Slugger O'Toole

In a less degenerate age, the sixteenth century Lord of all Ulster, but in my current incarnation, a one time film maker, animatior and producer/director, currently a visual artist, iconographer, writer, historian, neo-Jacobite and, I believe, a political moderate with serious polycultural leanings. Even so, I would like the old place to perhaps develop some of its own culture rather than simply borrow styles from the homogeneous mix available for the discerning plagiarist from other International art sources. I remember the Queens Festival when it was worth going to, not so very long ago. Also, I'd give a lot to see a serious re-forrestation project, deciduous please.

Latest comments from SeaanUiNeill (see all)

SeaanUiNeill has commented 157 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on A5 ruling: “They should not be left in any doubt about what may or may not occur…”
   on 10 April 2013 at 8:30 am

   @Los Lobos,

   Every congratulation on your success in opposing the waste and insanity of the A5 road replacement scheme. I’m at present watching the destruction of nature caused by its little brother in South Antrim every day I attempt to drive into Belfast from the Glens.

   But what else can anyone expect from “one party rule in two fiefdoms” to paraphrase David Crookes. The high handed behaviour of the authorities has been unimaginable to most of the local farmers involved, and the only good news is that it seems to have gone a long way to alienating much of the hard core DUP support amongst the local farming community. The only down side of this is that the TUV appears to be gaining support.

   Anecdotally, the actual payment for land siezed along the Larne Belfast line has as yet to be paid out many months into the preparation work. This is a poor precident for the compensation due to the A5 farmers. “Moreover, it is as impossible to compensate for the loss of mature trees which cannot be readily replaced as it is impossible to compensate for the stress and ill health suffered by those directly affected by this scheme.” I seriously doubt if any of this will ever be considered. Just who do these people on the hill consider they are governing on behalf of?

   Go to comment

2. Comment on Margaret Thatcher dies….
   on 9 April 2013 at 11:45 am

   Good grief Harry Flashman, what is it with you Sassenachs and your Stockholm syndrome? All a Leader needs to do is abuse the English people and everyone is clamoring for a State Funeral to thank them. Talk about “the Boots and the Doormat!” Firstly (many threads ago) you commend that idiot poser Churchill who lost your Empire with his woeful performance as an “International Leader” in the last war, and now you feel obliged to defend “that Woman” on three threads, no less!

   While I cannot fault your excellent “Rogues gallery” list of the equally culpable contemporaries and successors you compare her with who also aided and abetted the Globalisation process that has delivered us all into the merciless clutches of the out of control greed of international finance I feel that those who lived through the destructiveness of her terms in office are entitled to vent some indignation at the bizarre media hagiographic splash her death has unleashed on us all.

   I even found myself agreeing (for the first time) with the ex-Gauleiter for “Gau” London, Ken Livingstone, when he spoke of her radical work in destroying the real British economy to further the interests of international banking disguised as a patriotic support for the interests of the City of London. And, to quote Lady Bracknell about another Revolution “And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?”—Where we have all (Britain, Ireland, the world….) ended up today, with massive debts and the need to import almost everything we use without the means to pay for it all other than by borrowing! And can anyone tell me why it is so much better for the banks to own the houses we live in rather than the local councils?

   @FDM: “Her destruction of the social fabric of large swathes of England and Wales is similarly well known and accepted. The impacts of those nihilistic policies are still felt to this day.”

   Here in Norn Iron, too, where the DUP have espoused all of her exhausted and discredited policies en mass, converted from their earlier flirtations with Socialism by the fluttering of hard currency (Euro, Sterling, Dollar, any old notes will do!) under their noses. As we here are well known to be at least fifty years behind the rest of the world that Woman’s national Apocalypse should be continuing here for some time yet…..

   Go to comment

3. Comment on Margaret Thatcher: An Ireland ALMOST reconciled to a bitter legacy from the Troubles…
   on 9 April 2013 at 11:36 am

   Good grief Harry Flashman, what is it with you Sassenachs and your Stockholm syndrome? All a Leader needs to do is abuse the English people and everyone is clamoring for a State Funeral to thank them. Talk about “the Boots and the Doormat!” Firstly (many threads ago) you commend that idiot poser Churchill who lost your Empire with his woeful performance as an “International Leader” in the last war, and now you feel obliged to defend “that Woman” on three threads, no less!

