Your Republic, you pay for it!

Right....

The Treasury should guarantee some financial support over the next 25 years even if Ireland is united, the SDLP said.

Why?
If the majority within Northern Ireland and the Republic were to vote for "Unity", then then they should take the financial consequences of that decision. The day after that vote our financial welfare would no longer be the concern, legally or morally of the British taxpayer...

Meanwhile, in probably completely unrelated news:

The Republic of Ireland's credit rating has been cut yet again in a sign of fading belief that it will repay idebt.

The credit rating agency Moody's has marked the country down two notches on the scale to a status just one notch from "junk".

Quote of the day

Oh dear, Kevin....

St Patrick's Day, for all the "sophistication" of the Dublin parade, has thus become the one-day distillation of a ghastly year-long caricature. If the BBC were to offer comparable stereotypes of such paddy-whackery, our embassy in London would be howling about the racist portrayals of the Irish. Indeed, when the mayor of New York made some perfectly accurate observations about Irish behaviour there on St Patrick's Day, the 'Irish Voice' predictably shrieked: "Mayor Bloomberg outrages Irish Americans with 'people that are totally inebriated hanging out windows' comments."


I'm sure lots of people were outraged, indignation/anger/ offendedness being the default mode of the Irish. The point is: was Bloomberg right? If he was, what's the problem? Do Italians or Swedes or Spanish hang drunkenly out of windows on their national days?

Hain hits too convenient a target

Far be it for me to accuse Peter Hain of being economical with the truth:

Wales will lose three times the proportion of MPs as the average for the rest of the United Kingdom – a reduction in Wales’s voice in Parliament of fully a quarter from 40 to 30. Wales – a nation with just 5 per cent of the population of the UK – is contributing 20 per cent of the cut in MPs.

… but there is one salient fact that he has forgotten to mention there; post the change (if it happens) Wales, with “just” 5% of the UK’s population will have… 5% of the total number of the UK’s MPs, which seems fair enough to me.

One other relevant fact is that we now have 300 (yes, that’s right 300!) other directly elected full-time parliamentarians in the Scottish Parliament, the European Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Greater London Authority and the Northern Ireland Assembly. If anything we should also be organising a cull (humane, of course) of some of that lot- for example, Northern Ireland, population 1.7 million reallly needs 108 MLAs to *ahem* operate as efficiently as it presently does? I think not.

Adams (finally) on the run?

Grizzly's cage has been well and truly rattled:

GERRY Adams was today running scared after murdered Jean McConville's family accused him of dancing on their mother's grave.

For the first time, Adams has threatened to sue for defamation over claims of his IRA past.

The Sinn Fein leader has sent the threats of legal proceedings to the Herald after we highlighted the plight of the McConville family this week.

Today, Mrs Conville's family said they will not be silenced by his bully boy tactics.

Adams has been accused numerous times of being on the IRA army council and of being a senior Provo chief in the Belfast area.

But this is the first time he has threatened to sue journalists.

Interesting that last fact, especially when you consider the amount of "smears" and "lies" written about him previously. It certainly looks like the ROI's press are a lot less in awe of... no make that "a lot less frightened" to do their supposed job than their counterparts in Northern Ireland.

This is the original article upon which the "defamation" of character is alleged.

University tuition fees, the clock ticking for the Scottish Lib Dems?

It's a wholly justifiable comment with regards to Ms Swinson:

“A remark was made that Ms Swinson and the LibDems had as many faces as the town hall clock so why was anyone surprised by what they did?"

Ms Swinson being the Scottish Lib Dem MP whose attitude on university tuition fees depended on which audience and country's electorate she was addressing.

However, her local colleagues are at least showing a more consistent approach:

SPLITS have emerged between local LibDems and MP Jo Swinson over the explosive issue of student tuition fees.

However, during the debate, LibDem group leader Ashay Ghai went public with the unease it is believed many local activists feel about the LibDems’ stance nationally, especially after opinion polls showed their support in Scotland crashing ahead of this year’s Scottish Parliament elections.

Councillor Ghai said: “The LibDem members of this council do have personal views of conviction on the matter and in this case our leanings were towards voting against the coalition government.

