A Christmas Appeal On Behalf Of Sinn Féin

Posted on December 19, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

In this season of Goodwill, it is always good to remember those less fortunate than ourselves.

Those of us capable of independent thought may not fully understand that there are people who have not had an original thought in years…or indeed ever.

Take these tweets from Sinn Féin supporters.

They are in fact the same.

Perhaps this Christmas you will find it in your heart to help Sinn Féin. If you have an original thought to spare…no matter how trivial, please consider passing it on to Sinn Féin. Perhaps you will receive an unwanted oiginal thought for Christmas ….please consider those less fortunate than yourself.

Thank you…..and Merry Christmas to you all.

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Every Tom, Dick And Harry

Posted on December 16, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

There are rites of passage in life. One of the great days is walking into the local registry office, all pumped up and proud to register your child’s birth. I have done that twice and my two sons have done that…my second “baby” did it today.

You might have done this yourself.

Twice a week, a registrar visits the maternity hospital. I am a traditionalist. It seems like a job for a daddy. The first real service we can do for our child. The last real service we can do for a parent is registering their death. I have done that twice. You might also have done that.

Naming a child is a big deal. Kunta Kinte in “Roots” knew this and even those godless Scandanavians have ceremonies to mark an important part of Life.

Names…are strange. Even at times …controversial….fashionable and unfashionable.

Back in the early 1960s there were fifty five (yes…count them! ) in my primary school class. And the teacher made a graph on the blackboard. There were nine pupils called “John”, seven called “Gerard”….and the rest “Joseph”, “Patrick”, “James”, “Anthony” etc….down to the single “Terence” and “Damian”. I doubt if there were more than twelve different names.

To clarify the single “Gerald” was listed as a “Gerard” and the single “Seán” was listed as “John”.

This of course was a Catholic primary school  in West Belfast. Typically these boys came from big families and in some of the larger households, these names pre-dominated. If you were not actually called “John”, there was a reasonable chance that you had a brother called “John”.

For those who are not familiar with West Belfast, there are a lot of people called “Gerard” and “Geraldine”. The Redemptorist Church at Clonard has a shrine to St Gerard Majella, associated with the safe delivery of a child.

For the record, the girls had a limited range of names. “Mary”, “Anne”, “Catherine”….occassionally “Marian” (effectively dating a child to the Marian Year in 1953 or 1954)….”Geraldine”, “Theresa” and the odd “Patricia”.

Names do tend to date people. “Martha”, “Maggie”, “Minnie” were all elderly neighbours in the 1960s.

While family names are often used as a guide to identify a person as a Catholic or Protestant, the same could be said for “Christian” names. I knew no “David”, “Andrew” who was Catholic. But there are of course exceptions….the occasional “George”, Elizabeth” and of course in a mixed street, there was obviously a fondness among Protestant families for “royal” names. And a strange Protestant thing where surnames were also forenames….eg “Carson”, “Sinclair” and “Johnston”.

Effectively Catholic children were registered twice. Once by the State and once by the Church. Thus “John” and “James” was the neutral version submitted to the State and often “Seán” and “Séamus” was the name on the Baptism certificate. Occasionally  brave parents called a child “Kevin” which was both Catholic and  (hinting) at nationalist sentiment. No point in making it easy for  future employers to throw a job application in the waste paper bin.

I was at grammar school before I ever met someone called “Eamonn”. Middle class parents from the suburbs had a greater sense of empowerment.

To some extent, the Catholic Church restricted the choice of names available. It was not simply about choosing the name of a recognised Saint. This made calling a child “Elvis” or “Ringo” difficult although I dont think anyone actually tried. But the Church was not entirely comfortable with pre-Christian Irish names like “Conor” and “Deirdre”.

Of course things DO change and in the 1960s things DID change. Few Catholics were  called “Paul” prior to the election pf Pope Paul VI. Likewise there are few if any people called “John Paul” who pre-date the Pope of the same name. The popularity of the forename “Ryan” owes everything to Ryan O’Neal and Peyton Place.

Yet beyond the State and Church, the most important Gatekeeper was the Family. Certainly, in my day, children were named for parents, grandparents and aunties and uncles. Lets be honest….in West Belfast, we all know a “Big Paddy” and a “Wee Paddy”, “Big Mary” and “Wee Mary” and the rest….and inevitably “Wee Tommy” is bigger than “Big Tommy”.

