Oh god – for the past two days now, Gordon Brown has been residing in the castle of a village near to where I live. He has landed here in Northern Ireland to “help” the local political parties “save” the “power=sharing” Assembly. Good old Gordon – such a nice man.
The BBC narrative on what is happening here is framed in almost childish terms.
They would have you believe that the good and brave Gordon Brown (along with his Irish counterpart in unpopularity, the charming Mr Brian “BIFFO” Cowan) have come here to see if they can give encouragement to the local Northern Ireland parties as they seek to do “the deal” that will “save” all the good things that have been achieved here. The nation waits for white smoke to emerge from Hillsborough Castle.
OK – now back on planet earth and away from the spin of the BBC.
Brown and Cowan have come here to pressurise the spineless and now openly corrupted DUP into agreeing a date for devolving Policing and Justice powers into an administration that is inherently dysfunctional and which contains murderers, bombers, gunmen and bankrobbers. This is presented as “the last piece” of the devolution justice – in fact it is the last chance to save democracy by preventing the very thing that Brown and co are here to urge on.
Now I appreciate that the view I have expressed is just one view – but it is one that the BBC seems oddly reluctant to air. Why?
I caught part of the BBC news coverage of the talks on last nights 9pm news and pretty awful it was to. The reporter told us pointlessly about some kind of a joke Martin McGuiness had told about Peter Robinson (which amazingly didn’t involve his wife). All complete fluff of course and avoiding subjects I want to know about ..
1) Has the recent scandal damaged the DUP and how will it effect them in the next election.
2) There has been another attack on a Police station by “dissident” republicans. Who the hell are these people ? If they are disaffected IRA members then how many of them are there and what are they disaffected about ? More importantly are we about to see a official/republican IRA style split of the early 70’s happening again ?
It is also quite convenient for Macavity to avoid the poor news on the economy and the revelations at the Iraq enquiry. Guess he will be back for Blair’s big day on Friday.
I wouldn’t really wish Gordon the Moron on the Irish, but quite happy if he doesn’t hurry back.
According to 5Live Lite this morning Broon worked all night to save the world, er, the, power sharing agreement. I am sure _he_ didn’t work all night. Nice bit of spin there.
Worth counting the number of ‘We believe’s’ in the post match waffle.
Sadly, for Gordon, what he and his merry band ‘believe’ is usually met with utter incredulity outside of a BBC studio.
As a foolish, ignorant United Statesian, I have never understood why the BBC never comes out and says what’s going on with all these power-sharing talks. Once Sinn Fein was brought into the government, wasn’t that the beginning of the end of Northern Ireland as part of the UK?
Sinn Fein exists to end NI’s conneciton to the UK, so what’s the point of all this? Why doesn’t anyone ever say this is just another step in that direction, and that it’s Sinn Fein’s reason for existence? Gordon Brown is never going to save the Union here. Putting the police under local government control isn’t going to keep Sinn Fein from working for a full break with the UK. If anything it’s just postponing the inevitable.
Personally, I don’t have any vested interest in whether NI stays in the UK or becomes part of the nation of Ireland. While I can appreciate the feelings of both sides, I simply don’t care which way it turns out, to be honest. I just find all this dancing around the truth to be counterproductive and disingenuous, although rather amusing at times.
David Preiser
The trouble is that the majority of people in N Ireland want to remain part of the UK (quite why I don’t know since we’re totally f***ed (sorry DV) although the Republic has been similarly screwed by its political class) . This is a real problem for the political class here. After the British army defeated the IRA (remember the IRA effectively sued for peace – they knew they were defeated) the IRA was rewarded by a political victory. Successive UK governments (together with the UU and DUP) have betrayed the majority in NI by dealing with Sinn Fein as if it were a respectable political grouping as well as accepting as genuine a spurious weapons “decommissioning” attested to by people with the moral fibre of members of the BBC Trust.
Isn’t that all the more reason to report openly and accurately about the ultimate goal here? Sinn Fein isn’t shy about what they want, so why does the BBC so often pretend that this is about preserving the Union rather than the opposite? The BBC is – for now – the official state broadcaster of NI as well, so I guess they have to keep up the pretense?
You and I agree – I think – that reporting “openly and accurately” is what a news organisation is there to do. Unfortunately – as the evidence presented daily on this website attests – the BBC fails to report anything political or with a political dimension (eg climate, economics or business) openly let alone accurately.
Funnily enough, though, the BBC, in its role as the “impartial” conveyor of news to the nation, has little to lose by telling the truth (or, rather, letting the truth be told); that all these discussions in Belfast with our dysfunctional prime minister rushing hither and thither mask the ambition of the UK government to dump NI and all its trouble and expense. The problem – as I wrote above – is that in what is still (just) a functioning democracy the majority in the NI who wish to remain with us has to be fooled or coerced into changing its mind. Having a bunch of thugs in charge of the police and the judiciary might succeed in convincing that majority that it might be preferable to throw in its lot with the Republic. The DUP recognises this and, no matter how corrupt they are, they’re not stupid. They recognise that NI submerging itself in the Republic would see the end of the DUP’s political power.