Recently, one motorist whose car was failed at a Co Antrim centre told me his story. After watching his own car inexplicably fail a brake test, he returned the day afterwards, without having touched the car - and it passed.

There’s much more to this particular story, which you might be able to read about later this week.

Last year, MoT workers went on strike causing massive backlogs that led to some businesses experiencing severe financial difficulties and causing inconvenience for many drivers and workers.

If consumers are not prepared to be treated shabbily any more, and DVTA staff are being suspended (and we’d all like to know why, I’m sure), then the backlash starts here:

Now that evidence of less than acceptable standards is beginning to emerge, is it not time for the Government to consider privatising vehicle testing centres, as occurs in the rest of the UK?

Drivers deserve a better service.

NOTE: If you write about a bad experience you’ve had with getting your car MoT’d, please refrain from naming the testing centre or staff member, as it could leave Slugger in legal difficulties.

But it’s all very well to condemn this sort of behaviour. After the condemnations, we need action not words.

Firstly - More needs to be done for youngsters in deprived areas.

Those caught in this sort of behaviour should face stiff penalties. Parents need to assume reponsibility for the behaviour of their children.

Have we come to the stage where the police need to provide cover for ambulances and firecrews attending certain areas ? Would that encourage trouble in which case should emergency services be expected to face this sort of behaviour - could any of us blame them if they refused to attend a call to an area where they have been attacked ?
Horribly complicated and I could see a situation where Plastic bullets would end up being used for the first time in years - and personally speaking I would have no sympathy for any young thug injured while attacking anbulance or firecrews.

The Bishop of Derry, Seamus Hegarty, and Fr Alan Hilliard, as well as various FG Tds and an MEP are there at their own expense, hoping to meet politicians and Irish American groups to support the case for administrative changes which will make it easier for the illegals to remain in the USA.

In a month’s time, the immigration legislation is expected to go before US Congress, brought by senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy, which would subject illegal immigrants to fines, but allow them to remain in the US and earn a chance to apply for permanent residency.

Considering the harshness of Ireland’s treatment of those deemed illegal immigrants, this smacks of double standards - and surely couldn’t in any way be linked to the colour and religion of those from Ireland wishing to stay in the USA despite having broken the law ?

Transcript of O’Doherty’s speech:

Moments of sudden and overwhelming change occur in life. We may not expect them yet often after they have happened we can look back and see the progress towards them and wonder how anyone including ourselves could have failed to see in advance that they were inevitable.

Yet we live our lives by pushing aside the contradictions and the difficulties until they can be ignored no longer and then we write our history as a history of contradiction and difficulty rather than as a history of denial.

Divorce lawyers know this better than anybody. They say you never really know somebody until you have divorced them. Estranged partners attest that all the time, that they were taken by surprise. She never seemed to mind me having a drink then one day I came home and all my clothes were on the doorstep.

You live with somebody and you ignore the bad temper and the drinking and the smelly feet, treating them as lapses from basic civil decency, until one day all you can see is the anger and drunkenness and the pollution of your bed. The offensive one may be genuinely surprised that you have flipped but there is no talking you out of it this time. What enrages you now is not last night’s bad behaviour but a lifetime of bad behaviour and the marriage is over.

There is nothing more pathetic than those who plead for the offender, as if there has only been one offence, except perhaps those who insist on the innocence of the offender when it is clear that the offence was entirely in character and was only going to be repeated again if forgiven again.

That is where we are now with the Provisional movement. The flip has happened and it cannot be reversed and those who conduct their politics on the basis of the thinking that preceded the flip will be annihilated.

Sinn Fein in January urging Bertie Ahern to get back into talks to see if that one little hurdle could be resolved - the DUP’s unreasonable demand for a humiliating photograph of weapons decommissioning - was as pathetic as the drunken husband going back to the house next day, with his clothes in bin bags, to reassure his wife that he had come home late the night before because he was out buying her a birthday present.

The rest of us look back on all the efforts to get Sinn Fein into a political deal and feel simply that we have been humiliated, that we were just too blind to see the obvious, that they never wanted a deal. And that fresh conviction accords so well with the facts as we know them that we could not be talked out of it. The Northern Bank robbery did not set Sinn Fein back just one round of the negotiating process. There is no conceivable possibility that they could acknowledge it, apologise for it and pick up where they left off before it. What has been damaged, indeed convincingly refuted, is their entire credibility as serious players in a quest for democratic resolution.

