Liz O’Donnell, who you may (or may not) remember was a Progressive Democrat TD, has been gasping. Her reason for this shortness of breath? Enda Kenny.
“What makes me gasp is the timing of the Taoiseach’s musings about a border poll on Irish unity as part of the Brexit discussions”.
There are other things Liz could have gasped about. She might have suffered shortage of breath at the news that a poster honouring the loyalist killer Billy Wright was put up in Dungannon. The picture of the loyalist refers to him as a ‘Brigadier’ and quotes him as saying ‘Looking back, I would say Cappagh was our best’. This refers to the shooting dead of four unarmed men, three of them IRA men, in a bar in Co Tyrone. When the PSNI were approached to take it down, they said they would not. “There is no doubt that the sign will be perceived by some to be offensive, but not by others”. Which is a bit like saying that throwing a cat out a high-rise window is offensive to some but not to others.
You might think Liz, as a former member of a former party which was big into law and order – former party leader Michael McDowell as Minister for Justice talked a very good talk about cracking down on drug crime – you’d think Liz’s eye would be drawn to such a blatant example of hate crime. And there are plenty of other examples – Sammy Wilson on breast-feeding, Danny Kinahan on flags atop bonfires – yet none of them catch Liz’s attention or shortens her supply of oxygen. She is breathless at the Taoiseach so much as mentioning a border poll. Why? Because it might upset unionists.
So we have the spectacle of a former PD TD and Minister gasping at the very thought that the Taoiseach might refer to a key item from the Good Friday Agreement, but the same former TD and Minister having nothing to say about loyalist posters exulting in the killing of unarmed men or the ritual burning of the Irish national flag on Eleventh Night bonfires. Or Sammy’s view that breast-feeding in the House of Commons links to voyeurism and exhibitionism. But then such matters wouldn’t offend unionist politicians, only the nationalist/republican population north and south, and maybe the women and men who don’t see breast-feeding the way Sammy does, so that’s OK.
Good to know, Liz, that although time has booted you out of the Dail and destroyed your political party, it hasn’t blunted your keen moral judgement.
‘Because it might upset unionists’!
When have you ever seen a unionist who is not upset, annoyed, dismayed, disgusted or disappointed?
It just seems to be in their DNA.
“Conduct Unbecoming” springs to mind.
While agreeing with the general thrust of this article I have to cite in Liz’s defence that, in the run-up to the Good Friday agreement she stated firmly that any settlement that might compromise northern nationalists’ Irish birthright would be in her words “a bridge too far”. Credit where credit is due. perhaps in the intervening years she had become afflicted with ‘Sindo Sindrome’,This is a terminal affliction characterised by selective vision, total loss of critical faculties and sense of proportion,as well an insatiable appetite for cheques signed by,formerly,Anthony O’Reilly and latterly Denis O’Brien. Or maybe she simply recognise Enda’s speech for what it was, oppotunistic and vacuous guff which he has since disowned.
A truly remarkable aural resemblance, Esteemed Blogmeister, has been noted in the last couple of days. Between the full-dreck of the Liffeyside media brawlers and the half-deck of a Killybegs trawler.
So incredibly similar, indeed, has been the sound emitted from the two entirely disparate areas of activity, that P for Plagiarism has been heard with increased frequency on the lips of copyright lawyers in the victor-victim vicinity of the Four Agincourts.
The sound, of course, begins with a G:
-G for Gasp.
Here a flounder, whose eyes and colour are typically on the right; there a bass, blue of back and sliver of fin; here again a pollock immediately recognizable by its distinctive protruding lower jaw. And herrings, red of hue, and also the sliver-haired darlings such as Liz O’Donnell, both of which herring species are, of course, not entirely unrelated.
And that’s just the sniffy Liffeyside media.
So far one has chosen to concentrate on the sound; as for the smell, don’t even day dream of going there. Ostracise the very nostril-based suggestion ! Except to say, whether they be flounders, bass or contralto; pollock or herring itself they all give off the same whiff on Liffeyside, the whiff of cod, pure unadulterated cod.
Pong, sung blue.
Now, a whole shoal of pollacks simultaneously populate and pollute the pages of the press of DOBland. However, as they are all card-carrying members of Codology South one pollock will suffice. No ordinary pollock, mind you, but truly a pollock among pollocks.
-Now is not the time to talk about a Border Poll.
So gasped the headline of the column of Colum.
Not Colm, be it noted, but Colum – it rhymes with Gollum. Colum’s column is published in The Unionist Times, which does not come as a major aftershock, on account of the fact that Colum used to strut his communicative stuff in RTE, the broadcasting fin of T.U.T.
Normally, Colum in his column reserves his sharpest tut-tutting for Leprechaun : nothing quite curries this Southern Yoon’s yoghurt . Call it a compulsive currying. This time Colum Kenny (for it is he !) is all a-gasp at the nerve (calculated though it may well have been) of his namesake, Endgame Enda.
-One expects no more of Sinn Fein. But for Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to raise the prospect of Border Poll is disturbing.
And so on and on and on he gasps in the manner typical of pollocks out of water. Till the throttled reader is made to feel he has been grasped in the mottled neck by the handclasp of the hackitariat.
-One might have hoped for a more sober approach in Dublin.
Colum in this part of his column would seem to be gasping here for more water, not for himself, mind, but in the drinks of the Dublin Power-brokers.
-Some Unionists voted to stay in the EU. This does not mean that the idea of being part of the Republic now thrills them. For reasons why not they might not jump with joy at that prospect, just open any Irish newspaper any day of the week.
Hmmmm.
The last sentence might well become, say, a Professor Associate, Adjunct and Emeritus (phew ! or gasp ! as one of the half-decked pollocks might emit) in the School of Communications in the Dublin City University. Such as (gulp) Colum Kenny actually is.