   While I cannot fault your excellent “Rogues gallery” list of the equally culpable contemporaries and successors you compare her with who also aided and abetted the Globalisation process that has delivered us all into the merciless clutches of the out of control greed of international finance I feel that those who lived through the destructiveness of her terms in office are entitled to vent some indignation at the bizarre media hagiographic splash her death has unleashed on us all.

   I even found myself agreeing (for the first time) with the ex-Gauleiter for “Gau” London, Ken Livingstone, when he spoke of her radical work in destroying the real British economy to further the interests of international banking disguised as a patriotic support for the interests of the City of London. And, to quote Lady Bracknell about another Revolution “And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?”—Where we have all (Britain, Ireland, the world….) ended up today, with massive debts and the need to import almost everything we use without the means to pay for it all other than by borrowing! And can anyone tell me why it is so much better for the banks to own the houses we live in rather than the local councils?

   Go to comment

4. Comment on Politicians will drift from one St Patrick’s gathering to the next until the tide goes out leaving everyone beached
   on 21 March 2013 at 3:36 pm

   Nevin, you really are one of the few bloggers who, I would feel, consistently has “the self respect to demand good…government.” I really value your attempts both here (Slogger) and at the North Antrim Local Interest List to draw peoples attention to serious social and political issues in a precise and committed manner.

   Thank you for pointing out the “unpalatable stew of conspiracy, cock-up and cover-up, not just involving politicians but also public servants and lobbyists” that we all face every time we attempt to discover if any government department is actually doing anything othert than mouthing platitudes every time we query their actions.

   And for sharing that Kakfkaesque experience of “email us but no email address” which many of us can confirm from our own similar experiences with “our masters.”

   Go to comment

5. Comment on Politicians will drift from one St Patrick’s gathering to the next until the tide goes out leaving everyone beached
   on 21 March 2013 at 7:14 am

   JoeBryce, have you ever come across the concept of inverse-racism? Obama being simply black does not make him, ergo, a good, effective president any more than Peter Robinson appearing to co-operate with Martin McGuinness is a good thing if the OFMdFM are secretive and arbitary in their governance, and if the first minister still has an enquiry into his financial dealings hanging over him after all these years. See Wikipedia: ” the Standards and Privileges enquiry has still not been completed three years after it was ordered by the Assembly, and remains ongoing”

   One should have the self respect to demand good rather than politically correct government. And you really should hear what the more radical Democrats are saying about Obama!

   All government is a “conspiricy to defraud in the strictly legal sense that we are all lied to and our property alienated by taxation (or more importantly government borrowing) that we are seldom in any position to argue with in any meaningful sense. Anyone who has read my other posts will know how much value I place on the ability to repalce Tweedledum with Tweedledee every few years.

   My own feelings are that Ingham is being disingenious, politicians obviouusly conspire (not in big Dr No ways, however) but they are disorganised enough to cock it all up usually.

   Go to comment

6. Comment on Hugo Chávez Frias
   on 20 March 2013 at 10:26 am

   Or, harry, they enter the war at a later point after both Germany and Russia have weakened each other, and can then act as an equal to the USA with all those resourses taht a few more years of peace have permitted themto build up.

   But either way, why go into a war they were still unprepared for in 1939?

   Go to comment

7. Comment on Hugo Chávez Frias
   on 20 March 2013 at 8:19 am

   I’m sorry, Greenflag, to come in so late with a point to add to your excellent 12.25 posting on yesterday. While you mention the Armada (which would have won hands down!) and Napoleon (ditto) you have left out the one invasion of Britain since1066 that was entirely successful. I would have thought that the Dutch invasion of 1688, where a nation that had been that national enemy of England, Scotland and Ireland since the 1650s successfully landed a foreign army, and with the support of a small body of influential Quislings, substituted the head of state of a foreign power for the legitimate King, is the most telling parallel from history. And before you begin to refer to “the Glorious Revolution, Democracy, and British Liberties” please (PLEASE!) go back to Herbert Butterfield’s “The Whig interpretation of history.” Every serious historian knows this work, which has been one of most influential books on historical theory of the last century.

