SQUINTER had words with Naomi Long this week. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last. Squinter enjoys the back and forth and it’s conducted in a good spirit. Mostly. And anyway, if things ever get too heated we both know who’s going to break first because Squinter told her a secret once that would end his career if she revealed it.
She hasn’t so far because she’s a good person. Or because she knows one of the golden rules of politics: You can only use a good secret once – so choose your time and use it well.
We had words about these massive hoardings that the Justice supremo has put up in the Andytown area telling anybody and everybody that they’re in the midst of a den of mafiosi: ‘Paramilitaries control our communities with violence, intimidation and drug dealing.’ At the risk of having the cuffs snapped on, Squinter will point out that if one of those hoardings went up beside this business he wouldn’t be long taking it down.
Having a massive sign describing the place where you make your living as being in the grip of the Cali Cartel is not going to keep the tills ringing, Naomi.
Or maybe nobody thought about that.
And what’s this about ‘our communities’? Take the hoarding at Andytown Leisure Centre, for instance. If anyone who had anything to do with this message lives anywhere near it, Squinter will be a monkey’s uncle. What you’re seeing here is what somebody sitting at a desk in the city centre with a framed Ulster Rugby poster behind them thinks about working class communities in loyalist and republican areas of Belfast.
Heaven help us if the tactic starts spreading.
Will the Justice Department put up messages in Tyrone garage forecourts reading ‘Danger! JCBs are likely to attack this ATM at any minute.’?
Might the Mayor of London erect posters around the city reading ‘Careful! You are in the knife crime capital of Europe – please wear a stab vest.’?
Would it help if Dublin put up warning signs reading ‘Far-right headcases operate in this area.’?
Take the bloody things down, Naomi. You don’t even have to admit it was a horrible idea – just send in the blokes in the white vans with ladders and let’s hear no more about it. Otherwise you might be seeing a hoarding outside your office reading ‘People who haven’t a clue what they’re talking about work in here.’
British overtake the Irish
A SURVEY by the Anti-Defamation League ADL), the world’s largest pro-Israel advocacy group (after Israel), has found that six million Brits are antisemitic.
This is bad, of course it is. But there’s an upside. And the upside is that if the Brits are this bad then the Zionists are going to leave Ireland alone. And they’re going to leave our President, Mickey D, alone too. And not just Irish Zionists, who have been crying a river of tears on social media every time some no-mark from the Tel Aviv regime says something nasty about the Land of Saints and Scholars. It’s the Brit Zionists who are going to have to address the elephant in the corner of their own living room with a big swastika stamped on its head.
TARGET: President Michael D. Higgins
Wait!, Squinter hears you cry. Swastika? That’s a bit strong. Well, not if you consider the fact that the Jewish Chronicle reported the shocking ADL statistic alongside another finding that Holocaust denial is soaring too.
All of which is going to make it fairly awkward for a Daily Mail columnist to keep ranting on about Ireland’s problem with the Jews. All of which is going to make it difficult for a GB News presenter to keep accusing the Irish Head of State of being in league with the Wehrmacht.
Farmers fly wrong flag
WHY do farmers hate our values and our way of life?
That’s the question that occurred to Squinter when he saw this hussy climb atop a tractor in the middle of London this week and raise an upside-down union jack (below).
God alone knows what Nigel Farage thought of it as he stood nearby dressed in mustard chinos and a Barbour waxed jacket, bringing to mind Toad of Toad Hall on a trip to the Balmoral Show.
Further on down the massive line of £150k tractors, an ambulance peeked from behind the huge back wheels of the rearmost farm vehicles, its lights impotently flashing, to the total indifference of the water-booted tractor-drivers.
It’s the most popular allegation hurled by Gammon Britain at Just Stop Oil protesters, of course – ‘How the bloody hell can a half-dozen crusties be allowed to lie down in front of traffic and make it impossible for our emergency services heroes to do their jobs?’ (The same emergency services heroes being heartless pinko bastards when they strike for better pay and conditions.) Yet here was a mammoth protest consisting of the Reform UK target audience doing exactly what they abuse others for doing.
For drawing up a plan to block traffic on a motorway last year, Just Stop Oil founder Roger Hallam got five years. No, you didn’t misread that – the guy got what you might expect to be handed down to an armed robber or a rapist for ‘conspiring’ to climb up a motorway gantry. That sentence no doubt caused a growl of satisfaction in the leather wingback chairs of London men’s clubs where politicians and senior newspaper figures spend their evenings. But they love the geezer who drew up the plan of attack for the tractor takeover, so that person is unlikely to get the collar of their sleeveless gilet felt.
The poisoned chalice
THE SDLP say they’re not going to Paddy’s Day in the White House (below). As far as Squinter knows they haven’t received an invitation yet, so at this point it’s a bit like Squinter saying he won’t be going to the Oscars. But fair play to Claire Hanna because it’s the right call.
Sinn Féin won’t have got their invite either, but they haven’t said a thing. They haven’t got their invite to this year’s Pride parade either, but after they chucked our Trans friends and neighbours under the bus the sight of them parading past City Hall behind a rainbow banner or getting smiley pictures for their websites with drag queens would be a hard pill to swallow.
The problem for the Shinners, when you really think about it, is who they’re going to send should they decide to go to Washington with the cries of pain from Gaza ringing in their ears, as they did last year. Let’s face it, a republican MP or MLA who gets their picture taken with Donald Trump may as well belly up to the bar in the Felons wearing an ‘I Heart General Mike Jackson’ T-shirt.
Even if the grotesque man-child Trump is too busy, the acolytes they’re liable to be fobbed off with are every bit as toxic and disgusting, and in many cases even more so. So unless the unfortunate plenipotentiary is going to skulk around the White House and Washington, ducking into a side room or entry every time a Trump minion appears, it seems highly likely to Squinter that the Keepers of the Flame will stay at home this March.
