Just when you think its a good day……..up pops serial letsgetalongerist Andy Pollak on Slugger O’Toole. He admits to certain obsessions…..including
the exhortation to Northern Irish people to fully enjoy both their identities, Irish and British;
Seriously……..is this man for real?
You cant make this stuff up.
A poem ………almost by Robert Burns.
Ulster Scots wha’ hae ideas long dead.
Ulster Scots wha’ hae McCausland led.
Welcome tae yer Poll defed
Or tae victorie.
Eich Bin Ein Ulster-Scot!!
Over on his own Blog the peerless Mr BangorDub draws attention to the Orange Orders demand that “Ulster Scots” have a vote in any Referendum on Scottish Independence.
http://bangordub.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/lets-all-vote-together/
Aside from the nightmare of actually working out who is real Ulster Scot…..perhaps a certificate of authenticity signed by Nelson McCausland himself……I am not really sure that the Orange Order has thought this one thru.
Does the extended franchise extend to nationalists with Scottish names? Or exclude unionists with Irish names? After all we are all a pretty mixed bunch.
Does the franchise include the descendants of those Ulster Scots…….who stayed a generation in “Ulster” before taking themselves off to New York and Pennsylvania to wage war on the British Government and form the United States of America? Does this mean that John McCain gets a vote? Or if still alive…does Elvis Presley get a vote?
And why not descendents of the wider Scottish diaspora……..like the Jacobite prisoners herded into boats in Liverpool, Whitehaven and Scottish ports to be slaves in the Virginias and Carolinas? Its unlikely that their descendants would have any axe to grind. And what about all that unpleasantness around the Highland Clearances? Who could possibly hold a grudge after a couple of centuries?
Yet extending the franchise seems ill thought out. If we ever get round to a Border Poll…..a referendum on Norn Iron and a United Ireland……then presumably the Orange Order would want the franchise extended to those residents of the Republic of Ireland witha “north of Ireland” heritage. It seems pretty logical.
Paul Clark of the Covenant.
What was that all about on UTV News last night. A week long series of reports on the “Ulster Covenant” seems reasonable enough. And perhaps tonights promised report on Nationalism and the Covenant will do something to restore some balance to Paul Clarks strangely personal report last night.
Starting his Report with a visit to May Street Presbyterian Church where his grandfather heard a sermon on the Covenant in 1912 before walking out to sign it…….actually a couple of days later because the crowds were too great. Paul Clark even held up a “piece of family history”…….the Covenant signed by his grandfather in 1912.
Paul Clark is rapidly becoming the “Face of the Decades of Centenaries” ….on UTV at least. He is probably UTVs face with the most “gravitas”. This kinda thing seems to be his kinda thing. Visiting war graves in Flanders…..”Royal Visit”…..Titanic……and no harm in that.
But as the Titanic Experience showed, journalists got caught up in a Good News narrative that Belfast is just wonderful. Just look at those MTV Awards. Increasingly it looks like there is a narrative for the upcoming Decade and journalists will set aside anything that puts a darker shade on the Covenant…..
In journalistic terms, Paul Clark’s piece on the Covenant last night was an outrageous “puff piece” and unlikely to be balanced by tonights piece on “nationalism and the Covenant”. Meanwhile up at Stormont, there was hard news….a different narrative where an SDLP-led motion to censure a leading light in the 2012 Remembrance Campaign was being discussed.
Was it given proper recognition on UTV News last night? Why not?
If you were a core-team blogger on a letsgetalongerist anti-SDLP weblog………a weblog of record……..how exactly would you set the narrative for todays “McCausland vote”.
Well of course there is no such weblog 😉 but lets say that you cannot really like Nelson McCausland…….a bit of a dinosaur, you would kinda be helped by Alliance deciding to support the SDLP motion. You might even give a tip of the hat to David McClarty, the Independent Unionist who voted with SDLP.
The awkward thing is that it was a nationalist party which led the motion……and a “lets get alongerist” weblog needs to be fairly well implanted in the “liberal unionist” UUP-Alliance Camp.
So today’s vote was bad news for “lets getalongerists”. The Alliance Party which gets votes from Protestants and Catholics voted with SDLP. The UUP….whose Leader Mike Nesbitt……spoke again of his desire to have Catholics vote for his Party voted against the SDLP motion. His much vaunted “outreach” oft spoken of by “lets get alongerists” ……..got another airing at his Partys Conference on Saturday. And it is hard to escape the idea that Nesbitt’s outreach to Catholics is phoney.
There will of course be a narrative that the debate was about SDLP trying to “out-green” Sinn Féin. But does that stand any serious scrutiny? I dont think so……Aside from an attempt to raise the Ministerial Code, there is a Civil Rights dimension as well as nationalist/republican dimension here.