The Troubles DID empower Catholics/Nationalists to choose established Irish names. In the 1970s, names like “Conor”, “Fearghal”, “Aoife” and “Clodágh” entered the mainstream. But as they became more accepted, parents looked for more uncommon names in the 21st century. That is really the big difference in the last fifty years. There was a certain comfort in handing down names theu the generations. But now people want  their child’s name to be unique.

Well of course, a name can never be completely unique but in the limited context of family, neighbourhood and school, it can be almost unique.

The welcome development is that “John”, “Gerard”, “James” from 1966 can now openly refer to themselves as “Seán”, “Gearóid”, and “James”. We all probably know a “Rose” who is now defiantly “Roisín”
I know a “Prionsais” who is still “our Frank” to his mammy.

…and whether its empowerment or Sinn Féin-influenced spoofery….who knows?
Whether the person, you used to know as “Martin” is empowering himself as “Máirtín” or is just spoofing….only you can answer.

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Bell Or Foster?

Posted on December 16, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

I have not met Jonathon Bell. But I never really liked him.

I have not met Arlene Foster. But I have never really liked her.

I have never met Stephen Nolan. But I never really liked him.

So by any standards, I am a fair-minded person. Who do I believe? To be frank, nobody really convinced me. In fact Bell praying before the interview…evoking Rev Ian Paisley three times….and getting all teary about the children in hospitals. I am not sure what it reminded me of….maybe it was that Vice-President Richard Nixon speech (the one with the dog..Checkers???). Or maybe it was the scene in “Father Ted” where a priest asks “is there anything to be said for a Mass?”

Was he bullied by aggressive Arlene Foster?

Arlene did not do any praying but was she bullied by Jonathan Bell? It is curious that she professed to know about his record of aggression and yet never dismissed him from Office.

SDLP….for once…is playing well. A vote of Confidence is the logical step and they have 29 of the 30 signatures in the bag and as I write there are no Sinn Féin signatories. SF are spineless. Accusing SDLP of playing politics and reserving judgement cant cover the fact that they are nothing more than a DUP poodle. In office…but not in power.

And Claire Sugden…our Minister for Justice? What is she going to do? Hide behind Collective Responsibility?

Let us not get carried away with a Vote of Confidence. When a Government anywhere is caught out, the Opposition goes for a Confidence motion and Governments always win but lose the high moral ground as their back-benchers are shamed, defending the indefensible.

This is the position that DUP MLAs now find themselves. Some will be highly animated on Monday. How dare the Opposition suggest foul play? There is a script for this kinda thing. But while DUP loudmouths are always entertaining, its the serious DUP MLAs who will be more interesting….as they shuffle their papers  and try to look sincere when they endorse the Party Leader.

This could be a very important day.

In an effort to be more credible, I have decided to say a wee prayer before I post anything on my Blog.

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Peace Without Dignity?

Posted on December 13, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Yes I voted for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998…more than 90 per cent of nationalists did so and more than 50 per cent of unionists did so.

It is a simple enough balance sheet. It ended violence. That is no small achievement. If you lived thru the bad decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, you will know just how important that is.

The Agreement necessitated a lot of compromises, some of which (the early release of “terrorist” prisoners) were hard for unionists to take. The “constitutional position of Norn Iron” was hard for nationalists.

Eighteen years later for both unionists and nationalists, the outworking of the Agreement…no parity of esteem for the Irish language (hard for nationalists), the effective disbandment of the RUC (hard for unionists) and the absolute abandonment of the Victims (hard on everyone).

Sadly the abandonment of the Victims is not accidental. It suits both the British Government and Sinn Féin and the rest of us seem compliant. It is deemed more important to keep Stormont in place.

I have written before that SDLP are right to blame the British and Irish Governments for hollowing out the Agreement. But crucially, SDLP has yet to fully recognise their incompetence in the decade after 1998. The Party is inching its way to accepting its share of responsibilty.

I recognise my own. Do I regret voting for Sinn Féin from 1993 to 2009? I actually regret the years 1993-1998 when I was motivated by a sense of personal injustice. But I dont regret the years 1998-circa 2007, when it was clear that SDLP compromised too much.

The switch back to SDLP in 2009 was because Sinn Féin compromised even more. If SDLP is the “Stoop Down Low Party” then SF is the “Stoop Further”.

The Agreement is not so much about power-sharing itself. Rather the Agreement is about power-sharing between DUP and Sinn Féin. It is practically the “Constitution” aided and abetted by a supine Media and “Civic Society”.

We have Peace. We have no Dignity.

IS PEACE WITHOUT DIGNITY WORTH IT?

