The Sh!t hit the fan, literally, at the end of this week’s British Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London today.
A group of Welsh and Irish parliamentarians urged the Assembly to condemn the offensive use of the term “Operation Irish” as the code for a South Wales police operation to persuade schoolchildren to clear up dog mess.
The police have apologised and say that “operational names are randomly assigned to policing operations for administrative purposes.”
This rather misses the point which is that some plonker failed to realise that this would be offensive and randomly selected another name.
The Assembly couldn’t take a formal position on the matter as it was a last minute motion and members hadn’t had the chance to study the case for themselves.
But Co-Chairs Laurence Robertson MP and Joe McHugh TD will be asking the cops to comment.
Gary Kent is a graduate of international relations. After spells in management in British Rail and the Co-Op he began work in parliament in 1987 where he was active for two decades on Anglo-Irish peace activity against terrorism and then in support of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, which he has visited 40 times since 2006. He writes a foreign policy column for Progressive Britain.
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