Martin McGuinness, RIP or rot in hell?

[FuckingRotter]

I doubt if Corbyn himself was involved, he's too busy being down with the kids and hanging out with wealthy tax dodgers on a farm in Somerset for proper politics.

[FuckingRotter]

Well, so much for Corbyn. News sources are reporting a deal has been reached between the Conservative and Unionist party, and the DUP.

[tom8517]

The Welsh and the Scottish are bitching loudly. They're convinced the deal will give NI a bigger piece of the pie at their expense.

[FuckingRotter]

Yes, the SNP are complaining they should be getting more money from the treasury. I thought the point of the SNP was to be independent of the treasury. Sinn Fein are also whingeing, but I'm sure they will enjoy spending the extra money.

[tom8517]

In other news some bright light with a keen understanding of the north thought it would be a good idea to schedule Glasgow Celtic to play in Belfast on July 12th. What could possibly go wrong there? Wiser heads prevailed and the match was rescheduled.

[FuckingRotter]

Last thing Belfast needs is a bunch of pissed up Sweaty Socks on any day of the year.

[FuckingRotter]

The deadline to install a first minister and deputy to head a power sharing government in Ulster is tomorrow. Other wise it is direct rule from Westminster.

According to Sky News, the big remaining sticking point is language, with Sinn Fein wanting "Irish" put on an equal footing with English in the province. I wonder how much of that extra £1billion that would leave after all the road signs have been converted to dual language, and the cost of converting every public information point taken out?

I also wonder how widely "Irish" is used in the province?

[tom8517]

I'm not sure Sinn Fein will budge on this one. Recognizing Irish as an official language would be a huge win for them. The mechanics of changing road signs, place names etc. could be gradual, there would not need to be a huge money outlay all at once.

Peter Robinson has said there might be room for debate if Ulster Scots is given similar recognition. Sinn Fein is holding out for a stand alone recognition of Irish, their argument being that Ulster Scots is not a native language to Ireland. (neither is English) But there may some room for compromise on this.

As to its use, a fair number of the nationalist population speak some, a smaller number are fluent, fewer yet use it as their day to day language. It's growing in popularity though, particularly among children.

Quite a few of the present day Sinn Fein leadership with IRA backgrounds learned the language behind bars. Irish language classes were very popular in the H blocks.

[tom8517]

Part of Sinn Fein's insistence on an Irish language act stems from promises made by Tony Blair's government. Even the DUP now admits that the British government conned Sinn Fein with false promises of a language act at a later date. This is what Peter Robinson recalled of Ian Paisley's feelings when he found out what the government had done.

“It was Ian’s assessment – and in my view an accurate one – that if the government was prepared to con Sinn Féin in the way it did, they would be prepared to do the same to us.”

He revealed how “in later life Martin McGuinness and I often spoke about the different, inexact and misleading messages we were given during earlier negotiations with the Blair government "

[FuckingRotter]

Well, Blair's nickname is "pants on fire".

[FuckingRotter]

News this morning is that the parties are still in deadlock over the language issue. If good sense prevailed, they would drop that for the sake of getting on with things, and then thrash it out in the assembly once it is up and running again.

[tom8517]

honest%20tony.jpgthat may wind up happening. It is the sensible course. But Sinn Fein's position is that its not up for negotiation since it was already agreed to. This was in the Belfast Telegraph, NOT a paper known for it's republican sympathies.

[tom8517]

to put it another way, I understand Tony Blair's rather distant relationship with the truth. but the fact remains, he represented the government of the United Kingdom when he made these commitments. If Sinn Fein cannot trust promises made by a Labour government, what incentive do they have to trust that a DUP/Conservative coalition will honor any future agreements?

I understand the unionist reasons for opposing it, they rightly see it as a step on the road to reunification. But since "honest Tony" wrote the check as PM, they may have to bite the bullet and cash it.

[FuckingRotter]

Deadline passes. Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire is "confident a deal can be reached". It's been six months, two deadlines, and election, a general election. Meanwhile the Queens speech has been passed, presumably without Sinn Feins opposition. Do note, complaining about a thing and actually opposing it are not the same thing.

Perhaps direct rule is the impetus these idiots in Ulster need to get their collective acts together and come up with some thing imaginative that doesn't involve what Tony Blair promised. There were plenty of people smart enough to work out Blair was full of shit long before the results of the Iraq inquiry became known - have you seen the cunt smile for a start? I'm sure the likes of McGuinness were glad to rush in to any deal that ensured not spending his dying days in prison any way.