Voting is of course an act of Dignity. The majority of those who vote put #1 for DUP and Sinn Féin. Sadly they are motivated more by hatred for Sinn Féin and DUP and select the Party with the biggest flegs and the loudest rhetoric. Ironically this suits DUP and Sinn Féin just fine….beyond the flegs and the rhetoric, they are joined at the hip in a one-party State.

But where exactly is the Dignity in the NAMA Scandal? Where is the Dignity in the Sinn Féin silence?

Where is the Dignity in giving a load of cash to organisations that are linked to loyalist paramilitaries? Where is the Dignity in the Sinn Féin silence?

Where is the Dignity in this latest scandal over Renewable Heat Initiative? Where is the Dignity in Sinn Féin silence.

And where is the Dignity every time Gerry Adams denies something…anything? Where is the Dignity in DUP silence?

And when the PSNI tells us that UDA and IRA are still active? Why the universal silence?

We have now gone beyond Farce?

It is no longer about voting against a Government. It is about campaigning to end this “Constitution”.

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The Working Class Bite Back…Identity Politics, My Arse!

Posted on December 12, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

A group of statues at Bermondsey on the south Bank of the River Thames in London. An elderly man is depicted waving at a little girl who is playing with a cat.

Dr Alfred Salter was a doctor in Bermondsey in the late Victorian era. He and his wife lost their only child to illness and he dedicated his life to improving living conditions in working class areas of London. He was also a member of the British Labour Party.

image

It is a familiar enough story. It happened in Bermondsey…in Birmingham…in Belfast….in Berlin….in Boston…in Baltimore.  Good-natured people with a potentially comfortable lifestyle, who dedicated their lives to others. Philanthropists. Do-Gooders. ….Middle class people.

The rise of Labour is only in part about the Working Class. The facilitators were the educated, middle class, often fired by Christian or other “faith” conscience.

In Britain, the reformers like Clement Attlee, Michael Foot and Tony Benn (formerly hereditary peer Viscount Stansgate) were from priveleged backgrounds and arguably class traitors. The same might be said of the Milliband brothers. But I doubt if it will be said about Tony B Liar and Peter Mandelson.

Class is not a rigid thing. But Attlee, Foot and Benn are the exceptions to a rule. Other priveleged people like David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson are more typical. They dont extend a helping hand. Their membership of the Bullingdon Club and the Conservative Party are extensions of their own privilege.

Of course it works both ways. There is a lot of aspiration in the working class. I will be blunt. I was born and raised in a West Belfast slum to a father who was chronically ill and usually unfit for work. As he often said, his ambition for me was to have a job where I worked indoors and carried nothing heavier than a pencil. The way out was Education. My father would be delighted with my comfortable existence but even more delighted that I held on to his value system.

Too many left West Belfast for Carryduff, Glengormley and Crumlin and left their values behind. “Fur Coat….no Knickers”. And I am sure thats replicated in Liverpool, Birmingham, London and the rest. Probably true of Chicago, Boston and Detroit.

Of course Gratitude is thin on the ground. The New Testament reckoned that one of ten lepers came back to say “thank you” and (British) Labour struggled with the “ingratitude” that Labour voters preferred to buy and resell the council houses that Labour had provided ….and move to Essex and other leafy middle class areas. Labour has never really recovered from the aspiration that they could not understand.

Likewise the “mutual societies” with members like the Abbey National Building Society and Halifax Building Society changed to being “banks”. Literally millions of members were bribed into  abandoning the noble concept with £100 of shares with the near certainty of a quick profit when the shares were bought by corporate investors.

Likewise Labour felt a sense of betrayal when various State utilities were sold off by Thatcher and working class people enthusiastically bought into it.

Thatcher  did create a property owning population. She did not quite create a share-owning population. But she certainly did detach the Labour Party from a large part of its natural support.

Had the working class turned on Labour and embraced Thatcher?  Well, only to the extent that Labour over-stated Ideology. The rise of the Labour Party in the early and mid 20th century was accompanied by the fall of the Liberal Party. And increasingly the post-war Labour Party is a coalition of socialists and liberals with arguably a cross-over with social democrats.

Realistically Tony B Liar was never a true socialist or even social democrat. He was a neo-liberal and as it turned out, a neo-con…or simply a con.

B Liar in Sedgefield and Mandelson in Hartlepool …unlikely combinations. I excuse the Millibands in South Shields and Doncaster but isnt Tristram Hunt an unlikely MP for Stoke? This Blairite takeover has ruined Labour. They lost Brexit  to Farage in the north of England but only because Labour was not listening.

