Here's to you, Mrs Robinson

Ok, let's leave the schadenfreude to one side for now. Iris Robinson is, apparently, an ill woman with a recent history of suicidal ideation.

Of course, she's now utterly ruined as a politician and probably in her personal life too.

Her husband, the first minister, is hanging on tenaciously after a heart-rending performance on TV. But with the fundie Free Presbyterian Paisleyite moralists in his party to answer to, not to mention more questions coming about his family finances, that may not last long.

So where does this leave us? What have we learnt?

Well, firstly we now have first class proof, as if it were required, that the DUP are NOT holier than thou. They are not more upstanding or of a higher moral calibre. They are just as prone to sin, sex, and screwing up as everyone else.

We also have evidence of the dual standards operating in terms of gender. If a 59 year old man, who had been entrusted with the care of a teenage girl by her dying parent, then went on to fuck the girl for a period of time, what do you imagine the headlines might look like?

If the genders were reversed, and it were Peter and not Iris who'd had the affair, he'd be pilloried in the streets of conservative, religious, judgemental Northern Ireland. In fact, his life might even be at risk.

No matter how ill Iris is or claims to be (now, ten months after her apparent suicide attempt), her mental condition cannot excuse how she manipulated and abused her relationship with a much younger man who was effectively under her guidance and care.

I don't think it's too strong to say she groomed this young lad. Looked at through the prism of gender reversal, the scale of her wrongdoing becomes clear.

Finally, we have the prospect, in a British general election year, of NI's three biggest parties all changing their leadership.

Gerry Adams has been fighting a rearguard action for sometime against those in Sinn Fein seeking a change of leadership. But revelations about his child-abusing brother have stuck fast, and will be hard for him to shake off. Plus, there is a lot more to come out about Liam Adams. So Gerry may be forced to step down sooner rather than later.

Peter Robinson, who does appear to have been seriously wronged by his wife's behaviour, is also on a knife edge. He must explain his involvement in his wife's financial shenanigans, which comes on top of criticism of their lavish expense claims - the 'Swish Family Robinson' tag.

And then he must talk the fundies in Unionism into forgiving and forgetting. Meanwhile the TUV will snipe from the wings, and recent DUP converts will sigh and return to the UUP fold. It seems like he is a dead man walking.

Only the SDLP actually are choosing to change their leader.

Now is a moment of transition and possibility for NI, but also a dangerous time therefore. And there are still a lot of guns out there, especially UDA ones, despite their little PR stunt this week.

So here's to you, Mrs Robinson, for blowing holes in all the known assumptions about Northern Irish politics. If you achieved nothing else in your political career (and you did achieve nothing else) at least your sordid abuse of a young man has led to a moment of potential positive change.

And that change involves the eradication of pocket-lining big house Unionism in its modern DUP form - the Swish Family Robinson with their massive expenses and multiple luxury homes, or their predecessors the Paisley clan, with their multi-million church and dodgy property dealings.

Can Unionists turn their backs on such representatives for good? Or how many more such sordid revelations of DUP improbity can they stomach?

Does spouting about Christ in front of a Union Jack really excuse the dodgy pocketlining and sexual predation on a young Catholic man in the eyes of Unionism?

Let's hope so.

PS: I'm surprised to see that www.DUPcougars.com has not yet been registered by some enterprising porno king.

Big Ian leaves: compare and contrast

Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, his fellow Chuckle Brother, said:

"Obviously there's a lot of interest in the work I have been doing with Ian Paisley in the course of the last ten months," he said at Stormont. I think I have to say it's been a remarkable and unique experience."
"I think many of you will know I had a very dim view of Ian Paisley prior to the 26th March last year (when Sinn Fein and the DUP agreed to share power) and I suppose he even had a dimmer view of me if we are to be truthful about all of this."
"But we managed to work together on a deal brokered by Ian Paisley and leader of my party Gerry Adams and we developed a positive and constructive working relationship within the Office of First and Deputy First Minister."

Bertie Ahern, of Fianna Fail, and Taoiseach of the Irish Republic said:

"I'm not going to say I didn't spend most of my political life taking a different point of view (to Mr Paisley), I did."
"But when it came down to making the Good Friday Agreement work and to having an inclusive executive in Northern Ireland and to have North-South bodies, he made the big moves. We've worked hard to get the stability, we've worked hard to build a relationship with Dr Paisley."
"We've achieved that, it was not easy, and now the main player in a few months' time will go off the stage. We have to now work to see if that harmonious relationship can continue. Obviously, I hope so but time will decide that."

