“What they document is the clash between pragmatic unionism (which can be summed up as making the best of unpleasant political realities) and moral high-ground unionism (the view that almost anything is better than terrorist appeasement). The pragmatists have carried the day, so far. Yet, to be brutally honest, I acknowledge that as a matter of fact, rather than as a matter of pride.”

Although I am extremely reticent to claim the high moral ground for an anti agreement unionist position, as that ground is very likely to be found to be a high horse instead; Kane encapsulates the dilemma which many unionists may feel over the current dispensation. Many unionists who support the agreement do so with a heavy heart, there are still massive misgivings regarding the current process. Incidentally I am sure this position is mirrored within nationalism / republicanism.

Supporters of the agreement (or maybe acceptors would be a better term for many of them?) will often assent to all the criticisms made of the current agreement and then, with varying degrees of unhappiness, say that they still support it. Even here on slugger we have self proclaimed unionists from positions as disparate as Jo to Bigger Picture and many, many in between clearly not delighted by what has happened but willing to accept it for varying reasons but essentially either because it was a necessary price to end the conflict and / or because it was better than the alternatives.

Whilst I do not in any way impugn the moral rectitude of those who make this argument, I would submit that this is a very flawed approach and one which is not going to help build a civic society here. The lack of an alternative is also a very valid criticism albeit one which Jim Allister has begun trying to address.

Alex Kane’s last comment is also extremely valid and on it (as well as other issues) may depend the future of the agreement, the UUP, DUP and the TUV: “The electoral strength of the TUV… has yet to be properly gauged; but I’m increasingly of the opinion that it is much stronger than any of us think.” Then again of course I want to believe that. 

Mary McAleese has suggested that the end of Ireland’s centuries long political conflict is at hand. This in many ways echoes comments by Bertie Ahern whilst he was in Washington. Of course these sentiments are not confined to RoI politicians or to nationalists and also seem to have some echoes in Dr. Paisley’s latest remarks. I do feel, however, that this is a very difficult conclusion to draw when one considers the history of this island and indeed the history of other conflicts in the world.

The conflicts here have been “solved” with tedious frequency. Ireland has been “pacified” whether by force or by politics on many occasions. By turns Elizabeth I, James I/VI, Cromwell and Gladstone used “pacification” of various forms and the list of rebellions includes so many dates: 1641, 1798, 1916 etc. I would suggest that the nature of our conflict here is somewhat similar to ethnic conflicts, although as with many so called ethnic conflicts, there are no actual ethnic differences, merely cultural ones. The problem is with totally differing political aspirations and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Looking to other places in the world there are frequent examples of conflicts supposedly solved years ago, which recurred. How many expected the orgy of violence visited on the Balkans? Remember also that the Balkan conflict was “solved” by the creation of Yugoslavia after it had helped precipitate the First World War (of course the above is utterly simplified but there is some truth therein). The horrors of Rwanda were unexpected but had causes and (much milder) precedents in the history of that region.

So maybe we have some form of permanent peace and all subsequent quarrels about Northern Ireland will be solved peacefully. However, this sounds a little like the pronouncement of “The End of History” after the end of the Cold War.

Whilst I agree with Mick that at the moment there (thankfully) seems little likelihood that the dissident terrorists will manage to return us to major violence; I am brought back to that elderly couple at Moane’s Cross with whom I started. I sometimes wonder if the terrorist attacks we are seeing now are a little like the IRA border campaign. At the time I am sure the RUC and the government in Stormont were delighted with how relatively easily they defeated that campaign. Little did they know that massively more violence (initiated let us remember by loyalists) was then less than a decade away.

One point repeatedly raised at the west Belfast conference was that the Titanic quarter will shift the city’s economic centre of gravity to the east. But thousands of people from west Belfast once worked on Queen’s Island. They travelled there by tram and they could do so again if Sinn Fein regional development minister Conor Murphy would spend £1.86 million a year on a west Belfast light rail line.

West Belfast is a place and a community apart, not least due to the massive and traumatic population shifts of the late sixties and early seventies. Early attempts by some residents to move their families out into mixed areas, even well beyond the confines of the city ended in some of them being intimidated back into the safer reaches of their original communities. This is often underestimated by outside commentators. If there is a siege mentality, some of it arises from what many in that community would see as good reason.

