Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Have a glance at this charming Facebook group entitled ‘No Pope Here’. It includes such heart-warming (and grammatical) sentiments as, “wats the point him goin ther its basicly a death wish for him its like him sayin KILL ME NOW LOL” and “no pope is welcum here keep him out fgau NO SURRENDER X”. Lovely, I’m sure you’ll agree. It should hardly be surprising, but a 3000 Versts reader has pointed me in the direction of the membership which includes – DUP MLAs Ian McCrea and Trevor Clarke, Councillors Ian Stevenson and Pam Lewis (who runs Sammy Wilson’s office), Gordon Lyons (Wilson’s researcher) and John Hussey. Less predictable is the adherence of Ivan Djordjevic from Serbia, or a fansite for Eric Bristow, the darts player. Make no mistake about it, this is a hate site, and DUP representatives and employees have gleefully signed up. This is the nature of the party with which the UUP are urged to contract an electoral deal. If the DUP does wish to strike an electoral pact it should...

Popular opinion on Nick Griffin’s scheduled appearance on Question Time divides broadly into two categories. First, the argument runs that extremism is nurtured in dark corners and the way to defeat it is through open, democratic debate. Second, it is recognised that an organisation like the BNP craves publicity, and, given that all reasonable and reasoning people agree that its views are abhorrent, it should be denied it wherever possible. Unfortunately it has been a bad weekend for those who subscribe to the latter view. The debate on BNP participation has already commanded many inches of newsprint. Whether one agrees with the BBC’s decision to include Griffin in its panel, or not, the path of least resistance must surely now dictate that he appears. If he were replaced at this late juncture it could not fail to nourish the erroneous sense of grievance on which his party thrives. In Northern Ireland we have seen the way in which extreme political views can be insinuated into th...

I spent the weekend in Fermanagh, which led to a brief cessation of blogging. Nevertheless, I had intended to cobble together some preliminary thoughts on the European Election results, as they came in last night. Unfortunately my laptop had other ideas. So if anyone with technical expertise has any notion why a Dell Inspiron 1525 would be hanging irrecoverably after several minutes use, please do not be shy sharing your knowledge below. Diagnostics threw up something rather alarming about the Hard Disk, but I fail to see how the computer could boot at all if it had a profound hardware issue, rather than suffering some manner of software compatibility problem. I rather hope that it might be a hiccup due to Vista or Google Chrome, although the machine does remain within its warranty period at least. Setting aside that thrilling topic (computers are a tool, not an end in themselves) the implosion of Labour at the polls continued in Europe, after woeful local election results in Eng...

Periodically there is a story suggesting that far right groups plan to organise in Northern Ireland. In 2003 politicians expressed dismay and outrage when the BNP threatened to contest council elections here. Only last summer we were warned that the same party intended to recruit members at Twelfth of July parades. Today the Newsletter reports that a meeting of 40 “members and their trusted friends” have convened to hear the party’s leader, Nick Griffin, speak and reaffirm that his organisation has ambitions here. Certainly any attempt to organise in Northern Ireland is unwelcome. But reading between the lines the fact that since announcing its intentions in 1994 and restating that fielding candidates in Northern Ireland was a goal in 2003, that in 2007 there appears to be no progress towards this strongly suggests that the BNP is failing to attract members here. Despite the fact that Northern Ireland has for the first time developed relatively large immigrant communities, there...