Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from barryfrombelfast (see all)

barryfrombelfast has commented 9 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Republican reaction to ‘big deal’
   on 6 February 2010 at 3:19 am

   The ‘border’ was established through the Government of Ireland Act 1920 negotiated by Michael Collins (?) and Lloyd George (?). This was a year after ‘old men’ carved up Europe in the Treaty of Versailles. Despite various renegotiations, eg between Germany and Poland, the often deeply unfair Versailles borders have survived nearly a century.

   On the other hand, I have a memory of family and friends ‘down South’ asking me, with a vacant look in their eyes, ‘how are things up North?’

   I think it was Observer journalist, Nik Cohn (?), who, years ago, asked Gerry Adams (?), ‘but the South doesn’t want the North’.

   And so, SDLP contenders this weekend will still express meaningless platitudes about a ‘new Ireland’ and regressive so-called ‘Unionists’ on this blog will still incant the possibility of a ‘united Irelnd’.

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2. Comment on FM and DFM “will promote and support the agreed outcomes of the working group.”
   on 6 February 2010 at 2:14 am

   Whatever any ‘secret understandings’ with the OO, BP & ABD, another secret protocol to the Hillsborough Agreement may yet rip it apart.

   Apparently jocular and innocuous remarks by the FM&dFM; camouflage a shocking deal. It is now understood that the (UK)PM has indeed negotiated with the IOC, at the instigation of the FM, that ‘Negotiating’ will be a Olympic sport @ London 2012.

   We can reveal here tonight that the secret protocol allocates membership of the UK Negotiating Team to NI political parties. The dFM’s otherwise innocuous remarks (‘we have been a negotiating team for 20 years’) mask an agreement that, instead of membership of the team being determined by d’Hondt, SF, in an extraordinary reversal, will make up 56% of the Negotiating Team and the DUP, only 44%.

   We can further reveal that the secret protocol sets up OFNdFN (Olympic First Negotiator and deputy First Negotiator) and that, in a shocking development, the dFM has already been designated as First Negotiator.

   Unfortunately, this secret protocol is subject to a super-injunction and we are not at liberty to mention it. But, when it hits the Sundays in a couple of weeks (in guttural ‘awl hack’ voice) ‘you heard it here first’.

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3. Comment on Peter Robinson: the folly of tactics over strategy; and space hoppers
   on 2 February 2010 at 6:31 am

   On ‘devolution’ of P&J, has anyone checked the NIO website (NIO Departmental Report 2009)?

   £1.16B in 09-10 and, at most, £60M on other CJ.

   Doesn’t make Gordie’s £1B package seem so attractive?

   Actually, except for TUPE transfer of civil servants, what difference does a NI Min of Justice make?

   Most aspects of CJ insulated from political control. What a fuss over nought!

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4. Comment on The DUP are still in play at Hillsborough…
   on 2 February 2010 at 5:01 am

   Actually, I was also making a point, in my first post, about a possible coincidence between an Assembly and a General Election.

   Better constitutional experts can inform us on the technicalities. Could an Assembly Election be deferred until the General Election?

   If so, and if the various improbable pacts coalesce, could a ‘unionist’ vote for a ‘united unionist’ at a ‘first past the post’ General Election, force Nationalists into the arms of SF, wiping out the SDLP?

   And could Nationalists, propelled into voting for SF in a General Election, even under PR. switch their vote in an Assembly Election to the SDLP?