Labour took the north for granted. After Brexit, TV reporters scurried north to interview any elderly person carrying a LIDL shopping bag….elderly, northern and poor….surely meant uneducated and racist?  The truth is that the elderly saw little benefit in EU. After all a 58 year old woman might well have thought that she would get a state retirement pension when she reached 60…..now of course she must wait to 67 ….is it any surprise that the working class were unconvinced by REMAIN university students bleating about losing their exchange study programme in Germany and their CV-boosting internships in Brussels.

Ah yes…young REMAIN politicos whine about people like me selling out their futures. But they never notice that those 58 year old women had their futures sold out by Westminster. Any chance of them noticing that older people value our limited futures at least as much as young people value their extensive futures?

Nope….apparently young people cant afford it. The young leftist politicos…the unworthy successors to Dr Salter ….are great at the macro. Holding a university degree in Politics is all very well….but few know or care about the Durham Teaching Assistants….victims of Labour councillors!!!…and no national coverage. Where is Liz Kendall? YVette Cooper? Jess Phillips?…..where are the Labour feminists when it actually matters?
The Durham Teaching Assistants are ….women. Just the wrong kinda “women” for Liz, Yvette and Jess to agonise about in the opinion pages of The Guardian. You may not have noticed that the London-based media is in no hurry to head north to interview Teaching Assistants in Durham.

I declare an interest. The Labour….I repeat LABOUR councillors who sacked their Teaching Assistants are being challenged by local people at next year’s council elections and one is a friend and fellow-blogger, David Lindsay. I declare my support for David’s campaign.

Working class people will find no saviours in the Tory Party…or UKIP….but have they really any champions in the Labour Party except Jeremy Corbyn, vilified by Liz, Yvette and Jess?

Brexit and the US Presidential Election.
The English working class were unconvinced by letters in The Guardian. Letters signed by the Great and the Good who are always writing letters to The Guardian (ooops I wrote this before a letter co-signed by me was published!)
The American blue-collar workers were unconvinced by Hillary Clinton…is it any real surprise that Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Meryl Streep and the assorted Hollywood A-listers who campaigned for the Former First Lady only convinced themselves. A woman whose prime policy was her own sense of entitlement will be an unlikely champion of a people struggling in Wisconsin and Michigan.

There is of course a parallel. The Media….head to Youngstown to grab passers-by to explain themselves. Why did these blue-collar voters turn to Donald Trump? The Media lazily call them stupid and racist.

There IS a fault-line.

Few if any members of the cast of “Saturday Night Live” or the contributors to Stephen Colbert and those other satire shows are Trump supporters but simply insulting and ridiculing half of the voters in the United States is not the way to win friends and influence people.

Likewise in Britain, few if any of the panelists on “QI”, “Have I Got News For You” and “Mock The Week” will have voted for Brexit…but the values of those who did are routinely abused on these shows.

In Norn Iron, we have no comedians….unless at a stretch, you consider Tim McGarry and Jake O’Kane to be comedians. Satire isof course healthy but while we have so much to lampoon, the targets are really the people deemed too stupid to vote the “right way”.

Hillary Clinton’s advisors steered her away from the concerns of blue-collar workers in the “rust belt” and steered her away from the Dakota Standing Rock issue. People were taken for granted.

The Labour Party has turned its back on the north of England. Too many back-benchers feel they will be defeated. They are intent on damaging the Labour Party as much as they can before they go.

There was a time when the prime concern of the Labour Party was the working class. In the world of “Identity Politics”, the working class is just another “minority”.

“Identity Politics” is the very opposite of what people like Dr Salter stood for all those years ago in South London. He was advocating for the rights of others…not himself. And this is what the modern Labour back-bencher does not get….it is all about their rights and their careers.

The British Labour Party, the American Democrat Party….and our very own SDLP …have good track records on advocating the rights of others. Altruism is not something which should embarras people seeking to be involved in Politics.

“Identity Politics” underscores it. Really I am sick of it. If you want to advance working class “rights”, then talk about that. Dont preface your speech with “speaking as a gay man…” Or “as a woman….”. And dont fill my Facebook page with a selfie of you and your mates “wasted” at the latest place to be seen.

Just do it!

Or should I preface every post with “speaking as a wee old fat baldy man…..”

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It Wasn’t The Russians

Posted on December 10, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

I have no idea whether the Russian Intelligence Service manipulated the US Presidential Election. It does seem like the kinda thing that they might try to do. But conversely the American Intelligence “community” is hardly a credible source…President-Elect Trump makes a fair point when he says these are the same people that told the American people about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

While it is true to say that there is a massive disparity in the “electoral college” vote and the “popular” vote, it is equally true to say that Hillary Clinton was a useless candidate who has seriously betrayed the most vulnerable people in the United States.