Such a (gasp) jolly versatile fellow is he.
No doubt this Southern Yoon had this epistle from a Northern Yoon in mind which had appeared in the previous day’s Letters’ Page of (gasp) The Unionist Times:
-Whenever Irish politics are in trouble they raise the issue of a United Ireland. Enda Kenny has just done that and it is a joke as far as we in Northern Ireland are concerned.
The author of this epistle from the northern side of the Black Sow’s Dyke is a very occasional contributor to the Page of Rage in The Unionist Times. It obviously takes something really, really serious, such as (the mere mention of) a Border P., to give Lord Kilclooney (for it is he, whoever he is !) an anaphylactic attack which can only be cured by dashing off a snorter to the understanding (very) Editor of T.U.T.
While one is blissfully unaware as to who this Anglicsed Aristocrat of Anaphylaxis , who tailors his prose to fit the sympathetic space, might be, his address suggests he dwells in the boondocks:
-Mullinure, County Armagh.
Further digging by The Perkin ( between his thumb and his finger his pen squats, beneath the gasping sound) , in an effort to discover the actual identity of the scribe behind the flamboyant pseudonym, has prompted the following Limerick (home of the pogrom):
THE SCRIBE’S LATEST DIATRIBE
It has been suggested that the Lord Kilclooney
Could never be taken for Gorgeous G. Clooney
(Cle O’Patra was killed by an asp
Liz O’Donnell ‘s skilled at a gasp)
This boony belongs to a people not petty nor puny.
–
Perkin – personal jewel of the day: “Here a flounder, whose eyes and colour are typically on the right; there a bass, blue of back and sliver of fin; here again a pollock immediately recognizable by its distinctive protruding lower jaw. And herrings, red of hue, and also the sliver-haired darlings such as Liz O’Donnell, both of which herring species are, of course, not entirely unrelated.” How do you do it??
Liz would be very familiar with how Irish TDs can bollocks up negotiations with Unionism. Sure didn’t the bauld Liz lash up to the North one Friday evening off her own bat. Had a wee chat with Unionism and almost derailed the entire process.
Thankfully for Liz it was all swept under the rug by the civil service and the process gotten back on track.
There is a certain type we put into power they are in Fine Gael,Fianna Fail , emerged in the nearly defunct Labour Party and were the full makeup of the PDs and they remind me as a young boy watching the news with my dad and listening to white Rhodesians they lived in a world were they ignored what was happening around them,and even when the power was taken from them they believed what they had stolen was still theirs ,they believe they have a God given right to power ,to dictate against the majoritys wishes their esteemed view is paramount ,Odonnell et al are out of step with the electorate we now gasp when we see these people being elected but thankfully we now are seeing a turn from these career politicians for these people politics is who will be in charge of nepotism within the State and as Enda Kenny was he gave Liz Odonnell a nice little job as chair of the Road Safety Authority ,they always look after their own.
I don’t remember the Progressive Democrats and I certainly don’t remember Liz but I guess I’m better off not remembering, by the sounds of it the PD’s were just another Fine Gael.
The Billy Wright poster boasting about the murder of 4 men was slashed in half by a man on Wednesday morning. Another up has went up but it doesn’t mention Cappagh, it just says in memory of a “True Son of Ulster”. It seems in order to be a “True Son of Ulster” the criteria is you have to be a sectarian serial killer, the vast majority of your victims needing to be innocent Catholic civilians. That gives an insight into the minds of people who support Billy Wright, one of whom is so called “Victims Campaigner” Willie Frazer.
But also very noticeable in all of this is the silence from the DUP. We see how Nelson McCausland is in hysterics over any mention of Bobby Sands. Indeed he was on Nolan complaining about a documentary he hasn’t even watched….but when its posters of Billy Wright going up, a UDA parade honouring 2 sectarian psychopaths who committed the Sean Grahams massacre, etc the DUP are as quiet as a mouse. Sorry, that’s not totally true. DUP members/politicians have even been seen attending the parade to honour Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder in the past. They aren’t complaining either about the UDA plaque in a WW1 memorial or demanding its removal. Indeed the PSNI aren’t removing the plaque just like they are refusing to remove the Billy Wright posters but they WILL remove a 1916 memorial……..spot the difference?
Liz and Co may still want to pander to Unionism despite being demolished and swept away from the Dail but they aren’t the only ones. Our very own PSNI want to do the same…..or should we just call them the RUC?……
The PSNI are the R you don’t C. Most of the RUCSB who were pensioned off with lump sums were hired back to ensure no progress was made in the HET.
“Most of the RUCSB who were pensioned off with lump sums were hired back to ensure no progress was made in the HET”
Very true gendjinn. I think that became most obvious when Gerry Adams and other SF members were arrested and not a shred of evidence was put before them……it was like something that would’ve happened in the 1980’s or 90’s and just had the scent of RUC around it…….
“I don’t remember the Progressive Democrats and I certainly don’t remember Liz but I guess I’m better off not remembering, by the sounds of it the PD’s were just another Fine Gael. ”
Had they the support, they would have been much worse Ryan.
I can barely think of anyone who made my blood boil more than Michael McDowell
Ryan the PD`S came from FF.
Jude you criticized these obnoxious posters on the Nolan show are you willing to criticized similar obnoxious Republican posters?
If they’re similarly obnoxious, of course.
“Ryan the PD`S came from FF”
Often its hard to tell the difference between FF and FG Robert.
The PDs were the Blueshirt wing of FF, so not far off from FG. Led by Dessie O’Malley, a right wing, if not somewhat fascist, justice minister in the 70s by rhetoric and legislation.