A tragic story, but did the Mail forget that there was another British soldier killed that day?
He was of Turkish descent, but I’m sure the Mail wouldn’t let that get in the way and must have made an honest mistake here…
I like the front page. The whole situation is just so sad and I can’t express how angry I am with the whole thing. The Mail, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, need to lay off Sinn Fein a bit. Yes their response was rather cold and they do need to do more, but what they’ve done in response to the shootings has been significant. They’ve told their communities to work with the police, to help the police catch the killers of British soliders and they’ve condemned the shootings(albeit in a vauge manner). The Mail are trying to rock the boat and its not helping.
Anyonen read Littlejohn today? If you haven’t, I’ll sum it up for in a couple of words-THEY’RE TEACHING ABOUT GAYS AND NOT ABOUT THE NAZIS!!! THEY’RE TEACHING ABOUT GAYYYS!!
Go read his column its honestly the funniest thing that I’ve ever read. It’s a complete parody of everything that he’s ever written. Nobody knows about Auswitz? Must be those gays again. Also, check out his dickish bit about the Police Officer with the beard. What a cunt.
Typical mail – every new drug is a ‘wonder’ drug. Side effects are always ’sinister’. Of course the reality is statins are a useful drug when used appropriately, have well documented side effects in some people and… well that’s it really. Same as every other drug.
By far the most effective way to lower cholesterol remains eating a healthy diet. Of course they can’t take up a quarter of the page screaming about that because it’s not sexy enough. Gotta be a pill. Eat burgers every day. Take a pill. Sorted.
Not gonna comment on the Mails stance on NI i am completely underqualified to comment on that mess and i know there are people here who are much better informed.
Do the Mail EVER look at the benefits of a situation?? Their opinion on new drugs is a typical illustration of their overall mindset i.e. what harm could be caused to white, middle class people.
I feel the Mail have made a MAJOR mistake here by saying “IRA” and not “Real IRA” – there is a significant difference. The IRA (i.e. the group linked to Sinn Fein) have stepped down their activity significantly, and the fruit of this has been excellent, but the “Real IRA” are a bunch of hard-core lunatics that Sinn Fein have little or no control over.
I have a friend in NI who is really upset by all of this – just as it looked like she was getting her country back, and things seemed to be going well, along comes this horrible incident. I’m heartened by the response, actually – it seems that hardly anyone in NI wants to go back to the dark days of the past, and for Sinn Fein to call on the public to support the police and bring the killers to justice is a massive step forward that would not have happened just a few years ago. The Mail is wrong for failing to recognise this.
My friend wonders if the economic downturn is going to cause a return to violence. Sad but true – extremism flourishes in difficult economic conditions. I just pray it doesn’t go too far. Said friend is a Catholic and has a Protestant boyfriend – that would have been enough to get them both beaten to a pulp in the past, and needless to say, she doesn’t want a return to those days.
There were two British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland shortly before they were due to head out for deployment in Afghanistan. Both of them threw themselves over the civilians under fire (one of them a Polish man) to save their lives.
The names of these British soldiers were Cengiz Azimkar and Mark Quinsey.
Only one of these British soldiers is mentioned on the front page of today’s Mail.
The DM, like The Telegraph, are back to trying to exploit the recent violence in NI.
Undoubtedly there’s a hankering to return to their ‘traditional’ (small ‘u’) unionist prejudices.
Afterall ‘power-sharing’ is anethma to those types.
Ironically just like the Real/Continuity IRA it’s pretty clear they’d love the current ‘peace’ & political process/progress to fall apart.
Perhaps with the possibility of a Cameron Gov coming they imagine their time-warp day-dreams (of an entirely Unionist dominated state) are possible?
Fools…..and just as tragically deluded and pathetically dumb as those R/CIRA murderous scumbags who imagine shooting up a copper or the pizza delivery was a ‘blow for Irish freedom’.
The C/R/IRA are just a bunch of gangsters. Plain and simple.
How is robbing banks, running drugs and operating protection rackets not just in the North, but against their ‘own people’ in Ireland itself an act of ‘patriotism’?