That is not to say that others will not try to make it work. Tony Blair is very much a schemer out of the same mould as Gerry Adams and probably understands Gerry Adams a lot better than you or I do. He may well try, like some deft and charming poker player, to rope us back into another round and to assure us that he will protect us from the cheater. Be extremely careful of that, because those who go into another game may lose the next game and achieve nothing but taking the blame on themselves for the next breakdown.

Bertie Ahern seriously believed last December that the DUP’s requirement of a photographing of decommissioning was the only obstacle to the completion of a deal. One cannot be overcautious of someone as naive as that.

1What went wrong?

What went wrong was that the peace process was regarded as a project outside the rules of ordinary politics. It was regarded as a quasi religious project. People who knew better encouraged us to believe that a spiritual transformation was occurring inside Northern Ireland and that people who had been brutal and manipulative leaders of ethnic cults and death squads were undergoing a change of heart.

Do you remember the Northern Ireland office ads: a man of 50 comes out of prison, reflecting on his own paramilitary past to see that his own son has become a killer too. I’m a lot like you, Dad.

At the time, I thought those ads were directed at the leaders of the paramilitary organisations themselves to try and coax them to see that they faced the tragedy of their own children being condemned to reliving the troubles. Now I realise that those ads were aimed at all of us, as all ads are, to coax us into believing that a change of heart had come over the paramilitary leaders and that they were now ready to settle terms for the sake of a pipe and slippers and the odd night in the pub with their sons.

The idea that the peace process might be a spiritual event was imported from South Africa. South Africa had a leader who was revered worldwide as a man of superior conscience. Without scrutinising the details of their peace process, we could see that the massive civil war we had anticipated through the Eighties had been miraculously averted in the Nineties. Well that was in keeping with the spirit of the times. Walls had come down all over Europe. Soviet Russia had been opened up by an imaginative leader that Mrs Thatcher could do business with. We must not blame ourselves now the for agreeing to believe that a global miracle was occurring and that we were part of it, though you would think that the Balkans and Rwanda would have reminded us that the pendulum swings the other way too.

The peace package was sold to us by politicians pretending to be saints and the chief of these were Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mo Mowlam and Gerry Adams.

Much of the inspiration for this approach came from South Africa. I remember an introduction to a South African diplomat by the Northern Ireland office. The South African explained to us that a major breakthrough had occurred during peace talks there when one of the delegates travelling to the venue in his helicopter diverted to help an injured child, the child of a delegate on the other side.

The diplomat told me: when our people saw that their people loved children too it made a big difference to our perspective of them.

This patronises and infantilises people here and their political differences. We should have laughed at those who told us that unionism and republicanism would find common ground through personal relationships. No one argues that Tony Blair and Michael Howard would learn to moderate their language at Question Time if they got to know each other’s wives and children.

It also played into the hands of those political leaders who wanted to avert discussion of the issues which divided them from their enemies. Gerry Adams, at staged rallies on the Falls Road, personally lifted small children onto the stage to advertise himself as a decent and gentle human being. It was all beside the point. Who doubted that the man was capable of ordinary human civility? That was not in question. But if children got blown to smithereens in IRA operations sanctioned by him he seemed well able to retain his composure and resolve.

Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein routinely used language which referred to South Africa and implied that he was the Mandela figure of Northern Ireland and that all would be well if he only had a de Klerke settle final terms with.

Much of the media bought this.

Then, God help us, we had Mo Mowlam.

The woman was a complete nincompoop.

Mo was the apostle of anti politics. She was also the glove puppet of Tony Blair. It was clear at times of intense negotiation that she was extraneous. Her function had been to treat us like children and to set aside all consideration of real political issues. Through Mo, our conflict would be presented to Britain and the wider world as essentially infantile. The problem was not that we had impassioned and committed political leaders asserting incompatible communal positions; it was that we just didn’t know each other well enough to get along. This was a variant of a very old idea about the Irish, that they are immature and driven too much by their passions. Those who believe this and are not Irish themselves are enabled to feel very good about themselves in contrast with us. Those who are Irish and believe this must prefer to be pampered than to be treated as adults. And those who recognised the strategy and saw that truculence would be indefinitely indulged, and who saw themselves as outsmarting the imperialist, had a point.

