taboo like capital punishment, abortion, mental health, homosexuality, penal reform and other rights issues. Who would have considered paternity leave as an entitlement protected by law a possibility even in the swinging, liberal sixties?

So it is that those political groups who represent the most backward elements in society, those who are unwilling or incapable of recognising and embracing change as it develops, whom we forever find crying, “Sellout!” and accusing those with the courage to face reality and walk into the future as having cast aside their principles when what they actually have done is to cast off a mindset mired in a failed past.

Since this thread has set the tone for highminded quotations I recall the words of American patriot, Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death!” and think to apply them in a way more fitting to our present time and place where thanfully the choice is less stark but where death can be seen as social, cultural, political death as respresented by the decay and morbidity of TUV thinking and liberty is obtained by kicking over its coffin and breathing in fresh thought.

They will not learn, but death is waiting to examine and pass the same sentence on all.

I agree that there are more overwhelmingly unionist areas and seats but my argument is that the unionists there are very hard line and hence, for Campbell jumping ship and standing as an independent would be politically very possible.