They’re just a bunch of evil psychopaths and sociopaths who like causing chaos and misery but need to attach some incredibly deluded and flimsy air of legitimacy to their actions so they can feel like the ‘good’ guys while they’re busy kneecapping a 15 year old boy for being on the wrong street.
“I feel the Mail have made a MAJOR mistake here by saying “IRA” and not “Real IRA” – there is a significant difference. ”
If we’re going to be exact we should destinguish between the IRA (active up to about 1922), the Provisional IRA (who used to kill squaddies, coppers and blow up Manchester City Centre), the Real and Continuity IRAs (who kill squaddies and coppers and blow up town squares).
But actually, in England at least, the difference is largely lost on us. We’re glad the Provos have largely stopped, but those who’ve carried on are more or less IRA.
It’s really strange that the Mail is using the term “executioners” rather than “murderers”. Has anyone got an explanation for this, I remember seeing it on their front page and thinking it’s exactly the sort of word that beetroot-faced Tories are always imagining that the BBC uses in relation to terrorists leading to green-ink letters to the Telegraph about “legitimising” terrorist killings and yet here it is in the Mail. What on Earth is going on?
re Littlejohn / Auschwitz / children not knowing about ……..
Isn’t this based on a survey that revealed that 2% of children asked about Auschwitz thought it was a type of bread, and 1% thought it was a continental beer [or some similar figures]?
So choose the Mail/ Express headline:
Most British children know some 20th Century history
Zagrebo
I think they have chosen that term (and for a change not inappropriately) because reports said that the soldiers covered the pizza delivery guys with their bodies to protect them and when they were already shot and down the RIRA gunmen continued to shoot to try to ensure the soldiers died.
My gripe is not in describing these deluded murders for the low-life they are, it is in the obvious attempts by some to fan the flames with ill-chosen & incendiary language coupled with inaccurate and inappropriate sweeping statements which can only make the situation much worse.
Happliy the truth is (when discussing ‘community support’ or those ‘within the community harbouring these gunmen’) that they have no general ‘community support’.
Outside of a few families these guys are completely isolated in all of Ireland.
I do not expect Gerry Adams or anyone in Sinn Fein to disown their principles about Irish unity but it is quite clear from the statements they have made (along with others in Irish nationalist politics) that they have no sympathy whatsoever with the aims of the CIRA or the RIRA (excepting the most broad general aim that they would all like to see a united Ireland).
Martin McGuinness statement today that the dissidents are traitors couldn’t be clearer, neither could Gerry Adam’s call yesterday that everyone support the PSNI (the NI Police) in the investigation.
Actually, that is not true. While I’m sure its well meant (in general, as medical professionals, we try and push lifestyle advice e.g. good diet, stopping smoking, way before medication), in this case its not accurate.
Dietary cholesterol has almost NO effect on blood cholesterol levels – it is almost all synthesised by the liver as part of a complex and multifarious way of storing and transferring fat in lipoproteins. It is this pathway of synthesising cholesterol in the liver that statins block.
What IS true of course is that healthy eating leads to less obesity, and obesity, just like cholesterol, is an independant risk factor for heart disease. The public has its wires crossed that these are the same things, but thats not a problem as long as they get the “please dont eat shit and get fat and die” message.
Statins are pretty good though, and there’s now some evidence to say that if you give them to people with “normal” cholesterol you get a survival improvement. The thing about “sinister” side effects is absurd – they have some very well-understood, well-document side effects to do with muscle ache in a few, severe muscle pain in far far fewer, and rhabdomyolysis (muscle break down, extreme pain and kidney failure) in a tiny tiny tiny tiny group. Doctors prescribing statins are aware of all three and the risk factors for getting them, how to spot them and when to stop statins. No doubt the mail has wheeled out someone with the latter side effect as evidence that statins are bad, because it sounds (and is) scary. Pathetic.
You simply can’t equate the retired PIRA & Sinn Fein today – engaged with the Police and the democratic governance of NI – with the CIRA/RIRA.
Not only that but relationships between the UK & RoI states are entirely different (and better) thanks to the new political settlement.
The latent civil war is over (thank God) and therefore Sinn Fein and the PIRA are nothing like the same as the CIRA/RIRA.