Even last week I was on a radio programme arguing with another journalist who thought that one of the great contributions to peacemaking in Northern Ireland had been the publishing of joint editorials by the News Letter and the Irish News. This was of course entirely inconsequential and pure propaganda. It was propaganda for the myth that all we needed was a change of heart and that a change of heart was already underway. We were being coaxed out of thinking politically. The one thing we must never lose sight of: politics! Politics!

For some the peace process was a means of taking us out of stagnant politics into no politics.

The presumption of their thinking was that we are not fit for a political engagement here. Those who have most affected to be concerned for our welfare have been among those most patronising of us and most persuaded in themselves that we are not ready for the high risks of a functioning democracy.

There are people in government positions and in diplomatic positions who think that Northern Ireland has yet to evolve politically into the maturity of responsible civic commitment. Before that, if we are to go through a phase of corrupt politics, polluted by gunplay and espionage, well sure that’s normal, they tell themselves. Belfast in the 21st century will be like Boston in 19th, with its ward bosses, its bribery, occasional violent pruning and its crime links. And out of this will emerge the power blocs which will determine the political shape of future decades as the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys emerged out of the hustling, the dealing, the killings of the 19th century in Boston.

Be aware that that political environment is what many of those who say they are nurturing us towards peace think is all we are fit for.

And those who would seek to give us that kind of politics are very happy to indulge the patronising fantasies of those who think it is all we are fit for. What else is going on when Sinn Fein says that it must demur on the prospect of entering government, taking ministerial seats, assuming responsibility for devolved policing powers and making important decisions for the future of the electorate because those lot over there, yes themuns, insist on a photograph of decommissioning procedures which have already been agreed?

People believe that that was a legitimate reason for scuppering devolution because they believe we are children here and that we don’t yet understand how politics functions in the real world. They believe that that was the real reason for the collapse of talks because they cannot contemplate the possibility that they are simply being outmaneuvered, for goals they can barely conceive of, by the very people they have been presuming to patiently educate.

Their presumption of our political immaturity is the present-day equivalent of their long held assumption that we are passionate, unreasoning and—a late 20th century addition this—quaint.

It has come to be thought of as a stinging insult to tell a party here that it is electioneering and politicking with the peace process. What, in under God, is a political party for if not to fight elections and play politics? Yet this is now regarded as low motivation in the context of the peace process. It seems only one party is allowed, by the rules of peace processing, to fight for votes, and that is Sinn Fein.

When Bertie Ahern accuses Gerry Adams of bad faith in sanctioning a bank robbery during a talks process, Gerry Adams has one ready rebuke at hand that will shut him up: you are turning this into party politics because you are afraid of our vote: as if he wasn’t doing exactly the same thing himself. But can Bertie accuse Gerry of electioneering on the back of the peace process? No because the rise of Sinn Fein is provided for within the process itself. There are few who would not regard it as a setback to the peace process if the Sinn Fein vote fell and their supposed journey from violence to politics was seen to be unproductive for them.

We are living in a changed political context. That change came with the shock of disillusionment felt after the robbery of the Northern Bank. Now most of the media is concentrating on the McCartney sisters and their campaign for justice but that campaign has been relatively successful in attracting media attention and political sympathy because of the changed context since the bank robbery.

There are two myths which are accompanying much of the journalism about the McCartney sisters’ campaign. The first of these is that the IRA has changed from being a principled defender of the Catholic community into an organisation more barbarous and less politically astute.

The second myth, related to this, is that the Catholics of Short Strand live in perpetual danger of being overwhelmed by tens of thousands of Protestants living in East Belfast.

These myths cushion the shock of the changed context for people like those who read the Guardian for guidance on Northern Ireland. These myths reassure people that they were not wrong to trust in Gerry Adams and the IRA through the decade since the first ceasefire. They allow people to imagine that, had Robert McCartney been disembowelled seven years ago that would have scuppered the Good Friday Agreement.

It would not have damaged the Agreement at all.

The McCartney sisters would have gone up to Stormont or Hillsborough and Mo Mowlam would have lent them a hanky to dry their eyes with and gone back inside to discuss the way forward with Martin McGuinness. Do you think it is crass to suggest this?

