DEPUTY First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly is concerned about the prospect of the new Grand Central Station saying ‘Fáilte’ to its customers. So concerned, indeed, that the DUP Lagan Valley MLA felt it her bounden duty to bring the matter up at the Thursday meeting of the Stormont Executive.
The decision by Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins, said the dFM, did not “constitute value for money or good decision-making”. And on that I’d have to agree. Why Liz’s Sinn Féin colleague and Infrastructure predecessor John O’Dowd let the new station open without a word of the native language on any part of its vast acreage is still not clear to me, but what is clear is that the whingeing we’re seeing from unionists now is a direct result of that, ah… let’s say oversight by the Sinn Féin Keepers of the Language Flame.
What we’re seeing now as Emma takes her place on King Canute’s throne and feels the icy Irish Sea water lap over her Jimmy Choo’s is hubris on a Homeric scale. Because if there’s one thing that Ems shouldn’t go near, if there’s one subject that she should run away from at the speed of Stephen Nolan chasing a bloke round a petrol station forecourt, it’s bus stops.
I hasten to add for the sake of fairness that we’ve all got subjects on which our moral authority is either compromised or liquidated. For my part, I’d think twice about lecturing people on the danger of gambling; I’d think thrice about getting on my high horse about the evils of alcohol. Similarly, Edwin Poots would be well advised not to write a book on ‘My Time at the Top’, Gerry Carroll won’t be writing a letter to this paper on ‘Why I’m Glad I Backed Brexit’ and Doug Beattie would likely turn down an invitation to give a talk on ‘Social Media: Respect and Maturity are Key’.
Ems won’t thank me for saying it, but the truth is that in quiet moments she must reflect on whether being most famous for opposing the name of a bus stop in somebody else’s constituency is what she dreamt of when she first heard the call of politics. It was 2018 when the then South Belfast MP wrote to Translink to express her “serious concern” about a new Glider stop near Short Strand having a sign reading ‘Short Strand’. So incensed was Ems, so afire was she with the flame of righteous indignation, that she included in her letter a short lesson on the geography and nomenclature of East Belfast, knowledge she no doubt picked up as a girl in the teeming terraced streets of Markethill.
In the prevailing spirit of historical accuracy, Translink itself did a bit of research and established that the Metro bus stop that the new Glider stop was built to replace was also called – drum roll – Short Strand. Professor Google is possessed of no information – or at least none that I was able to find – about what Ems had to say about that and so we must remain sadly ignorant of whether Ems’s passion cooled on learning that the new Short Strand bus stop had been named after a bus stop called Short Strand.
NAME GAME: Emma Little-Pengelly expressed concern at this Glider stop near Short Strand being called... Short Strand
Whatever the case, the incident has bedevilled the current deputy First Minister for the seven years since she decided to get the bus across town. Or, to be more accurate, it has bedevilled her on every occasion that she has involved herself in matters pertaining or adjacent to names and words and language; and Loyal Ulster having decided that signs and words and language are the battleground on which the union will be won or lost, she’s reminded on a regular basis of that 2018 Summer of Signs.
When the time comes for Gavin Robinson to write his memoirs, he may admit that appointing Mrs Little-Pengelly as the DUP spokesperson for bus stops was not his finest moment as party leader, because the smart money is currently on the Irish signs going up, despite – or more likely because of – the intervention of Eddie the Legal. After Liz Kimmins’ announcement, Jamie Bryson lodged an appeal quicker than he hits the deck when he hears a banger, and we wait to see what will happen after Bryson of the Bailey clears his throat and takes his voluminous papers from his Lidl bag-for-life.
History tells us that Emma also has form when it comes to the resolution of disputes involving public displays. A year before the great bus stop bust-up of 2018, as the newly-installed MP for South Belfast Emma became embroiled in a row over the erection of UVF flags in a new mixed-religion housing estate off the Ravenhill Road. She hurried to Cantrell Close and Global Crescent, where, she said, she knocked on around 100 of the brand-new doors. And what pearl of Solomon-like wisdom did Emma glean from her canvass? Well, that while the Catholics and Protestants just moved into their new homes had a range of opinions on being surrounded by lamppost tributes to a gang of loyalist killers, people didn’t want “a public fuss”.
FLAG FURORE: Emma Little-Pengelly's intervention in a South Belfast lamppost furore was widely reported
I’m not sure how many doors Emma has knocked on, or rather, how many passengers she’s spoken with, to establish whether people want a fuss made about Irish words on the Grand Central Station signs, but the Lagan Valley MLA has decided to go ahead and make a fuss anyway.
A bus fuss, you might say. With a one-way ticket to nowhere.
