Gerry Adams has been criticized many times for talking about the ‘Trojan horse of equality’ being the instrument that’d “break the bastards”. Unionist battened onto the notion of a Trojan horse (armed men sliding from the belly of the beast in the moonlight) and the fact that they’d been referred to as “bastards”. Which was missing the point by roughly fifteen miles. The point was and is, can unionism accept equality in a state that thrived on inequality for a full fifty years?
Judging by reaction to last night’s deliberations in Belfast City Council, it looks as though the answer is No. Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Alliance Party have voted that next year, bonfires which promise to endanger property and/or life should have their materials removed. Red alert! Red alert! This is another Trojan horse! The whole thing is the beginning of an attempt to remove the materials from all Eleventh Night bonfires and so deprive unionists of their culture!
The DUP’s Lee Reynolds has claimed the vote in favour of removing material for dangerous bonfires turns the City Council into the “Belfast bonfire police”. Jim Rodgers of the UUP says “This is all about politicking and electioneering. It started off with the parades issue, then the flag issues and now we have the bonfires”.
Jim, as so often, is half-right, although maybe not in the way he intended. The parades in question were about triumphalism and mocking nationalists; the flags issue was about the need to fly the union flag at Belfast City Hall 365 days a year; and the bonfires in question are those which are dangerous. All three, unionist politicians appear to believe, must be defended. No change. Not an inch. Only here’s the thing. Change was won on the parades issue. Change was won on the flag issue. And now we must hope that change will prevail in the bonfire issue.
Maybe Gerry Adams got it wrong. Maybe it isn’t movement towards equality that is the issue which drives some unionist politicians wild. Maybe it’s the movement towards sanity.
Those who can’t see the sense in avoiding damaging property and life should perhaps reconsider their vocational calling. Latest reports say there are still empty spots within the ranks of the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Too true, Jude. Listening to Nolan coverage on same bonfire topic this morning and its same old prejudices, ” batten down the hatches “, republican plots and throw backs to IRA republican violence as trotted out by ruth Patterson, jim Rodgers and jim Wilson.. PUL are never happier than when they can invoke their siege mentality…… and then to listen to ruth Patterson and jim Wilson attempting to quote and interpret historical events and sequences……. truly risible. ( It would appear that Nolan and team do not know historical facts relating to irish history either as these sometimes absurd assertions are not challenged).
Nail on the head Patrick, these radio and tv presenters need to tell these people you mentioned that what they are doing is condoning hate crime and has nothing to do with allegience to their Queen.
Often wondered what it would be like to have an impartial journalist hosting these current affairs and news programmes.
These politicians just don’t get it. Only in Northern Ireland would the sight of fire tenders turning up at a bonfire use their hoses and point them AWAY from the fire and spray a building, instead of actually dousing the fire. Utter lunacy. I’m not a fireman but I’d love to know what page of the training manual that’s on.
Expressing hate for all things Irish Catholic and especially Republican is and always has been part of, indeed a legitimate expression of, Protestant culture and can not be interfered with ..!!!
I take it you mean Unionist culture not “Protestant culture,” as Republicanism grew out of Protestant culture, or more specifically non-conformist Protestantism, Roman Catholicism having always been a bastion of monarchical ancient regimes.
As a long time hater of ALL bonfires, I support the steps to try and clean up these mess makers. I remember a few years back that the BCC wanted to put a large incinerator on the fore shore that would have burnt much of our unrecyclable waste and at the same time generated electricity there were objections from the people who live on the shore road. They said it would cause poisonous fumes, no irony alert there.
Given that the bonfires do give off poisonous fumes at low levels (unlike the incinerator with its flue gas filter and two hundred metre stack) I have wondered how those people living beside the bonfires who have severe asthma and COPD cope during bonfire night. I wonder do they cause an increase burden on the hospitals and ambulance services?
One way to deal with the nonsense of bonfires would be to inform those living close to one of those crazy monsters that before the appointed night , they should vacate their properties for safety’s sake and take temporary accommodation because the fire services could not guarentee safety and might not even be required to attend . That might put local pressure to bear on the pyromaniacs and these wishy-washy politicians , whose only expression of culture was to threaten the possibility to burn a street down.
All of the unionists representatives mentioned are morons. If ever anyone spoke with forked tongue it’s Jim Rodgers.
Culture :
the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.
Maybe I’m missing some oblique point here but how can burning the symbols flags and artifacts of another culture be described as your “culture”?
How can thousands of triumphalist sectarian parades , used annually to remind another culture of the victor in a battle hundreds of years ago be described as your “culture” ?
How can the provocative and intimidatory flying of paramilitary flags associated with gruesome murders be described as your “culture”?
How can the contemptuous sneering at another’s language be described as your “culture”?
How can the denial to protect that ancient and indigenous language in law protect or enhance your “culture”?
Is there any manifestations of human intellectual achievement at all in your “culture”?
Another seemingly intrinsic part of unionist working class culture, drug dealing, prostitution and protection rackets, need to be tackled head on, particularly by the psni.