Three months after the Good Friday Agreement, in circumstances remarkably similar to those in which Robert McCartney died, an IRA man who had quarrelled with Andrew Kearney sent a squad to his home in a block of flats on the New Lodge Road. They shot him in the legs and left him to bleed to death, ripping out the phone so that help could not be summoned and jamming the lift so that no one could get to him.

Maureen Kearney, Andrew’s mother, was a Republican from Twinbrook. She picketed the talks at Stormont in 1999, when Blair told us there had been a seismic shift in IRA attitudes, and Tony Blair drove past her, Bertie Ahern drove past her, no one paid a blind bit of notice.

Why the McCartneys and not the Kearneys? Because the entire political climate is different now. When Maureen Kearney sought justice for her son, the broad political consensus was that the best way to put an end to violence was to complete the political process. By the time the McCartneys were calling for justice, all faith in that project had virtually collapsed.

Charlie Bennett. Trussed and shot in the head. In July 1999, on the eve of a review of the agreement chaired by Senator George Mitchell. Mo told us that to the IRA ceasefire had been breached but not broken.

Consider the broader implications of the changed context.

One is that the IRA is seriously challenged to go away. It is responding to that challenge with increasing bullishness. It can only go so much further in asserting its legitimacy and its right to kill who it pleases before it will have to end the ceasefire.

Maybe that bullishness will cost Sinn Fein votes.

Consider the implications if it does not. If Sinn Fein ascertains that it does not need to get rid of the IRA in order to thrive electorally, it will never get rid of the IRA. It will be free to argue that the IRA itself has a mandate and that argument will be more plausible the more visible the IRA has been in the run-up to the election.

Remember 1996. The IRA ended its ceasefire in February and went on to fight four elections: to the Forum, in Westminster, local government and the Dail and it raised its vote in all four. That enabled Republicans to argue with their colleagues that the IRA was not an electoral liability and for all we know it was to test this very question that the ceasefire was suspended and not for the much less plausible myth presented at the time, that John Major had ditched the Mitchell principles, which he hadn’t.

Our peace and welfare may depend on Sinn Fein suffering a reversal in the coming elections.

If the Catholic majority vote for Sinn Fein, knowing that the IRA is in bullish form, that will be taken as an expression of a lack of civic responsibility on the part of that community. They will have voted for spy rings and robbery.

What brought the Catholic community into assertive protest politics was their sense of being alienated within Northern Ireland. Brookeborough had asked if it was wise to have one about the place. Others will be asking the same question now in a new environment of suspicion and fear.

There is another implication of the recent political collapse which would be exacerbated by an increased Sinn Fein vote. Catholics came into political discussion in Northern Ireland from a position of disadvantage and moral authority. As the people who had been discriminated against they were the ones with the prior claim to have the political setup adjusted to their needs.

If the majority of Catholics vote for Sinn Fein—that party having scuppered every political prospect available to it in defence of the IRA’s right to carry on—where then will be the moral authority of a disadvantaged people?

When it came to it, even Ian Paisley was ready to make a deal that would put IRA leaders into government. It was Republicans who were found wanting and if their failure is endorsed by the electorate, then it will never again be possible for nationalism to refer to its history of disadvantage and discrimination in arguing for political change.

The negotiations between Nationalism and Unionism will be weighted as a simple contest of arguments, a contest of ideas not inherent principles or ancient grievances.

I don’t think for a moment that this reality has sunk in with either Sinn Fein or the SDLP. In a divided society both sides harangue each other. The SDLP and Sinn Fein routinely attacked the Unionists and the DUP for their obstructive approach to the Agreement. But it would be a cavalier reading of our recent history that would say that Republicans were ready and Unionists were not.

Now, where does that leave those of us want to defend the middle ground?

It leaves us better positioned to say that the case is no longer moral or historical but rational and political.

The Alliance party is not going to take power in Northern Ireland. I suspect you already know that.

No one is going to take power in Northern Ireland. The credibility of Sinn Fein has been squandered. Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair would, no doubt, like to take Gerry Adams by the hand into a new round of talks. There is no point.

The SDLP insisted that will not take part in any executive which is not inclusive. It announces therefore that a vote for themselves translates into a vote for lying, scheming, murdering Sinners in office. Mark Durkan tells his colleagues that to negotiate an executive without Sinn Fein would be political suicide. But none of them has seen fit to persuade him emphatically that it will simply be impossible to negotiate an executive with Sinn Fein. Seven years ago I imagined that the middle ground would be secured by the SDLP and Ulster Unionists working together. They hadn’t the bottle for it. Today there is only one middle ground party of any importance and that is yourselves.

