Oh dear oh dear. When you’re climbing on your high horse, it’s important to check that your fig-leaf is thick and flourishing. Otherwise people will see, um, through you.
I was just at the Rice Krispies stage this morning when the voices of two Belfast City councillors joined me from Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster. They were having a debate. Or to be more exact, Christopher Stalford (DUP) was attacking Mervyn Jones (Alliance).
It appears that the DUP had put forward a motion expressing sympathy with the deaths of two British soldiers killed in West Belfast 25 years ago. Mervyn Jones’s party, the Alliance Party, put forward an amendment, condemning violence from whatever quarter. This ignited Christopher Stalford and his party, who found such a widening of condemnation shameful. No matter that Mervyn Jones in the debate described the two corporals’ killing as vile - to amend the motion was still terrible, shocking. Was the Alliance Party saying that state violence was the same as terrorist violence? That the death of security force members was equivalent to the death of a terrorist? Was the Alliance Party saying Mairead Farrell was a victim? Jones suggested that, since she’d been brought into the discussion, in one sense she was, and there was a need to include all who had suffered. Councillor Stalford was even more disgusted. The Alliance Party had become so consumed with hatred of things unionist it ccouldn’t bring itself to support a DUP motion.
Oh dear Number Three. A whispered word in your shell-like ear, Christopher. If you’re going to sound high-principled, be sure no one can peek at your real motives. “Faux outrage”, as Stan Collymore might phrase it, is a poor, withered fig-leaf that exposes to all the iris-scorching truth: the DUP must hammer, hammer, HAMMER at the Alliance Party at every turn, because they need to, they have to, they MUST win back that blankety-blanking East Belfast seat.
When it suits them, the DUP is happy to equate the killings at the State's hands with those of paramilitaries as in Jeffrey Donaldson on QT in the wake of the Saville Report in 2010 ,saying the same standards should be expected of an alleged professional army as should an IRA gunman. He was corrected by the recently jailed Huhne, as I recall. Double standards are the default position of the DUP, all of them. They complain abiout a hierarchy of victims, but in truth they've no problem with this, they just disapprove of the the running order as they percieve it. [madraj55]
ReplyDeleteGreat photograph Jude has someone just stole Mr Stalfords teeth?
ReplyDeletecorrection to my post [1.01] I meant that Jeffrey had to all intents suggested [in his response to question], that army murders were equivalent to IRA ones.[madraj55]
ReplyDeletePretty sure I heard it right this morning but didn't the DUP end up supporting the Alliance Party amendment?
ReplyDeleteLook at these DUP guy's faces. Isn't it incredible that, leaving political issues aside, they just look so angry, resentful, negative. Why do so many of them -Stalford, Dodds, Robinson, Burnside, Trimble, Ross, etc etc, LOOK like that?
ReplyDeleteBecause they are angry, resentful, negative?
ReplyDelete