I wrote to my M.P., one Roberta Blackman-Woods, as quoted below:-

 Do you support the moves by the Northern Irish Secretary to move and facilitate the entry, into a devolved Government, of an unreconstructed bunch of terrorists and murderers?
 
As the IRA is still active, alongside it’s so-called Loyalist fellow-travellers, as is detailed within this Belfast Telegraph article, would you not agree with me that it is a stain on the memories of all those who died to get this bunch into Stormont?

Her reply is quoted verbatim:-

"Thank you for your correspondence of the 30-11-2006, the contents of which have been noted. I strongly support the move by the Secretary of State for Nothern Ireland to reinstate the devolved power sharing government. I feel that this will go a long way to ensuring peace and stability and greatle benefit the people of Northern Ireland."

A true object lesson in ‘how not to answer a question!’

Did you see that Treasury minister Dawn Primarolo has poured cold water on calls for her boss Gordon Brown to create a low tax base in the province to attract industry and jobs? In a hugely negative assessment she said reducing corporation tax would place a "significant administrative burden" on both the government and businesses.

The Industrial Task Force, a group of senior Ulster business leaders, has for the past year argued the 30% corporation tax rate in the province should be reduced to 12.5% – the level at which the levy is set in the Republic – to boost the economy. (I favour a 10% rate myself, let’s CHALLENGE the Republic and watch the corporate exodus Northwards!)

Primrolo adds that "Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice in September 2006, it is also clear that introducing lower regional rates for corporation tax in the UK would violate EU law."

Nice to have an admission from this lousy government that UK membership of the EU prevents us from doing that which may be right for our regions. The lower corporation tax idea gets my vote but it has NO CHANCE of being championed by the goons in power. 

Apart from being a cool song by The Buzzcocks from long ago, this also appears to sum up how people in Northern Ireland feel about our wonderful Police Service. Yes – it’s been revealed that almost 80% of people have "confidence" in the PSNI, the world’s most politically correct and neutered policing SERVICE!What amused me most about this seasonal PR story dressed up as news was that the media headline that followed it was all about an armed robbery that took place in the Park Centre, one of Belfast’s busiest shopping centres. Oddly enough, our wonderful Police Service seemed to miss that.

Probably too busy churning out postive pre-Xmas publicity!

Supposing the mother of a sexually violated daughter offered to meet the man who had carried out this wicked deed.  What would be gained?  It would only be an opportunity for the offender to claim he had an insatiable sex drive.  The point I am making is when you hold certain principles, you do not trade them for what you hope will be short-term expediency, but in effect will bestow an air of understanding and legitimacy upon the sinful party.

This same argument applies to the Orangemen of Portadown.  After years of maintaining the moral high ground by refusing to chin-wag with insurrectionist garbage about their right to walk down a public road in a profession of loyalty to the country in which they reside, they are now on the verge of a complete U-turn by suggesting they will meet the residents of the Garvaghy Road face-to-face.  Yes, they may not have been granted their inalienable right to walk down the road because a quango appointed by people who believe that the ‘rights’ of those who hate this United Kingdom should be accommodated before those of citizens who demonstrate steadfast loyalty, but that is beside the point.  There is nothing to discuss.  The Garvaghy Road is a thoroughfare within the United Kingdom.  Those who wish to walk along it for ONE day per year are people who take pride in that constitutional position.  By contrast, those who wish to deny them that entitlement are people who hate the United Kingdom and appoint a self-confessed bomber as their sanctimonious spokesman.

How many of the proles who will rush forth to defend the Garvaghy cabal have actually been down that road?  The nearest house to the kerbside is around 30 – 40 yards away.  The estate is typical of those built in the Craigavon area during the 1960s to accommodate the Belfast overspill.  Very few houses are in close proximity to principal thoroughfares.  Thus, who the hell is Brendan McCenasfodhadfngyivhfgsofidfiogudfiojsdgfhrfsdhdfhafigh (or simply ‘McKenna’ to normal people) to tell British people on British soil where they can and can’t walk?

