It is followed by an exhaustive list of retrospective remedies to IRA former abuses enforced upon IRA personnel and the structures set up to prevent further unjustified loss of life, including full documentation of each investigation and its subsequent punishment/reparations.
Next week, we shall publish the United Nations Security Council report on the rocket campaign against Israeli civilians with an exhaustive list of the indictments againstthePalestiniansandHezbollah, and the full table of organisation of the International Court of Justice trial against the perpetrators at The Hague.
The BNP cheats. Its supporters don’t wear sinister uniforms or flaunt evil-looking flags. They don’t disrupt pubic meetings as far as I know or try to intimidate democratically elected representatives of the people. Their local activists would be called ‘community leaders’ if they belonged to any other community than the white majority. If their famous race war is being planned in secret then it’s a damn well-kept secret, though some comment posters on some of their blogs look pretty bloody iffy even to my frothing-at-the-mouth, gun-me-down-like-a-rabid-dog Right-wing eyes.
No matter. I’m angry about this and so I’m going to labour the point two days running. Let’s forget the candidates themselves, their party and their policies real and imagined. Let’s read those numbers again. The number of people voting BNP across the UK as a whole went up slightly, from 808,201 to 943,598 in the European elections, but went down slightly in the two regions where it gained MEPs, with the party benefitting from a collapse in the Labour vote. They won 6.2% of votes, compared with 8.6% for the Green Party, 13.7% for the Lib Dems, 15.7% for Labour, 16.5% for the UK Independence Party and 27.7% for the Conservatives.
943,598 legally resident, fully-enfranchised British subjects cast their votes in a properly-run secret ballot for a legal organization whose candidates were not even in jail and on hunger strike or calling for the deaths of British soldiers or anything in the trusting and perhaps naïve faith that their own humanity mattered enough that their choices would be respected in the same way as the candidates of all the other parties would insist on being respected despite their recent financial and legislative records.
Apparently, someone has decided that this is not the case.They aren’t real people or proper people and their tribunes can be physically attacked and prevented from public speaking with immunity. And who decided this?
Well, the Labour Party, for starters – two of whose supporters I work with closely, and who yesterday expressed delight that Nick Griffin had been egged. Discussing this, I asked whether it would have been even more democratic if the missiles had been stones, or petrol bombs or grenades. This point missed their brains by several million realities, it seems, and they went on to discuss what a child had thought when he asked an adult what the man had done wrong. One colleague replied ‘Nothing, yet.’ The other one's making sure, I suppose, that the child in question knows which elected officials it’s going to be OK to attack and presumably with which weapons and weapon systems. That old Colorado Beetle's got a lot to answer for. If I’d suggested that we should egg people whose parties and fellow ideologues have recently killed and are still killing actual civilians and British soldiers, they’d have been all over me like a cheap suit.
I’m grateful to my colleagues for their words, though.
Previously I’d been finding it difficult to identify the fascists.
The government is to be asked to pay £12,000 to the families of all those killed during the Troubles - including members of paramilitary groups.
The families of paramilitary victims, members of the security forces and civilians who were killed will all be entitled to the same amount.
Be warned; the main posts and comments alike are larded with obscenities from the start.
Cool.
But setting aside any bitter, acid invective against the Olympic levels of all-my-ancestors-were-each-others’-cousins levels of stupidity and insensitivity to the innocent bereaved that this recommendation demonstrates, and manfully resisting the urge to speculate about what kind of dietary deficiencies or degenerative infections could produce brains feeble enough to generate moral equivalence of this nature from the start of the process; moral equivalence that led supposedly educated people to imagine that the deaths of uniformed professionals dedicated to preserving the lives of law-abiding British subjects were somehow similar to the deaths of plain-clothed war-criminals (as all terrorists are), I have to point out that there might be another problem here.
Where does this leave ‘The Peace Process?’
I mean, if it’s being done to ‘draw a line’ or ‘move on,’ is twelve grand going to be more than an insult to the bereaved? I have some pity for the orphans, but the IRA and UVF widows likely knew exactly who and what their lovely, Semtex-stained beaux palled around with.
So do the wise and the good think that twelve measly thousand’s going to bring somebody’s daddy back or make up for an adolescence of dreary commemorative visits by scary sods it nasty suits and putting absurdly large ‘patriotic’ floral displays on graves each year some how make it all better?
These lancet-minded former bishops and retired policemen must be thinking in the old money from when they were lads so maybe a dozen kilosovs looks just the job to them.
Or is it something else? Is this some part of a continuing squeeze operation against the British taxpayers for more protection money, or else the terrorists will go back to shooting prison officers on their doorsteps in front of their just-then widows and screaming children, or nail-bombing pubs?
Nowhere in mainland Britain, however, comes close to Northern Ireland, where the state is responsible for 77.6% of spending, despite the supposed resurgence of the economy after the end of the Troubles.
So is that it – ‘Pay up and massively subsidize our sewer of an economy and our ‘paramilitary’ families at all times and in all places,’ or what…?
See, there’s a bit of a cash shortage about just now and, you know, someone’s going to have to start cutting public expenditure sometime.
I hated the Good Friday Agreement from its appeasing, morally-equivalent start with all its dreamy big-tent, hands across the sectarian divide, Phony Tony Things Can Only Get Better evasion of centuries of history and decades of monstrous terrorist cruelty.
And now the filthy thugs have their hands on our cash-flow and not a leader in sight to put a stop to it.
On a lighter note, I was able to use this cheering little story to put up the first contact post on the freedom directory thing here, showing the Consultative Group’s email box and email and other contacts for the lovely ex-bishop of ’Derry’ should anyone wish to comment upon the Group’s work...
Take a look if you like. I’ve nearly finished the framework pages, but apart from this cheery little tale of our tax pounds in action, it’s empty of data so far.
I hope to make it much bigger really soon…
Raw Dead Plant Diet Week.
Day One.
A little peckish after breakfasting on only two tins of fruit, and colleagues were quite happy brandishing and extravagantly praising some extremely chocolatey biscuits as my stomach rumbled, but I can take it. There’s nothing a right-wing blogger can’t do once he sets his mind to it.
...taking the culture wars to the heart of the Welfare State.
Colleague of mine said at work the other day that, of all children's television characters she knew, she hated Basil Brush the most. I guess because he's English and posh (she's Feinian, all-round reflex-action Lefty and, well, not posh. At all.)
I was able to agree. I said Basil was opposed to hunting with hounds and therefore he should be shot.
Or gassed. Or poisoned. Or concreted into his home to starve to death.
No answer. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step...
