2017 NI Assembly Election

[BonnieShels]

But SF won't. they have been nothing but positive in their approach. I still haven't seen a single Unionist ;politician not frame this as a crisis in unionism instead of what it is, a shift to the middle ground and nationalists being sick of the DUP's "shoite".

If Unionism doesn't get a handle on what is going on they will be left behind.

[DannyInvincible]

But SF won't. they have been nothing but positive in their approach.

This is true. I wasn't suggesting Sinn Féin would behave in a similar manner. I was merely showing what Sinn Féin applying the same twisted logic would look like in order to demonstrate or emphasise the illogic and insincerity of the DUP's framing of the situation.

[BonnieShels]

Don't worry Danny I know.

[Gather round]

Ah, I think it's a bit unfair to crudely simplify my position as such. I'll assume you're being somewhat mischievous

It is pretty straightforward though. You want diversity in Ireland? You already have effectively two Irish nations both living in Ireland

[Abortion and gay marriage are] big issues for women and the LGBT community

Agreed, and I didn't mean to sound trite there. Marriage equality might not be that long delayed- there's a decent chance of either a) Direct Rule and the Tories waving it through, or b) DUP unable/ unwilling to use a PoC if Stormont resumes, then a free vote.

Abortion's trickier when Nationalist parties in NI, just like the DUP, remain clearly opposed to it in most situations.

Not out of a sense of supremacism though. It's important to properly understand the context and rationale, however troubling or regrettable certain acts may have been

I generally see it the other way round. If the operatives are shooting people, blowing things up and intimidating me out of home, school etc. I'm not that interested in the theorists gurning about a bent election a century ago to demonstrate how un-supremacist they are.

SF...have been nothing but positive in their approach. I still haven't seen a single Unionist ;politician not frame this as a crisis in unionism instead of what it is, a shift to the middle ground

You're joking surely? You can't see a veto on Foster as JFM (regardless of her past antics) as anything other than negative. That's what vetoes mean.

Broadly agree with yr second point. Now that the UUP clearly can't lead Unionism, there's much less incentive for voters either to give them first preferences, or for those that do to transfer anywhere bar DUP. So Unionists will inevitably be more co-operative with each other, while as a result less transfer-friendly to the non-aligned parties. Result: Nationalism could win 45%+ of the seats next time with 40% of the vote.

[DannyInvincible]

It is pretty straightforward though. You want diversity in Ireland? You already have effectively two Irish nations both living in Ireland

Diversity isn't my only interest. I also seek political and economic unity because I feel it will strengthen the country. Life compels prioritisation and balancing of interests.

I generally see it the other way round. If the operatives are shooting people, blowing things up and intimidating me out of home, school etc. I'm not that interested in the theorists gurning about a bent election a century ago to demonstrate how un-supremacist they are.

I can appreciate where you're coming from and I sympathise, but I still think such a view distorts the context.

You're joking surely? You can't see a veto on Foster as JFM (regardless of her past antics) as anything other than negative. That's what vetoes mean.

In any other political territory or professional sphere, she either would have stood down voluntarily or would have been suspended impending an investigation into the allegations of her wrongdoing. That's fairly standard and all main parties (bar the DUP) called for her to stand down. The reason she hasn't yet stood down is because identity - and fears or insecurities relating to that - apparently remains more important a matter to many people in the north of Ireland than corruption does or "bread and butter" issues do.

[Gather round]

I too suggested Foster should resign and still think she will within the next three months or so. You may to weigh loss of face if/ when she does against already lost reputation for safe hands. As well as the human element, stick on social media etc. Not just as she's a woman, male politicians are sensitive too.

That said, she might not. SF then have to either

a) collapse the Assembly

b) find some fudge to restart any form of discussion with Unionists (remember they still work together on the district councils and the rest), or

c) cave in and look silly.

In the meantime, they have to answer the local media stepping up the whataboutery- eg that Messrs Murphy, O'Mulleoir and Adams didn't step aside when accused variously of malpractice or serious criminality.

SF can't have it both ways, pretending that they're about energy policy and cost controls while milking sectarian politics at every chance.

[BonnieShels]

But none of them were first minister. And as has been pointed out ad nausea, the previous FM had no issue stepping aside when there were questions hanging over him. It should never have needed her to have a think when the precedent was there already!
SF are hardly being unreasonable in the request. What is unreasonable is that the DUP think their request is unreasonable.
Anyway, I trust SF’s ability to navigate the waters here. They’re the best at this.

