Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from sonofstrongbow (see all)

sonofstrongbow has commented 913 times (21 in the last month).

1. Comment on Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process?
   on 19 May 2013 at 5:37 pm

   So it seems that in order to hasten us all to the (not quite yet but coming soon) Land of Milk and Honey all that is required is for ‘working class loyalists’ to “embrace” ‘Irish culture’.

   Yet strangely some aspects of local Irish culture are deemed by some as nasty and “supremacist”. After all what could be more ‘Irish’ than the Orange Order?

   There again perhaps I’m (a few stops beyond) barking and it’s a nationalist defined Irish (mono) culture that those loyalist types are required to embrace?

   Pity the poor loyalist. So out of kilter with both Irish and contemporary British culture. But is that the culture of Dublin 4 or the Bogside; Notting Hill or east Bradford?

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2. Comment on Has the Protestant Working Class lost out in the Peace Process?
   on 19 May 2013 at 1:34 pm

   The usual laughable stuff from some nationalists. Ok I can understand their disquiet at loyalists infringing their MOPE copyright – especially so given their penchant for cheering on the deprivation within sections of the nationalist community.

   ‘Vote for us and we’ll make sure you continue living in sh*t’ is a bizarre but seemingly winning formula for Shinnerdom.

   And a point of order: a united Ireland by democratic means was always on option. The nationalist murderfest was just a pointless and completely unjustified indulgence. It is regrettable that some nationalists still buy into the ‘no other choice’ myth.

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3. Comment on Team Jasil – that’s John and Basil – say: “Get off your backsides and vote for people that are trying to make a difference”
   on 13 May 2013 at 5:04 pm

   A political party has to have a (even moderately) Big Idea that can be easily discerned; even if the idea is fanciful (SF and the UI campaign).

   Jasil’s big ‘U’ little ‘u’ subtleties are so opaque they are like brick aeroplanes: they will not fly.

   Can you imagine the doorstep conversations on the stump? The few moments you have to ‘hook’ a potential voter will be squandered trying to explain what you are trying to sell and what your top line actually means.

   The might get a tick for a little more honesty than Alliance in actually declaring themselves upfront as non-Unionist unionists. But Alliance seems to already ‘own’ the ‘nice’ liberal unionist franchise.

   No matter how many ‘ta-dah’ ‘star personality’ reveals or political refugees from other parties introduced as Jasil candidates when the last camera flash has darkened the nothing-to-see-here void will become apparent (how long did it take Mike Nesbit’s star to publicly fall?).

   Perhaps the new kids on the political block could telegraph their freshness and get some PR mileage referencing another of the edgy ‘fashionable’ fads of the 21st Century and call themselves FAjasil?

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4. Comment on UTV Insight: Collusion and some of its innocent victims…
   on 11 May 2013 at 6:14 pm

   ‘The fools, the fools they have left us our Patriot Posts……Ireland online shall never be at peace!’

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5. Comment on UTV Insight: Collusion and some of its innocent victims…
   on 11 May 2013 at 3:00 pm

   No need to spell out the “difference” we get it. We’ve listened to the Mopemachine too many years not to:

   The IRA et al were brave honourable patriots reluctantly taking up arms to free poor Ireland from beneath the cursed Saxon heel; regretting every life they had no alternative but to take.

   The Invaders and their peids-noirs henchmen were sectarian psychopaths who relished the sectarian murderfest they embarked on, having nothing much else to do that day (and it being so deeply ingrained in their nature of course).

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6. Comment on Irish Justice Minister: “a tribute to how far we have come as a society”
   on 9 May 2013 at 7:00 pm

   A “republican burger” is a popular menu choice in South Armagh.

   Flambé some horse and serve with a jus of laundered fuel, et voila Monsieur.

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7. Comment on Futile Border Poll campaign to launch
   on 9 May 2013 at 3:51 pm

   AG,

   As you wish. My only caveat being that I have no interest whatsoever in local football. However:

   1/ technically correct. NI is a constituent part of the UK and not the UK entire. I’m not sure what rules, if any, FIFA and/or the IFA have regarding the selection of anthems. If such rules do exist and the NI team is in contravention of them why has it no be challenged.

   Again I’m unaware of all the rules pertaining to the playing of one’s National Anthem, especially any that forbids its allegedly promiscuous playing, but if there are then challenge.

   I expect that NI football playing GSTQ is mere tradition that, much like my old school song saying little to children of the late 20th century, survives because there has been no groundswell of opinion to make a change.

   Again lobby and lead the charge. You have my (disinterested) blessing.

   2/ much of the above argument can be used with regard to an official flag for NI. The Ulster Banner is used by default but I’m sure something could be designed. After all didn’t the Assembly come up with flax stalks or something, and there’s always the PSNI’s hotchpotch.

