Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Don't get your hopes up - captain for the night Stephen Craigan look forward to his fiftieth cap. Will it be déja vu all over again for Northern Ireland in Maribor?  Two years ago, in an Autumn World Cup game, Slovenia won 2-0 in the fortress city, condemning Nigel Worthington’s men to an uphill battle for qualification. Back then, in a gloomy, angry post I condemned the manager for allowing his team to ’regress to the mean’.  It’s a process which I contend is still ongoing. The belief which Lawrie Sanchez instilled in his group of players, the discipline and the professionalism he inculcated, did not disappear immediately after Worthington took over.  Instead it dissipated gradually, like sand running through the Ballymena man’s fingers. Now, following seven matches without a goal and ten without a victory, the side is right back where it started when Sammy McIlroy - enthusiastic, likeable, but tactically naïve - resigned and Lawrie Sanchez took over. Worthi...

It’s just short of a month since Spain lifted the World Cup , but international football is already set to return for the 2010/11 season.  For the original Ireland team, it will be a relief to get back to onfield action, after a summer dominated by other issues. Nigel Worthington’s men are in Montenegro for a warm-up friendly, in advance of September’s European Championship opener against Slovenia.  And warm-up is the operative word.  Temperatures in Podgorica are set to soar into the mid thirties today. The value of these type of occasions is a matter for debate.  Club managers are resentful when players are taken away, in the middle of last minute preparations for the new season, and senior players often pull-out of games which are perceived to be meaningless. Nigel Worthington will argue that it is a useful chance to blood inexperienced squad members before a qualifying campaign, where they might well be needed.  It’s also an opportunity for seasoned pl...

Tomorrow is Armistice Day. Although commemorations are more commonly held on Remembrance Sunday, in the UK, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is marked by two minutes silence, in memory, in particular, of those who died in the First World War. Hostilities ceased, on the Western Front, at that time in 1918, after four years of mechanised warfare had wrought devastation on a generation of young men. Yesterday, whilst recording an episode of Blogtalk NI , I was asked to consider the issue of remembrance and in particular controversy which often becomes attached to the simple act of remembering, in Northern Ireland. In retrospect, I am dissatisfied with the answer I gave and pre-emptively, I would like to add a few thoughts here. Slugger O’Toole provides a useful snapshot of febrile debate which can attend simple, reverential acts, such as wearing a poppy, or laying a wreath. If you have the time, and the patience, there are pages and pages of it. In additio...

I observed only yesterday that Peter Robinson shares with Irish nationalist counterparts the habit of describing unionism, and nationalism for that matter, as a ‘community’, defined by common religion and a certain prescriptive view of culture. The Irish News’ resident hate monger, Brian Feeney, also uses the word ‘unionism’ to denote a perceived ‘community’, which allows him to confer collective responsibility for any act which he deems to have been perpetrated by a ‘unionist’ upon a broad swathe of society, whilst simultaneously distancing another section of society, to which Brian believes himself to belong, from any share of blame. Given that Feeney’s venom is almost exclusively targeted towards ‘unionists’, by his definition, he holds in contempt a mass of people who form the majority of the population of Northern Ireland. Thus, after stumbling upon an idea which makes some sense , i.e. that attacks on Romanian homes are the mirror image of ‘republican’ riots in mid Ulster and “...

Now, how’s this for irony? Brian Feeney has decided to condemn Northern Ireland’s parties for sectarian mudslinging. The poison dwarf has made a career by insisting that all ‘the north’s’ problems are unionism’s fault. His most sneering contempt is reserved for any party aspiring to lift Northern Ireland out of its sectarian morass or attempting to encourage normal politics here. What a contemptible hypocrite!

Warren Feeney’s glancing header helped Northern Ireland to a fourth consecutive World Cup victory at Windsor Park last night. We remain top of the group and although, realistically, an unlikely sequence of results would be required, there is still an outside chance that Nigel Worthington and his team could be competing in South Africa come summer 2010. After Saturday’s high tempo display, this was a rather low key performance from Northern Ireland. In the first half the Slovenes formed marginally the better side. They are a physically imposing outfit and with sloppy Irish passing in midfield, Slovenia found it relatively straightforward to outmuscle Healy and Feeney, who were in receipt of a constant supply of speculative balls along the channels. The second half saw substantial improvement. Although McCann remained a little wasteful in possession and Davis was out of sorts on the left flank, Northern Ireland’s distribution became sharper. Sammy Clingan in particular deserves cre...