But Emerson does have a point when he suggested that some of the Troubles-centric development decisions have helped deepen a sense of isolation from the rest of the city. Not least the deep (and widening) trench that is the Westlink:

One obvious and highly profitable solution would be to drop the road into a trench and roof it over, creating hundreds of acres of prime city centre real estate. It might seem perverse to suggest this while the current Westlink widening is still under way but that project ripped up years of recently completed improvements.

Even mundane cities such as Leeds manage to bury their urban motorways, despite having no local ministers with devolved powers. However, burying the Westlink has never been seriously considered throughout all the many opportunities to do so, including the Invest NI conference.

It appears that certain people, both inside and outside west Belfast, are only too happy with its tarmac moat.

He argues that Sinn Fein’s leadership on this issue is at best misguided:

Last week’s ‘cultural conference’ may have helped some republicans to cope with the stench of global capitalism emanating from the Invest NI conference. But few of the party’s constituents will be helped by pretending that a neighbourhood Irish-language quango will be a force for economic growth even if they find this tribal totem more pleasing to contemplate than the difficult decisions that are actually required.

“Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun,” Hermann Goering famously never said. Sinn Fein, conversely, has put down its gun and reached for the word ‘culture’. There is little reason to believe that this strategy will be any more successful than the last one.

This has been going on for 38 years. But in recent years the catalyst for a local resolution may well have emanated from legal actions in England. As the Guardian reported nearly two years ago, the Unions were being threatened with legal action from some of itheir members:

...a small group of no win, no fee lawyers are suing the union over the equal pay deals already struck by union branches in parts of the country, threatening to cost the union millions of pounds in payouts. The union faces more than 900 claims by lawyers contesting the union’s equal pay strategy, which name some of the activists at this week’s conference.

The bill for settlement is £100 million. That’s a lot of money, particularly when you consider that of Northern Ireland’s £18 billion budget only £9/10 billion is marked as ‘discretionary’ expenditure as opposed to ‘mandatory’. If it were delayed for the conclusion of what are commonly interminable Labour Tribunals, some sources believe it could rise by as much as £20 million a year.

Brown has little scope for funding it from Treasury funds since he’s just shelled out £2.3 billion to cover himself on the cut of the 10 pence tax rate. So Robinson is taking all the pain now, just as his own watch on Finance continues. With falling property prices, he may have to sell off a fair amount of the government estate just to bring this low paid group up to scratch.

Despite the spin, it’s unlikely to be a decision he’s taken either lightly, or willingly. 

From the Irish News report [subs for 24 hours]

Legal technicalities meant that Ms McGrath still had to pay E50 bail to get the case thrown out in the circuit court.

It was when she explained that she and her father, who had accompanied her to the hearing, had only sterling that the judge accused her of “showing the typical thickness from Tyrone people”.

“I am well used to it through football growing up in Donegal and different things,” he said.

Ms McGrath’s father went to a nearby bank to withdraw the money.

Earlier Judge McBride ac-cused her of disrespecting the court by shaking her head when told that a different court would have to dismiss the case and she would have to pay for the transfer.

Also from the [earlier] report

The core vote for the parties compared with the last Irish Times poll is: Fianna Fáil, 40 per cent (up eight points); Fine Gael, 20 per cent (down three points); Labour, 11 per cent (up two points); Sinn Féin, 6 per cent (down two points); Greens, 3 per cent (up two points); PDs, 1 per cent (down one point); Independents/ others, 4 per cent (no change); and undecided voters 15 per cent (down two points).

In terms of satisfaction ratings the poll shows the Government has recovered considerable ground since January, with a rise of 13 points to 48 per cent.

This is close to the rating it achieved just before the last election.

Dublin is the weakest region for Fianna Fáil, while the party is strongest in Mr Cowen’s home region of Leinster and in Connacht- Ulster. Fine Gael is also weakest in Dublin but it is the strongest region for Labour, which is now significantly ahead of Sinn Féin and the Green Party in the capital.

When voters were asked whether they believed Bertie Ahern was right to resign from the taoiseach’s office when he did, 70 per cent said he was right while 24 per cent said he was wrong, and 6 per cent had no opinion. Fianna Fáil supporters were more inclined than others to say Mr Ahern was wrong to go but there was a two to one majority among party voters who said he was right to go.

