Person 1: What’s a gross?
Person 2: A gross – that’s 144, isn’t it? Another word for 144.
Person 1: Are you sure?
Person 2: Quite sure.
Person 1: (Pause) See taigs?
Person 2: Pardon?
Person 1: See taigs – I love them. Taigs.
Person 2: Well, I’m glad to hear –
Person 1: But I don’t trust them.
Person 2: You don’t.
Person 1: Definitely not.
Person 2: But you love them.
Person 1: Yes. There are, I’m sure, lots of good Taigs. Butu I’d be very wary of them.
Person 2: Would you not trust them to even run an errand for you?
Person 1: Ah yes, I’d trust them to get me a loaf of bread at the shop on the corner. But that’s as far as it’d go.
Person 2: Why the suspicion?
Person 1: Simple. They’re heathens.
Person 2: You really think so?
Person 1: Definitely. Their whole faith is satanic.
Person 2: Satanic, eh?
Person 1: Definitely Satanic. And it was spawned in hell. It says in the Bible.
Person 2: Spawned?
Person 1: Devised. Created. They have cells throughout our United Kingdom, just like the IRA had. Or probably still have.
Person 2: But you love them just the same. These Taigs, I mean.
Person 1: Oh I do indeed. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on their head, that’s the God’s truth. It’s their heathen, Satanic faith, spawned in hell that I’m against.
Person 2: (Pause) I know you say you love Taigs, and I’m sure you do. But do you not think that talking like that is maybe…nasty? Vicious, even. Bordering on offensive.
Person 1: I know.
Person 2: You know that.
Person 1: Yes, I know it’s offensive. But the Bible tells me I’m right.
Person 2: So you admit you’re being offensive?
Person 1: Certainly. But I’m not being offensive multiplied by 144.
Person 2: Eh?
Person 1: I’m not being grossly offensive, and so that means there’s no law against it and this is just me exercising my free speech. Their faith is heathen, satanic and spawned in hell. I wouldn’t trust one of them. But I do love them.
Person 2: And you’d send them for a bottle of milk.
Person 1: Or a loaf of bread. I’d trust them that far. But no further.
Person 2: No further at all?
Person 1: Not an inch. Will we sing a verse of “I am washed in the blood of Jesus”?
Person 2: I’d love to, but here’s my bus now.
Person 1: May the Lord make His face shine on you, brother.
Person 2: Right. I trust we’ll meet again. Sometime.
Person 1: I trust we shall. (Closes his eyes and sings loudly, causing a passing cyclist to swerve and knock down an old lady.)
I know, Jude. The whole blinkn episode is unedifying for McConnell and his fellow travellers. However, the verdict will at least prevent that bitter, uneducated little man from enjoying the martyrdom of sentence, let alone prison. He would have lapped that up. No, I think on balance it is the best result. I completely agree that it was grossly offensive, but I wouldn’t want him gaining ultimate benefit from it. Basically the judge said that he was an offensive wee man and to wise up and go away.
“I am washed in the blood of Jesus”. Interesting choice of Hymn but I’m not sure it exists. Did you mean “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb”? That’s what the congregation were singing in Darkley Gospel Hall when republicans machine gunned them.
its not the job of criminal law to censor offensive utterances sez your honour.
will the dee fennell case get the same result
billy
I suppose each case would need to judged on its merits.
Fennell was arguably actively encouraging people to commit violent acts whereas McConnell’s remarks were more general.
Having said that they are both idiots in my view, but I am not sure that legal proceedings are much use in either case. He probably will get the same result.
Very clever! How do we know if we feel offended and when we are grossly offended? If you are not easily offended then I guess it is very unlikely you will ever be grossly offended (unless you have to spend a day with Gregory Campbell). Gregory may be offended by that comment but I’m sure he wouldn’t be grossly offended.
Gross injustices
Once again the north of Ireland hits the headlines for all the wrong reasons. As some people wait for treatment in hospitals, others cope with flooding and the reality of unemployment in 2016.
Mesopotamia is the ancient Greek name meaning the land “between rivers” and describes the valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in modern Iraq, celebrated in history as one of the cradles of civilization. As time and money was spent dealing with offensive comments about members of an established world religion others were busy debating the merits of two football teams. In what is left of one cradle of civilization, investigations are being made into deaths arising out of torture and mistreatment by British forces in Iraq.
Were you not taught by your parents not to laugh at people like that? It’s like mocking somebody with Alzheimer’s fullblown- not the simple forgetfulness that we have. It’s not that people like that and their supporters don’t think about what they’re saying,they don’t care. Like Ian Mór, they love the soundbite.