[Gather round]

But none of them were first minister

Come on. Adams was and is a national party leader. More important than Foster. And if MO'M and CM were relatively junior, then few outside Stormont would have noticed/ cared when they walked.

Foster made a judgement that Unionist voters wouldn't think her handling of RHI- however hapless and possibly fraudulent- was as bad as Robbo stealing from the biscuit tin while Iris shagged her toyboy. Much as it wrongfoots you or I she could be right.

SF are hardly being unreasonable in the request. What is unreasonable is that the DUP think their request is unreasonable

It's politics. Not unreasonable to ask, but obsessive to keep asking ad nauseam to the exclusion of all else.

Anyway, I trust SF’s ability to navigate the waters here. They’re the best at this

Look out for that iceberg.

[BonnieShels]

SF leader is more important NIFM? That is an interesting statement.

[Wolfman]

It is pretty straightforward though. You want diversity in Ireland? You already have effectively two Irish nations both living in Ireland.

Except one small part is a forgotten backwater of another country, currently hanging on to it's current makeup, apart from when it suits them.

I generally see it the other way round. If the operatives are shooting people, blowing things up and intimidating me out of home, school etc. I'm not that interested in the theorists gurning about a bent election a century ago to demonstrate how un-supremacist they are.

Except that ended the best part of 20 years ago FFS.

You can't see a veto on Foster as JFM (regardless of her past antics) as anything other than negative. That's what vetoes mean.

Why would anyone rational person want that thing as FM?

Now that the UUP clearly can't lead Unionism, there's much less incentive for voters either to give them first preferences, or for those that do to transfer anywhere bar DUP. So Unionists will inevitably be more co-operative with each other, while as a result less transfer-friendly to the non-aligned parties. Result: Nationalism could win 45%+ of the seats next time with 40% of the vote.

Who cares...
Unionists have quite happily done this/would do again if the maths was in their favour. So never mind the collective hypocrisy.

I too suggested Foster should resign and still think she will within the next three months or so. You may to weigh loss of face if/ when she does against already lost reputation for safe hands. As well as the human element, stick on social media etc. Not just as she's a woman, male politicians are sensitive too.

That said, she might not. SF then have to either

a) collapse the Assembly

b) find some fudge to restart any form of discussion with Unionists (remember they still work together on the district councils and the rest), or

c) cave in and look silly.

In the meantime, they have to answer the local media stepping up the whataboutery- eg that Messrs Murphy, O'Mulleoir and Adams didn't step aside when accused variously of malpractice or serious criminality.

SF can't have it both ways, pretending that they're about energy policy and cost controls while milking sectarian politics at every chance.

More drivel. The unionists can put up another candiadte, talk about straw clutching.
And you don't think the DUP et al don't 'milk sectarian politics at every chance'...

Come on. Adams was and is a national party leader. More important than Foster. And if MO'M and CM were relatively junior, then few outside Stormont would have noticed/ cared when they walked.

Foster made a judgement that Unionist voters wouldn't think her handling of RHI- however hapless and possibly fraudulent- was as bad as Robbo stealing from the biscuit tin while Iris shagged her toyboy. Much as it wrongfoots you or I she could be right.
It's politics. Not unreasonable to ask, but obsessive to keep asking ad nauseam to the exclusion of all else.

This again really doesn't make much sense, besides pointing out the obvious and the continued hypocrisy of the final sentence, again something unionists would never dream of.

It must have been a slow day in the West Midlands!!

[Gather round]

SF leader is more important NIFM? That is an interesting statement

SF leader: aspires to lead a national government

DUP leader: can probably take jointly leading a regional assembly (local authority, really) for granted IF it survives.

You're dancing on a pin here. The Unionist and Nationalist hacks (beardy ****** apart) I named are pretty much equivalent in both unimportance and managerial incompetence. You can only run so far with demonising Foster. Either she goes and you move on, or stays and you back down.

[Wolfman]

Except the unionists per se claim the North is a 'country', so any party leader there is a 'national' leader in theory.

And they also could choose to get rid of Foster and move on.

[DannyInvincible]

Conradh na Gaeilge have come up with a detailed and very informative discussion document looking at the potential workings and practicalities of an Irish language act: https://cnag.ie/images/Acht_Gaeilge_...March_2017.pdf

A BBC report on the development: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39272431

Introducing an Irish language act would cost an initial £8.5m, according to an Irish language group.

