Gerry McGeough- has he got something to "whinge and whine" about?

Gerry McGeough - now there's a name to set people's teeth on edge. If you're a unionist, you may think he's a very lucky man. After all, he did attack and unsuccessfully try to kill UDR man Sammy Brush in 1981. On Friday last Mr Justice Treacy told him he'd have to serve his two years in prison for what he had done. As Mr Brush himself says: "While he's serving a two-year sentence and whinging and whining, I have to get on with my life. It's more than two years for me, it's a life sentence".   You can see Brush's point of view. So what is McGeough "whinging and whining" about?

Well the answer may partially lie in the t-shirt Mario Balotelli wore under his Manchester City jersey a few months back. Having scored a goal, Balotelli pulled up his jersey to reveal the slogan "Why always me?" If you leave out the "always", you have McGeough's complaint in a nutshell.

For example: when David Cameron apologised for the killing of fourteen civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday, he didn't mention any of the Parachute regiment that did the killing going to jail. Not for two years, not for two minutes. The people still mourning dead relatives in Ballymurphy who were slaughtered by the same regiment haven't seen anyone charged, let alone sent to jail. And the list goes on - Rosemary Nelson, Pat Finucane,  maybe hundreds of other people left to mourn their dead loved ones, killed by British 'security forces', and no question of anyone going to prison.

So yes - from Brush's point of view, McGeough is getting off lightly with two years. But from McGeough's point of view, it must be galling that acknowledged killers on the state side don't even come into the punishment frame. Sammy Brush may not think he has seen justice meted out to the man who tried to kill him. But the state forces who successfully killed or colluded in the killing of innocent people magically escape the lash of punishment. Barely a rap on the knuckles, in fact. So from McGeough's perspective, the question that demands answering is "Why only them?"