Saturday, October 20, 2007
“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal..”
If anyone was thinking that the weekend would see a calming of the fractious Executive they can think again. The Northern Ireland Finance minister, the DUP’s Peter Robinson, has added to the comments made on Thursday by the Deputy First Minister, SF’s Martin McGuinness, and accused the Social Development minister, the SDLP’s Margaret Ritchie, of lying about passing on the legal advice. As with the earlier comments, close attention may be required to the detail of what is being said. Adds More of that advice here.
Mr Robinson deepened divisions today accusing Ms Ritchie of having lied about passing him the legal advice she obtained prior to making her decision to cut funding.
He quoted Ms Ritchie of stating on BBC TV: “I am very clear that I agreed and the Executive agreed on Monday night of last week that I was to obtain legal advice and share it with the First and Deputy First Minister and also the Finance Minister.
“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal, I supplied it to those three individuals.”
But firing his fresh broadside, Mr Robinson said: “This is a lie. Firstly no legal advice was handed over to be me before it was announced on Monday that the DSD minister was making statement to the Assembly. I first heard she was making a statement through the press.”
He said that on hearing she was making a statement he sent her a letter asking for the legal advice she had undertaken to supply, and claimed “some” pieces of the advice was passed to his office.
Mr Robinson said the dates on the documentation showed Ms Ritchie had been holding some of the advice for a week without passing it on.
I’d suggest that the “some of the advice” being referred to would be the internal advice… which would make the following line pivotal to the accusation.
“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal, I supplied it to those three individuals.” [added emphasis]
Also worth noting is the BBC report’s final line on those contested minutes
This, [Mr Robinson] says, is regardless of last week’s controversy over the minutes of an executive meeting on the matter.
Pete Baker @ 04:37 PM
Zilch in me Sunday paper here today (and I mean not a single word) - seems strange given possible implications on peace process and government structure.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 11:49 AMIf you are in Free State Dewi then no real suprise there.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 12:56 PMRory @ 10:26 AM:
You are, of course, correct. Actually, on mature reflection it was neither: I think it was Frank Chapple of the EEPTU (which in view of the Union’s factionalism makes the story more likely and more pointed.)
What remains inexplicable is that I must have been sleep-blogging at half-five this morning. I certainly don’t remember it.
Nevin @ 01:33 PM:
Yeah. I went through the statement on Robinson’s website, too. I didn’t see what it greatly added to the sum of human knowledge. And, of course, it’s his edited highlights.
I like your back-tracking on the tos-and-fros of the SF/SDLP continuing bun-fight. But, in short, which of the two parties is most under pressure? Which has most to lose?
Ritchie has (and I’m open to correction here) been one the stars of the show. She took the Welfare Reform Bill through (the first piece of legislation to go through the Assembly?). That wasn’t how it was intended to be: the UUP and the SDLP were to be the family pets, indulged with the scraps from the main players’ table. Inevitably, there’s got to be a touch of jealousy among those highly-strung egos.
Now I detect (from Henry McDonald in today’s Observer—http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2196061,00.html ) that David Ford is hardening up:
If she is blocked by other ministers around the table at the Northern Ireland Executive, then there is no point in continuing in government in those circumstances…
You can’t surely sit around a table with people who are trying to prevent you from doing your job. If they do that, the only alternative is to resign and join a new opposition that can give the people of Northern Ireland a real choice at the next election.
I’ve probably seen that previously; but I had not realised how make-or-break it is.It also crossed my mind that I do not grasp why Robinson behaved the way he did. The usual tactic would be to allow Ritchie her moment of limelight, then to reverse the decision in after-hours trading (where he obviously had the votes). That would have left Ritchie to make the choice:
accept the stuffing and carry through the re-affirmed policy (which neatly and painfully establishes the pecking order)
or
resign on a matter of principle.
Cue Clair Short as an example.So either Robinson was suffering a severe dose of the machos or he badly miscalculated.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 01:05 PMThanks for the cue, Malcolm, but I think I merely restated what I have believed for a long time: a Government in which people participate on the basis of the lucky dip of the d’Hondt formula without any agreement on a programme for government is an example of poor governance.
As said elsewhere, Stephen Farry and I told the Assembly Review Committee on Tuesday morning that Alliance believes that Executive collective responsibility was a prerequisite for the effective devolution of Justice.
We just didn’t realise this would be proven so conclusively within a few hours.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 03:17 PMdewi
Very little coverage of it in Northern Ireland’s Sunday’s either. Just the ocassional comment piece but little or nothing in the way of large-scale reportage and certainly no editorial comment. Which is amazing when you think about it.I think the Sunday World managed not to refer to the story at all. It just has a full front-page spread rehashing the “massive” move that Brigadier Jackie is going to make on Remembrance Sunday. He’s going to change the name of the UDA to the UDE apparently and hand out ties at a £5 a shot to the members just to prove it. He must have stood the UFF down about a dozen times now, if the SW is anything to go by. Some comfort to know the UDA is not going to be selling drugs, prostituting women, threatening beating and shooting locals or extorting money from business people any more, it’ll be the UDE. I wonder if it was the UDE that tarred and feathered the man in Finaghy the other week.
