Picture by Sion Fullana
Curious: So do they exist still or not?
Curiouser: Well…Yes and No.
Curious: That’s a help.
Curiouser: As an organisation, it’s fair to say they’ve left, quit the stage, gone…
Curious: I feel a But coming on.
Curiouser: But at the same time they haven’t gone away, you know. Some former members are still around and, I would say, active.
Curious: What do you mean by ‘active’?
Curiouser: Well they don’t have a formal structure any more but it’s undeniable that dozens of them are working in what you could call freelance and in unadvertised posts.
Curious: Unadvertised? Why does that not surprise me.
Curiouser: Every so often you’ll see their fingerprints, as it were, over an event.
Curious: Such as?
Curiouser: Such as Stormontgate and the arrest of Gerry Adams and the eeny meeny miny mo pick a Provo away you go of this past week’s press conferences.
Curious: Um…Are we talking about the same thing?
Curiouser: Well I’m talking about the RUC. What are you talking about?
Curious: Oh look, here’s my bus. Must dash.
I’m glad to be able to retreat to this refuge of sanity. One glance at this morning’s Sunday Independent had me frantically clicking back button to get away from the avalanche and lies and surmise.
The World Service fudged its words last night twice in the same news report. “Members of the IRA”, “The IRA”. That there may be serious implications for Power Sharing…What?? Neither Robinson, nor Villiers give two damns about a personal fall out resulting in two prior Volunteers Deaths.
Collapse Stormont because Republicans are going to War on Whom exactly. Smole, mirrors and duplicity abound in Political opportunism. The tragedy is real enough sadly to the near and dear, and certainly Community Morale suffers at such needless Deaths, but from those trying to capitalise on these tragedies for their own selfish motives, the tears and indignation are Crocodile. And these Crocodiles, although bereft of Tear Glands, still have teeth we must remember
Have you been on the wine Jude?
They don’t exist, except to raise money; http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/nation/the-7-richest-terrorist-groups-in-the-world-today/6/
That report references the Irish Independent for its veracity.
Would you not agree that is a beaten docket?
Ah, the RUC, that gallant, neutral and courageous police force, that worked in the interests of both communities, without fear or favour. Minus the systematic collusion with Unionist paramilitaries, firing 10 times as many plastic bullets at nationalists in comparison to unionists, destroying evidence connected to Unionist terrorist murders, being riddled with Unionist paramilitary members, standing by and watching a crazed Unionist mob lusting for Catholic blood as they beat Robert Hamill to death, etc then maybe, just MAYBE, my first sentence would be true. But that’s still a big maybe. Its hard to see how any police force can be neutral and working in the interests of both communities when it was set up and ran by Unionist political parties as their own personal paramilitary. Even the Orange Order were advocating as many Protestants join the RUC and UDR as possible and you know when the Orange Order, especially in decades past, advocated something it could only be a bad thing, especially for Catholics.
But thankfully today the RUC are consigned to the dustbin of history where they belong (its a pity the UDA/UVF didn’t join them) but we can all be confident that many of their members certainly haven’t. Are there some backward RUC men/women still in the PSNI? of course. Are they committed to peace and reconciliation? no more than the DUP is.
The PSNI now, according to the figures I read is 30% Catholic and 70% Protestant. For the PSNI to be credible as a police force for BOTH communities it should be 50% Catholic and 50% Protestant. I don’t know if 50/50 recruitment is still ongoing in the PSNI but I read that Unionism is opposed to this (surprise, surprise). Any element of the RUC has to be cut out of the PSNI. It is a cancer, a deadly growth, to the PSNI and opposes equality and fair policing to both communities and has a great hostility towards Sinn Fein, as Gerry Adams arrest clearly showed, and that is damaging to the peace process and the small, fragile hope of reconciliation.
No sign of Godot
One Institution which, indubitably, has not gone away, Esteemed Blogmeister, is Dame Dosh of Donnybrook, Dublin 4. . About whose durability there is possibly nothing at all curious.
Consider this list (partial) of the ‘Euro earnings’ of Made-up Marian Finucane (for it is she !) which she has managed to wheelbarrow home each week from the public purse.
2003: 180, 507.