Failing to understand and recognise this can do nothing but make matters harder than they need be.
The PIRA & Sinn Fein have embraced the new political reality (and received democratic support across all of Ireland for it).
Your attempt to pretend and insist that they are identical to the RIRA/CIRA merely highlights your own prejudices and your need to deny 10yrs of change and progress.
The nativity is yours, obviously you are unable to see and accept that huges changes have occurred in NI and you are stuck clutching your simplistic & out-dated notions.
Thankfully most of the rest of us are leaving that sort of dinosaur thinking well behind.
The fact is the likes of you and the ‘dissidents’ are made for each other, clinging to ancient long-gone versions of reality. In short the sort of people who are mildly dangerous (in the widest sense), if utterly irrelevant, nuisances best forgotten about and left well behind in the past.
Mail man, please explain to the kids next of kin that the terrorists are really just very fluffy. Whether it be IRA/Black September/Baader Meinhoff – they are all cowardly scum. If it turns out that one of the culprits was one of those released by Blair will you have the courtesy to admit your well meaning stupidity.
You can carry on your (obviously to you) clever little game but it’s pretty clear that you’re the desperate to see a return to the old days.
PIRA & Sinn Fein, like it or not (and quite obviously you’re in the ‘not’ category here) have joined in the new politics in NI (having spent well over 10yrs – with many others – trying to achieve change).
You sanctimonious & simplistic black and white stupidity would have thrown away the last 10yrs of progress because people like you prefer to sit doing nothing but harrumphing your sour bitter garbage about how much you are 100% right and the others must be 100% wrong.
If the price of peace in NI for the last 10yrs (and God knows how many lives saved and given a peaceful situation to prosper in) was prisoners on both sides let out then so be it.
Even if a handful cannot and will not accept the political changes.
The “stupidity” lies with those who are incapable of recognising and accepting the vast progress and changes for the better in NI…..or in fact that it required (on all sides) people willing to genuinely compromise and a be willing to take risks for peace to actually get that enormous progress.
I guess that for all your (to you) ‘clever’ little insults & digs that’s people like you and the likes of the republican dissidents.
You make great company for each other.
Enjoy your time-warp bitterness that goes with it.
Brian Read put it so much better than I in today’s Mirror (of all places).
“The majority of Brits have never understood the people on either side of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide.
At the height of the Troubles, Catholics were caricatured as bloodlusting bog-trotters, Protestants as sash-wearing bigots, and judging by the reaction to the murders at Antrim and Craigavon our appreciation of this most complex of tribal sagas has grown very little.
For a decade we’ve believed that by chucking the Northern Irish millions of pounds for their own parliament and slick waterfront developments all those ancient wounds had been healed.
We conveniently ignore the courage it took for Sinn Fein to join the British political process, persuade the IRA to admit defeat, carry the bulk of Republicans with them and hold the peace.
We refuse to understand why there will always be Irishmen who despise a foreign presence on their island and a handful of bloodlusting dinosaurs who think firing on a pizza delivery boy makes them look like Wolfe Tone.
It’s how you react to them that counts. And the reaction from politicians in Northern Ireland this past week has been about as decent and progressive as you could hope.
What’s been indecent and dated has been the reaction from opinion-formers this side of the Irish Sea.
Those who loathe Gerry Adams and everything for which he stands have been waiting for the chance to expose his conversion from violence as a sham.
When he refused to condemn the killers in the same language they use, “slaughtering scumbags, vile bastards” etc, they revelled in painting him as a colluder in the murders. Still a man of evil.
Advertisement – article continues below »
Yet their ignorance couldn’t be more glaring. It’s they who haven’t changed. It’s they who opposed terrorist concessions and who now mock the Reconciliation Process.
It is they who are the villains of the peace. Had Adams used emotive language against the rebel Republicans he would have added another thousand to their cause overnight and put the peace process back years.
You need only look at the reaction from leading Unionists like Peter Robinson and Ian Paisley, to see how Adams and Martin McGuinness got it spot-on.
Instead of pandering to the prejudices of their grass-roots supporters and deriding them as Fenian butchers, they have supported their once-detested enemies with placatory words.
