The DUP

[LongTimeLurker]

Maybe there needs to be longer for a generation to emerge into leadership roles that didn't experience the Troubles as their formative experiences. Arlene Foster was never likely to be all that different from what preceded her given the Provos blew up her school bus and tried to murder her father.

[Jacksgranda]

12 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Maybe there needs to be longer for a generation to emerge into leadership roles that didn't experience the Troubles as their formative experiences. Arlene Foster was never likely to be all that different from what preceded her given the Provos blew up her school bus and tried to murder her father.

My eldest grandchild is 25, the youngest 2 - it might be that generation that will sort things out, more likely the younger ones, (if the guns stay silent), the four eldest had fathers who served in the security forces, so are unlikely to be very conciliatory towards Sinn Fein, not that any of them have shown any inclination to go into politics.

And re your second sentence, I don't know how Arlene Foster could stomach being in the same room as some of her Sinn Fein governmental colleagues.

It took me all my time to shake hands with the then Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast when he was hosting an awards ceremony I was part of.

[Co.Down Hibee]

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

My eldest grandchild is 25, the youngest 2 - it might be that generation that will sort things out, more likely the younger ones, (if the guns stay silent), the four eldest had fathers who served in the security forces, so are unlikely to be very conciliatory towards Sinn Fein, not that any of them have shown any inclination to go into politics.

And re your second sentence, I don't know how Arlene Foster could stomach being in the same room as some of her Sinn Fein governmental colleagues.

It took me all my time to shake hands with the then Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast when he was hosting an awards ceremony I was part of.

My guess is that the salary and benefits she receives for leading her army of homophobic Bible bashing bigots eases the pain for the hateful cow ,you can easily swing it all round and argue why would any Catholic or nationalist want to be in the same room as the Dodds/Wilson's/Paisleys whose actions and policies have lead to divisions in communities resulting in murders, intimidation and intolerance.

Fosters "brave" actions can be easily picked apart the same as the rest of them.

[Jacksgranda]

17 hours ago, Co.Down Hibee said:

My guess is that the salary and benefits she receives for leading her army of homophobic Bible bashing bigots eases the pain for the hateful cow ,you can easily swing it all round and argue why would any Catholic or nationalist want to be in the same room as the Dodds/Wilson's/Paisleys whose actions and policies have lead to divisions in communities resulting in murders, intimidation and intolerance.

Fosters "brave" actions can be easily picked apart the same as the rest of them.

Maybe you could (they're probably there for the same reasons as you attribute to Arlene Foster) - but I don't recall the Paisleys/Wilsons/Dodds committing paramilitary murders, eulogising paramilitary murders, excusing paramilitary murders and attending commemorative events for paramilitaries, although Rev McCrea did infamously appear on the same platform as Billy Wright, something I don't think he ever explained/apologised for or shook off.*

Maybe I'll ask him the next time I meet him. Or maybe I won't bother...

* There could be other like events involving DUP politicians, but that's the one that sticks in my mind.

ETA: He also conducted a prayer service at the funerals of two loyalist paramilitaries, killed by their own bomb. Don't know if he conducted the actual funeral service, or why he was approached, I don't think the two men concerned were from Magherafelt (where McCrea was minister of the Free Presbyterian church).

Further edit: One of the terrorists was from Stewartstown, McCrea's home town, good possibility McCrea knew him/went to school with him or his siblings, etc.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Jacksgranda

[LongTimeLurker]

1 hour ago, Co.Down Hibee said:

...you can easily swing it all round and argue why would any Catholic or nationalist want to be in the same room as the Dodds/Wilson's/Paisleys whose actions and policies have lead to divisions in communities resulting in murders, intimidation and intolerance...

Think you are losing sight of the point that was being made to a certain extent. Where did anyone say that people on the other side of things couldn't have had similar experiences? Arlene Foster was never likely to be anything other than she has been given her career was effectively launched by a TV news interview after her school bus got blown up. Although she's an extreme example given what she experienced with her father being shot on the family farm, overall the generation that had their psyche shaped by the 70s and 80s in NI are likely to usually have a deeply tribal mindset with a deep distrust of the other lot in a way that makes power sharing difficult to do effectively even if nobody in their family ever got shot and they never directly experienced a terrorist bombing. You need to have been born around the late 80s to have avoided stuff like that being the ongoing norm and the oldest of that generation are still only 30 or so and are therefore about 10 to 20 years away from leadership roles.