Asked about Mr Ahern’s personal finances and tax liabilities, 65 per cent of people said he had not given the full picture and had further questions to answer (a drop of 13 points in the number holding that view) while 24 per cent said he had given the full picture (up 10 points).

Those questions are continuing..

David Ford had this to say on the Alliance Party website:

“Getting the chance to host this Congress is a massive boost for Belfast. It provides a great opportunity to show influential politicians from around the world that Northern Ireland is thriving.
“This is the first time that Northern Ireland has ever hosted the prestigious Liberal International Congress. This gives us the chance of a lifetime to showcase Northern Ireland to powerbrokers from across the globe. The Alliance Party’s global links within Liberal International are extremely important, and I only wish all other parties in Northern Ireland took such a broad world-view.
“The timing of this event is perfect as former Alliance Leader Lord Alderdice is currently President of the group.”

Whilst Lord Alderdice had this to say:

“I am delighted that Liberal International is coming to Belfast for this Congress. Liberal International is a substantial global network of about 100 political parties from all around the world. Its recent meetings have been in Taipei, Marrakech, Sofia, Manila, Cancun, Dakar, Budapest, Ottawa and Brussels, so you can see that the choice to come to Belfast means that our capital city now figures with some big names on the global conference circuit.
“There will be the whole range of motions on issues of concern from across the world, but we will focus on three main areas - dealing with violent political conflict, movement of people (migration, asylum and human trafficking) and the environment. There will be special sessions and papers on all three issues.”

I presume this conference is why Charles Kennedy was in town for Let’s Talk last night.

And the IMC statement in their most recent report

“We make the same comment on the murder of Denis Donaldson in County Donegal in April 2006 as we have since we first referred to it two years ago: we are unable to attribute responsibility for it. The investigation is still continuing.”

Also in the Irish Times article is a discussion of one of the transactions from the B/T account.

Mr Burke said the £20,000 was withdrawn in cash to pay a builder for work on St Luke’s.

Mr O’Neill asked why it needed to be in cash.

“The old saying is very simple, it’s always nice to see the colour of your money,” Mr Burke said.

He held the money in his safe for two months, he said, but did not engage a builder. He then decided it should be re-lodged.

He had spent some of the original cash, he said, and may have used sterling to replace it, which he kept in his safe to buy bric-a-brac in England for his pub refurbishment business. Sterling was on a par with Irish pounds at the time, he said.

Mr Burke said he put the £20,000 in an envelope and left it to be collected by Mr Collins, who was to lodge it to the B/T account.

However, he did not tell the person he gave it to what the envelope contained.

Mr O’Neill said there was no logical reason to conduct business that way and it seemed extraordinary to him.

“There’s loads of things in life that are extraordinary, but I wouldn’t want to explore them here today, but it wasn’t extraordinary to me,” Mr Burke replied.

And Miriam Lord has a wonderful description of Joe Burke’s involvement [subs req]..

Back in the 80s and 90s they went in search of a better way. It was summed up yesterday by Joe Burke, who repeatedly told the Mahon tribunal that all he ever did was to work for “the benefit and betterment of Fianna Fáil”.

He, like the rest of the tribunal undocumented, wasn’t to know that the climate would change in the new millennium and humble witnesses without their proper documentation would find themselves in trouble.

A deposit account here, a deposit account there, and suddenly, you have deposit accounts and cash coming out of your ears.

Who was counting? Who would ever find out?

Then the tribunals came along, examining banks accounts and discovering that a very personable minister for finance was taking in money far in excess of his earnings when in office. And - the cheek of them - they began to ask why.

Which is how Joe Burke came to be back in the witness box yesterday, attempting to explain how financial transactions connected to Bertie Ahern were conducted, and where the money came from.

Affronted, might be the best way to describe Joe’s reaction.

Joe has dedicated his adult life - when not running his now defunct pub refit business - to furthering the cause of Fianna Fáil and Bertie Ahern. He has been the former taoiseach’s right-hand man for decades.

Joe, now chairman of Dublin Port, played a central role in the running of Ahern’s Dublin Central constituency organisation since the early 1980s. He was in charge of a number of bank accounts and involved in the purchase of St Luke’s, the house that would become the nerve centre of Bertie’s political operation.

