Post by Wasp on Feb 26, 2008 18:54:05 GMT
Taken from the Belfast Telegraph
Martin McGuinness says that, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, he would have killed every British soldier in Londonderry. So, Art Garfunkel meets Rambo. And, in the upside down world of post-Agreement politics, some newspapers greeted his comments in an RTE interview with an almost approving tone.
The deaths of hundreds of young men from the Thames and the Mersey matter little in the calculations of our Deputy First Minister. After a few pints of McGuinness, it's a chorus of The Merry Ploughboy and The Men Behind the Wire.
This wasn't the 'Deputy First Minister' of a Coalition Executive talking. It was an IRA apologist. In common with most of the Executive, McGuinness still chooses to behave in public as if it didn't exist.
An interview reflective of SF's current astonishing accommodation with the DUP? Some account given of how McGuinness squares sitting on his haunches at Stormont administering British rule in Ireland with his blustery past of fist-shaking and outrages?
Nah. Instead it's wind from the windbag. McGuinness would be better off plying his rhetoric on those armed republicans in Cork arrested by the Gardai over the weekend. Their threat to British rule in Ireland has rather more bite to it than Martin's tray-baked those-were-the-days reminiscences of what a bad boy he used to be before he made that phone call to John Major and added his name to the long republican list of quislings.
What most people in Northern Ireland expect from a Deputy First Minister - and from its 'First Minister', Mr Paisley, Perky to his Pinky - is some gesture towards the pretence that we are living in a new dispensation.
Does Martin not realise we are all supposed to be pretending? The public pretends everything is now about bluetongue and water rates. The Executive pretends it's solemn and responsible like Dáil Éireann and the Scottish Executive rolled into one.
Perky pretends the IRA was defeated and all the murdered people did not die in vain. Pinky pretends the armed struggle was really about headed notepaper all along and the Republic is just round the corner. Since the rest of us are being lectured to do it all the time, and actually manage it some of the time, is it too much to ask that Ministers might rise to their high office and begin behaving like people for whom the past is a closed book?
Too often, it's still 'have your cake and eat it' sectarianism. Yes, we represent all of the people all of the time, as if we were real democrats - but we also like the personal thrill of reminding you whose side we are really on.
Still, the £181m - and counting - Bloody Sunday inquiry isn't the only string to Martin's bow.
We also get a slice of Hickory Ham, with McGuinness like head of the Derry branch of The Waltons.
Praising his wife Bernie for her loyalty, he says: "She had to work while I was running around the island of Ireland involved in all sorts of negotiations and coming home without tuppence in my pocket."
To which one can only say "well done, Mrs McGuinness". Except it's nobody's fault but Martin's that he reduced his family to poverty running around "negotiating". Of his £110,000 salary, he keeps £20,000, with the rest going to the taxman and SF.
Non-materialist McGuinness is keen to advertise his non-indulgence - two glasses of wine and he falls asleep just like any old granda.
His greatest pleasure is being able to come home to his wife.
This is the anodyne star chat you'd read on the back page of a celeb mag. Except Martin's no celeb. That dazzle in his eye is not stardust - it's bullsh*t.
What he chooses to do with his money is up to him, but the idea that he is just an ordinary working class man is bogus.
He was part of an organisation dedicated to murder and mayhem. His current 'reasonableness' came about because their armed campaign was a busted flush.
I'd be more trusting of Martin's version of events, if he would give a more exact account of his role in what he likes to call the Republican Movement.
It can't be that bad.
Martin McGuinness says that, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, he would have killed every British soldier in Londonderry. So, Art Garfunkel meets Rambo. And, in the upside down world of post-Agreement politics, some newspapers greeted his comments in an RTE interview with an almost approving tone.
The deaths of hundreds of young men from the Thames and the Mersey matter little in the calculations of our Deputy First Minister. After a few pints of McGuinness, it's a chorus of The Merry Ploughboy and The Men Behind the Wire.
This wasn't the 'Deputy First Minister' of a Coalition Executive talking. It was an IRA apologist. In common with most of the Executive, McGuinness still chooses to behave in public as if it didn't exist.
An interview reflective of SF's current astonishing accommodation with the DUP? Some account given of how McGuinness squares sitting on his haunches at Stormont administering British rule in Ireland with his blustery past of fist-shaking and outrages?
Nah. Instead it's wind from the windbag. McGuinness would be better off plying his rhetoric on those armed republicans in Cork arrested by the Gardai over the weekend. Their threat to British rule in Ireland has rather more bite to it than Martin's tray-baked those-were-the-days reminiscences of what a bad boy he used to be before he made that phone call to John Major and added his name to the long republican list of quislings.
What most people in Northern Ireland expect from a Deputy First Minister - and from its 'First Minister', Mr Paisley, Perky to his Pinky - is some gesture towards the pretence that we are living in a new dispensation.
Does Martin not realise we are all supposed to be pretending? The public pretends everything is now about bluetongue and water rates. The Executive pretends it's solemn and responsible like Dáil Éireann and the Scottish Executive rolled into one.
Perky pretends the IRA was defeated and all the murdered people did not die in vain. Pinky pretends the armed struggle was really about headed notepaper all along and the Republic is just round the corner. Since the rest of us are being lectured to do it all the time, and actually manage it some of the time, is it too much to ask that Ministers might rise to their high office and begin behaving like people for whom the past is a closed book?
Too often, it's still 'have your cake and eat it' sectarianism. Yes, we represent all of the people all of the time, as if we were real democrats - but we also like the personal thrill of reminding you whose side we are really on.
Still, the £181m - and counting - Bloody Sunday inquiry isn't the only string to Martin's bow.
We also get a slice of Hickory Ham, with McGuinness like head of the Derry branch of The Waltons.
Praising his wife Bernie for her loyalty, he says: "She had to work while I was running around the island of Ireland involved in all sorts of negotiations and coming home without tuppence in my pocket."
To which one can only say "well done, Mrs McGuinness". Except it's nobody's fault but Martin's that he reduced his family to poverty running around "negotiating". Of his £110,000 salary, he keeps £20,000, with the rest going to the taxman and SF.
Non-materialist McGuinness is keen to advertise his non-indulgence - two glasses of wine and he falls asleep just like any old granda.
His greatest pleasure is being able to come home to his wife.
This is the anodyne star chat you'd read on the back page of a celeb mag. Except Martin's no celeb. That dazzle in his eye is not stardust - it's bullsh*t.
What he chooses to do with his money is up to him, but the idea that he is just an ordinary working class man is bogus.
He was part of an organisation dedicated to murder and mayhem. His current 'reasonableness' came about because their armed campaign was a busted flush.
I'd be more trusting of Martin's version of events, if he would give a more exact account of his role in what he likes to call the Republican Movement.
It can't be that bad.