Great.story.jude God bless
G.r.m.a.J.i.m.
Am I allowed to say openly that i think he’s as mad as a box of frogs?
Is that legal , do you think , Jude? …especially as I’m saying it in the guise of my alter-ego and not the other guy in my head who writes under his own moniker for you every day or so?
This “free speech” thing …does it allow me to say that i believe the man to be plain bonkers for even believing that a “hell” exists at all…..{Where is it ?}…..never mind all that old ancient Biblical soap he blethers on about? Am I allowed to say any of this out loud or would that be grossly offensive . ? Maybe i should stop thinking about any of this at all, eh? It all offends me ….. It offends me that i have to listen to the ravings of religious fantasists of every stripe but who can i see to deal with them ? David Attenborough …where are you when i need you?
You are a HOOT, PK….
To wit …..to woo, Jude!!
Shame.on.that.priest.for.supporting.him.
The first thing I thought when this whole Pastor McConnell episode started was: “If he’s saying this about Islam, then what’s he saying about Catholicism and Catholics?”. No one knows better about fundamentalist, extremist protestant preachers than the Catholic population of Ireland, we had more than our fair share throughout history, maybe the most recent famous one being the late Ian Paisley Snr. Other famous extremist preachers, many which have caused riots, encouraged pogroms and murders of Catholics, discrimination, against basic civil rights for Catholics, etc have been: Hugh “Roaring” Hanna, Henry Cooke (Who has a statue in Belfast), Rev. Devine, Ian Paisley Snr, Rev. Martin Smyth, Rev. Robert Bradford (Killed by the IRA, his election campaign was openly supported by the British National Front), etc the list goes on.
Of course common sense tells you the list of lunatics I quoted do not represent the majority of decent protestant people or decent Protestant Pastors.
McConnell may say he loves Muslims but that’s not going to help when Muslims are being attacked in their homes or out in the street because of his teachings.
When it comes to a religion, yes its completely reasonable to say a particular religion is wrong, its teachings are basically false. That’s everyone’s right, every Catholic Priest, Islamic Iman, Jewish Rabbi, etc would say every religion is false except for theirs and only theirs is the truth.
False is one thing; spawned in the satanic bowels of hell is another.
Why did you change Muslins to Taigs in your story Jude? Are you claiming the Pastor used the same language about Catholicism?
No,BYC.Just a flight of fancy and seeing how it sounded when you substituted taigs…
Ok. I can’t tell if you’re trying to show solidarity with Muslims as a fellow victim of Pastor McConnells style of prejudice or if you’re trying to muscle In to remind people that Catholics are always the real victims here.
If it’s the second that seems rather dangerous (and a bit uneven) – especially in the light of armed attacks that Irish republicans (or Catholic “reaction forces”) have already made on members of the Pentecostal church and other Protestant worshippers while they were actually attending services.
I’m not sure why you resurrect the horror of Darkley, BYC, when I use Catholics as an example of how McConnell might have sounded if he’d said Catholics instead of Muslims. You do know, btw, that in the history of this state, there have been more than, oh, what – ten cases of bigotry directed at Catholics?
I see your point Jude and agree with it but this kind of thing from preachers of all religions is nothing new, its happened before and it will happen again. There’s no shortage of internet videos showing Islamic Iman’s calling other religions evil, there’s no shortage of Jewish Rabbi’s (particularly from Israel) calling other religions evil and now of course the dear Pastor McConnell has represented his version of Christianity in calling other religions evil.
As a young Catholic myself, though I’m not really a Mass goer, I’d accompany my mother when she goes from time to time, I apply basic common decency when it comes to people and their beliefs and that is respecting their right to believe in what they want.
you forgot the incinerators seawright wanted to build for the catholics.
Ah yes -poor George. I can still see him trying to scale the closed gate at Belfast City Hall…
Oh, how could we forget poor George, eh Billy? Wanting to build incinerators to burn all Catholics along with their Priests. Exactly what Jesus Christ preached……not.
It all ended badly for poor George but due to his antics and carry on I don’t think many were really surprised. The UVF later added him to their list of members who died during the troubles…..
In the interests of balance, which came first an urban myth or Urban II’s crusade?
Back in the Sixties (The 1960s), Esteemed Blogmeister, the definition of ‘gross ignorance’ was, erm, Dail Eireann.
On account of there being 144 TD’S at that time.
Not all that much has changed if one is to judge by the recent utterances of the Aire Oideachais / Minister of Education.