Makes you wonder how much input there is by government into editorial direction in NI’s Sunday papers and in the media here in general.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 03:41 PM“Dubliner, is there any hope in future of you leaving florid fantasies of “rancid shit and piss” to the love letters of James and Nora Joyce? ” - susan
Wasn’t that shite and onions?
“It seems both of the largest political parties had something to gain from Ritchie rubber-stamping the funding.” - susanWhat could they have gained? Let’s look at the context. There is a fundamental principle of justice that criminals should not be allowed to profit from criminal acts. As the DUP were fond of pointing out before it served their interests not to point it out, this was breached by bringing PSF into the political process, effectively rewarding them with the political power that they committed criminal acts to achieve. PSF tried to counteract concerns about the violation of this principle by claiming that their crimes were not criminal acts but were, in fact, political acts; and, ergo, the principle should not be applied to the purpose of preventing them from being duly rewarded. PSF’s supporters and voters are happy to play along with this obfuscation, despite a plethora of inconvenient instances of continuing crimimal acts that can no longer be disguised as political acts and, ergo, are either ignored, denied, or dismissed as the actions of rogue elements. That, however, is not the obfuscation that the DUP played along with: they always said that PSF was a criminal organisation but that it is no longer a criminal organisation because certain ‘tests’ of non-criminality were met to their satisfaction. This was the DUP’s workaround for how that fundamental principle might be violated without being seen to be violated, thereby allowing them to apply the principle to condemn criminal acts and organisations without being open to a charge of blatant hypocrisy and to a charge of having de facto voided that fundamental principle by sharing power with a criminal organisation - indeed, with one of the most ruthless, murderous, and wealthiest criminal organisations in Europe, no less.
So, the same principle is again violated - and its systematic violation was the basis of the ‘peace process’ - by Peter Hain and David Hanson in rewarding UDA criminals for their crimes with a substantial sum of money. Again, the principle must be violated without be seen to be violated, so the public is wrongly informed that the UDA godfathers receive no benefit from the generous reward. Being legitimised within the communities they plague is not to be considered as a reward, you see - neither is being made respectable by being invited to Áras an Uachtaráin or being invited to play golf with the President’s husband, nor if being seen by their own community as powerful, important, influential, and well-connected people who are granted de facto protection from prosecution for crime - as long as they keep it low level - any reward, either.
Now this is what Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British SoS, the NIO, the US Special Envoy and a plethora of other authorities, foreign statesmen, prime ministers, vested interests, Nobel Prize winners, et al, etc, ad nauseam have been proffering and implementing as progressive “conflict transformation” measures rather than rampant bribery. If Ms Ritchie opposes the funding of the UDA on moral grounds and is seen as having the approval of the public for her stance, then all of the former are left exposed to criticism for their amorality, pitted against the will and moral integrity of the public. That is a lot of powerful and conceited people and organisations to piss off with a little defiant dose of “What the hell were you doing here?”
So, it not a case of what the DUP or PSF could have gained. It’s more a case of what they could have lost: they could be left exposed to a new understanding by the public of how corrupt and devoid of moral authority they are. The charade would be exposed - the game effectively up. It is also incorrect to see the DUP and PSF as the puppetmasters here and not the puppets. They were told by the puppetmasters who authorised the funding that the funding must continue. Ergo, they were merely following the orders of their master by opposing Ms Ritchie’s attempt to stop the funding.
Welcome to the sewer and remember who voted for the rats.
“there is something deeply hypocritical about your outburst above, because your moniker is a reminder of the state, presumably from which you hail, which put the early edition of Sinn Fein into power at the state’s inception in 1922.” - It was Sammy Mc NallyI’m sorry to inform you that I took no position on political affairs in 1922 due to an absence of birth. Ergo, there is no hypocrisy. ;)
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 05:48 PMFor my money Sammy’s 7:29 post hit the nail on the head. Robinson doesn’t really give a crap about the UDA (although the ambiguity does him no harm in parts of his constituency) but more importantly he believed that he had reintroduced majority rule by the back door. Unionist majority in the Executive – Unionist veto on change. That is why this is a killer issue for him and that is why he has difficulty approaching it calmly or rationally. If Robinson losses this one, then he losses the basis of his whole SAA strategy and then Reg and others can ask, even more pointedly, what is so different about this DUP version of the GFA?
What I can’t yet figure is the SF angle in supporting crude majority rule. Another long game?