The most enduring part of this Election and its Fall Out is that USA is a hopelessly divided nation. A “Divided Nation” is arguably a better result for the Russians than a simple Trump victory.

Could an “Intelligence Service” actually manipulate a political party into Government? And maintain its place in Government?

Hmmmm….how else do we explain Sinn Féin in Government? How else do we explain the lack of open-ness to deal with historic murders? And the influence of informers?

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Craggy Island Politics

Posted on December 6, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

It seems a bit cheap for the DUP-Sinn Féin to call the Opposition the “Craggy Island Opposition”. The Government would rather have SDLP and UUP as small parties without influence within their own DUP-SF dominated Executive.

It shows a disrespect for the people who actually voted SDLP and UUP.

Who are the formerly fearless and intrepid journos who (poacher turned gamekeepers) who are now press officers, churning out this rubbish. I hope they are proud of themselves.

My favourite charachters on “Craggy Island” were the squabbling shopkeepers John and Mary. The married couple who hated each other in private and put on a show of affection when Fr Ted and Fr Dougal came shopping. A bit like…..Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster.

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Politicians And The Theatre

Posted on November 19, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Vice-President Mike Pence is a brave man. He is after all in the “Party  of Abraham Lincoln” and we all know what happened to Honest Abe on his last visit to the Theatre.

Pence should have known it would not end well.

Yet this form of protest might catch on. I look forward to Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness going to the Grand Opera House to see Cindarella, Sleeping Beauty or whatever the panto is this year.

It would be uncomfortable for a Sinn Féin (the Party of Trump?) sitting thru a lecture from May McFetridge.

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Ambassador Shaun Hannity?

Posted on November 11, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

Here is a thought.

When President Trump announces his ambassadorial appointments, could Shaun Hannity from Fux News be appointed to….Ireland?

Or Bill O’Reilly?

 

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President Trump

Posted on November 10, 2016 by fitzjameshorse

DRAFTED Wednesday 9th November

When I went to bed at 6am…at the point where it was certain that Donald Trump would be elected. Six hours later…and early reaction appears to be a bad idea. Looking at the reaction of people from Norn Iron…particuarly women…is an exercise in hyperbole.
HELL hath no fury like (a bunch of middle-class Norn Iron) women scorned.

Hillary Clinton did not break the Glass Ceiling.
If it was Women against Men, she would have got 51% of the votes cast
She didnt. Getting the endorsement of Lady Gaga, Meryl Streep and Beyonce did not get her into the White House. That is the world in which Hillary lives.
Her candidacy and her campaign were demonstrations of Arrogance.

She would have been at her peak in 2008 and was unfortunate to run up against Barack Obama, coming in to his prime. Obama was an outsider and the Democratic Party establishment failed to stop him. In 2016, she was past her peak. There was an absence of credible Democratic candidates…only Bernie Sanders and at a stretch, Martin O’Malley emerged as credible rivals.
In the end, she had the might of the machine to crush the Sanders challenge. But the diehard Bernie supporters never warmed to her.
There is an air of entitlement about the Clintons…and the Bush family for that matter. Even thru the prism of the Norn Iron “Peace Process”, it is hard to see how so many people here could not spot a phoney. We need to get past that whole Christmas Tree thing.

I was at a Presidential Election Quiz, hosted by SDLP Youth at Queens University Students Union last night (Tuesday). I voted jokingly for Trump in a mock ballot. Not surprisingly his only vote. But perhaps the real surprise was that most attendees voted for Sanders.
Hillary may or may not have inspired women. She didnt inspire young people.
CErtainly there IS a gender issue.
But lets not pretend that Clinton lost because she is a woman. She lost because she was perceived as an entitled and unpopular person.
A better candidate would have won the Presidency for the Democrats. She may have got votes that Sanders would not have got. But crucially this election was lost in the rust belt states where Sanders did well in his primary campaign.
The charge that she stole the Democratic nomination is hard to dismiss.
And it cost her dearly.
But miscalculating Wisconsin…she never visited. Her campaign assumed it was a “blue state”. She was wrong. It was a juvenile mistake.

So those women crying into their cappuchinos, mochas and lattés in Belfast’s trendy coffee shops need to dry their eyes. Hillary blew it. She might be forgiven by women under forty…they will probably get a new woman (maybe two) to kick at the glass ceiling. Their day will come.

But for a lot of people…there is no Future. So….thanks for that Hillary.

 

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