It is hard to think of the title”Dame” without thinking Widow Twanky and Mother Goose…especially in pantomime season. So the elevation of Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary whoop could not quite bring herself to condemn Israel on one of their most murderous adventures into Gaza is as likely to go down better in Tel Aviv as it will in Beckett’s Derbyshire constituency.
And I suppose that legendary MIddle East Peace Envoy…..how’s that going?….Tony B Liar will be congratulating Margaret.
This is the British Labour Party…….the Party that assorted members of the “too posh to vote for SDLP” over class want to see set up shop here.
Lovely people.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
The SDLP O’Loan family accepted the title Dame and then also the elevation to Baroness.
Oh goodness. Where do I start?
An “SDLP family”.?????
Didnt unionists claim that Pat Finucane was from an “IRA family”? Presumably that outraged you as much as it outraged me. Guilt by association.
To label a family as being political………..and to accuse or suggest (as DUP did) that a person like Nuala O’Loan is not independent because of family connexions….is not at all good.
She is English. She may or may not support Irish nationalism.
She may or may not support the British honours system ……..she had no connexion to Ireland before marrying a man she met at university as I understand it.
Thru being a Crossbench peer she has made an implicit statement that she is not a member of a political party.