   So why should SF not play ‘hard ball’? The prospect of a wipe out of the SDLP is too attractive to be ignored … and total Unionist disunity, fuelled by another sumami of DUP scandal …

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5. Comment on The DUP are still in play at Hillsborough…
   on 2 February 2010 at 4:28 am

   BTW, Kevsterino, with due respect to the rich constitutional history of the US, Wikipedia also states:-
   “A National Security Letter, an administrative subpoena used by the FBI, has an attached gag order which restricts the recipient from ever saying anything about being served with one. The government has issued hundreds of thousands of such NSLs accompanied with gag orders. The gag orders have been upheld in court.
   In the United States, a court can order parties to a case not to comment on it but has no authority to stop unrelated reporters from reporting on a case [cp super-injunctions]. Most statutes which restrict what may be reported have generally been found unconstitutional and void. However, the gag provisions of the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act have been upheld.
   The trials of Guantanamo Bay suspects have also been subjected to a gag order, which has hindered public scrutiny.”

   So there you have it!

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6. Comment on The DUP are still in play at Hillsborough…
   on 2 February 2010 at 3:47 am

   Well, Kevsterino, we don’t have the same constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech here in Europe because, even though the European Convention on Human Rights protects freedom of speech, it also protects (quite rightly) the right to ‘family and private life’.

   Actually, it’s not the super-celebrities who have sought, and been granted, super-injunctions, but rather multi-nationals.

   Wikipedia informs us:-
   “In England and Wales a new form of injunction known as a “super-injunction” is a form of gagging order in which the press is prohibited from reporting even the existence of the injunction, or any details of it. An example was the super-injunction raised in September 2009 by Carter-Ruck solicitors on behalf of oil trader Trafigura, prohibiting the reporting of an internal Trafigura report into the 2006 Côte d’Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal.”

   This super-injunction was only lifted as a result of a parliamentary question by (left-wing) Paul Flynn MP and even then the Speaker considered ruling out the question. (Mind you, the Speaker used to rule ‘out of order’ any Westminster questions about NI til the late 60s.)

   Firms like Carter-Ruck are golly good at protecting legitimate rights to privacy but, methinks, they go too far in these cases.

   Many might think that the captain of the England football team, Dad of Year in 2009 and with £10M of annual endorsements, deserves all he gets (though I wouldn’t head off to Dubia if I was the wounded party).

   As I say, purely private citizens should have watertight protection from invasions to their privacy – but not our elected politicians.

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7. Comment on The DUP are still in play at Hillsborough…
   on 2 February 2010 at 3:10 am

   Well after the discharging of John Terry’s super-injunction, what future for, hypothetically speaking, any super-injunctions in relation to these matters?

   Any (hypothetical) super-injunctions should, in my view, continue to apply to any private citizens inadvertently caught up in these affairs but not to elected politicians.

   I could, inadvertently of course, give indications about others than ‘he who shall remain nameless’. I actually think that that reference, and any other ‘inadvertent’ references, are genuinely inappropriate. No disrespect.

   Mind you, my newsagent is none too happy that I told him to order extra supplies of the Sundays yesterday.

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8. Comment on The DUP are still in play at Hillsborough…
   on 2 February 2010 at 1:52 am

   Eamonn says “A small fox has been sniffing around Stormont estate.” Does it realise that there may be super-injunctions out there?

   Or maybe they do not apply to foxes – or Joe & Josephine Blog(ger)?

   It’s a bit ‘Kafkaesque’. If, by definition, ordinary sods don’t know there is a super-injunction out there, how can it deter us from acknowledging them?

   Anyway, as ‘Mo’ showed us last night, political ambition knows no bounds. Which pact(s) will survive if we have Assembly and General Elections at (or around) the same time?

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9. Comment on On the danger of being unprepared for regional politics…
   on 27 January 2010 at 5:25 am

   I was going to describe this as my ‘virgin’ post on slugger, but …

   At 04:27 PM, mayday says:-
   “Perhaps the story is still evolving? These are fluid times.”

   Perhaps, this is an understatement?

   With no disrespect to mayday’s name, perhaps any DUP/UUP merger should, in this acronym-driven society, be called the the SOS (‘Save Our Skins’) Party?

   BTW, isn’t a bit ironic that the DUP is so fervently supporting a draft report on parading from Paddy ‘Pantssdown’ Ashdown?

   Go to comment