POLICE seized eight handguns and three pipe bombs in an operation aimed against the east Belfast UVF on Friday night past. One of the weapons recovered (right) was the iconic Colt .45 single action army revolver, known in the Wild West as ‘the Peacemaker’ and famously carried by Wyatt Earp.
 
We spoke this week to Wyatt Earp about his decision to join the east Belfast UVF, his deep attachment to loyalism and his hopes that the liquor, girls and gambling subjugating Protocol can be done away with before there’s a return to shoot-outs and stagecoach hold-ups...
 
AH shore didn’t know too much about yore liddle ole prahvince when Ah was jest a plain ole marshal in Tombstone roundin’ up drunks and playin’ three-card monte in the Silver Dollar saloon with mah buddy Doc Holliday. Till up’n around sundown one day the doors done fly open and an ornery lookin’ critter ambled in seemin’ as though he’d sump’n on his mind. His eyes were mean and full uh spite and when he caught my gaze why I’ll be hogtied if a shiver didn’ run down mah spine.

 

He took his place at the bar, ordered a shot of red eye and when the barkeep done pour him a glass and turned to walk away he took that old feller’s wrist and told him to leave the baddle. ‘Looky here, mister,’ said ole Sam, ‘Ah ain’t lookin’ for no trouble and Ah hope you ain’t neither.’ The stranger let go Sam’s arm, threw back his drink, poured another and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
 
‘Ah ain’t fixin’ to cause no trouble, so Ah’m not,’ he tole Sam and then he asked for sumpn to eat. ‘Ah don’t got much in the way of vittles,’ ole Sam came back, ‘but Ah can fix you a plate of bacon and beans if’n you like.’
 
‘Aintcha got no Tayto?’ the stranger asked, and in the big bar mirror Ah seen them mean eyes narrow into slits and Ah swear Ah saw into the soul of a stone-cold killer. ‘No, sir, no Tay-to,’ stammered Sam and then the stranger said he’d admire to have a smoke. ‘Gimme twenny Superkings and a lighter – and pronto,’ he growled and Ah seen ole Sam look my way like he was fixin’ to pass out  and Ah knew Ah had to do sump’n. Mah chair creaked as I lowered it from the back two legs and stood up and the stranger turned and looked at me and suddenly the only sound was mah bootsteps on the wooden floor as Ah crossed that saloon.
 
‘Howdy, mister,’ Ah said, bright and breezy as you please. ‘We don’t go in for no fancy food or smokes in these parts but you’re shore welcome to mah baccy pouch and papers.’ He didn’ say nuthin’, jest took ’em and commenced to roll. Ah figured – me givin’ him a smoke an’ all – that now might a purty good time to ask what his business was in town. He stared me right in the eyes as he licked his rollie closed and said: ‘Ah’m lookin’ for Mister Wyatt Earp, so Ah am.’
 
‘Well,’ Ah told him, ‘you done found him. Now what’s on your mind, stranger?’
 
Well, long story short, me and the stranger took a seat together and shared that bourbon. And dang it if he didn’ tell me he’d come all the way from Bel-fast to engage my skills in the service of the crown. Ah was plumb flummoxed by that and Ah axed him: ‘And to hire my gun you’ve come all the way from Ahrland?’ Ah could tell he didn’t like that too much cuz them eyes went mean again and right by a poppy tah-too on his neck a liddle vein pumped like he was fixin’ to blow a gasket and he tole me slow and madder’n a snakebit coyote: ‘Ah don’t come from Ahrland, mister, so Ah don’t. And you’d do well to remem-ber that, so you would.’
 
We got along just fine after that, me and Stooarty (yip, that was his name – a fine old Bel-fast moniker, bah the way) and as we talked into the night Ah found out why he looked so mean an’ roll me up in mah saddlebag if’n Ah didn’ think he had a point and mah eyes filled up when he done tole me about wut them ree-publicans had bin doin’ to the land of his grandpappy. He tole me they’d sing ‘Up the Ra’ at every barn dance and rodeo. He tole me they wouldn’t leddem put nuthin’ on the bone-fires they got there ever’ summer. He said they ain’t allowed no sawsidges in the general stores no more; they cain’t put no flag up over the town hall; they’re makin’ ’em speak Ahrish in them thar schools and they’s jest bin tole there’s more bead-rattling Papes there than they got Gahd-fearin’ Protestant folk.

Anyhoo, Ah made mah mind up there’n then that Ah couldn’ stand bah and leave Stooarty and his kin to suffer like that and so Ah up’n lef’ Tombstone with Stooarty the very nex’ day an’ we rode hard to the east coast and caught a steam packet to a liddle ole border town name of Larne – an’ here Ah am. 
 
Truth to tell, though, Ah ain’t done much fightin’ here ’cept that one time when we dynamited an Ahrish gubmint guy back to Ahrland over in the Ar-doyne. Wasn’t real dynamite or nuthin’, mind, jest a box with ‘Bomb!’ written on it, but it caused a mighty big ruckus, Ah can tell you. ’Part from that Ah’ve bin mostly sellin’ that white powder them folks over here seem to like so much and – hoowee! – they’s a lot of money in that stuff. I done got mah Turkey teeth done and all and ole Doc’s gonna get blinded when Ah open mah mouth if’n when Ah gits back to Tombstone some time.
 
