Has the Belfast Telegraph adopted a policy of discarding titles when reporting on the doings of titled persons? As a policy it will certainly ruffle noble feathers here in Ulster. Suppose Lord John Kilclooney makes fresh headlines with his proposal for the partitioning of Scotland, will the Belfast Telegraph ascribe his comments to Mr John Taylor? And what about Baron Kilclooney? He might be quite cross if any fresh road rage incident were to be attributed by the Telegraph to a mere Mr Maginnis.
Which brings me to yesterday’s Telegraph reportage on Mr Dolan. Who is Mr Dolan? He is a person better known as Cardinal Dolan, Catholic Archbishop of New York. I believe, along with Sinn Fein and Mr Doug Beattie, one time RIR Captain, that Cardinal Dolan was mistaken in his recent pairing of the IRA and Islamic State as religious perverts. That does not mean that I would be so discourteous as to deprive the Cardinal of his title.
However, Mr Chris Kilpatrick and Mr John Porter, reporting in the Belfast Telegraph, do not feel bound by such rules of courtesy. In the course of their reporting of Mr David Simpson’s endorsement of Cardinal Dolan’s remarks, they identify the cardinal, initially, as “an American cardinal”. He then becomes “New York-based Timothy Dolan”. A direct quotation from a SF spokesman does allow Timothy Dolan his title “Cardinal Timothy Dolan” but this is courtesy by the Sinn Fein spokesman, not Messrs Kilpatrick and Porter.
From that point on, the Cardinal becomes Mr Dolan. Mr Dolan is mentioned 3 times in the closing paragraphs of the report.
I feel, in the interests of parity of esteem, that the Belfast Telegraph should, for a fortnight at least, remove all titles from its reportage. Tell us the latest news about what Mrs Windsor-Mountbatten and her spouse are getting up to this week or how young Mr and Mrs Willie Windsor-Mountbatten and the wean are keeping.
An exception would have to be made, of course, for Lady Eileen Emily Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George. In my view, she is the most entitled lady in the whole House of Lords.
Another cardinal error
It is said that organized religion is like organized crime; it preys on peoples’ weaknesses, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate. The Church briefly replaced the monarchy in Ireland. The Princes’ of the church obviously favour the aristocracy not civic and political equality, to be addressed as ‘My Lord’ and to live in houses called ‘palaces’. Thankfully deference to anachronistic titles is being rendered redundant in modern democracies.
One motored through this piece with relative ease till the second last paragraph when one encountered a blip. Which reminded one of nothing so much of those speed ramp thingies which went with, say, RUC stations as say, weasels do with woodpeckers.
That would have been the reference to: ‘Mrs Windsor-Mountbatten’.
Cor ! but that rather jarred with one of the Warbeck name. One will not feign differently – the evidence is there from the velvet vocal chords of The Platters to those of Freddy Mercury himself – but the nomenclature of the Royal Family (there’s only one such clann worth talking about) is something that we Warbeckians are acutely allergic to.
And that version (see above) is one that grated: it would be futile to, erm, pretend otherwise.
Because we on the Island of Ireland are such fanatical speakers of the Queen’s English – one says pshaw ! to all this current bog shamrockery togged out in the livery of the leprechaun as we approach the bucklepping run up to St. Patsy’s Day – it is crucial for agreement to be reached on this q.of how to refer to the Queen.
Perhaps the time has come to think and look outside both the box hedge and the box kick of leafy suburbia.
Like doing something new, such as looking at, erm, The Island of New Ireland.
The time is ripe. Not least because things antipodean are de rigeur on the Island of Ireland at this m.in time,going forward. Downunder is on the Up and Under, as it were. Look no further than His Holiness Joe.Who continues to forge the conscience of our race in the Schmidty of his soul, to put it bluntly.Or,something.
Before mentioning this South Sea Island’s term of affection yet reverence for the Q. it is only meet and just to mention the traits which the two Islands of Ireland, the old, and the new, share in common.
Their official language, for instance, is Tok Pisin. Or, Talk Pidgin if one prefers to be perfectly po-faced about it.What Pat or Patricia has not indulged in Tok Pisin at one stage or other?
Then, there is the long tradition of Blackbirding in The Island of New Ireland.This involved the coercion and the hoodwinking of indigenous folk to work as indentured slaves in the sugar plantations of (gulp) Queensland. ‘Blackbirding’ was slang was taking pot shots at the l. yokels.
There is even a notable poem in leprechaun ‘Lon Dubh an Chairn’ in the barony of Oriel, to do with a, yes, blackbird.dating from the same era in not area.
Reptiles are enormously popular in both islands: and in both ends of this island too, from the tiny gechkoe lizards in the mangrove swamps of Leinster House to the red-bellied side-necked turtles of Teach Stormont.
-Missis Kwin.
Yes, that is how She is addressed in the official Tok Pisin language of the The Island of New Irealnd.
As a term of greeting it does have a resonance about it, does it not? Combining as it patently does, a patina of formality but yet managing to retain that element of informality which we Irish, both on the Island of, old and the Island of, new, have quite cornered the market in.
It ought not have encounter any great difficulty in catching on, having the benefit of many headstarts across the l. and breath of the Island of Ireland already: from Super Kwin to Kwinsworth, give or take a Kwin Direct or two.
Tthat’s all the Tok Pisin from Perkie for today, folks.
The link to the BT article mentioned above http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/islamic-state-and-ira-terror-differ-only-in-scale-says-mp-31044961.html
That kind of petty anti Catholic rudeness has always been a stock in trade of the Unionist papers, pathetic really.