Four men and twenty-five points

Rev. Chris Hudson MBE, Cllr Dr John Kyle MRCGP, Trevor Ringland MBE, and Professor Graham Spencer have put together a sort of Think Positive list of points to transform unionism. The full list of 25 points can be found on Slugger O’Toole, where Mick Fealty himself tells us the foursome are The Northern Ireland Development Group and assures us they’ve produced “a fascinating document’”.

I know at this point I should be polite and respectful to a body that has not one but two MBEs on it, but when I read their list of twenty-five points, I found myself thinking of Billy Bunter. You may remember how Billy would be caught scoffing tuck that wasn’t his and then going into a self-contradictory defence-and- denial routine:

Oo-er you chaps I didn’t touch your cake these aren’t crumbs around my mouth they’re not my crumbs they’re another chap’s and he lent them to me and I don’t even like cake apart from some kinds that have sugar and icing on them like the one that I didn’t find in your locker Huree Jamset and didn’t scoff completely oh I say you chaps all right I might have been sleep-walking and in my sleep scoffed your cake yaroo that hurt I say chaps you know I’m not the sort that takes other chaps’ stuff and stuffs himself with it oh my sainted aunt put me down that hurts oh I say  can’t we be friends and forget cakes?”

Here are a just 5 of the 25 points assembled by Chris, John, Trev and Graham.

• ‘Represent Northern Ireland as a place where you can do anything you want and where there is no need for constitutional change in order to realise aspirations and opportunities.’ That’s my underlining, as I thought it was very important. I expect Chris, John, Trev and Graham would agree.
• ‘Draw on examples of success such as the IFA’s Football For All campaign.’  Derry City take note – the IFA ain’t what it used to be.
• ‘Realise that people who are not unionist in outlook are now more important for the longevity of the Union.’ Or put bluntly,  ‘We’re doomed if we don’t get more recruits to the unionist cause.’
• ‘Transform tribalism into collective responsibility to develop the integration of education’ Translation: we really must put an end to those Catholic schools, especially the successful ones.
• Become used to depicting disadvantage as advantage by using it as the basis for momentum rather than stasis.’ This is more Animal Farm than Billy Bunter: black is white, etc. Or maybe the four lads got a collective rush of blood to the head and it just doesn’t make sense at all at all.

OK, that’s enough of that, I think.

Does this group bring any central message? Well yes. We’re sorry we weren’t nicer to you over the last 100 years but now we’d really, really like to be your friends. In our New Province.