Personal "views of conviction", now there's an interesting concept.

Quote of the day

The European Union's basic weakness in a shameful nutshell:

“To join the EU you have to smell of roses. But if you are a member and you start to reek, there is nobody to make you take a bath.”

Nationalist barmies prepare to take over EU Presidency

Another slightly longer piece, especially for The Aberdonian if he's still reading;)


On January 1st, the six month revolving EU Presidency will pass onto the Hungarian government, a government comprising of two nationalist parties- Fidesz and the KDNP. But before any SNPers and Plaiders go a-hopping and a-skipping at the “success” of another one of their Euro-Nat brothers, here’s a couple of statements from members of the two parties which should make even the most wild-eyed of cybernats on The Scotsman's Midnight Shift blanch:

“I love Hungary, I love Hungarian people, and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially, Hungary,” Fidesz Mayor of Edeleny, Oszkar Molnar: 2009

To be fair, the party leader, Viktor Orban, did admit to feeling rather "embarrassed" after that first one; Mr Semjén,  in contrast, is now his Deputy Prime-Minister….

""The former (socialist) government stole more than all the Gypsies put together." He ( Semjén) talked about "the foreign garbage" the multinational companies feed Hungarians. According to him there was a secret socialist-liberal plan that envisaged the immigration of one million people from Asia in order to satisfy the needs of the multinational companies for a large labor force.""

As I said in my title, 'barmies" and I have covered the rest of the government’s (slightly) more mainstream nationalist credentials previously here. Since that time the incorporation of an ethnic Magyar party into the Slovak ruling coalition has dampened the Greater Hungary cultural populism somewhat but in compensation Orban has decided that the foreign multinationals should be targetted for “solidarity” taxes. That has succeeded in keeping the rabid nats more than happy- after all, if you can no longer bash the Slovaks, Romanians, Ukranians etc on behalf of the Motherland, then Volksbank, Tescos and Cora will do nicely.

In truth though, the arbitary nature of that tax points towards the bigger problem (or at least it would be if the Commission had any backbone) of the Hungarian government assuming the EU’s Presidency and that is not its nationalism but its increasingly authoritarian nature.

Peter King's "freedom fighters" become terrorists and return to haunt....

“Scum” is an epithet thrown around too readily in the British blogosphere and in my opinion there are very, very few of our politicians who have done anything near despicable enough to earn the description.

There is one “Irish”-American politician, however, that I have no hesitation whatsoever in attaching that label to, the the U.S. Representative for New York's 3rd congressional district, Peter King. He’s the Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security and is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

This is one of his most recent quotes on the subject:

Today is Friday, so that means it's my Scottish policy today.

I've filed this under "devolved absurdities":

Scottish Liberal Democrat MP, Jo Swinson follows the official UK party line on the introduction of tuition fees whilst the party in Scotland Parliament has the policy of and votes for "free" ( of course it isn't really "free" but you know what I mean) university tuition in Scotland.

Apparently Ms Swinson actually wrote in favour of both policies last week (I would be grateful if anyone has access to the original article)! I don't know if she has two hats, one labelled "UK minus Scotland", the other "Only Scotland" that she wears depending on which audience she's speaking to you but it sure is an impressive feat to believe in both principles simultaneously.

Pearse Doherty- perhaps "progressive" doesn't sell so well in Donegal?

Not directly related to the overall theme to this blog but given Sinn Fein's self-proclaimed "progressive" attitudes on social matters, I think you'll find this by their new TD interesting:

Sinn Féin – Senator Pearse Doherty has given a written personal commitment to oppose any legislation that would make abortion available in Ireland and supports a law to protect the human embryo from deliberate destruction.

Oppose legislation on women's reproductive rights full-stop; so, no room for manoeuvre in Mr Doherty's world for "cases of rape, incest or sexual abuse, or where a woman’s life and health is at risk or in grave danger"? Clearly not.

Pearse Doherty is, of course, like the rest of us entitled to have his own opinion on such matters of social conscience. What he is not entitled to is the carte blanche to impose those opinions on the rest of society. And shouldn't someone representing a truly progressive party surely "accept that the final decision must rest with the woman"?