[FuckingRotter]

Negotiations extended until Monday. How the fuck are the British public supposed to take this fucking government seriously? They can't stick to fucking any thing. Direct rule should have been imposed when the first deadline passed back in what ever fucking decade it was.

[FuckingRotter]

You know what? I'm losing my fucking mind trying to get it around the cunts in this country that belong to the political class. People are actually bleating about the fact that the most economically deprived, crime riven, socially divided region of this country has just been gifted an extra £1billion to spend. People that have moaned for decades about government spending cuts, and how fucking nasty we are to the fucking paddies. People, who to form a government themselves would need not only the cooperation of the fucking anti-abortionists, but of their sworn enemies who refuse to even sit in parliament. So they've got less chance than a chocolate dildos hope in hell of forming a government.

In the meantime, the cunts themselves in Northern Ireland, are arguing over petty language issues. Yeah, great, I'm sure some one is going to give a flying fuck what language I chose to speak when I came to shoot your fucking kneecaps off. I'm sure they'd be eternally grateful for how much money the fucking Ulster assembly spent on pidgin Arabic lessons when Harland and Wolf shut down the fucking ship yard, because ships could be built cheaper in Rosythe or Portsmouth. Or people didn't fancy going to the Titanic visitor centre just to see the latest episode of the Prods and Taigs pissing contest mural plastered all over it.

Get a fucking grip!

[tom8517]

This was coming for a while. The fact power sharing lasted as long as it did is a testament to how remarkable Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness truly were.

At some point, this will get sorted out. It may take a period of direct rule. Practically speaking the Irish Language Act is symbolic, whether it passes or not it wont have any impact whatsoever on the lives of anyone, republican or unionist. Another less discussed issue is same sex marriages, NI is the only place in the UK where its prohibited, or in the Republic. DUP's opposition is a bit odd considering their patron saints leanings in that area.

But I think its important to remember how personal this is for the principals involved. Its far, far different from politics in the US or the rest of the UK. As I posted earlier, Arlene Foster's father survived an IRA ambush, as a teenager she saw her bus driver, also in the UDR, killed by the IRA. On the other side, Michelle O'Neil's father was imprisoned for IRA membership. A cousin was killed in a shoot out with the SAS. Another badly wounded.

All this makes compromise harder, but at some point it will get done. But this years marching season should be one to watch.

[FuckingRotter]

Petty, self-inflicted grievances. Summer on the main land could be far hotter.

[tom8517]

Typical English arrogance. The grievances seem petty to you, your opinion doesn't fucking count. The problem is that each side believes that about the other. The DUP went up in flames when Michelle O'Neil attended the annual memorial for the 8 IRA volunteers killed while assaulting an RUC barracks in Loughall. Similarly the nationalist locals are screaming that the UVF man responsible for the Miami show band murders has a banner in erected in his memory.

Until each side recognizes that the other has a very different view of history, no real engagement for the future is possible.

[FuckingRotter]

Doesn't count? There are plenty in mainland Britain that would gladly see every one of Sinn Fein hang, rather than have them in any sort of power sharing agreement over a single square yard of the United Kingdom. They are petty grievances because, well, those men volunteered to do what they did. Nobody made them. It is right there in your own post "IRA volunteers", "Ulster Volunteer Force". On the other hand, nobody volunteered to be in the Manchester Arndale centre the day it was blown up.

What some one right there in the thick of it may see as a legitimate grievance, well, let me tell you how it looks to the typical British tax payer. Northern Ireland has just been gifted a big sum of money which could be spent on housing, hospitals, education, or creating the Freeport the DUP so desperately want in order to boost jobs. But Sinn Fein and the DUP probably wont get to decide how to spend the money because they're squabbling over languages and same sex marriage. Hardly fucking important in the scheme of things. Now you're telling me it is in fact because daddy got shot trying to blow up a police station? How about, he fucking had it coming?

Yes, it looks fucking petty to me. Twenty years of peace and growing prosperity down the drain for some thing that happened a generation ago. If Michelle O'Neil and Arlene Foster can't keep the hatchet that Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley buried 20 years ago, deep in the ground, they want their heads knocking together and their cunts kicking right out of any form of democratic assembly. They, and their parties, don't deserve to be any where near Stormont.