I imagine the Orange leaders in Mid-Ulster thing that by talking to the likes of McKenna they will open up a window that will inevitably lead to the resumption of their church parade.  Not a bit of it.  Republicans will use the meeting as a photo-opportunity to demonstrate how the Orangemen have been humbled by circumstances, yet will still preclude them for marching by invoking the same stupid arguments they have been using since the mid-1990s.  You maintain your dignity and your pride by adhering to certain fundamentals.

So what should the Portadown Orangemen do?  What they have done for the last nine summers, of course!!  You hold fast on Drumcree Hill and pray for a time when politicians in charge of this nation adopt the more sensible tactic of putting down those who despise it in order that individuals and organisations which are proud to call themselves British can resume the entitlements they had previously.

I see that Conor Cruise O’Brien has weighed in on the subject of whether Dr Paisley will "do a deal" and allow the IRA into a local Government, early next year…

For some days, there has been rather feverish speculation in the Dublin and London papers about the intentions of Ian Paisley. Commentators have been suggesting that Paisley is about to do a deal with Sinn Fein, in which he would become First Minister with a Sinn Fein representative as his deputy. Paisley did not initially discourage the speculation. Indeed, he allowed it to be known that he was keeping an open mind.

 

The Dublin and London media grasped at this signal and suggested the deal was as good as made. I have known the DUP leader very well for nearly half a century now and I know this speculation to be altogether unfounded. Indeed, Paisley would have been crazy to have concluded such a deal. His own followers, who have made him the leader of the largest party in Northern Ireland, would have deserted him enmasse immediately.

 

But my friend and political ally Bob McCartney believes Paisley was seriously contemplating such a deal and warned him quite earnestly of the political ruin that would follow it. Paisley was quite happy to take on board such a warning. But the Paisley-watchers in the British and Irish Governments refused to take the warning seriously. They really believed he was about to do the deal. As I write, the British and Irish Governments and their press officers are still trying to keep the proposed deal alive, but by now rather forlornly. I expect it will soon collapse and Paisley will become a non-person in the press which the governments control.

I hope Conor is right. I can’t say in all honesty that I share his view on this. There is an unbearable pragmatism in the air which will be further fueled early in the New Year and the portents for a "walk away" scenario as outlined by Conor are poor.

I might be a little cheeky and remind Conor that it was his political ally Bob Mc Cartney who devised the "tar baby" analogy when it came to a previous team of foolish Unionists embracing that which they then found they could not then get away from. Back then, they were also given good advice and ignored it. I feel the same is happening now….time will tell, and all views are welcome.

You can read my script for Hearts and Minds here, with the cartoons that accompanied it, and if you are VERY BRAVE, if you click the Watch Hearts and Minds button, I’m on after about 12 minutes…..naturally I use a body stunt double! And did you spot the Costello reference buried in the labyrinthine words….?

I commend this article from my former political associate, Robert McCartney, in last evening’s Belfast Telegraph…

Jeffrey Donaldson, who as an Ulster Unionist opposed David Trimble’s policies, is now adapting one of Trimble’s reasons for power-sharing with Sinn Fein, by trotting out the old bogeyman that if Unionists don’t do the deal something worse like joint authority is lurking in the woodshed.

Faced with the prospect of dissent within their own grass roots and the loss of the votes of anti-Agreement Ulster Unionists who switched to the DUP in the last two elections, the DUP ‘pragmatists’ had already devised a big stick with which to herd a fearful Unionist electorate into the polling booths on the party’s behalf.

They recognised that as the DUP and the Ulster Unionists were now both willing to enter an enforced coalition with Sinn Fein their policies were indistinguishable.

As a result, anti-Agreement Unionists would have no place to go to on election day and might stay at home or spoil their ballot papers. A scheme of electoral emotional blackmail had therefore to be devised to drive them to the polling stations and give Ian Paisley their vote.

But the electorate would do well to simply remember the pledge which that party gave in its general election manifesto last year: ‘Inclusive mandatory coalition government which includes Sinn Fein under D’Hondt or any other system is out of the question.’

Read the rest. Bob and I agreed more often than not on many local constitutional issues, and I am very pleased with his take on this. 