Only Seamus Mallon of the SDLP had the balls to say:

"The paradox is that it was the Good Friday Agreement, which he set out to destroy, that allowed him to be inside in terms of influence for the first time in his whole political career. Those are two of the areas that historians will look at and people will be assessing from now on."
Mallon, who once watched Mr Paisley during the famous Civil Rights march at Armagh when he took over the city said "it was that desire for dominance that many people in the nationalist community will remember."
And he also pointed out that the fact that among Paisley's first moves during serious negotiations with the Governments was for seats in the House of Lords and a Privy Councillorship indicated "his desire, not just for power, but for the trappings of power."
"Yes he brought unionism into a power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Fein, but to do that he had to destroy, as he had destroyed Terence O'Neill, as he destroyed Faulkner, as he destroyed Chichester Clarke, he had to destroy the unionist leader David Trimble."
"It tells you about the paradox of all this, that the creativity which he undoubtedly gave the political process in Northern Ireland in his later years, was achieved as a result of the destructive element in his approach to politics and this type of political atavism which demanded absolute and total power."

Correct, Seamus.

Additional useful perspectives on Paisley from Trimble and Ruarai O'Bradaigh can be read here, at Best of Both Worlds.

It chokes me to say it

But I'm proud of Baby Ian.

Not because he's been diddling the taxpayer over his office expenses (150 seater office, Ian? WTF?) or because he was blatantly lobbying to privatise the Giant's Causeway into the hands of his pal, private developer Seymour Sweeney.

Nope. I'm proud of Ian Junior because he has singlehandedly resurrected a political practice I feared had been abandoned forever on the island of Ireland. That of resigning when you've been caught doing wrong.

Okay, he hasn't (and won't) admit he's done wrong. And he only resigned to protect his da, who also has a series of hard office-related questions to answer.

But it is entirely refreshing to see an Irish politician having the relative decency of falling on their sword when caught out.

I do hope the denizens of Leinster House will take note and learn from this. There is a long queue of wrongdoers in there who by any moral compass ought to have jumped a long time ago.

Top of my personal list are Mary Harney, for crimes against the Irish people by seeking to privatise the health service into her funders' pockets, and Bertie Ahern, for the most eye-wateringly bizarre personal finance practices ever engaged in by an alleged Finance Minister.

Who would you like to see emulate Little Ian and resign, then?

Happy Hogmanay

Yes, it's been a while.

Sorry about that.

I was busy though, if that helps.

During my blogging mini-hiatus, I became aware of the following facts, which I will offer to you without further comment:

1. Ryanair claim to be the world's 'on-time' airline, but they only achieve their on time targets by adding forty minutes to the scheduled journey, to account for the fact that they are invariably a half hour late leaving.

2. If people try to kill you by blowing themselves up near to you, chances are that they are determined enough for another of them to try a second time. Change jobs, up your security and leave the country. Don't hang around for an election you won't live to see.

3. We's all in big economic doo-doo now. I expect housing to fall calamitously in price in 2008, especially in micro-bubbles like Northern Ireland and the commuterland in the Pale. Sell now, or remortgage on a fixed rate if you haven't already and don't plan on moving for half a decade, when your house will be worth half as much.

4. I don't care how many times they do it, or where they do it, or the fact we're all supposed to feel warm and gooey inside when they do it. Everytime I see Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness gurning their hideous grins at each other like smitten teens, I feel nauseous.

5. Writing a book is solitary, boring, and takes a helluva lot of hours out of your free time. It also requires discipline, inspiration and a functioning computer.

6. I got a sat-nav for Christmas. But what I really wanted was one of those electronic devices that emit noise only gangs of surly ne'er-do-well teenagers can hear.

7. Texting people is not the same as calling or writing a card or letter. I'm a bad and cheapskate friend in this regard.

8. Big open plan houses are expensive to heat in a rising oil market. So is driving a large family saloon. So why did I only start doing both this year?

9. A chest infection is a handy way of clearing your lungs of all the gunk that smoking normally deposits in there.

10. My peers all started having babies in earnest this year. Fourteen years into my own parenthood project, I'm not inclined to start from scratch again. I admire the courage and energy of my friends, but having seen the road ahead of them, I don't intend to walk it twice.

Happy Hogmanay. Let's all meet up here again next year for pints, right?

You are now entering Gay Derry

The past two Friday nights, I've ended up in a gay bar. Fair play to my same-sexed compadres, they do know how to throw a party and keep a bar open a reasonable length of time.

I'm not gay myself, and I have some reservations about the wisdom of attributing the term 'marriage' to a gay union. I'm also not convinced about the necessity for gay people to adopt kids. But these aren't major issues for me. I've got gay friends and we tend to talk about other things.