SDLP is on its best ground when Civil Rights is an issue. I do not really see any difference between the SDLP attitude on (Orange) Parades than in 1997 when Drumcree was a hot issue. It is Sinn Féin who have moved more towards faux acceptance of these parades.
Put simply, it should never be the responsibility of a nationalist/republican Party to facilitate quasi-fascists in the Orange Order. Marginalise them first…..like the Ku Klux Klan…….and when rendered relative harmless………let them march all day and all night.
The Andrew Mitchell story is surely not that unique. He is hardly a household name in his own household. And if I ever appear on the excellent “Pointless Quiz” on BBC and chosse “Tory MPs Recognised By The Public”, I would nominate Andrew Mitchell……surely a “pointless answer”. Indeed yesterday I kept referring to him as DAVID Mitchell.
So ANDREW Mitchell. Chief Whip in the Con-Lib Coalition. Appointed three weeks ago. And in charge of keeping the names of Tory MPs out of the headlines.
But it seems to have gone to his head a bit.
He is a Man of the People. Well maybe he is……..and maybe he isnt. But he rides a bicycle about Westminster……..which is a Member of Parliament’s way of saying he is an ordinary bloke.
So what could possibly go wrong? Well those big gates at the end of Downing Street. On Wednesday evening, Mitchelll leaves his office at 12 Downing Street and the policemen on duty dont open the gates so that he can make a grand exit……showing the people in Whitehall that he is not just some press officer or whatever. He is the Government Chief Whip! The police tell him to take himself and his bike out thru the pedestrian exit. Like an ordinary bloke.
What happens next is in doubt. Mitchell has issued a grovelling apology saying that he did not treat the police officers with proper respect. He has spoken to the officer concerned. But words were exchanged….mostly it seems by Mitchell. Some words “plebs”, “Im the Chief Whip!!” and “f***ing morons” are alleged to have been spoken.
All from a Tory Government Minister. A few months ago Boris Johnson, Mayor of London made a speech in which he urged zero tolerance for people who swear at police officers. His Tory audience applauded. Of course it does not seem very likely that Mitchell will be arrested. Because Tories make laws for other people not for themselves.
Yet “Gate-gate” has the capacity to embarass the Government. And it takes a heart of stone not to laugh when an episode of “The Thick of It” is enacted in front of our very eyes.
Just before 8am this morning, there is breaking news……and it seems like some political correspondents have been early risers. Gary O’Donoghue and Joey Jones and others are there with camera crews. No doubt Government Press Officers have been briefing them. “Get to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall at 8am and Andrew Mitchell will make a statement”.
At 8am…….Mitchell arrives…..makes a fuzzy kinda statement/apology on the pavement and hurries into the Cabinet Office. A rainy looking morning in London. No sign of the bicycle…..and no sign of Mitchell walking to 12 Downing Street via those “gates”. Indeed the first time Mitchell goes thru those gates, it will be in the full glare of publicity.
Rightward leaning Lib Dems….in coalition with the Tories……..wish it would all go away. They must express a degree of righteous disgust……but it has to be limited. Leftward-leaning Lib Dems such as Vince Cable sieze the real mood of the Lib Dems (holding their annual conference this week) by joking at Mitchell’s expense.
Of course there are dimensions to this story. Mitchell insists he did not say “words attributed to me” but its unclear if this means none, some or all of the words…….”f**king morons”, “plebs”. The Police made nots at the time and somehow these notes or what purports to be these notes have been published by The Sun newspaper.
Will he stay or will he go? To some extent it is no longer relevant. A Government Minister who actually releases a more revealing account of that altercation is unlikely to survive the embarassment….as wahtever words were used are unlikely to show Mitchell in a good light. And denying the allegations without further explanation runs the risk of effectively calling the Police liars. And as always the factor that Labour must bear in mind is that a damaged Government Minister is more useful to them than a “clean skin”.
Which brings me to Nelson McCausland, himself the subject of a vote of no confidence in Stormont today. Stormont is of course a Grand Coalition of five parties……..and the DUP and Sinn Féin are at its heart. Alliance is more central to it than SDLP and UUP.
Yet heres the irony. The SDLP arrange the vote of no-confidence. But its as much about embarassing Sinn Féin as it is about embarassing McCausland, who is shameless. And its even more about embarassing those highly principled……but only occasionally………Alliance people.
Gerry Kelly MLA looked interesting on UTV News tonight. What WAS he wearing? I was thinking that he had maybe dropped into Havelock House straight from a rehearsal of Sinn Féin Amateur Dramatic Societys production of “Grease”.
Caitriona Ruane as “Sandy”? Martina Anderson has a nice pony tail.