[LongTimeLurker]

14 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

* There could be other like events involving DUP politicians, but that's the one that sticks in my mind.

The above is:

(a) The president of Belfast's MENSA chapter

(b) Northern Ireland's leading haiku poet

(c) The DUP candidate for West Belfast at the last Westminster and Assemby elections.

Mentioned this guy earlier in the thread but the usual suspects didn't pick up on it as they clearly can't get their heads around the concept of somebody criticising both the DUP and SF in a thread like this given their simplistic tricolour good Union Jack bad mindset.

The DUP's links to loyalism are not as direct and organic as SF's to the IRA, but they often worked closely together and I could understand why somebody would have the sort of distate for being in the same room as somebody like Peter Robinson that we would both have for having to deal socially with a top Sinn Feiner:

 

Edited November 20, 2017 by LongTimeLurker

[Jacksgranda]

Robinson certainly doesn't come out of that well.

Reminds me a bit of an interview I saw back in the early 70s, when someone was being interviewed by Barry Cowan, and the interviewee was advocating the death penalty for IRA men. Cowan asked him would he call for the death penalty for UVF men, and the interviewee was absolutely flummoxed!

 

[Co.Down Hibee]

20 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Think you are losing sight of the point that was being made to a certain extent. Where did anyone say that people on the other side of things couldn't have had similar experiences? Arlene Foster was never likely to be anything other than she has been given her career was effectively launched by a TV news interview after her school bus got blown up. Although she's an extreme example given what she experienced with her father being shot on the family farm, overall the generation that had their psyche shaped by the 70s and 80s in NI are likely to usually have a deeply tribal mindset with a deep distrust of the other lot in a way that makes power sharing difficult to do effectively even if nobody in their family ever got shot and they never directly experienced a terrorist bombing. You need to have been born around the late 80s to have avoided stuff like that being the ongoing norm and the oldest of that generation are still only 30 or so and are therefore about 10 to 20 years away from leadership roles.

The DUP and Sinn Fein are tribalistic by nature, the year the leadership was born has nothing to do with it, most leaders of the other parties are around the same age or older than O'Neil and foster yet they aren't anywhere close to being as divisive as the big 2,you will always have the Shinners commemorating their courageous bomb planters and snipers every bit as much as the DUP will always have a strong  showing amongst their brethren goons marching about the place in the summer, it's who they are and part of the identity that has made them the strongest parties.cant ever see it changing . Personally I'd like to see them both away Tae f**k.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Think you are losing sight of the point that was being made to a certain extent. Where did anyone say that people on the other side of things couldn't have had similar experiences?

 

If you’re going to start picking people up for Whataboutery on a Northern Ireland related thread then there’s a long backlog to get through before you get to Co Down Hibee

 

I wouldn’t bother

[LongTimeLurker]

1 hour ago, Co.Down Hibee said:

The DUP and Sinn Fein are tribalistic by nature, the year the leadership was born has nothing to do with it, most leaders of the other parties are around the same age or older than O'Neil and foster yet they aren't anywhere close to being as divisive as the big 2,you will always have the Shinners commemorating their courageous bomb planters and snipers every bit as much as the DUP will always have a strong  showing amongst their brethren goons marching about the place in the summer, it's who they are and part of the identity that has made them the strongest parties.cant ever see it changing . Personally I'd like to see them both away Tae f**k.

Hopefully the under-30 generation I mentioned will drift away from the balaclava wearers and bible thumpers and vote Alliance, Greens, PBP etc instead. Time will tell.

[JamieThomas]

11 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

The above is:

(a) The president of Belfast's MENSA chapter

(b) Northern Ireland's leading haiku poet

(c) The DUP candidate for West Belfast at the last Westminster and Assemby elections.

d) The villain in that episode of Minder when Arthur had to go into hospital with his ingrown toenail.

[Jacksgranda]

4 hours ago, Co.Down Hibee said:

The DUP and Sinn Fein are tribalistic by nature, the year the leadership was born has nothing to do with it, most leaders of the other parties are around the same age or older than O'Neil and foster yet they aren't anywhere close to being as divisive as the big 2,you will always have the Shinners commemorating their courageous bomb planters and snipers every bit as much as the DUP will always have a strong  showing amongst their brethren goons marching about the place in the summer, it's who they are and part of the identity that has made them the strongest parties.cant ever see it changing . Personally I'd like to see them both away Tae f**k.