That’s how far Northern Ireland has come and that’s why we should be more optimistic than ever of lasting peace. Their politicians know the Armalite will never rule over the ballot box again because their constituents have tasted normality and liked it.
The men of terror have not laid down every gun, and never will.
But they’re becoming increasingly irrelevant because the men of debate have laid aside enough of their loathing to carry out the will of their people.
We should applaud Belfast’s politicians for maturing immensely during the past decade.
If only we were able to say the same for the commentators on this side of the Irish Sea.”
Brian Reade 12/03/2009
Mail man – before I sign off on this one, you are obviously one of those who would sit down and happily give compensation to terrorist’s for ‘loss of earnings’. Be a man and call them for what they all, and I do mean all, are – cowards killing kids. Just keep bending over backwards – I’m sure that will be easy for you.
You own invented nonsense and feeble ridiculous and predictably dreary insults have characterised your comments all the way through this.
I am prepared to accept (as even the likes of Paisley et al are) that Sinn Fein and PIRA have genuinely changed and are now a positive influence working within the new political environment in NI.
They are helping matters and have become part of the solution.
They are not the problem.
You clearly can’t accept anyone has changed much at all and insist on pretending they are no different to those dissident groups currently engaging in murderous acts.
Too bad.
I guess it’s a free country, enjoy your time-warp bitterness and linguistic quibbling, the rest of us moved on long ago.
A tragic story, but did the Mail forget that there was another British soldier killed that day?
He was of Turkish descent, but I’m sure the Mail wouldn’t let that get in the way and must have made an honest mistake here…
I like the front page. The whole situation is just so sad and I can’t express how angry I am with the whole thing. The Mail, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, need to lay off Sinn Fein a bit. Yes their response was rather cold and they do need to do more, but what they’ve done in response to the shootings has been significant. They’ve told their communities to work with the police, to help the police catch the killers of British soliders and they’ve condemned the shootings(albeit in a vauge manner). The Mail are trying to rock the boat and its not helping.
Anyonen read Littlejohn today? If you haven’t, I’ll sum it up for in a couple of words-THEY’RE TEACHING ABOUT GAYS AND NOT ABOUT THE NAZIS!!! THEY’RE TEACHING ABOUT GAYYYS!!
Go read his column its honestly the funniest thing that I’ve ever read. It’s a complete parody of everything that he’s ever written. Nobody knows about Auswitz? Must be those gays again. Also, check out his dickish bit about the Police Officer with the beard. What a cunt.
Typical mail – every new drug is a ‘wonder’ drug. Side effects are always ’sinister’. Of course the reality is statins are a useful drug when used appropriately, have well documented side effects in some people and… well that’s it really. Same as every other drug.
By far the most effective way to lower cholesterol remains eating a healthy diet. Of course they can’t take up a quarter of the page screaming about that because it’s not sexy enough. Gotta be a pill. Eat burgers every day. Take a pill. Sorted.
but do statins cure or cause cancer? I need to know.
Not gonna comment on the Mails stance on NI i am completely underqualified to comment on that mess and i know there are people here who are much better informed.
Do the Mail EVER look at the benefits of a situation?? Their opinion on new drugs is a typical illustration of their overall mindset i.e. what harm could be caused to white, middle class people.
Execution, is the killing of a person by judicial process for retribution and incapacitation. This is murder!
I feel the Mail have made a MAJOR mistake here by saying “IRA” and not “Real IRA” – there is a significant difference. The IRA (i.e. the group linked to Sinn Fein) have stepped down their activity significantly, and the fruit of this has been excellent, but the “Real IRA” are a bunch of hard-core lunatics that Sinn Fein have little or no control over.
I have a friend in NI who is really upset by all of this – just as it looked like she was getting her country back, and things seemed to be going well, along comes this horrible incident. I’m heartened by the response, actually – it seems that hardly anyone in NI wants to go back to the dark days of the past, and for Sinn Fein to call on the public to support the police and bring the killers to justice is a massive step forward that would not have happened just a few years ago. The Mail is wrong for failing to recognise this.