From the perspective of a fan of the Northern Ireland football team, I was opposed to the Maze stadium proposals for purely apolitical reasons. The plans would simply have delivered the wrong facility in the wrong place Naturally, as a unionist, I was also deeply unenthused by the prospect of a terrorist museum being erected / preserved at the Maze site. However my apprehension in that regard had little to do with concerns about the suitability of the stadium. The act of building a sports’ venue at the Maze would not have metamorphosised the adjacent hospital into some manner of IRA shrine by some indelible law of nature. Nor will scrapping plans for the stadium necessarily involve shelving the ‘peace and reconciliation centre’ (ho hum), as is becoming increasingly apparent. I can also say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of Northern Ireland supporters have no difficulty sharing a stadium with the GAA (in principle). There may be reservations as regards design implic...

Come Saturday night we will know a lot more about Northern Ireland’s chances of qualifying for the World Cup in South Africa. Come Wednesday night the Green and White Army will have a fair idea whether it is even worth dreaming about an African odyssey come the summer of 2010. Put quite simply, if Northern Ireland lose the first two matches of the campaign, then the rest of the group games are merely for FIFA ranking places, we’re not going to the World Cup. Failing to qualify for South Africa would not, of course, represent abject failure for Nigel Worthington’s squad. Realistically, it would be a fine achievement to top the ‘group within a group’ which also includes Slovenia and Slovakia. Overwhelmingly the Czechs and Poland will be favourites to progress, but in the European Championships we regularly defeated opposition of a similar standard (and better, the eventual champs for goodness sake!) at Windsor Park. Naturally, expectations have risen commensurately. However, North...

Another week, another tirade of abuse aimed at unionists masquerading as political commentary, from Brian Feeney. I am boring myself picking apart Feeney’s nonsense on a regular basis, never mind the readers of this blog. I do not propose to analyse his latest offering, an incoherent and constitutionally confused rant which includes a reference to unionists as “horses’ asses” (yes Brian is that pathetic!). Other than pointing out that not accepting nationalists’ aspirations for a united Ireland does not equate to bigotry (and nor does not following the machinations of the Dail), I want only to linger on one glaring inaccuracy. Feeney decides in the course of his abuse to deliver a sideswipe toward Northern Ireland football supporters. “It may be ‘our wee country’ to unionists (that’s what they call the IFA fans’ website, to attract nationalists) but it’s not.” Leaving aside the sweeping and inaccurate political point, the fans’ website entitled Our Wee Country has no connection t...

If a good dose of sectarian bile is what you’re missing in your life, then Brian Feeney’s weekly Irish News column is a godsend. It is puzzlement to me that a reasonably good newspaper persists in publishing his hate-filled rants. Perhaps they do so out of amusement value. Perhaps people are entertained by the vein bulging derision Feeney heaps on unionists week on week. Those of us with more discretion will feel that Feeney epitomises a type of institutionalised bigotry that already gains far too much exposure in Northern Ireland. That joke isn’t funny anymore. Feeney turns his attentions towards the Maze stadium debate and concludes that anyone who might prefer a national sports stadium to be in Belfast, does so only out of unionist bigotry. It’s not so much this contention that makes Feeney’s piece so offensive, because his entire output consists of making unfounded and sweeping allegations against unionism, but the abusive language which he then persists in putting into the m...

Just to prove that not all nationalists are of Feeney’s ilk O’Neill has drawn to my attention a fine thoughtful article from Conn Corrigan at Open Democracy. The gist is that Corrigan believes the Republic of Ireland should re-enter the Commonwealth, re-establishing a natural link and simultaneously providing a powerful persuader to unionists that a united Ireland would be a friendlier home for those who consider themselves British. In common with O’Neill, I would welcome the Republic rejoining the Commonwealth, but I would contest the notion that there is a compelling argument for a united Ireland or that this would be significantly strengthened by Commonwealth membership. I also believe that there are stronger incentives for remaining part of the UK than Corrigan allows and that civic politics allows for a stronger emotional link with the idea of Britishness than he acknowledges. Nevertheless, the article is scrupulously argued from the nationalist perspective and shows that ther...