None of you will ever be ministers in Stormont but neither will any one else from a local party.

In this new political context in which society is polarising and parties that we could once invest hope in are falling apart, it will not be by electoral office that people of political imagination will influence others. It will be by argument.

The Stepford Sinners will go on reciting their robotic party lines and those who believe them will do so by choice motivated by nothing other than sectarian solidarity.

The DUP will be insufferably smug, having been let off the hook. In private they may reflect on how much damage they would have sustained had they blundered into an agreement with Sinn Fein and the bank robbery had then gone ahead. They will not risk that again.

And you?

You will have to be a vehementally anti sectarian. You will have to assert the primacy of political thinking in the political world. Never again should we be asked to suspend our political faculties by the likes of Mo Mowlam and Tony Blair and Gerry Adams and to put our faith in some kind of spiritual transformation instead.

But after such a long drain on our reason this society will need to be educated in politics and responsibility.

Look around you. If these are the only people fit to speak sanely, and with untarnished credibility in a political wasteland, then so be it.

Social Development Minister John Spellar said:

The current framework for the regulation of charities in Northern Ireland does not provide for any form of local registration or enforcement. My Department is proposing that new Northern Ireland charities legislation should be brought forward to introduce an integrated system of registration and regulation (including control of charitable fund-raising) as well as supervision and support of registered charities.

The aim of these proposed changes will be to provide a structure and process through which charities can demonstrate their contribution to society, the public can be assured regarding how charities are spending any donations and government can assist in the better governance of the charity sector.

In its third report, the IMC stated:

We have been struck by the limited controls over charities in Northern Ireland. We have heard frequent allegations that this has facilitated the activities of paramilitary groups by making possible the illicit use of money and the diversion of funds obtained from crime.

It is difficult to know whether and to what extent such a problem exists, either generally or in relation to paramilitary groups. However, reasonable suspicion is aroused by the fact that about two years ago of over 3,500 charities which had approached the Inland Revenue from the Belfast area, only 40% had subsequently made gift aid or other tax claims. We are anxious not to draw specific conclusions from these figures, especially because we know that the charitable sector in Northern Ireland is not identical to that elsewhere. Nevertheless, the low follow-up rate means that 60% had a response from the Inland Revenue in the form of a letter bearing a reference number and accompanying material and had then done no other charitable business involving tax. In some cases this letter could be used for the purposes of passing off an organisation as a new charity, for example in opening a bank account. There is no doubt a natural rate of attrition, when people hope to start new charitable work but fail to do so, or they do so without wanting to claim tax relief. The figure of 60% is nevertheless high. It tends to lend credence to the view a number hold that charitable status is abused by some, and that it may be a channel for the misuse of paramilitary funds.
...
We welcome the fact that the British Government is undertaking a review of the control of charities in Northern Ireland which encompasses the question of the establishment of arrangements comparable to those elsewhere in the UK.
We are sure that stronger controls should be established, in the interests of ensuring that paramilitary funds cannot be illicitly diverted, including possibly to political parties. Charities in the South are also unregulated. The Irish Government has undertaken comprehensively to reform the law and following extensive public consultation legislation is being prepared. The two jurisdictions are in communication about their respective proposals. Again we welcome this. We would request the two Governments to keep us advised on their progress in this area.

(PS: The IMC website could do with some work. A proper search facility would be good for start, if anyone’s listening.)

Follow the link to vote yes or no www.irwinsbakery.com/stpatricksdayoff
and to validate the vote one ends up having to supply one’s name and address to a bakery.

This is classified as “News”.

I call it sexist exploitative advertising.

And although I’m not terribly religious I think our national Saint deserves better treatment than a naff article featuring a scantily clad woman in a paper providing back-door advertising for a ‘celebrity chef’ and a bakery .

Off Soapbox.

McIntyre writes:

Throughout the peace process a binding rule was that of creative ambiguity. There was an institutional acknowledgement that the IRA, although on ceasefire, would be permitted to engage in a little ‘internal housekeeping’. The governments would look the other way when a mutilation was inflicted, a dissident republican murdered, kidnapped or disappeared. The unwritten agreement was explained to IRA members by their leaders. A policy of ‘no claim no blame’ would apply to all IRA operations; if arrested, the one thing volunteers must not do is admit that they were on ‘IRA business’.