For my last Feeney Watch of ’06 I want to take another look at Bigoted Bri’s ever-more prominent journey into the IRA’s political knickers.  He says the Provos are right to refuse to endorse the police until a deal satisfactory to their aim of corrupting it from within is in place.  He says:

‘Unionists like to claim, as they have always claimed, that they are the ‘law-abiding community’, as if nationalists are a kind of sub-species who enjoy criminality and endorse lawlessness. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact northern nationalists have always wanted but never enjoyed, proper policing.’

To me the definition of a ‘law-abiding community’ is one which is accepting of the State in which it lives; cooperates and follows the tenets of good community relations; obeys the law of the land; and, most importantly, does not massively endorse the use of illegal militias/terrorists to kill innocent people under the false pastiche of a ‘liberation struggle’.  On these measures Unionists hold all the aces.  As far as I, and thousands of others across this land are concerned, we don’t CLAIM nationalists are a sub-species, nationalists ARE a sub-species.  A people who who can give increasing support to the frontsmen of terrorists who killed nearly 2,000 people are not fit to walk the streets.  Those who were law-abiding were protected by the Royal Ulster Constabulary – simple as!!!

‘Policing in the north was created by and for unionists. Policing always belonged to unionists because they believed the very existence of their northern state depended on a police force created to defend it.’

Balderdash!!!  Policing in Northern Ireland was created on the same basis that every other police force in the western world is created – to defend the integrity of the State in which it serves.  That is no less in the official remit of the PSNI than it was of the RUC; and no less than the Garda is expected to uphold in the Irish Republic; the Carabinieri in Italy; or Deputy Inspector Michael Lau, who supervises the police operations on New York’s Fifth Precinct.  Given that nationalists still think they are entitled to share power in the State just so as they can destroy it, the more rancid analysts in that community continue to see policing through that prism.

Feeney, by his typical prattling poison, not only insults the hundreds of Catholic RUC officers who served their country down the years, he also pours scorn on those in his erstwhile party who do give their support to the PSNI.  As for the Unionist ‘meedja’, perhaps he can tell me where the Ulster’s British community has the equivalent of An Phoblacht, Andersonstown News, South Belfast News, North Belfast News or the moribund Daily Provo?  And all acting as fly-posters for republican propaganda!!

Those who wish to govern Northern Ireland either give support to the police and, by extension, the State, and exercise power.  Or they withhold that support and forget about ever holding power again.  No ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ or ‘quid pro quos’.  The choice is theirs.

What a surprise. The so-called "hard men of loyalism" (Quislings to anyone with a brain btw) will not "stand in the way" of an Ian Paisley-Martin McGuinness government. That was the message delivered by the UDA’s political wing – the Ulster Political Research Group – in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph. Ho Hum.Cue celebrations all round.

I need not remind readers as to how vile and disgusting a terror group the UDA is. That it remains active, murdering and wounding, stealing and intimidating, up to its neck in every form of criminality. That it’s political frontmen welcome the admission of IRA terror proxies to Government is entirely predictable and should give the more reasoned element of the DUP food for thought. Does Jim Allister, for example, welcome the goodwill from the UDA’s stooges for his Party entering Government with the Irish mafiosa? Green light spells danger, to paraphrase Bily Ocean.

I note that the government is "consulting" people in Northern Ireland about whether Irish should be recognised as an official language here.

Four options are being considered for the protection and promotion of the language in NI. 

The first option would see Irish become an official language in Northern Ireland like Welsh is in Wales, giving it an equal footing with English. That would mean it would be used to a significant extent by state agencies, government and the justice system.

The second alternative would be to recognise Irish as having equal validity as English, but this would fall short of the status afforded to Welsh.

A third option would be to recognise Irish as a traditional, historic, indigenous or minority language, according it public recognition but again falling short of official and equal status.

The final plan would be to aspire that Irish would become an official language or have equal status in the future.

Not sure I agree with ANY of these! How about we recognise Irish in the same way as we recognise Klingon, some people choose to speak it which is their business but not of any public concern and should not cost one penny of public money? I fully understand how Irish Nationalists use the "Irish language" to advance their own insurrectionist ideology, just as some Unionists go ape crazy over "Ulster-Scots." I have no time for EITHER, and so I must reject all four options. You can be certain the Government will ignore the so-called consultation anyway and try to give IRA/Sinn Fein what they want. English is our language, pure and simple.