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 06:03 PMThe Dubliner,
Welcome to the sewer and remember who voted for the rats.
Would they be the same people you described in a prior paragraph:
pitted against the will and moral integrity of the public.
Consistency, old chap, consistency, if you don’t mind.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 06:36 PMDubliner, what exactly did you think I meant when I said a few posts up on this same thread that “the leadership of both parties seem cringingly slow to appreciate what they may yet stand to lose for their participation in the whole sorry fiasco”? In an earlier thread days ago I stated my opinion that the Executive at present is little more than window dressing for a continuance of what was established under direct rule.
And how is it you recognise the lunacy of holding someone responsible for things that happened decades before they were born (or at least you do when the “someone” not being held responsible happens to be your own good self) but you regularly issue sweeping moral judgements against people, indeed an entire populace, living their lives in a place you have never called home?
I read an interview online by Henry McDonald in with Margaret Ritchie today. She doesn’t seem inclined to take your advice to resign and disappear. Says she’s more resilient than that, and intends to stay the course. Good on her. Pyrrhic orgies of self-congratulation are best left to the internet,
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2196014,00.html
PS I think the onions you are thinking of must have been from “A Portrait,” or “Ulysses.” Nora and Jim were not much for condiments in their correspondence.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 07:38 PMMalcolm, I put up Robinson’s statement as it forms part of the debate; it’s one of the pieces of the jig-saw. It’s most probably selective and jaundiced but it’s still a primary source.
I mentioned the feedback I got from an SDLP contact in South Belfast ie the fear that McAleese and SF endorsement of the Finaghy Crossroads Group (and like groups) would lead to a further loss of votes from the SDLP in Belfast generally. Such endorsement could elevate ‘parapolitics’ above the politics of the SDLP-Alliance-UUP spectrum. Why vote for the politics of the middle ground if parapolitics ‘works’?
Elsewhere, I’ve noted that allegedly godly citizens have gone to the ‘civic police’ for prompt action as going through the official justice process would be slow and, maybe, a total waste of time.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 09:33 PMNevin @ 11:33 PM:
Believe me, I thoroughly approve of your take and the posting of the Robinson piece: it is, as you say, a “primary source” (and about as close as we’ve got to his definite position yet).
Without getting into the “parapolitics” of this (on which you are clearly miles ahead of where I sit), I’m still totally unable to get a handle on the “why” of Robinson’s behaviour. Ritchie’s is, to me, totally explicable: she seems to have gone ahead with doing what she said she would (though whether or not she had the powers to do so is obviously in doubt, as must be—ultimately—the wisdom and manner of it). However, she does not have the experience of the years of parliamentary experience and manipulation Robinson should have and should evidence.
I find myself repeatedly ticking the boxes:
Did she prepare her own statement (the other key primary evidence) without departmental input?
Since that is unlikely in the extreme (at least from my reading of what seems to be a carefully constructed text), why did the departmental bureaucracy allow her to go ahead? My local government experience tells me that, when a Borough Solicitor lectures and spells out the consequences, it can be a bowel-loosener. A Stormont lawyer must be that at full throttle.
Why did Robinson intervene so personally? Heaven knows he has enough helots to do the business for him.
Note that I’m steering clear of the secondary actions by the other parties: that’s a side-show as they endeavour to get their ducks in a line.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 10:20 PMThe Dubliner,
Welcome to the sewer and remember who voted for the rats.
Would they be the same people you described in a prior paragraph:
pitted against the will and moral integrity of the public.
Consistency, old chap, consistency, if you don’t mind.” - tweedledee
There is no inconsistency. How about attention to detail and context in your critique?“It’s more a case of what they could have lost: they could be left exposed to a new understanding by the public of how corrupt and devoid of moral authority they are. The charade would be exposed - the game effectively up.” - The Dubliner
Notice that the “understanding” is “new” as opposed to what…? That’s right: the old understanding. So what would the old understanding be? It would be the one that they were hoodwinked into believing as voters. Ergo: “The charade would be exposed - the game effectively up.”
Supporting Ms Ritchie indicates that the public is asserting the primacy of moral authority which recognises that they were sold a pup. That’s what has the corrupt cabal so scared. Will it translate into a rejection of DUP and PSF at the next election? Will it even translate into a restriction of the current policy of appeasing terrorists and criminals, ignoring their crimes? I doubt it. If folks were sold a pup once, I think the powers-that-be will call it a kitten and sell it to them again. After all, it’s not like you have an impartial press that will actually tell you the truth, is it? They’re just the salesmen.
