DUP COMMUNITIES Minister Gordon Lyons has apologised to Alliance South Belfast MLA Kate Nicholl after he twice told her to “Sit down” during a Stormont debate on Monday.
Well, Squinter says he apologised, but it was one of those ‘perhaps’ apologies so beloved of politicians who put their foot in it and want to get it out, but lack the grace to do so without a bit of a kick. “I do believe in the cut and thrust of debate we need to robustly challenge each other in this chamber,” he said. “I can give it and I can take it, but I understand there are those in the chamber who I have perhaps sincerely offended I'm more than content to apologise for that. I do believe we need to continue that robust debate but I understand the concerns some have expressed today."
For her part, Ms Nicholl said she doesn’t believe that to be an apology worthy of the name, and Squinter has to say it’s hard to disagree with her on that particular point.
On the wider issue, Squinter’s all for the kind of Ulster plain-speaking the DUP like to engage in. In this case, Gordon pulled no punches in a drive-by comment to a woman, and for that he received further criticism. But knowing the East Antrim MLA as Squinter does, there can be little doubt that when Gordon recently met the Loyalist Communities Council he addressed them in a similarly frank way.
For instance, if Spike from the UDA spoke out of turn at the meeting, Squinter can picture him being told to ‘Shut up.’ And if Pliers from the UVF said something that displeased the minister, there can be little doubt that he too was subjected to the same uncompromising honesty.
And if they were spoken to harshly, you can bet your bottom dollar that Spike and Pliers didn’t demand an apology for their hurt feelings. Nope, they would have just taken their medicine and got on with it.
Like men.
A ton-up toasty treat
HOORAY! A hundred quid for pensioners so that they don’t have to gather round a candle stub to warm their hands this winter as the snow falls and the mercury plummets.
It’s not a fortune, but it’s a hundred quid more than OAPs in England, Scotland and Wales are getting after Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came through on their promise to end austerity by taking the winter heating allowance off the old-timers.
But those Stormont Executive ministers patting themselves on their well-upholstered behinds for their largesse are no doubt hoping that pensioners planning to spend their hundred quid on five bags of coal to last them four months don’t turn their gaze south.
The hundred quid for OAPs in Ballymurphy and Ballybeen will be paid at some unidentified point before March next year, which means that if you’re eligible and skint and you pop into your local garage for a bag of household and a sack of logs you’re going to have to ask for it on tick.
Just over the border, meanwhile, OAPs haven’t been required to wait – they’ve been getting their winter heating money since the last week of September. And the payment will continue until the first week of April.
It’s not a hundred quid, or even two hundred quid. It’s thirty-three euros a week, and thirty-three euros times 27 weeks is...
Well, if you’re a pensioner it’s probably best that you don’t do the math, as they say in the States, for fear that your blood runs cold.
Or should that be even colder?
What’s your birth worth?
THE exchange of ideas, articles, thoughts and inclinations between the Belfast Telegraph and its big sister, the Irish Independent, is entirely understandable. They’re both part of the same Low Countries multinational, Mediahuis, and the sharing of stories and features makes perfect economic sense. But what happens when Loyal Ulster meets Dublin 4 on contested ground?
Well, when it comes to James McClean, the sharing requires a little tweaking.
In a piece about the EFL allowing McClean to leave the pitch when subsituted in a way that avoids him coming into contact with hostile fans, the Irish Independent referred to the Wrexham winger as “Derry-born”. When the piece was dispatched through the ether to the banks of the Lagan, he suddenly became “Londonderry-born”.
MAIDEN IRELAND: Or Loyal Ulster, if you're James McClean
Which is odd because the BelTel has no hard and fast rule about what to call the Maiden City. In fact, it seems its journalists and subs are free to call the place whatever they want. McClean, of course, would much prefer “Derry-born”, as would the vast majority of people in the city, but Londonderry it was.
Elsewhere in the same piece, McClean was variously said to have ‘flaunted’ or ‘flouted’ the EPL rule on substitutions, neither of which he did. The BelTel finally settled after three tries on ‘bypassed’.
Wrong again: Dictionary misplaced as well as atlas.
Mind your language
THE picture of the guy who got his ging-gangs knocked in by Fine Gael Louth election candidate John McGahon does not make for easy viewing. But for John’s boss, party leader Simon Harris, it must be like viewing a horror movie.
Harris’s endorsement of McGahon has dominated the election agenda thanks to the insertion of said picture into the fray last week – a canny move by Fine Gael’s opponents who rightly calculated that the old journalistic adage ‘If it bleeds it leads’ would trump the natural inclination of the southern media to go easy on the civil war parties during an election cycle in order to keep the Sinn Féin hordes at the gate.
FINE MARGINS: John McGahon was ordered by the High Court to pay his victim almost 40k
Sinn Féin’s been having a very good election, despite – or perhaps even because of – the savage hammering it took on both sides of the border over a series of party difficulties/scandals (take your pick) that dominated the news for the better part of a month. Doubtless plans are afoot to bring Mary Lou McDonald’s impressive run to an end as we speak.
But as Fine Gael filled their boots with thundering daily denunciations of Sinn Féin’s inner-workings and the catastrophic failings of the party’s human resources department, no-one stopped to consider the possible – perhaps even likely – event of the Blueshirts experiencing a bit of local trouble. Hence Harris and co are being hoist by their own petard, and hoist even higher after a new difficulty/ scandal emerged about, altogether now, inappropriate messages.
Stones never landed so loudly on glass.
A hasty retreat well under way
THE full-blown retreat from the journalistic obscenity that was the reporting of the ‘Amsterdam pogrom’ continues, with most of the guilty outlets having held up their hands and admitted their failings.
Most have done so reluctantly and bitterly. The New York Times, for instance, withdrew footage it claimed was of antisemites attacking Jewish Maccabi fans rather than admit the truth – that the footage was Maccabi fans attacking Amsterdammers.
RACIST CHANTS: Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are renowned for their vile songs
Closer to home, Sky has acknowledged its part in the mess not via apology or explanation but via its reporting. In the days since it withdrew an accurate report on the violence, it has covered the genocide in Gaza in a number of stories that have been unprecedented in their accuracy and robustness.
But the single biggest casualty was not a journalist or a media outlet, it was the Mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, who this week apologised for calling the non-existent pogrom a pogrom, and for failing to stand up for Dutch citizens battered by Israeli thugs. She was, she said, “under immense international pressure”.
Throwing your own people under the bus at the behest of Israel. Good luck in the next election, Femke.
