SQUINTER’S with Jim Allister on this Troubles thing. Kind of.
Jim is up on his hind legs about the new ‘Northern Ireland Troubles Bill’ for a few reasons. But the first one he articulated in a video statement at one of those odd semi-rural locations he seems to favour was the Bill’s name. Jim doesn’t think the government should have called it the NI Troubles Bill.
Why? Because “NI didn’t suffer ‘Troubles’.” Troubles, he said, “are what you get at a football match”. And he continued: “We suffered horrendous, orchestrated, intended insurrection and terrorism and the whole Bill can’t even used the word ‘terrorism’.”
Squinter goes along with that. Not the terrorist bit, needless to say, because Jim and Squinter, you’ll hardly be surprised to hear, are unlikely to find common ground on what terrorism is and who terrorists are. The bit that Squinter agrees with is that the word ‘Troubles’ has never seemed up to the task of articulating what we all went through for all those years.
But unlike Jim, Squinter’s not going to give anybody else a rollicking for using it, for the very good reason that Squinter uses it all the time himself.
And it would be a rum kind of person indeed who gives off about the unsuitability of certain language when he uses the very same language himself.
The TUV leader has no such qualms, however; which is probably a good thing in the cut-and-thrust of politics, a business in which sensitivity is most assuredly not a plus. A five-minute Google search reveals that Jim’s not averse to using the word himself when the occasion demands, even though he deprecates its use elsewhere. What’s more, he can deploy it to great effect and with considerable emotional punch…
In a debate about victims, Jim described what we went through not as the Troubles, but as “the horrendous Troubles”, with Hansard being considerate enough to cap up the word for him. In a submission on the subject of a one-off payment to victims, Jim said the suggested 12k should only be made to the relatives of “innocent” victims “killed during the Troubles”. In a comment on the roll-out of the EU Peace II Programme, Jim expressed concern about the “lack of assistance given to innocent victims of the Troubles”.
In a statement on memorials for paramilitaries on Roads Service property, Jim articulated his disgust at an attempt by the Infrastructure Minister to draw an equivalence between such memorials and “memorials to members of the security forces murdered during the Troubles”. And decrying a comment by the Secretary of State on the subject of an amnesty, Jim stressed that “Troubles deaths were murder,” adding, “Murder is murder.”
And the Troubles are the Troubles, it seems. But only for people like Jim.
And Squinter.
Ace Ventura applies his old detective skills to our Covid past
AFTER having done a bit of detective work on Jim Allister’s loyal lexicon, Squinter’s attention was drawn to the Pravince’s most noted detective, the Ace Ventura of Stormont, North Antrim parachutist John Burrows MLA.
ON THE CASE: Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Jon this week took a break from his busy schedule of standing up for incarcerated pet dogs and goldfish to emote at length in the Assembly on the most salient points thrown up by the second report of the Covid 19 Inquiry. And of course the most salient of those salient points for Jon – as it is for everyone who treasures our Precious Union© – was the Bobby Storey funeral.
Former cop Jon let the Shinners have it with both barrels – or perhaps it might be more fitting given his background in policing to say he empted the mag of his service Glock 17 in their direction.
The Shinners deserved everything they got, of course, because the Storey funeral was the single worst thing that happened here during the long, dark night of the Covid crisis. Wasn’t it?
Except for that thing with Jon’s present boss, of course, which no doubt someone else in the UUP will be referring to in the chamber before the Christmas break.
A month before the Storey funeral, UUP Strangford MLA Mike Nesbitt was sufficiently concerned about his own Covid behaviour to sack himself as deputy chair of the committee for the Executive Office. Mike had jumped in his car and driven 60 miles to visit a friend in the North Antrim village of Portballintrae. His leader, Steve Aiken, described it as a “huge mistake”, while in his stepping-down speech Mike admitted he had made some “very poor decisions” while going through a “stressful and difficult period”.
Submarine Steve would himself make his final “Dive!” command as UUP leader a year later in the wake of a disastrous interview on the Nolan Show about the Chief Constable’s handling of – altogether now! – the Bobby Storey funeral. It wasn’t so much a car crash as a 100-vehicle snowstorm motorway pile-up. Squinter doesn’t recommend you watch it on catch-up. You’ll facepalm so hard you’ll leave a mark.
Don’t get Squinter wrong – Mike quickly did the honourable thing when the Sunday World revealed his transgression, while the Shinners coped with the Storey funeral fall-out with all the grace and assuredness of a rhino in a tutu. But even so, you’d like to think that if you were in a party whose current leader had fallen on his own syringe for breaking the Covid rules you’d be a bit more inclusive when injecting blame into the Stormont chamber five years after the event.
No?
Okay.