..before picking up some detail on another of those transactions. [subs again]

Thirty thousand pounds was withdrawn from the B/T account and “loaned” to Bertie Ahern’s then partner, Celia Larkin, to help her aged aunts buy their rented home after they were threatened with eviction. An admirable gesture, even if it came from an account which was purely for the upkeep of St Luke’s.

No documentation remains. Trustee Joe presumed solicitor Gerry Brennan looked after the interests of the trust by putting the legal documentation in place for the loan. That never happened. “I did not question Mr Brennan’s legal integrity,” Burke told the tribunal.

Unfortunately, Mr Brennan passed away in 1997. Joe never discussed the loan with Ahern, his close friend, even though the money was going to Ahern’s then life partner. “Why would I discuss it?” he asked.

But when the house was purchased, Celia Larkin became the legal owner. She is not an elderly aunt, and the “loan” was only repaid in January of this year when the tribunal began asking questions.

Before I add the final paragraphs from Miriam Lord’s article, here’s a reminder of what the then-Taoiseach previously said

Insisting that no favours had been offered, or received, Mr Ahern said: “I might have appointed somebody but I appointed them because they were friends, not because of anything they had given me.”[added emphasis]

And those final paragraphs

Happily, Joe Burke was able to shed light on one aspect of the B/T account yesterday. Twenty thousand pounds was withdrawn from it in August of 1994, and IR£20,000 went into it in October of 1994. But a problem with damp was bigger than anticipated and he decided to hand the money back. Joe went into St Luke’s with the £20k and handed it to a secretary. He got no receipt.

But these things must be investigated by the tribunal, it was explained by Des O’Neill to an exasperated Joe. He agreed. “It is most important the public are kept informed. They are paying for it, at the end of the day.”

The Galileo Project goes on to record the development of the telescope by Galileo

The news of this new invention spread rapidly through Europe, and the device itself quickly followed. By April 1609 three-powered spyglasses could be bought in spectacle-maker’s shops on the Pont Neuf in Paris, and four months later there were several in Italy. (fig. 4) We know that Thomas Harriot observed the Moon with a six-powered instrument early in August 1609. But it was Galileo who made the instrument famous. He constructed his first three-powered spyglass in June or July 1609, presented an eight-powered instrument to the Venetian Senate in August, and turned a twenty-powered instrument to the heavens in October or November. With this instrument (fig. 5) he observed the Moon, discovered four satellites of Jupiter, and resolved nebular patches into stars. He published Sidereus Nuncius in March 1610.

The fault may lie with an over-enthusiastic interpretation of the perhaps ambiguous BT press release

The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2009 was launched today by its organiser and sponsor BT.  A key feature will be the International Year of Astronomy 2009 which coincides with the 400th anniversary of the development of the telescope by Galileo in 1609 and is being marked by events throughout the world.

The press release then goes on to make an error all of their own.

Due to Galileo’s foresight and advancements with the telescope, scholars and professors went on to discover our planets and solar system, the earth was deemed to be round and, in more modern times, space travel became a reality.  The 400th anniversary will educate and inspire young people worldwide to look at the universe with the same questioning and pioneering spirit as Galileo. [added emphasis]

The concept of a spherical Earth was known to early Greek philosophers, Pythagorus [570 BCE], Plato [427 BCE] and Aristotle [384 BCE] in particular.  With Aristotle providing physical and observational arguments supporting the idea of a spherical Earth.

And Eratosthenes [276 BCE] estimated Earth’s circumference in around 240 BCE.

Not to mention Ptolemy [90 CE].

Then there were the Islamic astronomers who, around 830 BCE CE [edited], calculated the Earth’s circumference to be 24,000 miles.

What actually followed Galileo’s observations is mentioned here - eppur, si muove

Let’s hope the young scientists do better..

“There is not a problem about players travelling on either passport,” he said.

“The issue has been that historically, on the administration of some matches that we have had at international level, there has been confusion in the minds of some Uefa officials about the fact… that some of our players have different passports to each other.

“It is because people don’t understand the differences, or the uniqueness of Northern Ireland, in terms of our passport issue.”

Given that was the IFA position at the outset of the controversy, I’m not sure how Máirtín’s claim stands up to scrutiny now…