Saturday, June 16, 2007
From Ikea to Limavady
SDLP Councillor Gerry Mullan is objecting to the display of a Union flag during a World War I commemoration event in Limavady. The solitary Union flag will not be flown on council property, on a temporary flag poll for approximately 30 minutes. However, this is too much for Cllr Mullan who has attacked it as a “flag-waving exercise”.
Fair Deal @ 10:59 AM
Turgon
you sad bastard why do you assume you are a Captain and I merely a private
You are the quintisential big house prod
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 10:46 PMturgon,
Your attitude here is quite right in some ways.... this has been badly handled by the sdlp. if the event had not been trumpeted as cross community on the other hand then this should never have arisen/ however it has been trumpeted as such and there is a problem there no doubt about it.
i think it ia always regrettable to put it up to people. organic changes are so much more healthy. i remember being absolutely stunned and moved in derry a couple of years ago when the royal british legion in derry city decided to fly the tricolour as well as the union jack at their november remembrance ceremony and they got a representative of the old dublin fusiliers to do so… it was a lovely magnanimous gesture and had no hint of falsity about it and it was beautifully done.
the dublin govt’s ceremony last year to commemorate the somme in islandbridge wsa i gather on the other hand also much appreciated by unionists.
regards,
dub.
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 10:48 PMThose now trumpeting that 2 flags = equality might care to read comments 23 and 25.
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 10:57 PMSean
The operative word was “if”. If you are a big house taig or a big house nothing, or a big house hindu / muslim / mormon / christian scientist that is fine by me. And my point is that the designation in front of the name means nothing to the relatives.
It is interesting that duribg the first world war it was accepted that the middle and upper class kids all got commissions. There was (entirely appropriately) a lot more resentment of it in the second world war.
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 10:59 PMI no longer live in N.I. so I don’t have a vote, but, if I did, since I always vote for the individual as well as the party, I would be inclined to give the SDLP a fairly high preference but there is no way I would vote for a “divisionist” such as this councillor.
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:03 PMTurgon
why do you assume I am not at the least middle class.
Ding ding as the ding aling sings
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:08 PMNo Dozer:
“there apparently wasn’t enough catholics employed”Apparently so! Imagine one community feeling under-represented while having 7.5% of the police force being catholic! It would have to be anti-protestant to challenge that!
1996 figures:
* 88.67% of regular officers are Protestant, 8.16% are Catholic
* 88.12% of full-time reservists are Protestant, 6.49% are Catholic
* 93.62% of part-time reservists are Protestant, 5.02% are CatholicPosted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:19 PMI did not and do not assume anything I used a parallel. ie it does not matter what class you are when you are dead. Also I thought considering your view of Northern Ireland before 1972 or presumably Ireland before 1921 it was only possible to have a commission if you were a big house prod. If you are a very rich whatever I do not care.
If I offended you by appearing to judge you a working class anything or anything else I am actually genuninely sorry.
I would sort of prefer you not to call me a slug but if that makes you happy I can bear it.
I suspect you would not call me it if we met in the street, who knows we may have. Great thing about cyberspace isn’t it?
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:22 PMBack in the days 9% of the RUC were female.
Going by No Dozer’s standards that means they would be anti-male if they raised it with anyone, instead of perhaps just wanting to feel equal.
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:25 PMturgon
you are quite correct if we met in the strees I would not call you a slug, but not out of fear but because I was raised to act with class and manners. I assume you think because my poor language skills I am not very inteligent or educated. You would be correct about the education and dead wrong about the inteligent. I was born with no apparent afinity to parse a sentence or phrase one as per aceepted norms but I was also born with an innate ability to solve problems and create solutions.I have understood from a young age that I would never do well in the strict confines of traditional education so I have invented my own ways and systems. I dare to say you can not find a problem I can not find a solution for and thats what has allowed me to raise above what you would view as my station.