Conradh na Gaeilge (CnG) has produced an implementation document detailing what an act would entail.

It estimates that such an act would cost £2m a year to run, in addition to the £8.5m one-off cost.

The group said the intention would be to make implementation of an act "as practical and workable as possible".

The document, which has been seen by the BBC, states that an act should gradually be introduced over a five-year period.

The power of words

It proposes 11 different sections as part of an act covering elements such as use of Irish:

• In the Northern Ireland Assembly
• By local government and public bodies
• In the courts

The document estimates that it would cost £100,000 to establish a central translation department at Stormont.

A further £50,000 would be spent installing a simultaneous translation system in the assembly.

CnG has estimated it would then cost £500,000 a year to run the translation department, including the cost of employing 10 staff.

Among other estimated costs, £372,000 per year would be spent training workers in public bodies to speak Irish.

About £750,000 - £1m would initially be spent translating public websites, forms and documents.

A further £1.5m a year would be used to enable bilingual road signs to be provided.

'Reasonable cost'

The document also recommends that a language commissioner is appointed to ensure the act is being complied with.

It says a commissioner's office would cost between £300,000 and £400,000 per year.

"It is a very reasonable cost, especially if the act is implemented properly and willingly," says CnG.

The document also calls for the BBC to spend £10m on Irish language services.

This would ensure that there would be more Irish language included among the services of the BBC and that costs for this would come from the current budget of the BBC," it states.

"The majority of parties and recently elected MLAs support an Irish language act."

"We now have a unique and historical opportunity to settle this long-running issue."

A consultation document on an act produced by the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) in February 2015 did not estimate how much it might cost to implement.

Sinn Féin and the DUP have subsequently disagreed over the cost of Irish language legislation.

DUP leader Arlene Foster has previously said the party would never agree to an Irish language act.

Dr Niall Comer, President of Conradh na Gaeilge, said they wanted to inform people of what an act involved.

"Already, five parties alongside a majority 50 of the 90 newly-elected MLAs support protective legislation for the Irish-language in the form of an act, " he said.

"We are calling on the parties now to come together and support these proposals, and to implement Irish language legislation, as recently recommended by both the Council of Europe and the United Nations, and as was promised over ten years ago in the St Andrew's Agreement."

So, the estimated cost of the act will actually be £2 million per year over five years, plus £8.5 million over the same period as a one-off infrastructure investment. That equates to less than £4 million per year; considerably less than the scaremongering £100 million a year plucked out of, erm, thin air by the DUP.

[DannyInvincible]

Brian Feeney's latest cutting column in the Irish News on the utter uselessness of James Brokenshire made me chuckle so much at Brokenshire's expense that I then almost began to feel sorry for the poor fool: http://www.irishnews.com/opinion/col...-depth-963021/

We’re told our proconsul for the time being is not going to Washington for St Patrick’s Day celebrations.

That news calls to mind Dorothy Parker’s remark on being told in 1933 that US President Calvin Coolidge had died. She asked, ‘How can they tell?’

How will anyone know whether the proconsul is in DC or Stormont or Westminster?

You can hardly dignify him with the description politician. He’s such a lightweight he rose without trace, a man promoted for unthinking loyalty to Theresa May in her silly futile mission to reduce immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ as David Cameron had promised in 2010.

Cameron knew there was no chance but poor Theresa May believed his promise and tried to deliver it while everyone except herself and our proconsul knew it was impossible, just a figure thrown out to destabilise the Labour party.

Now he’s here, way out of his depth, supposedly running negotiations to restore devolution.

Remember, he has no experience or qualifications of any kind for such an enterprise. Occasionally he emerges to stand like a hologram in front of a doorway intoning a paragraph he’s just learnt which says, well, nothing.

His interview in this paper with John Manley last week was a perfect example of what George Orwell wrote about in his famous essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’: ‘lifeless, defending the indefensible, euphemism, question-begging, sheer cloudy vagueness.’

Mangling the language, debasing it, uttering meaningless claptrap instead of answering questions, but above all, saying nothing. A metaphor for the man.

It’s a shambles up at Stormont. It’s difficult to work out whether the proconsul is so partisan that his aim is to protect his friends in the DUP or whether he’s so inept he doesn’t even know he’s offering gifts to them.