2004: 239, 265 *
2008: 570, 000
2001: 492, 000
2012: 295, 000
(* 2004 is more notorious in financial circles for a Certain Withdrawal though as can be seen it wasn’t all one way traffic and the figure above will redden the hearth of the stay at home Depositor).
Appropriately, she qualified as an architect, an academic grounding which has proved quite useful as she built a career as a legendary broad-caster. In 1974 she was recruited as a, erm, continuity announcer in RTE by (gulp) Eoghan Harris. It could be argued that the studios of RTE have proved to be a warm house for her ever since.
Nowadays she has built an extension to her career as a continuity presenter.
And while her Popeye-shaped forearms give silent testimony to the above (albeit incomplete) list they do not quite indicate how she has decided to concentrate more on quality rather than on quality in recent years.
Thus, in a courageous career move, she has decided to condense her contribution to the public weal in a Fore Arm Four Hour Show every weekend: 2 hours on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday. Small wonder her Wheelbarrow has been renamed: The Wealbarrow.
To say the Well Made Marian is worth every last make is obvious from a random sample of her Four Hour Week this weekend.
Quoting extensively from The Dependents (both editions), on Saturday she repeatedly referred to ‘Mr. Adams’. This was a reminder of her Continuity credentials as she was The Chosen One when it came to replace the irreplaceable Gay Byrne on the radio. It was, of course, GB who pioneered the No Hand Shake treatment of the Frozen Out One.
This morning she continued to quote extensively and again, not disapprovingly, from the Sunday Edition of the Dependent. Curiously enough, one who hangs his Broad Black Bomber in this organ of the DOBlin media is one (gulp) Eoghan Harris. Continuity once again.
Around her on her Two Hours Shift this morning Dame Dosh of Donnybrook, Dublin 4 had gathered a Clique Chorus of Oui Persons. While it would be invidious to single one of this chorus for special mention, perhaps an exception might be justifiably made in the shape of the exceptional Labour Party MP for Kerry North.
Who informed the Free Southern Stateen that he had driven up from the Tralee that morning, via Adare, County Limerick. Which – strangely – gave him a change to namecheck a Jerry (with a J).
Arthur Spring, M.P. (yes, a relation) was up in Dublin for the Kerry v Tyrone game in Croke Park. (Honest, the hardships the MP alumni from an oval-ball background have to endure and all in the name of us and democracy).
Shocked to hear that a crowd of over 50,000 (more than the Aviva) was anticipated, Dame Dosh (who has no time for No-dosh sports) did her spirtied level best to keep the attendance down: ‘But it’s raining cats and dogs (famous for her phrase-turn is she): you’ll be drenched !’.
A particular wisdom in that forecast: certainly for those on Hill 16 which is also known as the USA end. (As in Unfinished Stadium of Anglophilia).
Given the devotion of Dame Dosh to the Dworkin Class, perhaps, it is only fair to allow the last word to a representative of the fair sex, another Marian. After being interviewed on the Fore Arm Four Hour Show, Marian Keyes, the novelist, remarked:
-Marian Finucane has all the empathy of a cardboard box.
I would have said bucket myself, Perkin. And you’d probably have come up with an even better one: maybe a bejewelled spitoon?
One may have done Dame Dosh an injustice, Esteemed Blogmeister, by misquoting her.
Instead of ‘drenched’ in the fourth last paragraph, she may well have used the word ‘soaked’.
This is not unimportant, as Dame Dosh of Donnybrook, Dublin 4 is a critically-acclaimed Mistress of the German Queen’s English and as words are her shtick in trade opts to choose them very, very carefully.
Small wonder that her celebrated catch phrase has already entered the vernacular of the Free Southern Stateen: ‘and so on and so forth’.
And as Dame Dosh is also, of course, a globally recognised Diva of the Dismal Science with a specific specialisation in the economic concept of ‘soaking’, on balance, the likelihood is that it was the s-word rather than the d-word that was used.
Not to mention the fact that as she was also the pioneer on RTE of the broad-casting genre know as ‘The Emma Empathy Show’ she would have been well positioned to appreciate just how much the licence-payer in the FSS has been s-worded enough.
Her inner Emma Empathy would naturally have wished them not to be soaked any further.
The clincher, surely.
Peter,the link you posted suddenly fell apart when the immortal line “the Irish Independent reported” came into view!