I have dealt with prigs like you for my whole life and I treat them with exactly the same didain I you. I do not care who your daddy was or who your grand daddy is, I judge you and nothing I have seen changes my opinion of you. You took what you were offered by birth and built on it slightly but never as successfully as the man you inherited it from. Like the son of the richest man in my town if I was to see you drive down my street in your fancy car I wouldnt be thinking how succesful you are but I would think there goes a little boy whos daddy bought him a shiny toy
Posted by on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:49 PM“Decal - nobody fought in WW1 from either community under the tricolour.”
That is some twisted logic there.
A pile of Irish men dies because they were told to sign up to die for Home Rule, certainly not fighting for the Union Jack, and another pile died because they were told to die to stop Home Rule happening. And people wonder why republicans have problems with WWI commemorations.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 12:14 AMSean,
You have the right to think whatever you will of anyone me included.
I do not judge you (my religious beliefs forbid it) but I am getting a little tired of this. Okay I am an upper middle class Prod what do you want me to do about it, some possible options
1). Die
2). Kill my wife and kids and then myself so there are less people like me to annoy you
3). Accept that all the world’s problems ever are caused by my family or just by folk like me.
4). Give you all my money and then do 2 above.You have based your whole view of me on the basis that I said I lived in quite a big house and married a girl from a bigger house. These were comments meant partly in jest to parcifal I think, I cannot actually remember who.
Yes I was born into a modest degree of privilidge, sorry.
Actually my mother was the first from her family to go to university, she was from a very working class background. My father the same except a different branch of the family had been in business in the 19th century but my dad was not raised in luxury either.
Yes my sister and I had horses, yes we both wanted for little, yes we both went to university, no I was never bought a car. My wife’s family were medium sized farmers who bought a big house and did fairly well for themselves.
I am sorry if this offends you. By all means continue your crusade against my evilness. Alternately we could debate the issues with varying degrees of civility as most people on this site do.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 12:24 AMTurgon
Quit playing the martyr i judge you on what you write, and not just in the words but on the underlaying subtext you probably do not even realize you put into your postsI do not want your money or her money or anyone elses money what is mine is mine and I worked hard to aquire it and I own it with pride.
You don’t offend me its just I refuse to defer to you because of YOUR percieved superiority.
I never called you evil just a snob and you prove my point with every post
Crusade? Do you have a persecution complex as well?
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 12:47 AMcommemorations are about the reflection on the loss of life in the horror of war,not the flying of flags.if nationalists protest that it’s a flag waving exercise then its up to unionists to be the bigger people and prove its not through the very simple outreach of flying the other cloth.if they can’t bring themselves to also flying the dreaded “trickler”, then they shouldn’t be flying anything.
for the record,that’s some pretty weak posturing by the SDLP.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 12:47 AMThat’s six posts so far Sean. Fancy playing the ball.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 12:55 AMSometimes the man becomes the ball
And quit trying to deflect because I can show your hypocracy
you claim egalitarian motives but have no way to back them up
As for the ball I have made it abundantly clear that if the unionist were serious about cross community events they would either fly both flags or neither. Flying only one flag makes it a single community event and the war was not a single community event
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 01:13 AM#
Decal - nobody fought in WW1 from either community under the tricolour.
Posted by Cruimh on Jun 16, 2007 @ 11:21 PM #Not true, the Easter Rising in Dublin was inextricably linked with WW 1, the event was very much co-ordinated with the Germans ("Gallant Allies in Europe”, para. 2 Proclamation of the Irish Republic) and was timed to take place at a time when Britain was militarily stretched, the troops used to put down the rebellion were for the most part British troops diverted from France.
To say that the Easter Rising was not part of WW 1 but was merely part of an ongoing Irish nationalist campaign is as absurd as to say that the Battle of Kinsale, the Boyne or 1798 were completely unrelated to the wider European wars ongoing at that time.
Equally it would be like denying that the Armenian uprising in Turkey or the Bolshevik takeover in Russia or the many other ethnic/political struggles that erupted at that time in Europe and whose origins were centuries old were not part of the First World War, nor that the French maquis, Greek Communists or Croat nationalists who fought on various sides in the Second World War were not part of that wider campaign. Wars in the Twentieth Century were not fought solely by Generals and Admirals and their men.