For example he told Sinn Féin there’s no money for legacy inquests because the matter of the past has to be agreed as a whole. Is he too stupid to realise that means he’s therefore told the DUP that all they have to do is disagree and they can stop anything? Or is he doing it deliberately because he’s hand in glove with the DUP? Or is he just so inexperienced as a negotiator he hasn’t a clue?

He certainly hasn’t taken control of talks. There are private talks going on between Sinn Féin and the DUP and going nowhere. The proconsul seems to have no agenda, no sense of realising that restoring devolution is not Sinn Féin’s priority and no plan for addressing what are their priorities.

His idiotic threat to call a new election sums up his lack of aims or objectives. Surely some adviser must have told him that after an election it’s groundhog day with another £5 million of public money burned through to get there?

Clearly he’s a player, so closely allied to the DUP he can’t chair talks, unable to accede to any legitimate request from Sinn Féin in case it discomfits his parliamentary allies.

The fact that Sinn Féin has a mandate almost precisely equal to the DUP’s, with only 1,168 votes separating them is disregarded.

The proconsul seems to consider Sinn Féin as somehow illegitimate, uppity, having no right to make demands on behalf of their electorate.

At no time has he indicated either in his language or behaviour that he regards Sinn Féin as a party with equality of status or parity of esteem.

Of course it’s true that the assembly election result profoundly shocked Downing Street and after discussions there behind closed doors they have no idea what to do.

The result called in question the existence of the north as a viable political entity just as rumblings in Scotland after May’s disastrous, hectoring, offensive speech to Scottish Conservatives in Glasgow on March 3 called the union between England and Scotland in question.

The truth obviously is that since May, the most parochial, small-minded home counties Conservative leader there’s ever been, doesn’t know what to do, then there’s no chance her representative here is going to take any decision, propose any policy or line of action until he’s told what to do.

It must be bewildering for him to accept that Sinn Féin has the initiative.

[BonnieShels]

Of course it’s true that the assembly election result profoundly shocked Downing Street and after discussions there behind closed doors they have no idea what to do.

This is May's government in a nutshell. Shocked by everything and no plan at all. Has there ever been a worse PM? Not in my lifetime and I started with Maggie.

[DannyInvincible]

Irish nationalism is badly named. It isn't a nationalist movement at all. For me nationalism is about the impression of superiority of a nation over others. I Don't think I've ever met a genuine Irish nationalist if one defines it as an Irish equivilant of Serbian nationalism for example. On the other hand in the USA almost everyone is a nationalist. Nobody would ever campaign for political office in Ireland talking about us being a "shining house on the hill" or "beacon of freedom".

During a recent interview, Ben Lowry of the Belfast Newsletter asked Yanis Varoufakis about Sinn Féin's nationalism and how it co-exists with their leftist politics: http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opi...army-1-7872307

I thought his answer was relevant to our prior discussion.

BL: Some people say Sinn Fein is so nationalistic that it is not left wing.

YV: This is a problem that doesn’t only pertain to Sinn Fein. It pertains to every national liberation movement.

Struggles for national self determination whether they are in Ireland, or in Greece in the 19th century, or in – wherever they happened to take place, Latin America – by their very nature they tend to promote, it is very easy when you are part of such a national liberation struggle to lose sight of the border line between patriotism and nationalism.

Now, from my experience of Sinn Fein, they are not nationalist, they are patriotic, like the SNP, the Scottish National Party, it is remarkable in that it is not nationalistic even thought it calls itself a national party, similarly the Catalonians.

What I think Sinn Fein, the SNP and the Catalan separatists have in common, nationalists have in common, is that they are completely internationalist and they do not see independence for their territory or their country as they see it to be part of nationalist international agenda like Le Pen, like Ukip, like Donald Trump and so on. So there’s a profound difference.

[backstothewall]

Yanis Varoufakis is why the EU presidency won't be an elected position for at least 20 years.

He would win in a landslide.

[BonnieShels]

Would he?

I think he's a bit of a clown.

[BonnieShels]

Brokenshire states that "there is a short window" to agree power-sharing.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0327/862796-stormont-talks/

So after his apparent significant statement that was due to be announced today this is what we got?

No wonder SF had enough of him last week.

[backstothewall]

Máirtín Ó Muilleoir tweeted pics tonight of SF in South Belfast out on the doorsteps. A team of them out knocking doors and delivering "thank you letters" that look a lot suspiciously like campaign literature.

They have seemingly rolled straight back onto election footing again and are practically daring Brokenshire to call another one.