Jude Collins

Saturday 5 January 2013

Theresa Villiers - what is she for?




As Belfast City Hall braces itself for another flags protest at lunchtime today, and Leinster House in Dublin waits with fear and trembling for the arrival of Willie Frazer and his rag-tag-and-bobtail crew, who will demand “sarcastically” (Willie’s word, I promise you) that the tricolour be removed from above that place, my thoughts turn naturally to Theresa Villiers, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

What is she for? I mean, not what does she support (we’ll get to that in a minute) but what purpose does she serve? Apart, that is, from being ready to keep in jail someone like Marian Price, on the impeccable legal grounds that she doesn’t like the look of her or what she might do next. At one time - when we had no Assembly - I could see a case being argued for a Secretary of State. These days, other than living in luxury above in Hillsborough Castle, does she do anything?

Well yes. Let’s be fair. The woman has come out and has said that the flags protest is a bad thing and should stop. What, after all, is the point in disrupting civil life and issuing death threats, all over a flag that’s going to get its 15 or 17 days in the sun anyway? To the cool eye of a detached observer like Theresa, the people gathering in front of City Hall today, not to mention the ones attacking police in places like Carrickfergus and Albertbrige Road,  must appear a bunch of primitive natives. 

Except, er, um, it appears to depend on what flag we’re talking about and where it’s being flown/not being flown. Thanks to a pointer from a sharp-eyed poster on one of my blogs,  I can now reveal that Theresa believes flags are very important. In 2000, a newspaper report records that the Foreign Office “came under fire” when it was found that two of Britain’s three embassies in Belgium fail regularly to fly the Union flag. This  is when the Tories were in opposition. They were very miffed at this non-flag-flying, and said it showed a lack of national pride by the Foreign Office.

“It is part of a conspiracy to sell us down the road until we find ourselves just a province of the United States of Europe. Our flag should fly every day, that’s what embassies are for”.

Change a few words in that and it could have been drafted by one of our own revolting flag-people. And who was the speaker? Non other than a London MEP of the time, one Theresa Villiers. 

I think she and Willie Frazer should have a little chat together. They’ll be amazed at how much they have in common. 

7 comments:

  1. Jude
    I have no idea what she is for either, and I'm not sure she knows herself.
    However I see nothing unremarkable in a British MEP wanting her country's embassy to fly their national flag permanently.I would have thought that would be the rule, rather than the exception, to be honest.
    A different scenario from our own little flag bother.
    Unless you see the City Hall as the British Embassy here?

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  2. Well, given that Belfast now has a nationalist majority, that would be one way of looking at City Hall. And I don't mind what British embassies abroad do - that's their business. The comparison was with her enthusiasm for flags in one context with her after-everyone-else condemnation of flags protests here.

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    1. Jude
      Thanks for the reply.
      Surely the context is everything.
      Flags are not important to me at all, but I am saying that all embassies surely fly their flag all the time, so there is no contradiction in supporting that and condemning the criminal behaviour related to flag protests here.
      I reckon she has been handed the poison chalice here, with responsibility but no real power.
      However given her history in connection to the MPs' expenses scandal I have no sympathy with her.

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  3. I had been wondering why we hadn't heard much from her on the fleg carry on, like everyone else I assumed it was just her being a total non-entity, maybe she just remembered her own fiery fleg rhetoric and didn't want to risk any journos twisting with her ...people might stop looking at her as a harmless non-entity and see what she's really about. Just a thought.

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    1. Actually i take that back, just saw the shape of her on utv live at 6 there, Paul Clarke aint't no Jeremy Paxman, you'd have thought he was though by her answers ...something something sectarian, something something shared future. Complete and utter non-entity. You're right Jude, what the hell is she for. Save the tax payer her flights and keep her at Westminster, seriously!

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  4. Talking to an English friend on the phone earlier, who lives in London - she said from watching sky news, all she could equate the images of the protesters with their flags etc - was with the english fringe far right (EDL/BNP etc), I had to assure her these people were very much the fringe over here too and not the norm as she was quite horrified. The scary thing is I don't know if I even believe my assurances myself, the fringe here isn't too far removed at all from the unionist mainstream. They have very, very little in common with British people or british values in the rest of the UK it seems. Stuck in a right wing fundamentalist time warp/nightmare.

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  5. Is this a UVF flag that Jamie Bryson, spokesperson for the UPF and winner of 107 votes, is carrying? pic.twitter.com/C1EssoeP

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