“And how is it you recognise the lunacy of holding someone responsible for things that happened decades before they were born (or at least you do when the “someone” not being held responsible happens to be your own good self) but you regularly issue sweeping moral judgements against people, indeed an entire populace, living their lives in a place you have never called home?” - susan
I think that if you vote for PSF that you do so knowing what you are voting for: a criminal organisation that masquerades as a political party. It is a fascist organisation that murdered close to 2,000 people, maimed tens of thousands, set unity back by several generations, and achieved nothing except power and prestige for its leaders. It continues to manage its vast wealth accrued from organised crime, tens of millions, for the benefit of its leaders.
There really isn’t any point in you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t shake my head at people who vote for such an organisation or that I should believe that sociopaths - devoid of the capacity to serve any interests other than their own - are fit and proper people to hold elected office, to then be expected to overcome their psychological dysfunction and serve the best interests of society.
If you elect the amoral, then you get amoral actions such as their degenerate behaviour regarding Ms Ritchie and the issue of UDA funding. So, in that respect, I feel less tolerance for the voters. I dearly hope that they learn the lessons here and apply then, but I don’t think they will. Folks vote for them because they feel they will better serve their own sectarian interests than the alternative. Since the decision is selfish and sectarian, I suspect that it doesn’t matter if the consequences of that decision are too.
I’m happy to be proven wrong by nationalists not voting for them, however. But what does my non-residency in the north have to do with it? Many northern nationalists would agree fully with my points. I’m opinionated, so sue me. If they ever got into power in the south, it would be time to dust off my Hungarian passport and be gone. ;)
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 10:27 PMThe Dubliner,
Notice that the “understanding” is “new” as opposed to what…? That’s right: the old understanding. So what would the old understanding be? It would be the one that they were hoodwinked into believing as voters. Ergo: “The charade would be exposed - the game effectively up.”
So now you’re saying the “new” is the moral public, and the “old” was the public were “hoodwinked”. In other words, the public were moral in the “old” times back in March as well, they were just “hoodwinked”.
A bit different from what you said at the start:
In the end, folks like it in the sewer. They must do because they voted for the rats. Margaret Ritchie should probably resign from the Assembly and from politics and let the lot of them drown in their own rancid piss and shit.
Posted by on Oct 21, 2007 @ 11:05 PMafter this weeks events,the prospect of a dup/sf justice minister is getting scary.
Posted by on Oct 22, 2007 @ 01:07 AMMalcolm,
I think that you are probably on the right track in attributing the saying to Frank Chapple, the darling of the Daily Telegraph and the bete noir of the Morning Star. Not my favourite trade union leader as you might well imagine, but he did have a sense of humour no doubt tickled by all those feathers he accumulated in his own nest.
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 08:42 AMRory @ 10:42 AM:
Yeah, I think we’ve got the right [sic] one with Francis Joseph.
Due respect for Baron Chapple of Hoxton in the County of Greater London. And I’m feeling very queasy ...
Makes me nostalgic for those days when we used to bellow out Leon Rosselson’s Battle Hymn of the New Socialist Party:
[All together now!]
We will not cease from mental fight till every wrong is righted,
And all men are equal quite, and all our leaders knighted;
For we are sure if we persist to make the New Year’s Honours list,
Then every loyal Labour peer will sing The Red Flag once a Year.Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 09:33 AMLeon Rosselson’s anthem - as Maurice Chevalier would have it, “Ah yes, I remember it well.”
Then every loyal Labour peer will sing The Red Flag once a Year.
Even that’s a tune too far for them nowadays.
After a lifetime of TU leaders with good old down-to-earth proletarian names, Jack Jones, Hughie Scanlan, Mick McGahey, Len Daly, Vic Feather, Len Murray I was disconcerted when along comes one with the unlikely name of “Rodney Bickerstaff”.
“My God!” I thought, “What next? Peregrine Featheringstone-Faunshaugh or Bunty Cholmondley-Landgrabber or somesuch?Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 03:27 PMRory @ 05:27 PM:
But what makes it even more sad (apart from all the wasted years ...) is that Rosselson must have done that back in the early Sixties (as I recall it was aimed at Gaitskell and the Clause IV debates of 1959!) Somewhere in the attic I’ve got the original Topic EP.
Also on the same disc (as I recall) were gems like:
I am a Tory lady, sir, of gentle disposition;
I go to church on Sunday, sir, and feel it is my mission
To educate the masses in the art of gentle living,
By teaching them to follow the example I am giving ...
[That one was always preceded by his story of the speaker at Tory Conference demanding that rapists be birched before they were hung, “to teach them not to do it again”)
And,
Dear John Profumo, I’m writing to tell you,
Though I’m sure that you’re not to blame,
Again, my recollection suggests that Profumo was in the cold before that ditty hit vinyl.And what about Alex Glasgow’s “Socialist ABC” (from “Close the Coalhouse Door”)?
Of course, we don’t need stuff like that in these enlightened times, ... err, do we?
Hey! I feel a blog entry coming on!
Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 @ 04:29 PM