   However don’t be thinking that it will unite the Planter and the Gael. Many nationalists can’t even bring themselves to say ‘Northern’ and ‘Ireland’ in the same sentence let alone consider a flag for the “statelet”.

   3/ flags do excite, and they excite a small minority extremely. It is a natural response to having the flag, and more importantly what it represents – our place within the UK, attacked and continued attempts made to undermine that significance. I expect back in the fifties and sixties the current plethora of flags would have been unknown.

   4/ a moot point. I believe that a “resurgent, confident nationalism” seemingly minutes away from a ‘united’ Ireland would look upon it as a rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic moment. Even those Unicorns would be disinterested as they, quite properly, are realistic enough to be concentrating on making and eating hay with their families.

   5/ Personally I’ve never ‘marched’ a day in my life and the whole OO thing leaves me cold. Isn’t the Order very much a minority thing within unionism? Perhaps its reduced numbers represents another out working of the recent violence. As the organisation becomes more extreme in response to attacks on it and its property the more liberal and fraternally interested membership ebbs away.

   Do I think the playing of offensive tunes and the carrying of the type of banners you allude to are reprehensible. Most certainly. However I leave the police to investigate, and deal, with crime when it is alleged to have taken place.

   As to the unicorns perceptions. Perhaps they could adopt my approach. I find elements of the GAA and the flying of the Irish Tricolour as the emblem of the ‘Ra’,as one gable wall would have it, in a village near to me offensive.

   However I recognise that in life we are in the midst of rubbish. That the rubbish has some sort of tenuous community link with me, or not as the case may be, is of no consequence to me whatsoever.

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8. Comment on UTV Insight: Collusion and some of its innocent victims…
   on 9 May 2013 at 2:56 pm

   “There’s no way unionists would even acknowledge wrongs by the State”.

   Bollocks.

   Unionists like me are more than content to see ALL crime investigated and where the evidence merits it then prosecute without FEAR or FAVOUR.

   I’m equally happy to see ‘loyalist’ criminals in gaol just as much as having ‘republican’ criminals do time; and again just to add emphasis, gaol time for those ‘State actors’ that merit it can be added to that mix.

   What I, and others, will not support is some sort of Show Trial, ‘international’ or otherwise, that brings with it any sort of amnesty.

   Such a circus would bring with it trawling through reams of official records whilst on the other side, as with the Saville debacle, the cupboard would be found to be conveniently empty.

   We would be left with a completely unbalanced impression of the past that by sheer volume of State papers would portray the authorities as the bad guys and leave those responsible for most of the violence as bit-part players.

   Given that most observers seldom get beyond the headline and the soundbite the ‘past’ would be a revisioned fantasy: which of course is exactly the nationalist agenda.

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9. Comment on UTV Insight: Collusion and some of its innocent victims…
   on 9 May 2013 at 11:11 am

   Points: from reality and from the mythic nationalist ‘The North’.

   Reality: the programme was more nudge nudge, wink wink. Heavy on innuendo and effectively edited to flavour the crock of sh*t with a more palatable taste for its target audience.

   Nationalists will lap it up as it is the continuance of the ‘conflict’ and they’d love to see the papers (edited to protect their own gang members of course).

   But it’s for all sides they cry! Yea sure. However the nationalist murder gangs will turn out to be poor record keepers with even poorer memories. A bit like ‘decommissioning’ with all those weapons “put beyond use” now turning up in the hands of PIRAnua.

   Bottom line. With all that legal aid dosh swilling around and those publicly funded ‘human rights’ [sic] advocate groups loitering about name names and present the ‘evidence’. If the ‘corrupt’ public prosecutor won’t go for it launch private actions.

   And now to ‘The North’. Sure it was a war boyos? You did expect the enemy to shoot back didn’t you? All your soldiers, out of uniform and as fifth columnists acting as British citizens, were surely briefed what the penalty would be if they were caught by enemy toops?

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10. Comment on Futile Border Poll campaign to launch
    on 9 May 2013 at 10:33 am

    AG

    Trading nonsense = nonsensical is I agree a simple “flow chart”.

    As to the baulk of your latest stream-of-consciousness posting it’s really too dense for me to unpick. I’ll just put it in my scrapbook as an art installation to look up when I need a surrealism fix.

    I will mention two points. ‘Home Rule’ was indeed ‘Rome Rule’. A theocracy ruled for a considerable time by John Charles McQuaid. Suggesting that unionists would have forced a very different outcome is simply wishful thinking.

    When nationalists denied the minority’s Britishness before independence why do you suppose they would have supported its cultural sensitivities post independence?

    And that brings me round to a point you keep making in various forms. “A Home Rule agreed by unionists …….” or its contemporary version will not fly. Unionists wish to remain as part of the UK. It is, ahem, what makes them unionists. Should unionists start to advocate or negotiate a united Ireland they will cease to be unionists.

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