A BUSY week of UDA transitioning in Newtownards, Bangor and Donaghadee as rival factions of the loyalist paramilitary group added petrol bombing each others’ houses to the long list of community activities made possible by government funding.
On Friday four men were arrested on the outskirts of Newtownards after an incident in Ards Shopping Centre in which some bloke allegedly got his ging-gangs kicked in by a masked gang. The men were detained after a black BMW was stopped a short time later on the road to Belfast and Dundonald. After the stop operation the vehicle was brought to Dundonald police station where it was driven through the heavily barricaded gates into the blastproof building and stored in a secure garage facility.
Only jokin’. The Beamer was parked on the street outside the station and was then set fire to in the early hours of Sunday morning. Squinter has it on good authority that after being detained the four men were held in a secure facility at the Newtownards Wetherspoons and eyewitnesses who came forward were interviewed in the Dundonald Costa.
Why the car and any evidence that may have been contained within it was parked outside the station instead of being brought inside is anybody’s guess, but the comical episode was fully in keeping with the nature of the police response to the UDA feud. At the start of the week, 30 masked UDA men marched from Newtownards courthouse to an estate in the town while being followed by PSNI officers. Reports that the Benny Hill theme music was being played have not been confirmed.
Strangely, the antics of the Newtownards-subjugating UDA didn’t manage to catch the eye of certain excitable and vocal loyalist politicians and commentators, just as they managed to miss the decision of a primary school to end its brief association with East Belfast GAC after a taster session for pupils resulted in a number of intimidating social media and email messages being sent. Must be that voice-subjugating blindness again. Lot of it going about at the minute.
Last plane and boat out of Brexit Island
SQUINTER knew that Home Secretary Suella Braverman wants to send immigrants to Rwanda with the same enthusiasm that the North Down UDA wants to send the South East Antrim UDA to Boot Hill.
Speaking at an event at the Conservative Party’s autumn conference, she said: “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”
Some people dream of going to the moon; some people dream of winning the Lotto; some people dream of ending world hunger. Suella dreams of sending people who haven’t got a pot to piss in to a country where they shoot immigrants dead. Which is exactly the Home Secretary that the Tories need just now.
But what Cruella hasn’t been telling us is that the return flight from Kigali is not going to be empty as she doubtless envisions when she nods off at night, a contented smile on her face and visions of black and brown people disappearing into the clouds.
Admission time: Squinter’s been asleep at the wheel on this one. While he’s been writing and tweeting about the Tories’ revolting Rwanda plan for some time, he never bothered reading the deal signed between the two countries. So he was surprised when it turned out that as part of the deal the UK will be taking Rwandan refugees in return for taking Suella’s. Yep, it seems the Gammons who blew trumpets and flew flags when the Rwanda deal was announced have had the wool pulled over their glazed and puffy eyes.
Squinter found this out from a rather unexpected source. BBC politico Laura Kuenssberg isn’t known for giving Tories a hard time – in fact she’s something of a bête noir to Labour supporters who considered her relationship with Boris Johnson a rather too cosy one. But in an interview with Braverman on her Sunday politics show she told the Home Secretary: “It’s in the agreement. It says ‘The participants will make arrangments for the United Kingdom to resettle a portion of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom.’”
Not surprisingly, Cruella wasn’t keen to engage on the subject, although Squinter rather suspects she didn't fall asleep that night as quickly as usual when she buried her head in her Enoch Powell pillow.
Elsewhere, Tory wins just kept on coming as Dover went into lockdown at the weekend with Brits trying to escape Brexit Island for Easter forced to wait in massive queues to clear French immigration at Dover.
Former Tory bigshot John Redwood had some solid advice for families who didn’t fancy waiting for eight hours in a car breathing coach and HGV fumes: “Why not take a holiday break in the UK to avoid the delays into France?” he tweeted. “There are some great places to stay.”
Squinter hates to be the one to break it to John, whose most famous contribution to public life was to pretend to know the words of words of the Welsh National Anthem when he didn’t. But families don’t jump in a car and decide to go to Europe for Easter on the morning of departure. They book the trips months in advance. And the trips cost a lot of money. So any mammies and daddies reading John’s tweet weren’t going to do a u-turn on their way to Dover and head to Blackpool instead.
And anyway, there’s a reason that people who want a week or two by the seaside aren’t that keen on doing so in Blighty. And that reason is that the seas are thick with poo and hygiene products thanks to the Tories’ innovative new environmental policy of letting water companies increase their profits by dumping untreated shit in the sea to save money.
Which is why in Cornwall, for instance, you’re not longer swimming when hit the ocean for a dip, you’re simply going through the motions.
Tanks for the memories, Jonny
JONATHAN Buckley of the DUP was on Talkback on Monday to discuss a new poll that suggests the under-35s don’t know much about what happened in the Troubles.
Let’s leave aside the fact that no two people have the same take on what happened in the Troubles for a second and look instead at what Jonathan had to say about Americans who he believes are receiving and dispensing duff information about the conflict here.
He pointed out that on a recent visit to the British border in Ireland then Speaker Nancy Pelosi had claimed there were tanks there when she visited during the conflict. Chiding Nancy for her ignorance, Jonathan pointed out that tanks had never been deployed during the Troubles. Sadly for the boul’ Jonny, he was just plain wrong. Centurion tanks were deployed in Derry during Operation Motorman in 1972 (see main photo above). They were also fitted with blades to clear barricades and the gun barrels were turned in the opposite direction when the blades were in use.
Not that the rest of the interview went any better. Here he is explaining to host William Crawley just why it’s important to “accurately record the facts”.
JB: So I sort of thought to myself, my goodness, if this rewriting and this misunderstanding of what actually happened was at the heart of the US administration as such what hope do we have to educate our young people? Why is it important that we educate our young people and why is it important to accurately record the facts of what happened during the Troubles and call it out, the rewriting? And I think this is important and goes to the very nub of this article and why it is important. Because if we view this through the romanticisation or a rewriting narrative and, you know, a misinformation from social media, when we have a police officer that has been murdered in the name of republican violence just a few weeks ago, a month ago, we have to understand that there is young people that look upon the actio...
WC: Very seriously injured.
JB: Sorry, sorry, beg your pardon. Very seriously injured.
Tank commander! Reverse, reverse!
