2007-03-31

Stormont!

Something huge happened this week. It didn't get many column inches compared to the latest celebrity wardrobe malfunction so perhaps you missed it. Two men from opposite sides of a very high, very long and very old fence put their personal feelings aside to discuss a better future for the people of Fenceland.

If you don't understand the Irish conflict, join the club; I know enough to keep my foreign mouth shut about it when I'm around Irish people. Take this start point and good luck.

Ian Paisley gets the merit award for making up the most ground the fastest. The **** is so hardline, the joke goes that he calls for a priest on his deathbed to convert to Catholicism because "better a dead Catholic than a dead Protestant". On Monday, nine years save a week since the Good Friday Agreement, he sat at the same table as Gerry Adams [imagine Amri Assad from the current series of 24, my American friends] for the greater good. I'm welling up just thinking about it.

posted by thisismarcus @ 21:28 

4 Comments:

Blogger James Lindsay said...

One of my bigger arguments against organized religion of any kind right there. More blood has been shed in the name of god(s) throughout human history than for any other single reason. Some people, at this point, call me a non-believer or an athiest, to which I reply, "No, I actually do believe in God, I just don't think he has set things up so His believers play on different teams and try to convert/eliminate each other..."

I have great faith in God, I just have zero faith in Religion. Religion is a human construct, corrupted my man to enforce social restrictions and encourage allegedly "proper" conduct and behaviour by the masses. Anything created by man is created with inherent flaws. Even the Pope was created by a man and a woman, as was dear sweet old Liz, long may she reign.

I could go on for hours about this, but really, it's not my blog.

18:27  
Blogger tenderhooligan said...

Needless to tell you, I was rather tearful myself about last week's agreement. And, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I wasn't being even a tiny bit cynical about it. As far as I'm concerned, Ireland, and particularly the North, is the best place in the whole entire freakin' world, and I'm going to be very happy seeing this moving forward.

(All that said, we've got our hopes up so many times only to have them dashed, so I'm not going to be holding my breath for now.)

15:52  
Blogger The Paranoid Mod said...

I loved the small detail that they weren't actually sitting at the same table, but at two tables pushed together so they were on the same corner. Hilarious. But if that's what it takes...

And after a few years of blaming each other for rising council tax rates or how to pay for rural bus services, they should be ready to actually sit at the same table. Or Paisley will die, whichever comes first.

Adams is a smart man. How to get pretty much everything you want (except a united Ireland, ahem) while telling your membership that the stuggle will continue, no, no, we're not going to lay down our guns, we'll still have the option to return to the old days, isn't Wolfe Tone grand; oh look lads, everything's been decommissioned. Right. Last one on the gravy train's a marxist!

Or something.

18:00  
Blogger tenderhooligan said...

Paisley will die, whichever comes first.

I don't think that will ever happen. I had him the new years death poll in our office three years in a row and he never came through for me. And he recovered from that near-death illness he had a year or so back like he was some sort of God-like creature. That terrified me, frankly.

Adams is a very clever man. As is McGuiness. Good summary of his last ten years of speeches there, Mod. Or something... ;)

19:11  

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