I’ve just heard a woman on the radio throw everything but the kitchen sink at the Stop The War group. She accused them of comparing ISIS recruits from Britain to those who left Britain to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the republican side; and she said that the Stop The War coalition had supported the Russian intervention in Syria. The fact that a Stop The War representative said her claims were “lies” (remember, you can be sued for calling someone a liar in public) didn’t seem to worry her. She just kept on pitching into them and into Jeremy Corbyn, the former chair of the Stop The War group who plans to attend their Christmas fund-raiser this evening.
While that assault was thundering ahead, an MP called Michael Dugher was reported in The Guardian today as saying that the pro-Corbyn group Momentum were no better than a mob and that its aggression is matched only by its stupidity. Of Corbyn’s ally Ken Livingstone, Dugher said “Every time he opens his mouth he manages to offend large numbers of people, so maybe he should just open his mouth a little less”. Dugher welcomed Jeremy Corbyn attending the Stop the War coalition’s Christmas fund-raiser because that would let him have a word with them as their former chairman and say to them “stop the intimidation, stop the abuse and stop the talk of de-selections and going after Labour MPs who voted in a way they didn’t approve of”. Dugher is a member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
There can have been few times in recent decades when members of a shadow cabinet have thrown so much abuse and vilification at the head of their party leader – or been so condescending and dismissive of a group in their own party that’s opposed to killing foreigners.
Meanwhile closer to home, The News Letter has a headline that grabbed my attention: “Sinn Féin minister gives £160K to Irish language centre”. I first interpreted this as meaning a Sinn Féin minister had made a donation of £160K and was wondering how s/he could afford to do this on an average industrial wage. Closer examination showed that it was a grant awarded to help develop an Irish language cultural hub in Belfast. Belfast City Council and the Irish language group Ciste Infheistiochta Gaeilge are both committed to giving grants of up to £112K each .
Given that the two other groups are providing the majority of the funding, you’d maybe have expected that would feature in the headline. Uh-uh. The Sinn Féin culture minister had done it. The implication is obvious: Caral Ni Chuilin is wasting public money on her pet obsession – her very name tells you that.
Much as the anti-Corbynistas detest anything that’d stop them supporting bombing in Syria, much as they detest the pro-Corbyn group Momentum and much as they detest Ken Livingstone, they’re expressing their contempt for all three with one intent in mind: to damage Jeremy Corbyn in the eyes of the public. And much as The News Letter is a bit short of No 1 Fan for development of the Irish language, they are using this story as a way of weakening the position of a Sinn Féin minister.
Christmas spirit, anyone?
Bombs, bullets, bread and butter
I had to read it twice, “a reconstruction tax” in Syria. Could it be possible, Irish neutrality and the use of Shannon Airport is bringing the bombing of Syria to an end? Alas, it is not to be. Someone told the Syrian Tax man about Irish stealth taxes. Now the price of bread, electricity and water is to increase in Syria. A 10% reconstruction tax will be paid on sandwiches. Water bills and floods are driving people from their homes in the west of Ireland while drinking water must be purchased. It is evident that a rising tide only lifts some boats.
spot.on.jude.great.story.these.are mad.times.
Grma. Jim.Were.they.ever.any.other.way?
Not only do they share common initials, Esteemed Blogmeister, but Julius Caesar and Jeremy Corbyn were/ are under pressure from their respective legions of the rearguard. In the case of the former it was the backstabbers with their bodkins, in the case of the latter it is the carbines which are out for Corbyn.
Not for the first time, many of the Labour Party are more than happy to play the lapdogs of war and cry havoc even as they attempt inflict same on the own peace-minded leader while simultaneously gifting the never-resting, conquest-focused Cons glee unconfined.
These blocks, these stones, these worse than senseless things, such as Michael Dugher, are never content while they behold a being greater than themselves.
And the more they make Corbyn seem like the colossus he is even as he bestrides their narrow world the more these petty men walk beneath his huge legs and peep about to seek dishonorable rave reviews in the Daily Rant and the Sunday Screech.
Scratch a Labour Party hack (on either side of the Irish channel) and you’ll find a blood and guts imperialist underneath. These Toga Bears in the House of Commons are a case in point. And the more they cosy up to the Tory Bears the more they remind one of a quote from the recently late and much lamented baseball great, Yogi Berra:
-The towels are so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.
This could be a quote from a former land-grabbing, olive-drabbing Labour Party despot during his sojourn in the Land of the Towel-head: Yogi Blaira.
Meanwhile back in the colony of Norneverland: no better impressarios of empah than the News Lettermen to sponsor this year’s production of ‘A Christmas Caral’.
The headline of these Ebeneezer Stooges of Single Lingodom sums up snappily and aptly their brotherly grimness: ‘Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man’s pocket’.
The newpaper continues: ‘Marley the Leprechaun is dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about this. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner. Ebeneezer Stooge signed it and Stooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his name to. Old Marley the Leprechaun is as a dead as a door nail’.
One trusts that Linda Irvine and the ladies of the Lower Newtownards Road have read this issue of the News Letter and taken note: to shred into tears rather than to shed any tears.
Mind you, the Stridentia in the Free Southern Stateen have no need to read it, for they sing off the same hymn-and-her sheet as (gulp) the News Lettermen.
Certainly, if the ear-shattering silence they have maintained on the Twin Shinners in Beal Feirste agus Baile Atha Cliath / Belfast and Dublin: Caral agus Criona, is anything to go by.
Caral Ni Chuilin is the Culture Minsiter in the one, while Criona Ni Dhalaigh is the Lord Mayor of the other. This silence is odd, rather. Tar eis an tsaoil / After all, they both do something which one would have thought might well have won them a full-throated female whoop of ‘Go, girls !’ from the Stridentia who manipulate the media south of the Black Sow’s Dyke.
They both wish to restore the primacy of the (gulp) Mother Tongue.
Perhaps tis best to leave the last word in logic to Yogi Berra, Uasal (see above): it would appear as if the Stridentia, dressed in their de rigeur dungarees of the Dworkin Class, have taken his advice to heart:
-Ma thagann tu chuig gabhal sa bhriste, ups, sa bhothar, tog e / If you come to a fork in the trousers, oops, road, take it .
“-The towels are so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase’ – give that man a cigar, someone. BRILLIANT…
£160,000 spent on an Irish language centre? Is that all?
I wonder how much is spent on policing Orange/Loyalist parades? which the Journalists at The Newsletter are great fans of.
Camp Twaddell alone has cost the taxpayer £18.5 million to police, a camp which both main Unionist parties have given their full support to. And what does the camp promote? culture? tradition? (well, you could say tradition…) Tolerance? Peace? No. Go ask the Catholic residents of Ardoyne why this camp has SAS and Parachute regiment flags pointing towards their homes, and it has nothing to do with culture that’s for sure.
Ryan – just to give you and other readers an idea of the cost of NI’s obsessions – here we go as they were a couple of years ago.
You can imagine what the update is in overt costs! covert costs! and expenses!
Way to go!!!
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/northern-ireland-how-much-do-your-obsessions-cost/