GORDON Lyons. He’s the embodiment of that internet meme that depicts Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons surrounded by rakes and every time he moves he steps on one and bashes himself in the face.
He’s a regular trouble magnet, is our Gordon. It’s not his portfolio, because while Communities is a diverse brief with a lot of trickily intersecting responsibilities, it’s far from the most troublesome department. Other ministers whose jobs hold considerably more stress potential manage to appear in the dock of public opinion a lot less regularly, and when they do appear they tend to scowl while Gordon affects a wry eyebrow-smile.
And it’s self-evidently the case that throughout his career and before he first sank into the air-conditioned embrace of a ministerial car, he found himself front and centre of many a DUP donnybrook.
Behind his slightly confused Tesco Metro branch manager appearance and demeanour, might he be the type who embraces a good row? Does every new day of wtf? headlines and omg social media end not with fretful tossing and turning, but with a deep, contented, smiley sleep?
Even if he doesn’t court the chaos, it can only be the case that he has an asbestos-like tolerance of it because as he finds himself back in the news again this week he exhibits his usual lack of interest in mopping the public’s fevered brow. GAA President Jarlath Burns said he’s “disappointed” that the minister hasn’t replied to a letter he sent him on December 20 asking for an update on Casement.
Ignoring the head of the island’s biggest sporting organisation when you’re the man responsible for sport in the top right hand corner of said island is not the behaviour of someone who’s confrontation-averse. Not answering Jarlath’s letter was in fact more difficult than answering it – and infinitely more problematic. It’s almost impossible to imagine that Gord wasn’t aware of the letter, and if we accept that he was, as we surely must, then he had two options:
i) reply;
ii) ignore.
Only one of these options was inevitably problematic, only one of these options would plant the seed for a New Year blooming of controversy. So instead of writing a short reply – or more likely causing a short reply to be written – Gordon decided to do nothing. Of course the reality was that doing nothing in this case was very much doing something.
Casement Park
Jarlath’s letter was in effect a parking ticket which Gord decided to pull off his windscreen and roll up in a ball. Not only did the minister know that wasn’t the end of it – he knew that when it did come up again his behaviour would incur a bigger penalty.
Acting the ballix over Casement is now a kind of DUP rite of passage. The lowliest councillor from the remotest hamlet will take a break from telling us floods are God’s punishment for line-dancing to froth at the mouth about the eleventy squillion cost of the development. The most wincingly inarticulate MLA who fell over the electoral line on the 28th count will for a few glorious but fleeting seconds morph into Martin Luther King as he thunders his opposition to the BBC broadcasting the IRA live before falling back on the bench and scrambling for his inhaler. How much more of a gift from God is Casement to Gord, a man who could probably manage to squeeze a bad headline from opening a home for sick guide dog puppies?
As the DUP’s electoral fortunes continue to wane, the party’s enthusiasm for whacking the Casement piñata grows in inverse proportion. They famously tried and failed in the past to defeat the invasion of university campuses by rebel forces in O’Neill’s half-zips, but they’ve found that filibustering a football pitch takes considerably less effort and produces considerably more reward.
As if all this Casement sturm und drang wasn’t enough, Gordon has decided that the previously settled question of the DUP attending GAA matches is to be unsettled.
In June 2018 then First Minister Arlene Foster attended the Ulster Football Final in Monaghan between Donegal and Fermanagh. True, she looked as though she’d rather be dipping her face in a pan of boiling chip fat, but she was there and the double whammy of her seniority and her perceived staunchness served to send a powerful symbolic message. Over a year after being handed the gig, Gordon has yet to attend a GAA game as Minister for Sport. Squinter has no doubt that there are other demands on his time. The second round Ulster Cricket Cup tie between Holywood 2nds and Sion Mills cried out for a big name in the temporary stand, for instance; and somebody with a high profile was needed to wave the starter’s flag on the Cookstown 100. While Squinter never had Gordon down as a Sabbatarian, he accepts of course that the minister can’t attend GAA matches on Sunday because of church commitments. We patiently await his civil servants informing him of
i) the GAA not being a Sunday-only sport and
ii) the tragic news about the Titanic.
Jarlath Burns also questioned this week why it is that Gordon Lyons hasn’t watched a game of football or hurling. The DUP man’s absence means that Arlene’s gesture of seven years ago had a use-by date which has now passed. And the Sports Minister doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the smell.