There’s a mixture of anger, frustration and disillusionment in Liam Clarke’s editorial in the Sunday Times. In response to the Taoiseach’s remarks in the Dail about how Ahern and other parties had worked to bring Sinn Fein into the process, Clarke wrote that it “was like Dr Frankenstein’s recounting of his generosity to the monster he could no longer control”.

Clarke argues that there is a republican veto hanging over the entire process:

Sinn Fein has also managed to get its ideas accepted. It has made such a shibboleth of “inclusivity” that a devolved government in Northern Ireland seems to be unthinkable without its involvement. “Exclusion”, even in the wake of robberies and shootings, is such a dirty word that the SDLP dare not form a coalition without Sinn Fein.

The result is that all parties will, unless the SDLP has a change of heart, be excluded from taking part in a power-sharing executive and the Northern Ireland assembly may be wound up. The point is that it is not as much of a punishment for Sinn Fein as the other parties.

Tony Blair has hinted that Sinn Fein could be sidelined in “another way forward”, as did the Secretary of State. Are they serious?

In Paul Murphy’s response to Seamus Mallon in Westminster, he said:

[Mallon] makes a point about the negotiation process, and perhaps it is time to take on a different type of negotiation. That will result largely from my discussions in the weeks ahead with political parties.

Apparently rejecting voluntary coalition on the basis that there weren’t enough volunteers (ie the SDLP), Murphy said: “Therefore, there must be other ways. The point is also to end criminality so that we have a wholesome and uncorrupted politics in Northern Ireland.”

And when Peter Robinson asked him “Why is democracy in Northern Ireland to be held back because of gunmen and gangsters? Surely the time has come to make it very clear that politics moves on, and moves on without them”, Murphy replied “It may have to be that”.

Yet despite the warnings to Sinn Fein, the problem for the British Government is that it has no credibility when it adopts a tough line with Sinn Fein. Sanctions can be sidestepped nicely until the next IMC report (which will be brought forward), and even if SF were to be excluded from negotiations for a period, we end up back where we started. Blair’s problem, as someone said recently, is that he has drawn so many lines in the sand, he’s run out of beach. The Government might demand clarity, but it is so addicted to process and spin that it cannot take the lead.

Writing in Parliamentary Brief, Professor of Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast, Paul Bew raises some fundamental yet unanswered questions from the ‘Comprehensive Agreement’ that will no doubt crop up again when crisis threatens.

What was the IRA’s ‘new mode’ to be? The IRA’s statement of December 9 talked of continuing ‘activities’. What exactly were these to be? What was the status of the IRA’s training manual, the Green Book? Why in neither this document nor any other document bearing on the Comprehensive Agreement is mention not made of criminal activities like money laundering and cross border smuggling? Why did the governments not explicitly ask the IRA to respect property rights?

If ambiguity is out, acts of completion due and lines in the sand drawn and crossed, these sorts of questions should have been dealt with long before publishing the ‘Comprehensive Agreement’. They mirror unwanted questions that the Northern Bank heist forced the governments to face - what actually constitutes paramilitary and criminal activity; who are the legal authorities on the island and who defines the rule of law?

That they haven’t is an acknowledgement that the Government has failed to persuade Sinn Fein to accept the need for ‘straight talking’, which former Secretary of State John Reid demanded after Stormontgate. When he said you couldn’t blame anyone for believing republicans “are trying to ride two horses” he didn’t say he was prepared to accept the situation himself. If Blair’s ‘acts of completion’ speech is to mean anything, it means he has to ask unavoidable questions about fundmental republican beliefs and intentions.

The notion of ridding the process of the doublespeak contained within ‘creative ambiguity’ that inevitably leads to crisis is not a new one. A breakdown of communication when one party derives a radically different interpretation of any agreement from the others leads to further breakdowns in relations between parties, in confidence and in trust.

It is this deliberate openness of interpretation in what the Governments put on paper that gives everyone ‘wriggle room’ for when things go wrong. If the process is to remain inclusive, the Governments will always provide fast-tracked forgiveness, space or cover to those who provide the greatest threat to stability. The British believe this to be the IRA, and since Blair is ultimately more concerned about bombs going off in London than anything else, unionists have perceived inclusion as a policy of appeasement. It might well be a lesson the UDA have learned too.

