I am (at least) half Irish. My wife is partly Irish. It’s the condition of being English. It is something that just happens for the blindingly obvious reason that Britain and Ireland are next door to each other.
I thought we had closed this filthy chapter in our shared history. I was wrong.
They are not sure who did it. It could be Real IRA or Continuity IRA or some other tribute act but for fuck’s sake this is so old.
Let’s look at the evidence. The UK is a liberal democracy. The Irish Republic is a liberal democracy. GDP per capita is about the same. We speak the same language. Irish folk living in the UK can vote. They can come and live here and vice versa with remarkably little let or hinderance. Our laws are almost exactly the same. We are both EU members.
So what exactly are they still fighting over?
Don’t get me wrong. There is a role for irregular freedom fighters. There are issues which can only be solved at gunpoint and there are governments which have been overthrown for bloody good reasons. But whether the Brit Jack or the Paddy Tricolour flutters over the town hall is not a reason to kill anyone.
I am deeply depressed over this. I thought this at least was a solved problem because it was a non-problem. At least some half-witted cunts disagree with me.
I hope the SAS get the unmitigated bastards responsible for this utter outrage and I hope the only court it ever comes to is the coroner’s.
[...] March, 2009 by landedunderclass I am as disgusted as everyone else (exhibits A, B and C) at what has occurred but have to say that on the basis of the evidence so far I remain [...]
Naah. What made you think it was over? There are more “peace lines” in Belfast today than there were ten years ago. The Belfast Agreement didn’t bring real peace; it started a cold war (which is certainly preferable to a hot one, don’t get me wrong). The tensions are all still there and the bastards have still been fighting among themselves. It was only a matter of time before a few of them worked up the bravado to do something like this.
Funnily enough, just as the first reports of this appeared on the news, I happened to be reading Friday’s Mail, which reported that Hugh Orde had brought in a few special forces blokes to help the PSNI because “the threat of a serious attack was higher than at any time since he joined the force seven years ago”. Sinn Fein called the move “stupid and dangerous”. Looks like Hughie was right.
“So what exactly are they still fighting over?”
Blood, soil, history, honour; the usual nonsense. They left reason behind decades ago.
Yes well put Sam, they did leave reason behind many decades ago.
Obviously some of the Guinness Wallas have been reading the newspapers lately, and while holding their thumb under, and mouthing the words, have figured out that the Bombay(I refuse to use Mumbai) and Lahor attacks were a bit more “spectacular” than just planting a bomb and buggering off to the pub.
The sectarian divides are still there, as entrenched as ever, but the MSM has moved on to other conflicts, so you just dont hear about the kneecappings and drugs and turf wars that are still going on.
I have met some IRA terrorists. I went to a conference at the Watershed in Bristol, oh back in the 80s now, where Kenneth Griffith, the actor and documentary filmaker, was presenting his films that had been made for British TV, but were banned by the Government.
Well there were no great shakes or shocks in them. Standard pro IRA stuff (Kenneth, The Wild Geese etc was a staunch supporter of the IRA and Republicanism) but there were, as there always are, present, those who have done nothing in their lives but support terrorism, and be killers, It is their job. They know no other.
To sit and talk and have a beer with these people is to chill the soul, but as I’m a journalist, well it’s my job to do that.
God I could bang on about this for ages. It is so complicated yet so simple.
We Celts have fictionalised our past and indeed our future, and there is only one enemy, England (no bombs ever went off during the “Troubles” euphamistic cunts, in Wales or Scotland, fellow Celts you see!) only in England and “Occupied” N Ireland.
These people who did this are just a tiny minority, just as we are told the Jihaddis are compared to Muslims as a whole. But they are fuckin deadly if you bump into them in the wrong place, like those poor sods wh othought it was all over the other night.
When the Sinn Fain/ IRA put a bullet in the back of the heads of these fuckers (because I now they know who they are) then I will listen to talk of the ongoing Peace Process without a smile of disbelief on my face.
Don’t get me started on Scotland being homogeneously “celtic”. I’m just glad the IRA thought we were.
The trouble is that, like the Jihadis, this is just the current phase of an old, old problem. I have Irish ancestors too (although, as Protestants, the ones who came over here a century or so ago would have rather been called bastards than Irish), and although I haven’t kept in touch with any relatives in Ulster, my dad spent a few holidays with cousins and whatnot in his youth. This would be the late 1940s and the ’50s, but he remembers police stations with sandbags and locked steel doors even then. Certainly, nobody really took the old “Official” IRA very seriously at that time, but they knew the threat was still potentially there.
However the next generation felt that the “Officials” had become soft and too accommodating towards Britain - they’d been told the Stories and were full of hatred, so they broke away and formed their own IRA. Never forget that these “respectable” Shinners in suits swanning around Stormont were “dissident republicans” once.
I’m quite sure that the guys who carried out this attack weren’t of McGuinness and Adams’ age; they’re the next generation, full of hate, and full of anger at their elders “selling out” to Britain. Just as Martin and Gerry were in the early ’70s. They may not have the numbers or the money that PIRA had back then, and so may not turn out to be as dangerous, but it’s definitely not over.
Very good article here.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5877219.ece
He must have met some of the same brain dead bastards as I did.