Slugger O'Toole

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1. Comment on Origins of the Northern Irish conflict: Gerrymandering and mistrust…
   on 6 April 2013 at 2:25 pm

   Sorry GEF I was replying to Flashman (see Older Comments) but your contribution snuck in while I was typing

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2. Comment on Origins of the Northern Irish conflict: Gerrymandering and mistrust…
   on 6 April 2013 at 10:44 am

   One man One vote was a campaign against multiple votes for property owners. What you are complaining about here is transferable voting, which is a completely different thing. If you have an issue with proportional voting, then you must take it up with the British Government, who first introduced it into Ireland in the early part of the 20th Century in an attempt to diminish the successes of Sinn Féin.

   It was well known that Catholics greatly outnumbered Protestants in the Londonderry Region. However, after the founding of the Alliance Party in 1970, a large number of Catholics favoured this party with their first preference, either hoping to usher in a new non-sectarian era, or not daring to rock the boat too much. Nevertheless, they reverted to type with their second preference. And indeed with the passage of time, Alliance died out in Derry, with its former voters moving to the SDLP.

   But if the election was held under transferable voting rules, then you cannot assert that this was the only way Nationalists could achieve a majority: you do not take into consideration that people vote in a different way when the system is different.

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3. Comment on Origins of the Northern Irish conflict: Gerrymandering and mistrust…
   on 5 April 2013 at 9:54 pm

   Flashman is repeating a mis-perception that we have been through before.

   The 1973 Local Elections led to the return of 14 Nationalist councillors, 9 Loyalists and 4 Alliance.

   http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/73-81lgderry.htm

   That is a majority in anyone’s books, but I am sure Flashie will now proceed to argue the reverse.

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4. Comment on Ireland and the Commonwealth: “Our door is always open…”
   on 18 March 2013 at 8:49 pm

   The problem that an independent Ireland has is that it can never really oppose the neighbouring island in anything, except its own independence. What is bad for Britain is highly unlikely to be good for Ireland. Economically and geographically, Ireland is linked to Britain. And this is before one takes into account the risk of retaliation that might occur, if Ireland were seen to be aiding Britain’s enemies.

   So Ireland’s stance is generally one of neutrality, most successfully adopted during World War II. I seem to recall seeing some American passenger lists for immigrants from Dublin in the 1930s: under nationality was written ‘British’. Until Ireland refused to join the war, Irish nationality effectively did not exist: the Free State was just a Bantustan.

   Not joining the Commonwealth is a way of distancing oneself, ever so slightly, from the British agenda. If Ireland were to adopt the pro-British stance in everything, outsiders would regard it merely as another Isle of Man.

   If you’re in the business of wooing even a tiny proportion of the northern unionist population so you can get over 50%+1 a few years earlier than the great tipping point the baby-counters tell us is just over the horizon of the next census (or maybe the one after that) why not start by accepting a bit of sentimentality?

   To tell the truth, I am not. For me, the great tipping point, however fictional and far off it may seem to you, is a more certain event than the conversion of even the tiniest percentage of the Unionist population in advance of their declining into a majority.

   Moreover, the proposed exchange is an unequal contract. We can tell whether Ireland, Republic of, has joined the Commonwealth: but there is no way of forcing even a small number of Unionists to vote for reunification, or even telling whether they have done so. So instead I propose that, in the event of a United Ireland, Lisburn City Council (and Bangor, Ards, Abbey, Carrick etc) be allowed to ‘like’ the Commonwealth on Facebook.

   This of course brings things in line with the British model. As certain areas—Scotland, Wales, Cornwall—may consider themselves Celtic nations, they may each independently entertain relations with the Celtic Congress. But it is no business of the U.K. to join or subsidise this organisation. We leave that to the concerned peripheral areas.

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5. Comment on Millward Brown poll puts Fianna Fail comfortably up on its #LG09 figure
   on 18 March 2013 at 6:37 pm

   I don’t suppose SF wanted to go into coalition with the DUP, but the desire for power is an incredible aphrodisiac.

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6. Comment on Ireland and the Commonwealth: “Our door is always open…”
   on 18 March 2013 at 4:24 pm

   I have known many groovy hipsters but none of them were Commonwealth enthusiasts.

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7. Comment on Millward Brown poll puts Fianna Fail comfortably up on its #LG09 figure
   on 18 March 2013 at 3:31 pm

   Given the usual caveat that Opinion Polls are as reliable as Old Moore’s Almanac, the results of this poll, if believed, indicate that the next government will be a coalition of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein.

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8. Comment on Ireland and the Commonwealth: “Our door is always open…”
   on 18 March 2013 at 2:53 pm

   Mrs Otto is being dragged into quite a few metaphors here.

   The point about the Orange Order being a tiny minority is taken. However, in the context of the Ulster marching seasons, they are not the marchers, but merely the vanguard of the marchers. You may know only one Orangeman, but I would wager that you know more than one person who left the pavement on the 12th of July.

   As for the Commonwealth, the late Ulster Unionist M.P. for South Down, Mr Enoch Powell, spoke vociferously against it. In his career prior to coming to Northern Ireland, he had found that the Commonwealth was a Trojan horse which enabled people from other countries to immigrate to England and displace the natives. He believed it was his role to stand up for the purely native born, on an ‘Ourselves Alone’ ticket. As such Mr Powell made himself so popular with a certain class of society, which includes Unionists, that he was invited to become their candidate in South Down, an honour never previously or subsequently bestowed on someone from outside the Province.

   This would indicate that there is a strong link between Unionism and dislike of the workings of the Commonwealth. However, due to a flaw in the Unionist Psyche, they have a somewhat outmoded view of the organisation, and mistake it for an outfit celebrating their own triumphalism, when really it is quite the contrary. Once called the British Commonwealth, it has now changed its name to the Commonwealth of Nations: the link with the British monarch only lasts as long as the life of the current incumbent: Fenianism is rampant.

   So, when courting the future Mrs Otto, it makes sense to hold a cost effectiveness analysis to determine whether it is worthwhile visiting her Auntie Myrtle. I argue that it is not: there is no evidence that Mrs Otto actually likes her Auntie Myrtle, and she isn’t really her auntie, just the divorced wife of her uncle.

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9. Comment on Ireland and the Commonwealth: “Our door is always open…”
   on 16 March 2013 at 11:38 am

   The problem that we have with joining the Commonwealth is that it will not cause NI’s Unionist population to advance by a single day the arrival of a United Ireland. Therefore it is pointless. Unionists do not derive any pleasure from the Commonwealth; their happiness lies in Unionist power.

   An Indian lady I know worked for the NHS in England, then in Ballymena, then England again. She complained that in Ballymena everyone kept asking her “When are you going home”, while no-one in England ever attempted such rudeness. I would suggest that NI’s Protestants are deeply opposed to most of the work of the Commonwealth: it does tend to function as a begging bowl for Africans and the like, and as a result African countries which were never part of the British Empire have joined up.

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10. Comment on All but three islanders vote to keep the Falklands British…
    on 13 March 2013 at 10:31 am

    This is a massive victory for the pro-Argentinian population. We can now proceed to partition the islands, joining together the property of the three loyalist Argentinians by passing over that of two traitors (as 3 outnumbers 2). I expect that any future Northern Falklands Life and Times Survey will find that they secretly want to stay in Argentina, anyway.

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