If parties get themselves onto a hook, such as decommissioning, you can depend on the governments to dig them out of the hole. Keeping everyone on board has become a greater priority than adhering to democratic standards. As it is often electorally advantageous for parties to stall on a deal until after elections, it means the Governments expend most of their efforts on a very narrow focus on the ‘problem parties’, excluding moderates, in the intervening period.

Because those who create obstacles must be kept on board, the Government must always give a little, but can take little in return. This creates the impression that intransigence is rewarded, and indeed it often is at the polls. But the Government has no choice but to keep returning to the table with more carrots and, when parties have a larger mandate, less stick. Currently, the DUP and Sinn Fein have the ability to switch the process on and off like a light bulb.

The semantic somersaults the language used in ‘agreements’ permits, leads to such drastically different readings that you could reasonably conclude that no agreement had actually been reached. Until common standards, definitions and interpretations are nailed down and agreed, participants in future talks may as well be speaking two different languages. Sadly, clarification between governments and parties of aspects of any deal is kept secret.

The governments’ desire is to keep the process moving, because stalling creates a vacuum where anything might happen. That can suit both unionists and republicans alike, since they can simply stall on any particular issue until they gain some concessions. Issues that threaten to create permanent obstacles are farmed out to commissions so they can be dealt with down the line.

However, the peace train appears to be running out of track.

The two governments are as culpable as any of the parties about using get-out clauses or loopholes. ‘Creative ambiguity’ is what allows the Irish Government to lead us to believe the killers of Garda McCabe would remain in prison, while considering their release as part of the political deal last year. It’s what allows paramilitaries to shoot people within their own communities, because the Government doesn’t consider it a ceasefire breach.

Writing in the Enquirer in March 2003, William A. Hazleton, a former senior fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University, summarised:

[T]he price of preserving the peace process was “constructive ambiguity” in what the Agreement meant and what it required. This allowed incompatible objectives to be accommodated, with nationalists and republicans seeing the Agreement as a step toward a united Ireland and unionists as securing Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. Similarly, troublesome issues, like IRA decommissioning, were left deliberately vague to keep the process moving ahead.

The Agreement also left the North’s sectarian divisions in place, if not strengthened. This has fueled uncertainty and distrust, particularly among working-class Protestants and Catholics, which periodically ignites at any number of flash points. Not surprisingly, then, the Agreement’s implementation has become yet another battleground for communal aspirations cloaked in insistent demands of what was promised and to whom.

Pat Leahy detects a shift in attitudes down south too. After the Taoiseach’s admission that “everything possible” was done to bring Sinn Fein “into the centre by ignoring all kinds of things”, he now faces a dilemma. He supports a coalition government in the north that must involve a party he believes is associated with criminality, when he has specifically ruled it out in the Dail.

Of course, the Dail has a stable voluntary coalition government, and therefore has the luxury of being able to survive a crisis of trust and confidence beween parties.

Ahern opposes sanctions against Sinn Fein, and the Department of Foreign affairs has tried to smooth over any issues concerning Washington visas for St Patrick’s Day, so unionists may see his demand for a clear statement from the IRA on ending illegal activity as lacking bite.

The Irish Foreign Minister wrote:

There remains an ambiguity about whether the full range of activities described in paragraph 13 [of the Joint Declaration] has been dealt with. Unless this aspect of the issue is addressed to the satisfaction of everyone, the prospect of inclusive partnership government being restored is unlikely to be translated into reality.

That wasn’t Minister Dermot Ahern speaking last month. It was Brian Cowen in May 2003. History is repeating, and patterns are emerging.

The Cruiser reckons that American influence may play a part in a hardening the Irish line against Sinn Fein, making the invitation list of northern politicos to the White House this St Paddy’s Day potentially interesting reading - assuming it isn’t blank.

Leahy writes in the Sunday Business Post:

Politics is rarely about attractive choices - it’s often about the least unpalatable choice. Previously, the governments judged that fudging the violence and decommissioning issue was an acceptable price to pay in the short-term.

But as Sinn Fein’s support rises and punishment beatings and robberies continue - and, crucially, the IRA campaign recedes into memory - that judgment is being reviewed.