That is the smiley-faced Ms.Jan O’Sullivan who is, of course, the Poster Gal of Political Protestantism if one reads The Unionist Times correctly. That is paper of record on Liffeyside which is ever and always on the qui vive for slights done to the M.O.P.E.s (Most Oppressed Prods Ever).
M.O.P.E. is, if anything, an understatement. After suffering nothing less than ETHNIC CLEANSING (i.e., one way ticket, first class cabin, full washing facilities, sailing east, to the cradle of civilisation / Mainland) in the FSS for nigh on a century all they are left with are (gulp) just two Cathedrals on Liffeyside.
That’s just two (sob) out of two.
That’s all the thanks they get for centuries spent selflessly civilising the horizontal croppies. No doubt, some awkward soreheads will point to their occupation of the high moral ground and all the benefits that accrue from that location. Such as utter immunity from the sectarian sledging which the RC’s receive on a daily basis from the agenda-driven, anal-retentive anglos in the homongenous hackitariat.
But what good, others might claim, is this abstraction called moral authority if one discovers, – alas, too late ! – that the Sean Scully which one has bought Darling Daphne on our golden anniversary for to hang in the drawing room of our humble hacienda in the barrio of Killiney-sur-Dort ,has been hanging upside down !
Nor only that but to have it revealed by the Paddy Stink of a Papist whom one had hired to wait on table for our dinner pawty of a (thankfully) pawltry fifty five. Oppression, once again.
Where’s your moral authority then at that pivotal moment in time, going f., ? Riddle one that.
Pe sceal e/ Anyhow.it is Smiley-faced Jan’s profound ambish, beginning this very January, to see to it thal all traces of Popery (codenamed ‘all organised religiions’) will be banished from the classrooms of the FSS.
But on a graded basis, as befits the setting: first, down to the back of the classroom; then out to the corridor, before being finally toepoked to the hedgeschools and Mass Rocks in Ballygobackwards where it belongs.
To be replaced by an enlightened touchy-feel form of REAL religion whose role model will be (gasp) the Reverend Cyril Fairplay in The Quiet Man. Who else, sez you.
The first lesson to be taught, ar ndoigh / naturally, will be under R for Restitution. The essential beauty of this new religion is that it can be integrated into every other school subject right across the blackboard. For instance, Restitution can be taught in a maths class. Possibly along the lines of; say, one steals two apples from one’s neighbour, how many apples is one duty bound to restore to one’s neighbour?
(It needn’t, of course, be apples, it could be oranges, or, the Queen forbid, Cathedrals theyselves. Flexibility being another essential factor in this new order).
Btw, like yawns, smiley faces are very contagious, not least when they emanate from the laborious party. Jan, for instance, never fails to bring a smile to Perkie;s normally sullen puss. For one is always reminded of a comical song once sung in the movie ‘Flying Deuces’ by that pair of laugh merchants, Laurel and Hardy:
-January, February, June and July,
Shine on, shine on, harvest moon’
One is confident that there will be no such gaps apparent in the plans of Jan, who ran Averil Power so close for the title of ‘Calendar Girl of 2015’.
To conclude where one began, Dail Eireann aka the T-all and the D-all of the Free Southern Stateen.
These days, E.B., it ‘boasts’ of 166 members. This is a figure which figures. As it is also the number onthe periodic chart which represents the element known as:
-Unhexhexium.
With a few notable exceptions (ar ndoigh/ of course) the density of this element is unknown.
The measuring device has yet to be invented.
Jimmy McConnell, according to a number of posters, is as daft as a brush (with apologies to any brushes which have never stooped to his level of ignorance).
But then you hear about his followers packing out the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and you saw the political support (mostly DUP) he got during his court case.
So if he is demented, what does that say about his supporters (political and otherwise)?
This morning’s discussion on local radio about last night’s Belfast council debate on inviting football teams was at a similar level of intellect.
We can’t invite the Republic because ‘they steal our players’!
We can’t invite the Republic because James McClean won’t wear a poppy.
But if you invite England and Wales then these two objections won’t matter.
And now you’ve voted just to invite the Republic, we will go to the event anyway.
Should there not be sanity tests before these loons are allowed to stand as councillors?
ime sure it will be the highlight of the players career getting to meet jim rodgers and nial o,d .
A Christian standing up during what is suppose to be a Christian religious service and using the opportunity to attack those of a different faith instead of proclaiming the Gospels is a bigot in my opinion and far removed from the spirit of the Gospels.
That said, I didn’t and still do not agree with the PPS in taking this case. McConnell portraying himself as the modern day St. Stephen is sickening. I don’t see how this case was in the public interest.