So yes, men did fight under the Irish Tricolour in the First World War.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 01:26 AMTurgon,
quit apologizing! We’re on different sides, but you get an idea of who’s decent on this site after a while, and you’re one of them IMHO.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 01:29 AMMy Great-Uncle Bill (yes, William) fought and died in WW1. Given what I know about my ancestors, he was a devout Catholic, a proud Irishman, and firmly believed in Home Rule.
He fought under the Union flag, didn’t despise it, and like all young warriors, cherished his comrades in arms, mainly young Englishmen.
Shame on you who would disparage his memory.Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 02:56 AM{i]"the Easter Rising in Dublin was inextricably linked with WW 1, the event was very much co-ordinated with the Germans”
Getting Arms for the Rebellion - January-Good Friday 1916
The Germans were completely against the notion of sending a military force but cooperated with the arms problems. 20,000 rifles with ammunition were to be sent in April, but the British authorities had broken the German codes and were expecting something to happen. But no decisive action was taken by the British Forces.
The arms left the German port of LĂĽbeck on 9th April bound for landing on the Kerry coast (the south-west of Ireland). But by now, however, Casement was disillusioned with the notion of a rising and anxiously left on a submarine with the firm intention of halting it.
Things began to go horribly wrong when the Aud, the German ship disguised as a Norwegian merchantman put in at the wrong port. At this critical moment the British were by now scanning the horizons searching for her.
On Friday while waiting in Tralee Bay the elusive Aud was captured at gunpoint by the British Navy. When she reached Cork harbour the German Captain, who was still in command, scuttled her and the arms were lost, as well as any hope of an Irish military success. To the British, now a rising seemed impossible. Things seemed to have gone completely their way.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/easterrising.htmPosted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 03:03 AMNo Dozer
“Cahal
You are spot on there. The s.d.l.p. were after the Workers party on my voting preference. Lets not beat about the bush here, the s.d.l.p. are a sectarian party, albeit a middle class one.”All parties in the north are sectarian. It goes with the sectarian nature at the heart of the state.
“They call themseveles socialists”
No they don’t. Social democrats aren’t socialists. Politics 101.
“yet they campained for protestant workers to be sacked from the police in N.I. because there apparently wasn’t enough catholics employed”
Sacked? When?
The stoops are what they are. They’ve a better record than any of the other parties on sectarianism I’d say.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 03:03 AMHarry - that’s really stretching it LOL
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 09:12 AMJoe
But the problem is this is twice in a week the SDLP has come up with such nonsense.
Throw in the ridiculous “Nationalist History” campaign in Strangford, and one can only reach the conclusion that this kind of claptrap is what the SDLP is all about.
Yes, the 1998 deal allowed people to be Irish. It also allowed them to be British. It seems that the SDLP is alone in having a problem with the latter.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 11:13 AM*Harry - that’s really stretching it LOL*
In what way? I am merely making a historical point.
I’m not a nationalist nor a republican but history clearly shows that what occurred in Dublin in Easter 1916 was inextricably a part of the wider conflict engulfing Europe at that time and which has gone down to history as the First World War. In exactly the same way as the Armenian genocide and countless other regional conflicts of the time were also part of that war.
I do not make a political point, simply a historical one, the conflict in Dublin’s O’Connell Street was a First World War battle, a small battle (though nonetheless significant in UK history) in terms of the battles being faught in France and Russia but a part of the First World War nonetheless.
So once again I state that men did fight under the Irish Tricolour in the First World War, as self-proclaimed allies of Germany certainly, but that does not change the fact that those men fought in the First World War.
It’s simple really.
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 01:19 PMThe SDLP are a nationalist and republican party and as such they need to raise nationalist concerns. Obviously they will also wish to raise their support among the post-unionist population and even among my limited acquaintance I know unionists who gave up the ghost when the DUP triumphed so those votes are out there.
This is a straightforward choice. Do unionists want a cross-community ceremony or do they wish to continue with the sort of exclusive behaviour which has destryed them in the past?
What I really don’t understand is why there are so few unionist supporters who are prepared to concede that this is a selfdefeating move in Limavady? Is friendship really such a threat, even at a quasi-religious event?
Posted by on Jun 17, 2007 @ 01:58 PM