   This a big, but very useful quote from Wikipedia;
   “He found Whiggish history objectionable because it warps the past to see it in terms of the issues of the present, to squeeze the contending forces of, say, the mid-17th century into those which remind us of ourselves most and least, or to imagine them as struggling to produce our wonderful selves.” I don’t think I need to labour just how it applies to much that is being written on this thread.

   I’ve quoted Hiram Morgan’s words on the earlier Presbyterian thread before, but they are so apt at this point:

   “Essentially the more you dig down into a subject, looking at the documents, the original sources, you get further and further away from your own preconceptions your own present mindedness as it were.”

   And, Harry, going back and reading some of the modern historical re-appraisals would have put your model of co-operation on a much, much surer footing. Its not a matter of not fighting Hitler, its a matter of when would have been moist efficacious moment for entry into a war for his defeat. Yes, it was a joint effort that won the war, but the early entry by the British and French weakened them so much that the delivery of a post war world to Russia and the USA became inevitable. And I know that you probably share my abhorrence of Stalin’s post-war expansion and its foul effects on European civilisation in general.

   And Mister_Joe, with every respect, you should not call historical re-appraisals “silly” that you have not actually assessed with your own research and careful reading. If I were ignorant of careful historical research, I would feel that any comments I make are so subjective as to render them completely invalid. And I imagine that a desire to prevent the closing up avenues of thought is essentially what many ordinary people thought they were fighting the war for. It remains one of the most honourable of the war aims and is not invalidated just because we were unable to achieve it.

   One last quote from Butterfield himself: “The greatest menace to our civilization is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness — each only too delighted to find that the other is wicked — each only too glad that the sins of the other give it pretext for still deeper hatred.”

   Go to comment

8. Comment on “unless it’s because politicians in Northern Ireland want to be able to sue newspapers more readily…”
   on 19 March 2013 at 8:53 am

   Oh Peter Baker, how very disingenious! While “none of the parties concerned have articulated their opposition” their views are well known by anyone who cares to ask any party member. Has anyone checked out Ian Paisley Junior’s views on all of this, expressed during the Westminster debate?

   Brian2013 gives the link on the earlier thread “Embarrassment over Stormont Executive’s shameful failiure to support UK wide free speech and libel reform.” Anyone who has even glanced over David Gordon’s book “The Fall of the House of Paisley” will see right away just where Ian Og is coming from. Blue Jazz is probably writing from the sort of personal knowledge many of us experience of the views and intentions of party members in Norn Iron, rather than “guessing.”

   Lord Lester’s ironic comment; “I can’t think of any good reason …. unless it’s because politicians in Northern Ireland want to be able to sue newspapers more readily, which doesn’t seem to me to be a very good reason.” sums it all up.

   Go to comment

9. Comment on Hugo Chávez Frias
   on 19 March 2013 at 8:33 am

   Thank you Greenflag, great reply with lots of real info. English historians frequently say of poor old Brendan “of unknown background” but at least the Slugger readers will know better now.

   My father was a sailor who fought in the war, and that’s another run of stories I was told. But as Yeats says in a poem, describing this very thing, “But this is not the old sea, nor this the old sea shore.” The real issue was that the Luftwaffe controlled the air over France, and without mistakes would have facilitated an invasion of Britain. The Battle of Britain was a very near run thing where at least one of Churchill’s calls almost lost it. And sea power was effectivly going to the U boat until the USA entered the war.

   Go to comment

10. Comment on Hugo Chávez Frias
    on 19 March 2013 at 8:20 am

    Rory, Yes. People like me are very careful with their “genealogical details.” We look for proof before we accept anything. I’m still awaiting the USSR production figures…….

    Go to comment