Ah bin runnin’ girls too, which kinda makes me pine a liddle for upstairs in the Silver Dollar. An’ Ah bin lendin’ money to folks who ain’t got much cash just now with things the way they is an’ all. Ah said to Stooarty, Ah said, ‘Stooarty, them poor varmints might not have much money to begin with but they shore got none when we done finish with ’em.’ And Stooarty laughed and tole me Ah was beginnin’ to catch on. Ah bin visitin’ stores too and axin’ folks for donations, which is how Ah got my hand-tooled noo boots, mah fancy noo suit and this here Ro-lex timepiece in my vest pocket.
 
Now Ah hear that we might be fixin’ to do sump’n about this here Pro-to-col agin – most likely when Stooarty gets back from the Sey-chelles. Maybe burn another bus cuz Ah hear that worked out purty good the last time. Hell, Ah was even plannin’ to innerdooce one or two of them bead-rattlers to my six-shooter until the po-lice done take it away. So Ah guess the bus it’ll be. One of them fancy-Dan Gliders this time, cuz ole Wyatt? He ain’t fixin’ to surrender no time soon.  

A CHORUS FOR COGGLE

MURAL: Joe Coggle
2Gallery

MURAL: Joe Coggle

This tiny old gunman is grandpa Joe Coggle
 
In a mural that makes the mind fair boggle.
 
He’s bald and has a double chin
 
From too much chips and beer and gin.
 
He recently tried to get into heaven
 
At the point of his AK47.
 
(In fact it’s a cheaper vz. 58
 
That came with a poppy stamped on the crate.)
 
But Joe was refused, sad to report,
 
By the saints of St Peter’s Pearly Gates court,
 
Who through a long tunnel of time and of stars
 
Saw he’d murdered a granny and shot and bombed bars.
 
The gun was supplied with the active assistance
 
Of the DUP’s war child, Ulster Resistance.
 
‘S. Company’ reads the red poppy wreath
 
With ‘Lest We Forget’ written beneath.
 
Lest we forget the blood of the Somme,
 
Lest we forget the Dublin-Monaghan bomb.
 
Lest we forget British battles so grand,
 
Lest we forget the Miami Showband.
 
Lest we forget the weeping war wives,
 
Lest we forget the Butchers’ long knives.
 
Lest we forget our brave soldiers’ tombs,
 
Lest we forget the drunk romper rooms.
 
Lest we forget who fought the Turks,
 
Lest we forget who bombed McGurk’s.
 
Lest we forget the Jocks from the Highland,
 
Lest we forget Team Loughinisland.
 
Lest we forget our navy defenders,
 
Lest we forget estate money-lenders.
 
Lest we forget the Spitfire’s drone,
 
Lest we forget the Fenians’ moan.
 
Lest we forget the last-ever hugs,
 
Lest we forget the class-A drugs. 

Keir going to get Brexit done

KEIR Starmer’s going to plough on with Brexit, though even viewers of GB News, the broadcasting arm of UKIP, have had enough of the Leave project and now want to Get Brexit Undone.
 
In an extraordinary development at the weekend, the channel held a poll asking its viewers what way they would vote if another referendum was held tomorrow. 19,000 people took part, of whom 55 per cent said that they would vote to remain in the EU.
 
Now losing a Leaver who voted Brexit because he or she had reached the conclusion that GB would be better off financially outside Europe is one thing. They have arrived at their decision because of a (now utterly discredited) belief that the country would be better off. But GB News doesn’t cater for an audience that is interested in economics. It caters for an older audience that thought leaving Europe would clear their local Costa of black and brown people; that thought the EU was responsible for desperate Syrians and Afghans crossing the channel in dinghies; that believes Trans people in shopping centre toilets is a bigger threat than climate change; that thinks Gary Lineker is a traitor whose head should be on a spike at the Tower of London; that thinks Greta Thunberg should shut up and go back to school. 
 
In other words, people who are incredibly amenable to the blatant propaganda spewed out by the Brexit-supporting Tory media. And if GB News viewers – who only watch the channel because they’re fed up with the tofu-munching woke elite – are wobbling badly in their commitment to Brexit, you’d like to think that a future Labour government would be open to at least a reconfiguration of the country’s Europe strategy. But no, Keir’s convinced a lurch to the right is what’s needed at a time when the signs are the British public might just be starting to wake up to the truth about Brexit.
 

Oh, and Keir says the Tories aren’t doing enough to reduce the number of asylum-seekers crossing the channel in dinghies. To be clear, he believes the Tories, who are considering gunboats and wave machines to turn back inflatables containing vulnerable humans aren’t tough enough when it comes to immigration. He believes Labour would be more effective in combating the migrant invasion (©Suella Braverman) than the party that wants to put black and brown people on a plane to Rwanda as soon as they set foot on the beach.
 
Not that any of this has come as a shock to Squinter. The facts about the poisonous machinations inside Labour HQ in the run-up to the 2019 were outlined in jawdropping detail in a batch of documents leaked to Al Jazeera which later went on to form the basis of the documentary ‘The Labour Files’. 
 
• Three senior Labour Party officials had a WhatsApp chat about stabbing their then leader Jeremy Corbyn and went on to discuss whether to use a kitchen knife or an ice pick. 
 
• During a meeting at Labour HQ, party staff joked about the death of an elderly member who died from a stroke after learning she’d been suspended over bogus anti-Semitism claims. 
 
• The raft of anti-Semitism complaints that formed the basis of the ‘institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’ claim came over-whelmingly from a small cabal of pro-Israel activists, some with links to the British far-right, including the Nazi BNP. 
 
• Over half the complaints came from non-members.
Don’t blame yourself if you don’t know these things, they were comprehensively ignored by the same media who gleefully reported Corbyn lie after Corbyn lie. A thoroughly decent man was traduced and brought down and so the Boris Johnson years began. 
 
Anyone for a verse or two of The Red Flag?