My friend wonders if the economic downturn is going to cause a return to violence. Sad but true – extremism flourishes in difficult economic conditions. I just pray it doesn’t go too far. Said friend is a Catholic and has a Protestant boyfriend – that would have been enough to get them both beaten to a pulp in the past, and needless to say, she doesn’t want a return to those days.
There were two British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland shortly before they were due to head out for deployment in Afghanistan. Both of them threw themselves over the civilians under fire (one of them a Polish man) to save their lives.
The names of these British soldiers were Cengiz Azimkar and Mark Quinsey.
Only one of these British soldiers is mentioned on the front page of today’s Mail.
Shame on you, Daily Mail. Shame on you.
The fact that the soldier of Turkish descent who gave his life for this country is totally ignored by the Mail is FUCKING DISGUSTING.
I’m furious. Really. Seriously.
I can only echo the sentiments of Doreen and Steven. It’s an absolute disgrace.
Some of the comments on Littlejohn’s page today are also an absolute disgrace. Homophobia is alive and well in Litltlejohn’s Britain.
The DM, like The Telegraph, are back to trying to exploit the recent violence in NI.
Undoubtedly there’s a hankering to return to their ‘traditional’ (small ‘u’) unionist prejudices.
Afterall ‘power-sharing’ is anethma to those types.
Ironically just like the Real/Continuity IRA it’s pretty clear they’d love the current ‘peace’ & political process/progress to fall apart.
Perhaps with the possibility of a Cameron Gov coming they imagine their time-warp day-dreams (of an entirely Unionist dominated state) are possible?
Fools…..and just as tragically deluded and pathetically dumb as those R/CIRA murderous scumbags who imagine shooting up a copper or the pizza delivery was a ‘blow for Irish freedom’.
Littlejohn.
Just the same old scumbag idiocy.
The C/R/IRA are just a bunch of gangsters. Plain and simple.
How is robbing banks, running drugs and operating protection rackets not just in the North, but against their ‘own people’ in Ireland itself an act of ‘patriotism’?
They’re just a bunch of evil psychopaths and sociopaths who like causing chaos and misery but need to attach some incredibly deluded and flimsy air of legitimacy to their actions so they can feel like the ‘good’ guys while they’re busy kneecapping a 15 year old boy for being on the wrong street.
“I feel the Mail have made a MAJOR mistake here by saying “IRA” and not “Real IRA” – there is a significant difference. ”
If we’re going to be exact we should destinguish between the IRA (active up to about 1922), the Provisional IRA (who used to kill squaddies, coppers and blow up Manchester City Centre), the Real and Continuity IRAs (who kill squaddies and coppers and blow up town squares).
But actually, in England at least, the difference is largely lost on us. We’re glad the Provos have largely stopped, but those who’ve carried on are more or less IRA.
It’s really strange that the Mail is using the term “executioners” rather than “murderers”. Has anyone got an explanation for this, I remember seeing it on their front page and thinking it’s exactly the sort of word that beetroot-faced Tories are always imagining that the BBC uses in relation to terrorists leading to green-ink letters to the Telegraph about “legitimising” terrorist killings and yet here it is in the Mail. What on Earth is going on?
re Littlejohn / Auschwitz / children not knowing about ……..
Isn’t this based on a survey that revealed that 2% of children asked about Auschwitz thought it was a type of bread, and 1% thought it was a continental beer [or some similar figures]?
So choose the Mail/ Express headline:
Most British children know some 20th Century history
OR
Kids think Auschwitz is a type of beer.
Can you guess which they used ???????
Zagrebo
I think they have chosen that term (and for a change not inappropriately) because reports said that the soldiers covered the pizza delivery guys with their bodies to protect them and when they were already shot and down the RIRA gunmen continued to shoot to try to ensure the soldiers died.
My gripe is not in describing these deluded murders for the low-life they are, it is in the obvious attempts by some to fan the flames with ill-chosen & incendiary language coupled with inaccurate and inappropriate sweeping statements which can only make the situation much worse.
Happliy the truth is (when discussing ‘community support’ or those ‘within the community harbouring these gunmen’) that they have no general ‘community support’.
Outside of a few families these guys are completely isolated in all of Ireland.