That's because they aren't the big two anymore. When the UUP and the SDLP were top dogs they weren't universally admired by the other side, and were equally tribalistic, particularly the UUP. They were also divisive, although it was their own communities they ended up dividing.

It's interesting to see that now the UUP are practically an irrelevance, how few of their councillors and MLAs are Orangemen, other than the old school.

Once upon a time it would practically have been electoral suicide for a UUP politician not to have been a member of the Orange Order, although I think the current leader, Robin Swan is. I know his brother was.

And it's no bad thing for the UUP to be no longer linked to the Orange Order, although I think it could be a very long time before the UUP is a major player again in NI politics.

I think we're stuck with the Old Firm for the foreseeable future, and if we keep voting for them that isn't going to change.

[Antlion]

Nigel Dodd seems raging on Daily Politics that the Republic is daring to look after its own people and not kowtow to the UK. He’s even still raging at the Republic for “breaking with Sterling” back in the day. Theresa May’s friends... 

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Nigel Dodd seems raging on Daily Politics that the Republic is daring to look after its own people and not kowtow to the UK. He’s even still raging at the Republic for “breaking with Sterling” back in the day. Theresa May’s friends... 

He’ll be fuming when he hears about the Euro

[LongTimeLurker]

The EU negotiates as a single block, so I suspect the first bit was added spin. On the second bit, I suspect there may be some regret in Dublin at the moment amongst the elite that will never be stated publicly that they didn't stay pegged to the pound and hitched themselves to the euro, but nobody could have foreseen a decade or two ago that a Conservative leader would be crazy enough to hold a Brexit referendum and risk a hard border having to be enforced between the RoI and NI and most people still assumed that Remain would win even after they decided to proceed. The UK is the RoI's main trading partner, so the RoI may wind up having most to lose in all of this, if it has to adhere to a set of policies that are designed to suit EU members that can much more easily live without trade with the UK and want to make sure the UK suffers in the aftermath of all this to send the message that leaving the club is a very bad move.

[bob the tank]

What a fud Dodds is being on daily politics. Sinn fein "fell for" what Tony Blair promised them in the agreement but we won't implement it.

[Jacksgranda]

3 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

The EU negotiates as a single block, so I suspect the first bit was added spin. On the second bit, I suspect there may be some regret in Dublin at the moment amongst the elite that will never be stated publicly that they didn't stay pegged to the pound and hitched themselves to the euro, but nobody could have foreseen a decade or two ago that a Conservative leader would be crazy enough to hold a Brexit referendum and risk a hard border having to be enforced between the RoI and NI and most people still assumed that Remain would win even after they decided to proceed. The UK is the RoI's main trading partner, so the RoI may wind up having most to lose in all of this, if it has to adhere to a set of policies that are designed to suit EU members that can much more easily live without trade with the UK and want to make sure the UK suffers in the aftermath of all this to send the message that leaving the club is a very bad move.

Heard a couple of discussions along similar lines this last couple of days, "We're both islands, surrounded by water (really!)", so there could be flexible/fudged solutions provided that satisfy both the RoI re a hard border and unionists re UK geographical integrity.

No doubt a compromise will be cobbled together which can be sold to both parties as a "triumph".

[Granny Danger]

The DUP are coming across as complete c***s on the Brexit issue.

Maybe it’s time to just let NI float free then they can deal with all this shite themselves.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

Having a hard border with either the RoI or mainland Britain is a catastrophe economically for NI. They were complete c***ts (that will confuse the hard of thinking who think I support them) for backing Brexit in the first place, but it was more Nigel and Geoffrey in Little Buggerington-on-Thames in the Home Counties that swung that one rather than William and Mervyn in places like Moira, Cullybackey  or Comber and now that it has happened the DUP have to do what's best for their electorate. On balance leaving aside the fleg waving angle that is involved, NI as a totality is probably still better off making sure it keeps unfettered access to the internal UK market than the EU one, so it's rational to push for the hard border that is inevitable at this point to be at Newry rather than Larne if you have the economy of the core greater Belfast area in mind. Not so clear cut along the border and with Londonderry obviously but DUP supporters tend to be thinner on the ground there. The rational arguments for UI have probably never been stronger, so the future of Unionism that had looked secure for the forseeable future relatively recently is now far from rosy.

Edited December 1, 2017 by LongTimeLurker

[welshbairn]

For those who think the ROI will have to cave into whatever Westminster wants to safeguard trade with the UK, it may be news to them that only 14% of their trade is with the UK.