WHEN YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR ARSE FROM YOUR ELBOW

Not knowing their arses from their elbows as my dear mother was want to say..the DUP want on one hand to kick Sinn Fein out of Stormont and on the other hand they want them to stay and explain why they believe that the IRA is not an illusion.I would call ,it one hand not knowing what the other is doing….or hope for the impossible to happen. They would really love to “punish Sinn Fein”, as some of them have stated.Sinn Fein are saying they’ve done nothing remiss.
Outside of all of this , no-one beyond our magical little world really gives a damn. Norneverland has barely featured in the news anywhere else in the world these past few days of “crisis”.No one cares whether it all disappears in a puff of unholy smoke.If we, the inhabitants of this mad and magical land are fed up to the back teeth with the political contortions of our non-politicians, you can imagine that at the furthest reaches from these shores they couldn’t give a solitary fig.
People in the UK are more interested in the ongoing ISIS crisis or whether or not athletes are using dope to enhance performances.One story is about a schoolboy being smacked by his father.These are the things that are headline news stories on national television and in newspapers beyond our feted land .
Most people are more interested in whether our politicians should be paid or not for their poor exam results as their holidays end. They don’t want them extending this vacation from reality any longer.I’ve always thought that this might be the only lever the public might have to ensure our politicians waste no more of our time and money.Given that most of us realise that the latest crisis is a manufactured event , braced and based on no hard evidence, so far revealed, voters have a right to say, “Stop paying these people!”.
Personally, I have no idea whether or not Sinn Fein and the IRA are currently the same thing.I ‘ll also say , I have no notion who any of the republican people featuring in the various news items actually, are or were. They may be known to some Sinn Fein voters local to them but somehow I doubt whether they are known to everyone ,or to too many , outside of the Belfast streets. . Then again , people living in Belfast have a tendency to believe that they are actually living in the centre of the universe and that the sun revolves around them.I could say the same about many of the unionist talking heads too. Who are these people? Like everyone else , I have to go on evidence and what I see and read.Everything else can really be reduced to gossip and Chinese Whispers .This latest made -up crisis is based on something akin to muttered Chinese Whispers. If it is ever written into the history books ,I’d hate to be the school child served up with it as an exam question in some far-flung future A level exam …..
Date 2187…..Question: “Why did the Stormont Executive fall in September 2015?”….
Answer : Well….let’s see….erm…well it was because a couple of old IRA guys were murdered and the police thought that maybe somebody in Sinn Fein asked for it to be done so that their partners in government would have a reason to bring the government down.These Sinn fein fellows knew everybody in the street so they’d be the first to ask , wouldn’t they? You see they were having problems in the government , agreeing on balancing the books,I believe….. so they figured that if they handed the whole mess back to the Westminster Government for a few months , then they couldn’t be blamed for getting any of their sums wrong. The Dup thought this was a good idea too. They didn’t know at the time the the Ulster Unionists would mess the whole thing up in the elections that followed a few months later and take half of the DUP’s seats, splitting the unionist vote again. The unionist parties came out of the elections a bit more evenly balanced this time ,because there were a lot of old grannies that fancied TVMike Nesbitt and decided to give him their vote…. but these unionists all still hated each other so much that they were spitting feathers , as my late mother-in-law ,would say and forgot to hate Sinn Fein , the SDLP and Alliance.
Then to cap it all Sinn Fein went on to poll such huge numbers that they became the biggest party in the land and Martin McGuinness was made First Minister . By that time all those Hate Laws , Equal Marriage Acts , Dual Street Signs Acts, Irish language acts and a whole slew of stuff like designing a new flag were sorted out sharpish . Some cartoonist scribbled a sketch of a new flag on the back of a cigarette pack and it was passed for production within twenty four hours .Job done .It’s a bit like one of those smiley faces that used to be so popular in the 1980’s .I have to say, it looks great hanging from all the lamp posts…..oh yes … .and John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance” was turned into the new national anthem …him being half-Irish and half English and all that…..Paul McCartney got together with Van Morrison to score it for brass and fiddles. Everything was passed by the Westminster government with that Southern Irish lot ‘s blessings. They were just glad to be rid of it all for another while. Most people were happy enough to get on with things after that when they discovered that the world didn’t end suddenly.
It wasn’t until much later that someone mentioned that MI5 had slipped some LSD into the water -cooler in the final days on non-talks. The Chief Conststable wasn’t able to figure out who did that either…..
…but that was long ago and far away , anyway….
If the DUP and the UUP believe ,and have always believed ,that the IRA exists and that SInn Fein and the IRA is the same thing , as in “SinnFeinIRA” why have they been drawing their salaries while working alongside them , all these years? Is it just for the money? Did they feel forced to work with them and just scooped up the cash, saving it in investments in Florida for this very day.?
In this scenario , there is no possibility that there can ever be any form of future joined-up government across the board here .
Nobody considers whether or not republicans feel good at having to share power with unionists given their absurd behaviour..
These unionists ,too ,have a background in violence, either supported by the state in a “legal” way which was by laws to suit themselves or in an “illegal” paramilitary way, right from the start of this state and throughout its horrible, convoluted history. That violent relationship is rarely referred to because Sinn Fein and nationalism generally wanted a new start and a clean slate .It is rarely referred to .Unionists appear to have no real insight into their own violent shortcomings in any of that. They consider themselves the only victims here..I’m sure republicans and nationalists ,for these reasons , are wary of their intentions .People forget that this is a community with two differing stories..
Sinn Fein is representing a huge section of the voting population here , after all.Whether all those voters who support them think that Sinn Fein and the IRA are the same thing is a question that might be asked of them . Somehow , I don’t think they believe that is the case at all. I would imagine those voters made a choice for what they thought would most vigourously support their political demands. The question that isn’t being asked is how can this huge tranche of people ever let their representatives sit down with people like the DUP or the UUP in government , when they obviously disrespect and hate them with such venom.
That’s without even mentioning what passes for “normal” politics , which the DUP and the UUP seem to have abandoned completely at the first chance “to punish Sinn Fein”. Better that they get the job done they were employed by us to do ,than to think about punishing anyone.