I do not expect Gerry Adams or anyone in Sinn Fein to disown their principles about Irish unity but it is quite clear from the statements they have made (along with others in Irish nationalist politics) that they have no sympathy whatsoever with the aims of the CIRA or the RIRA (excepting the most broad general aim that they would all like to see a united Ireland).
Martin McGuinness statement today that the dissidents are traitors couldn’t be clearer, neither could Gerry Adam’s call yesterday that everyone support the PSNI (the NI Police) in the investigation.
Sarah – what I couldn’t believe was the Mail on Sunday was giving away a Pet Shop Boys CD. Well, correct me If I’m wrong, but aren’t they ‘gays’ ?
Folks, rather than bleat about Real/Continuity or IRA, it boils down to one simple fact. They are cowardly terrorist scum.
@:Tony
Actually, that is not true. While I’m sure its well meant (in general, as medical professionals, we try and push lifestyle advice e.g. good diet, stopping smoking, way before medication), in this case its not accurate.
Dietary cholesterol has almost NO effect on blood cholesterol levels – it is almost all synthesised by the liver as part of a complex and multifarious way of storing and transferring fat in lipoproteins. It is this pathway of synthesising cholesterol in the liver that statins block.
What IS true of course is that healthy eating leads to less obesity, and obesity, just like cholesterol, is an independant risk factor for heart disease. The public has its wires crossed that these are the same things, but thats not a problem as long as they get the “please dont eat shit and get fat and die” message.
Statins are pretty good though, and there’s now some evidence to say that if you give them to people with “normal” cholesterol you get a survival improvement. The thing about “sinister” side effects is absurd – they have some very well-understood, well-document side effects to do with muscle ache in a few, severe muscle pain in far far fewer, and rhabdomyolysis (muscle break down, extreme pain and kidney failure) in a tiny tiny tiny tiny group. Doctors prescribing statins are aware of all three and the risk factors for getting them, how to spot them and when to stop statins. No doubt the mail has wheeled out someone with the latter side effect as evidence that statins are bad, because it sounds (and is) scary. Pathetic.
Good IRA v Bad IRA….
Is that like Good AIDS and Bad AIDS?
“but do statins cure or cause cancer? I need to know.”
Of more pressing concern to us is their effect on house prices.
You simply can’t equate the retired PIRA & Sinn Fein today – engaged with the Police and the democratic governance of NI – with the CIRA/RIRA.
Not only that but relationships between the UK & RoI states are entirely different (and better) thanks to the new political settlement.
The latent civil war is over (thank God) and therefore Sinn Fein and the PIRA are nothing like the same as the CIRA/RIRA.
Failing to understand and recognise this can do nothing but make matters harder than they need be.
Mail man, what a load of bollocks, so there is a difference between good terrorists and bad terrorists? How bloody naive.
ae1
The bollocks is coming from you, sadly.
The PIRA & Sinn Fein have embraced the new political reality (and received democratic support across all of Ireland for it).
Your attempt to pretend and insist that they are identical to the RIRA/CIRA merely highlights your own prejudices and your need to deny 10yrs of change and progress.
The nativity is yours, obviously you are unable to see and accept that huges changes have occurred in NI and you are stuck clutching your simplistic & out-dated notions.
Thankfully most of the rest of us are leaving that sort of dinosaur thinking well behind.
The fact is the likes of you and the ‘dissidents’ are made for each other, clinging to ancient long-gone versions of reality. In short the sort of people who are mildly dangerous (in the widest sense), if utterly irrelevant, nuisances best forgotten about and left well behind in the past.
Mail man, please explain to the kids next of kin that the terrorists are really just very fluffy. Whether it be IRA/Black September/Baader Meinhoff – they are all cowardly scum. If it turns out that one of the culprits was one of those released by Blair will you have the courtesy to admit your well meaning stupidity.
ae1
You can carry on your (obviously to you) clever little game but it’s pretty clear that you’re the desperate to see a return to the old days.
PIRA & Sinn Fein, like it or not (and quite obviously you’re in the ‘not’ category here) have joined in the new politics in NI (having spent well over 10yrs – with many others – trying to achieve change).
