In the vivid if somewhat coarse wording of The Thick of It’s script-writers, this has been a cluster-fuck of a Twelfth for unionism. First there was the bouncy-bouncy dance of the Finaghy True Blues in Donegall Street, then the alleged murder attempt on the life of a young woman by car-driver and Orangeman John Aughey, and finally Mick Wallace TD’s claim that a northern politician was involved in a massive NAMA fixer deal featuring some £7 million in an off-shore account.
Let’s take the first of these, since it may have nothing to do with unionism. Mike Nesbit has come out and declared no one in his party had any involvement. I’m not sure if Sinn Féin or the SDLP have come out with similar statements. But Peter Robinson has been at some pains to point out that his son and none of his family were involved. Time will tell if this affair was one that did in fact involve a northern politician; but past controversies about land deals and the anxiety of the DUP to deny any knowledge while sounding pretty nervous opens up at least a possibility that the party may be involved in a scandal. Even if they are not, as we know, the suggestion that they are may be enough to damage them.
Now let’s look at John Aughie, the Orangeman whose car ploughed into a crowd and left a young woman with a range of injuries – a broken collar-bone, a broken pelvis and a broken ankle among them. Only swift action by the PSNI and some nationalists on the spot in lifting the car from on top of her saved her life. Mr Aughey is faced with charges of attempted murder. His solicitor has made known that Aughey is recovering from cancer and is the main carer for his seriously-ill wife. One has sympathy for anyone suffering from cancer and caring for an ill relative is a demanding job in more ways than one (as Jim Wells has reminded us); but the idea that attempt murder or homophobic remarks should not be prosecuted with vigour because the accused is having a hard time in his personal life is frankly ludicrous. Continue that line of argument and a thief might argue he stole your television because his sick child enjoys watching X Factor.
Finally, the Finaghy True Blues. There have been people posting on this site arguing that their odd bouncy-bouncy dance predated the fatal attack on Robert Hamill in Portadown and therefore has nothing to do with him. It’s an attractive but fatally flawed argument. As I pointed out in another blog, The Beachboys’ ‘Sloop John B’ was composed in the 1950s (or 1960s, according to Neill) but no one for a moment doubts that when the circling band outside St Patrick’s Church two years ago played and sang it, it was naked sectarianism designed to provoke. I listened to Noel Thompson interviewing Drew Nelson on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster this morning, and both men danced around the nature of the offensive behaviour. They agreed it was regrettable but even the possibility that it was a mockery of the death of Robert Hamill, kicked to death by loyalist thugs, was not mentioned. In some ways it’s irrelevant whether or not the Finaghy True Blues had Hamill in mind: what’s certain is that a lot of nationalists/republicans are convinced of their intention to insult the memory of a dead man – and this a few yards from the spot where the infamous Famine Song was played a few years ago.
On at least three fronts, then, it’s been a horror-show Twelfth for unionists. Might it encourage them to think of a radically new way to celebrate the Twelfth next year? About as much chance as Orange Lodges budgeting for a supply of Holy Water for the brethren.
Last night during an interview with Drew Nelson on BBC NI’s Newsline he condemned the violence on the 13th of July, however the interviewer never put it to him that one of his own loyal bretheren alledgedly attempted to murder members of the public on the Crumlin Road.
I wonder would the BBC be so shy as to not to ask that question to a Sinn Fein representative if one of their members had been involved in a similar incident? Methinks not.
The question which got up on its hind legs to beg, Esteemed Blogmeister, when you mentioned Peter Robinson was” ‘doth the gentleman protest too much?’
This is a near quotation from, no, not ‘Twelfth Night’ but rather from ‘Hamlet’, the bog-standard play by the journeyman dramatist whose first name, coincidentally enough, was: William. This is a play which features many floral references as in the drowning of Ophelia:
‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crowflowers,nettles, daisies and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maidens do ‘dead mens’ fingers’ call them’.
Apologies for inserting these leaden-footed and lacklustre lines, EB, but wait till the DruidShakespeare script doctors get their Hiberno-English hands on them and then you’ll see revealing improvements.. Flower words like i for iris might even begin to get a mench.
Say no more, Seymour. Is leor nod don eolai teileafoin.
The point here is that anything to do with the orange groves of Norneverland is liable to bring folk in the Free Southern Stateen out in a rash of poetic licences, whether they have been approved by the Parades Commission or no. (Which last monosyllable is Hiberno English for ‘not’).