It must be twenty years since Ann (or is it Anne?) Diamond invented the tactic of faux disgust at tabloid newspapers. Classicly she once interviewed Rolling Stone, Bill Wyman, referring to how horrified he must be…..as indeed was she …….to see lurid headlines about himself and his girlfriend of the time in the morning’s headlines.
Its classic journalistic hypocrisy and those pictures of Kate……have given journalists a chance to do some moralistic crap……about the French while at the same time helpfully directing all and sundry to Le Closer. Even Dirty Richard Desmond has been duly disgusted……and assorted tabloid hacks, including at least one facing serious criminal charges have been wheeled out to be duly disgusted.
Of course the Story developed even more legs when the disgusting Irish published the pics. And even more legs when the disgusting Italians (well what would you expect of Berlusconi?) published them. Not to mention the Swedes and the Danes….well they are sex mad anyway. Thats a heck of a lot of legs.
It seems now that even The Economist…….and I am indebted to Slugger O’Toole for pointing this out……talks about the economics of that pic. Curiously the Irish Independent expresses disgust at the Irish Daily Star…..by er posting a “sneaky pic” itself.
Even more curiously Slugger O’Toole illustrates the point that it is making…..by publishing a helpful pic.
Could turn out that Ms Middleton is going to be an even greater asset to Republicanism than her deceased mother-in-law.
At some point today, I hope to blog about the general Bastardy of the Alliance Party.
But just a thought on the issue of Nelson McCausland and the motion of censure which the SDLP has tabled. Love them or hate them, it has to be said that this looks like a good move by the SDLP. They are taking the lead and have forced Sinn Féin into making a decision….to support them.
But what will the Alliance Party do? The “principle” would be to support the motion. But Politics and general Bastardy play a part. David Ford will of course make a speech……a pious one……bemoaning the sectarianism in Norn Iron Politics but rather than supporting the SDLP motion he will claim that it is another piece of sectarian point scoring and his Party will have none of it. On principle. They will abstain.
And I cant help feeling that Sinn Féin will be relieved…….even though they vote for the motion.
But its Politics…….whats in it for Alliance?
Most reasonable people think that eleven “ministries” in the Executive is too many. The threshold for having a Ministry (as of right) is just eight seats……..and it has cost Alliance …or rather it has cost Rowntree £97,000 in “Quaker Money”, “Innocent Money”, “Chocolate Money” (thanks to Quintin Oliver of Stratagem for this reference) since 2007 just to get that one extra Assembly seat.
But thru the good offices of DUP and Sinn Féin, Alliance have a second Ministry…Justice (Minister Ford).
So look on this example of total Bastardy. UUP 16 Assembly seats…..88,000 votes and one Executive seat. SDLP 14 Assembly seats ….95,000 votes and one Executive seat…….and Alliance 8 Assembly seats (52,000 votes) and TWO Executive seats. Curiously the wonderfully fair-minded Alliance Party think this is just peachy.
So limiting the number of Ministries would raise the threshold for getting an Executive seats to around ten Assembly seats and confined to the Belfast suburbs, the Alliance Party and probably Ford’s leadership would be screwed. Of course they cant exactly rely on boundary changes or a lowering of the number of constituencies and MLAs helping them.
What they MAY be able to rely on is a re-think by the DUP and Sinn Féin……and no changes in the current system until after the next Assembly Election.
Stamps are meant to commemorate (among other things) important historic occasions. So why wasn’t the first power-sharing government of Norn Iron (after the Good Friday Agreement 1998) commemorated? Well actually it was….by me.
I actually had a little trouble with this one. On the morning of 2nd December 1999, I got a train to Dublin, with six self addressed envelopes….with a Norn Iron regional postage stamp…..upside down. I had used my new-fangled computer thingy to print out labels with the logos of the four parties who would share power and the inscription in English and Gaelic “”Northern Ireland” Government 2nd December 1999″.
Unfortunately the guy at the Philatelic Bureau in GPO Dublin would not accept the envelopes across the country. The issue wasnt the inscription or even the “Queen” being upside down (that happens accidently….er six times) ….the issue was actually “cancelling” another country’s stamps. The only reason I was at the Philatelic Bureau was to get a nice “handstamp” with the date clearly shown.
This meant I had to drop the six envelopes in an ordinary postbox at the GPO. And they duly arrived at my house a few days later.
So I got myself some nice philatelic souvenirs of an historic day.
Propaganda stamps were often used in the 1912-1922 period and made a return in Norn Iron when someone (NOT ME!!!) overprinted British stamps with political slogans. The person involved did so for commercial reasons….passing them off to gullible people as stamps produced by “the IRA”. Later he produced the same stamps with “loyalist” slogans. Most of these did not pass thru any postal service as they were clearly “illegal” but he did have some cancelled by a friendly sub-postmaster.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 