Sinn Féin’s red lines? : “So you had the Irish language act, there was a thing called the bill of rights and there was another issues.”

Launching the Sinn Féin manifesto for the Northern Ireland Assembly election a couple of weeks ago, the party’s appointed ‘leader in the North’, Michelle O’Neill, declared that “You’d be very aware that I won’t be drawing any red line issues…” Since then she has allowed the impression to be created that the one ‘red line’ the party does have is the nomination of the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, as First, or deputy First, Minister before Judge Coughlin’s inquiry into the RHI scheme …

Read more…

Sinn Feín MLA considers 13-17 year olds “British Army”

Not necessarily a surprising one, more a case of here we go again. On a par with Jude Collins comparing the Boys Brigade to children taking part in dissident republican marches. The PSNI Chief Inspector was at Loreto Grammar School, speaking about careers and gave an answer to a question by mentioning the Air Cadets. Barry McElduff MLA posted the following tweet, Following on from this, Pat Sheehan MLA, McElDuff’s party colleague, took up the cause today in a BBC Talkback …

Read more…

Pat Sheehan

McKittrick in the Independent profiles Pat Sheehan, who is following Gerry Adams as MLA for West Belfast. A reflective piece: Then he came up with an unusual description of the Irish conflict: it was, he remarked, “probably quite civilised, if that’s a proper description to use”. Civilised? Was the IRA civilised, was it a civilised conflict? “If you look at it in the round,” he contended, “the type of mass killings and genocide in other conflicts didn’t happen here. The …

Read more…