Seamas O Neill mentioned the Peep o’ Day boys as the first draft of the Orange Order and this POD in their DNA undoubtedly casts the OO in the role of a genuine cultural body.That this has not been alluded to down here South of the Black Pig’s Dyke in the last few days is understandable as we have had our problems with the mirror image organisation (alleged) of the OO.
So, Perkie’s inner backstory teller finds it imperative to give a foretaste of what will be written in the DOBland media once we have dealt with our own mischief-makers (genuine). The Peep O’ Day boys, far from being an agrarian bunch of billy boys whose sole concern was the gentle art of Catholic cattle houghing in the yawn and stretch time of Dawn, were a far more profoundly cuturural institution than that.
Take their headgear, for example. The Wideawake Hat. Need one say more about this cultural, erm, tool that just make a passing mention of the two most renowned wearers of this most uplifting of aesthetic headgear, in history:: Rembrandt and the Quaker Oats Man.
The significance of one of these being a Dutchman and the other of Scots descent, scarcely needs emphasising
And the reason why these positives have not been aired in Eireland / FSS is because the liberal shepherds of the purchased press have been otherwise pre-occupied by the nefarious doings of .what the cold maidens of the media here delicately refer to as ‘dead mens’ fingers’.
One of course, is referring to the politics of the latest atrocity perpetrated by the 100 % all-beef thermometers of the GAA. What the liberal shepherd of Londonderry famously christened ‘the bald-headed yoghurt slingers’.
Yes, the GAA: what some deluded bigots refer to as the mirror image of the OO. Nothing could be further from the Truth, except , perhaps, Phibsboro.
The essential contrast between the GAA and the OO was never more apparent indeed than in the former’s latest manifestation of barbarism: it was, unlike the manly,out in the open OO, carried out in the cowardly way, in the immortal words of CJH, aka Charlie Rich: ‘Behind Closed Doors’.
‘My baby makes me proud
Lord, how she makes me proud:
She never makes a scene’.
The third line there sums up what the Russels of the Love Muscle (self love) in the GAA are about: abominable acts, behind closed doors, and swept under the carpet. This occurred (on a date and venue still clouded in vagueness) in what was billed as ‘friendly’ game between the bogballers of Armagh and the ‘dead mens’ fingers’ of Dublin.
During which genial get together a Dublin player sustained facial injuries of such severity that he was not released from the ICU of DCU till after (gasp) two nights. 48 Hours. (Hammer Fillums have first option on the movie rights).
This is the dept of sporting depravity which has quite correctly convulsed both the liberal shepherds and the cold maidens of the morally superior media on Liffeyside. To say the Armagh v Dublin Debacle has provoked more outrage and harvested more headlines than the mere Monaghan and Dublin bombings is to underestimate the level of saeva indignatio in DOBland.
So saeva indeed is the indignaito that it has even attracted (a) the attention and (b) the ire of the Olympian Paul Kimmage. This attentive ire gives a hint of just how global, how viral the recent cover version of the Charlie Rich hit list has become.
So seriously indeed, has Paul Kimmage taken this latest in a lengthy list of blaggardly acts by the bogballers, that he has magnanimously agreed to park his other ongoing project: the banning of Mary Poppins. On the grounds that Julie Andrews was high on drugs even as she cycled high n the sky.
Focal scoir: whereas the GAA is all about the clash of the ash, OO is about nothing more dangerous than the flash of the sash.
Ni difriocht go dti e.
Writing in The New York Times Steven Davidoff Solomon, law professor at the University of California in Berkely, described the ongoing Nama financial scandal as “a toxic mix of money, lawyers, politicians and the continued wreckage of the financial crisis”.
It would appear that there is no need to advocate the need for a conscience clause or to read the good book during the month of July in the sick counties. Is it acceptable to use the symbol of a cross to crucify Catholics? “Thou shall not kill”, does not appear to apply given one individual is facing serious charges following the disorder at Ardoyne on 13 July 2015 and on a day that the PSNI have arrested one more individual for the murder of Paul McCauley in Derry.
“Thou shall not steal” does not appear to apply either given the austerity measures being visited on citizens throughout the country as a direct result of the activities of ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘fixers’ and ‘influencers’. It certainly is less vulgar to discuss ‘commercial sensitivities’ as opposed to corruption in public life.
I wonder what Professor Solomon would make of the fact that thousands of pounds have been spent facilitating bonfires at a time when the Fire Service is unable to find fire hydrants due to an abject failure to maintain grass cutting services?