Mind you, the North of Ireland has rarely been a friendly place for homosexuals, so it is to be welcomed (even if it is hideously garish, dahlings) that 'Free Derry Corner' has been painted pink in support of gay pride week.




Of course, openness to the gay community has not always been the hallmark of all of the North's main political traditions. Who can forget Ian Paisley's campaign over gay rights in the Seventies? (Clue: he wasn't in favour.) Or more recently, his son's expression of personal disgust at gay people?

So it was perhaps not surprising that two posters on Politics.ie decided to imagine what a gay eye for another notorious Northern Irish mural might result in!



St333ve goes for the subtle pastel look above, while Lenster Hauser prefers a more edgy and contemporary vision below!

Collusion - the proof

Hot on the heels of the recent independent international panel report into 76 deaths in the 1970s, now we have Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman report into collusion.

Thank you, Nuala O'Loan for your brave and comprehensive report into the biggest scandal of the entire 'Troubles' period.

It is now incontrovertible that the state's police and security services routinely colluded with Loyalist gunmen in order to bring about the murder of Catholic citizens of Northern Ireland.

No doubt the Paisleyites will be suddenly silenced, as they always are when evidence of the wrongdoings committed against the Catholic community of the six counties are highlighted.

But with the DUP's eternal ranting about murderers and terrorism, with the UUP's continuing demands for Nationalists to ally themselves to and offer respect for the organs of state control, surely now is the time for both of those parties to stand up and loudly state that they condemn utterly the activities which saw those state organs take part in the murder of innocent citizens?

Well, Ian? Well, Reg? A single condemnation will do. Though of course, it would be even better if you could convince those members of your electorate who refused to talk to Nuala O'Loan, likely due to their own guilt, to come forward and reveal the full extent of their complicity with Loyalist death squads.

A few arrests wouldn't go amiss either. There are former RUC officers who, we now know from two reports, were involved in plotting the killing of innocent civilians, yet they live in comfortable retirement paid for by the taxpayer out of their extensive pensions.

They could be released after a token sentence under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement if necessary.

But if the Unionist parties really want to convince anyone that they really do stand by justice and against terrorism, now is the time for them to step up to the plate and do so, unequivocally.

Bertie Ahern, a man usually known for saying nothing in a thousand words, has been refreshingly clear in his response to this report. I await the response of Tony Blair with interest. But not as much interest as I await Paisley's and Empey's responses.

Update: Tony Blair didn't see fit to comment himself, instead leaving it up to an unnamed mouthpiece to make the following statement:

"This is a deeply disturbing report about events which were totally wrong and which should never have happened. The fact that they did is a matter for profound regret, and the prime minister shares that regret. But this is also a report about the past, and what is important now is that, under the new structures introduced along with the formation of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, these events could not happen now."

Hugh Orde and Peter Hain appear to be towing the same line of 'it couldn't happen now.' Surely the point is that it happened THEN? Despite repeated denials from all the same sources now wringing their hands and seeking solace in recent change, these death occurred in the Nineties, some less than a decade ago.

I do very much welcome Hain's statement that he wants to see those involved arrested though:

"There are all sorts of opportunities for prosecutions to follow," said the direct rule Secretary of State. "The fact that some retired police officers obstructed the investigation and refused to cooperate with the police ombudsman is very serious in itself."

Well, feel free to start with the group of former Special Branch officers quoted in The Guardian as saying they had "nothing to be ashamed of', Peter.

Visionary

Kudos to El Blogador for his photoshopping skills which provided a much needed giggle today.

My personal favourites among his collection of humorous doctored images are the Sinn Fein/British Government marriage cert and the report card for British rule in Northern Ireland.

Dr No returns to form

And so it begins. Two days after signing up to the latest remix 'historic agreement', Dr No returns to form by refusing to meet with the Shinners to discuss what they're going to do together in Government.

Other than bicker and accuse each other of perfidy, of course.


The British Government is gainfully putting the best spin possible on the development, calling it optimistically a 'hitch.'

I'd be more inclined to refer to it as the shape of things to come. Now there is little doubt that there are plenty of people inside the DUP prepared to do the only deal in town and get democracy up and running in the North.

But will we really have to wait for Dr No to release the shackles of control over his party before we can move beyond the ever-shifting goalposts that Ian puts between his consent and the future of Northern Ireland?

Must we wait for the rumoured prostate cancer to take effect before we can experience DUP's long-awaited sequel to Dr No? And will it be, as some people are spinning, 'From Robinson With Love'?