With despondency creeping into the process, Paul Bew writes of it:

That project has taken a very big hit, following on from other very big hits in 2003, and there is no getting away from that grim reality. Northern Ireland faces a political Dark Age. There is but one very slim hope of avoiding a dangerous polarisation of the two communities: a new coalition of the decent based on the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP in the North and mainstream unionist and nationalist opinion on an all-Ireland basis.

The elements of agreement are clear: the principle of consent, exclusion of Sinn Fein from government while the IRA retains its ‘capacity’ to rob banks, the need for power-sharing and north south cooperation. The SDLP has already advanced interesting if imperfect ideas in this area. It is a pivotal moment but it won’t come to anything unless the Irish government throws its weight behind constitutional nationalism in the North in a way that it has not been doing for at least two years.

Former UDA member (now target) Davy Adams suggests that one legacy of our violent past may be our moral desensitisation.

Adams writes that:

[T]he prolonged period of violent upheaval in Northern Ireland has resulted in legal, democratic and even moral points of reference having shifted, disappeared or been distorted to such an extent that notions of legality or right and wrong are now something - for the elites at least - which can be made up as you go along.

Normality can, in simple terms, be defined as that which happens on a regular basis, and so decades of violence and criminality have, to a frightening degree, come to be accepted as the norm.

In a pessimistic article, Adams adds:

In order to end the conflict, we gambled - rightly, I believe - on opening up the political mainstream, including executive office, to those who were formerly excluded because of their links to paramilitary organisations. Up to this point, at least, the gamble has failed.

Where once they had only paramilitary power, now, with feet firmly planted in both camps, they have substantial political clout as well. Instead of creating the inclusive democracy we had hoped for, we are now closer to having built a mafia state. In future years, Northern Ireland may be retrieved, but at the moment even the most optimistic among us are struggling to find a bright spot on the horizon.

One of the by-products of an inclusive approach means talks proceed at the pace of the slowest. Effectively, the two largest parties hold vetoes over the advance of the process, meaning the ‘inclusive’ talks are dictated by the agendas of just the two largest parties. Since they have to agree in the first instance, other parties are marginalised until a deal is practically on the table. This in turn puts pressure on the other parties to sign up, since no-one wants to be blamed for scuppering a peace deal.

Achieving agreement acceptable to all means compromise, and where issues cannot be resolved, that means creating fudge in order to get parties to sign up to a quick-fix, short-term plan to keep things going for another while. There is little consideration given to how the matter will be tackled when it comes back to haunt politicians.

As McIntyre says:

At first glance it would appear that the dishonesty which lubricated the peace process has now clogged it up. The response to the robbery has dwarfed anything previously hurled Sinn Fein’s way. Yet, the party only has to sit it out and its fortunes will turn around. The British general election will take place this year. A fresh approach will be taken with the peace process. The Irish leader, Bertie Ahern, will lick his wounds caused by what he feels is a lying Sinn Fein leadership. Tony Blair will behave as Tony Blur. Things will be cobbled together again.

For the governing class, getting rid of the IRA is what the peace process is about. Their engagement in it will stop once the IRA goes. For Sinn Fein that moment has to be postponed for as long as possible. Without the piper of the IRA there are no tunes to be called.

Clifford Smyth asks the question unionists are now pondering:

At the heart of the ‘peace process’ remains the unanswered question; is Sinn Fein on a journey towards democracy, or have these contemporary exponents of the republican tradition taken the nineteenth century Irish nationalist Charles Parnell’s cynical advice: to engage in constitutional politics while maintaining a criminal organisation outside the law?

I’ve no sound to, so can’t check this suggested link, but it should be OK to listen to.

“My equally demonic sister has a whole collection of rodents dressed in holiday clothes that she puts up around her house. There’s a mouse Santa Claus and mouse Mrs. Claus and mice elves and a miniature Christmas village with mice, and some rat Cinderella coachmen in pink waistcoats and rats in red velvet vests and more rats, wearing frilly red-and-white nightshirts and nightcaps and holding little candles, leading you up the steps to bed. It’s beyond creepy. I keep fretting that it’s going to be like “Willard” meets “The Nutcracker,” where they come alive and eat her like a Christmas pudding.”

Why fret ? She deserves it!