You sanctimonious & simplistic black and white stupidity would have thrown away the last 10yrs of progress because people like you prefer to sit doing nothing but harrumphing your sour bitter garbage about how much you are 100% right and the others must be 100% wrong.
If the price of peace in NI for the last 10yrs (and God knows how many lives saved and given a peaceful situation to prosper in) was prisoners on both sides let out then so be it.
Even if a handful cannot and will not accept the political changes.
The “stupidity” lies with those who are incapable of recognising and accepting the vast progress and changes for the better in NI…..or in fact that it required (on all sides) people willing to genuinely compromise and a be willing to take risks for peace to actually get that enormous progress.
I guess that for all your (to you) ‘clever’ little insults & digs that’s people like you and the likes of the republican dissidents.
You make great company for each other.
Enjoy your time-warp bitterness that goes with it.
Brian Read put it so much better than I in today’s Mirror (of all places).
“The majority of Brits have never understood the people on either side of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide.
At the height of the Troubles, Catholics were caricatured as bloodlusting bog-trotters, Protestants as sash-wearing bigots, and judging by the reaction to the murders at Antrim and Craigavon our appreciation of this most complex of tribal sagas has grown very little.
For a decade we’ve believed that by chucking the Northern Irish millions of pounds for their own parliament and slick waterfront developments all those ancient wounds had been healed.
We conveniently ignore the courage it took for Sinn Fein to join the British political process, persuade the IRA to admit defeat, carry the bulk of Republicans with them and hold the peace.
We refuse to understand why there will always be Irishmen who despise a foreign presence on their island and a handful of bloodlusting dinosaurs who think firing on a pizza delivery boy makes them look like Wolfe Tone.
It’s how you react to them that counts. And the reaction from politicians in Northern Ireland this past week has been about as decent and progressive as you could hope.
What’s been indecent and dated has been the reaction from opinion-formers this side of the Irish Sea.
Those who loathe Gerry Adams and everything for which he stands have been waiting for the chance to expose his conversion from violence as a sham.
When he refused to condemn the killers in the same language they use, “slaughtering scumbags, vile bastards” etc, they revelled in painting him as a colluder in the murders. Still a man of evil.
Advertisement – article continues below »
Yet their ignorance couldn’t be more glaring. It’s they who haven’t changed. It’s they who opposed terrorist concessions and who now mock the Reconciliation Process.
It is they who are the villains of the peace. Had Adams used emotive language against the rebel Republicans he would have added another thousand to their cause overnight and put the peace process back years.
You need only look at the reaction from leading Unionists like Peter Robinson and Ian Paisley, to see how Adams and Martin McGuinness got it spot-on.
Instead of pandering to the prejudices of their grass-roots supporters and deriding them as Fenian butchers, they have supported their once-detested enemies with placatory words.
That’s how far Northern Ireland has come and that’s why we should be more optimistic than ever of lasting peace. Their politicians know the Armalite will never rule over the ballot box again because their constituents have tasted normality and liked it.
The men of terror have not laid down every gun, and never will.
But they’re becoming increasingly irrelevant because the men of debate have laid aside enough of their loathing to carry out the will of their people.
We should applaud Belfast’s politicians for maturing immensely during the past decade.
If only we were able to say the same for the commentators on this side of the Irish Sea.”
Brian Reade 12/03/2009
I’ll leave it at that.
Mail man – before I sign off on this one, you are obviously one of those who would sit down and happily give compensation to terrorist’s for ‘loss of earnings’. Be a man and call them for what they all, and I do mean all, are – cowards killing kids. Just keep bending over backwards – I’m sure that will be easy for you.
ae1
Typical.
You own invented nonsense and feeble ridiculous and predictably dreary insults have characterised your comments all the way through this.
I am prepared to accept (as even the likes of Paisley et al are) that Sinn Fein and PIRA have genuinely changed and are now a positive influence working within the new political environment in NI.
They are helping matters and have become part of the solution.
They are not the problem.
You clearly can’t accept anyone has changed much at all and insist on pretending they are no different to those dissident groups currently engaging in murderous acts.
Too bad.
I guess it’s a free country, enjoy your time-warp bitterness and linguistic quibbling, the rest of us moved on long ago.
mail man and sarah – very wise.