Hey martybo, ( aka Martin from Ballymurphy ) I like the way you presented your ” I’m not across the detail ” argument on the Nolan show today. Well done .
Are Royalty ever urged to take a particular stand on issues by the British government? What if for example a Corbyn government was to take King Charlie to one side and ask him to disassociate his family from these professions of loyalty?
One cannot help noticing the link between this posting on bonfires , Esteemed Blogmeister, and your previous one, to do with Sean Donlon.
-Delvin, County Westmeath.
That’s the Irish village which is, of course, synonymous with bonfires when the villagers back in the day of, gulp, 1918, got together and made a bonfire of the bought and unread novel by Brinsley McNamara which they deemed to have demeaned their hamlet of a habitat.
-The Valley of the Squinting Windows.
For it was in that same village that Donlon Major was born. And though one has not, erm, delved too deeply in the genial topic of genealogy in this particular instance, nonethless there is a fair to middling chance that is in the boneyard of that same village that the Donlon ancestors are laid, go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a n-anamacha dilse.
Brought up in a Leprechaun-speaking household Sean Donlon will know better than Dr. Johnson of The Dictionary himself that the origin of bonfire is bone-fire:
-Tine chnámh.
Doctor Samuel Johnson, of the other hand, got his bona fides wrong in this case as he fell for the old canard that bonfire must have originated from bon feu in the French: good fire.
But then, the comparison in this instance is as odious as a toadstool’s Fintan. After all, Sam Johnson had only won one doctorate while Sean Donlon has (gulp) two doctorates (honorary) to his illustrious name. Besides, Dr. Dr. Donlon will have had exposure at the recent McGall Shout Out in Na Gleannta/ Glenties to the pronunciation of the local surname, Bonner. It gives a clue to its aboriginal Leprechaun version:
– Ó Cnáimhsi.
(For the pronunciaiton of Bonner see under ‘a toadstool’s Fintan’ just above).
Apart from his uber-deserved double doctorate, your honour, Sean Donlon was inundated with all sorts of hugely earned and (possibly) even yearned- for honours, both of an academic and hackademic nature alike.
•
None more so that the role of Chance, (cough) Chancellor of Limerick University. Resplendent no doubt did Dr. Dr. Donlon look in his scarlet or black damask academic gown with its ermined shoulder pads beneath a velvet mortarboard trimmed with gold braid and tassel.
No doubt either an honour bestowed in part in recognition of His Excellency’s stellar spell as FSS Ambassador to the US, from 1978 to 1984 . In 1986, incidentlaly, it was ordained that a little part of Shannon Airport that would be forever , erm, Shenandoah. These things just don’t happen overnight, unlike, say, red-eye Trans-Atlantic Flights.
Re-spect.
Incidentally, Shannon is the first airport in the world, outside of the Americas, to offer Full US Preclearance facilities to passengers tavelling to the USA. Now, Shannon Airport is located a mere
list of richly deserved directorships down the road from Limerick University.
The airport which was, tragically, the sad scene of, perhaps, THE most devastating downfall ever recorded in the rarefied world of aeronautical lease and fleece..
This happened, sadly, when GPA,the greatest global aircraft leasing company the globe had ever gawked in awe upon , nose-dived without warning into the ground in 1992 at Shenandoah Airport.
Happily, one is loath to rehash that painful plane-related commercial crash or go into the gruesome debt-defying details. One must be careful of reminding the world of this, em, aeronautical atrocity.,not.
After all, Dr Dr. Sean Donlon (77) – so good they doctored him twice – has sadly already had his inane, two-steps- at- a- time, five step hectoring of the feckin’ elected Shinners, ritually disembowelled by your posting yesterday , E. B., and then, as a coup de grace , a what-not on the snot by GPA (Gerry ‘President’ Adams) in the august letter columns of (gasp) today’s TUT.
Ach , dá fhad an oíche, erm, Tagann An Lá.
It is never too late to go into salvage mode. As a cross-community gesture of reconciliation, a cause dear to the dear warm heart of The Donlon ( a term of endearment dating from his Wash-out, oops, Washingtonian Days) here’s an idea for the day / smaoineamh an lae:
Let the uppity Crops empty out the warehouses of West Belfast, where the redundant stocks of unsold SDLPs (Collected Screechy Speeches of Sean Donlon: The Album) and the Collected Columns of Our Kev devoted to Racist Rants against Republicans (which, in respect of his Antiseimic Rants are in a ratio of roughly 1918: 1 , singing Ooh, ah, Up the RA-tio).
The mouldy old doh ! of this stockpile could then be forklifted on to a cavalcade of, say, fourteen Eighteen-Wheelers and transported to the nearest Orange centre of cultural excellence.
This is where one has no doubt they would be gratefully received. On account of both the dryness of the content and the incendiary nature of the wrappings.
It could only be – for both sides of the divide – a Shin-win situation:
-The Bonfire of the Inanities.