Brian Feeney really is becoming almost a parody of himself. He is a venomous little snake, basking in the sunshine of his own conceit, firing off poisonous invective haranguing everyone who isn’t Brian for their rank stupidity. Feeney never provides evidence for anything because the fact that Feeney says it should be authority enough. Now whether Brian is a bigot or not is a judgment which I shall leave to your own discretion, but what is perfectly clear is that he detests unionists. There is no trace of a desire for understanding and tolerance in Feeney’s nationalism. He is of the old fashioned school that views unionism as an illogical aberration born only of stupidity. His rationale seems to be along the lines that if he and his ilk berate unionists for their stupidity for long enough, we will finally see the error of our ways. Feeney’s latest column is certainly a classic of the genre. He lectures unionists for opposing a Human Rights Bill but his argument boils down to ‘you...

Woe betide the man who puts his head over the parapet in Northern Ireland and argues for integration and neutral spaces. The Alliance Party are subjected to vicious attacks from Brian Feeney and today Newton Emerson has been fielding a broadside on Slugger O’Toole for having the temerity to suggest that a neutral ethos needs to be preserved if the Assembly begins to require social housing provision as part of new developments under the 1991 Planning Order . With the carve-up between the TNA in operation, flaunting your symbols is in, separate but equal apartheid is in and the idea that we should look toward a shared future is certainly out. Emerton highlights the lack of will to instigate mixed social housing. He points in particular to the Crumlin Road plan, where a wrangle over the development being allocated to one community, may yet see no social housing at all on the site. A genuinely mixed development in Fermanagh was attacked by Sinn Fein’s Michelle Gildernew because it d...

Brian Feeney really is a venomous little man. He has been ranting at the moderate middle ground once again , lecturing them for their temerity in questioning the Twin Nationalisms Axis. Indeed he explicitly indicates that he would take great delight in the Alliance Party being wound up and voters who do not want to take a constitutional position being disenfranchised. His most withering criticism is reserved for anyone who wishes to see democratic accountability introduced in Northern Ireland. This he maintains will never happen, for the simple reason that Feeney says it won’t. The way he frames his derision for the oppositional system of politics seems to suggest that he views it as some manner of foreign and detrimental British construct, suitable for nowhere but Westminster. Because Mary Harney will survive a no-confidence vote, there is no purpose in opposition and the only politics worth pursuing are those of government. How those who once railed against authority change th...

The carve-up of politics in Northern Ireland can be a debilitating and self-perpetuating phenomenon. As this process has become institutionalised and as the electorate has fallen behind the two parties perpetuating it, so the predominant political commentary in local newspapers has followed the electorate to disseminate largely the viewpoint of the same two parties. And so we have the Irish News, traditional bastion of moderate nationalism, not only modifying its editorial stance to reflect the prevailing currents in nationalism but also giving space to those who simply despise unionists such as Brian Feeney and republican ex-terrorists like Jim Gibney. Gibney’s evaluation of the first 6 months of the Executive is such a doctrinaire Sinn Fein reading that it may as well have issued straight from a press release. Firstly Gibney plays to the crowd and hails the formation of the Executive as a triumph of Sinn Fein’s reasonableness against unionist intransigence. He actually seems to s...

Brian Feeney's latest piece of sectarian bluster was blogged here . O'Neill fascinatingly took apart Feeney's understanding of government and history in Lebanon over on A Pint of Unionist Lite . To surmise, if we were to logically extrapolate the thesis this tiresomely partial columnist advanced, we would conclude that in all divided societies, functioning democracy is not possible because majorities cannot be trusted not to oppress minorities. One such divided society is Ukraine , where Party of the Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych, whose party narrowly lost a bitterly contested snap election, is suggesting that a government of national unity needs to be formed. Perhaps we should send over Mr Feeney and he can provide much needed advice on cosociational models of government to aid the people of Ukraine? Or would we find that there are minorities and minorities and that the pro-Russian population of Ukraine don't quite fit into the type Feeney is so eager to protect?

Brian Feeney consistently produces republican tinged commentary which belies his status as a supposed constitutional nationalist. Quite simply he reviles and detests unionists. Feeney’s latest contribution is effectively his contention that the people of Northern Ireland should forever be denied accountable government or democratic norms, basically because he believes we can’t be trusted with them. It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to uncover Feeney’s subtext. The electorate cannot be allowed to hold the executive to account because unionists are a majority and can’t be trusted: “The arrangement is the price unionists have to pay for making themselves so objectionable over the 50 years they had a free hand here. “ Northern Ireland is forever to be consigned to the status of Lebanon, because Feeney is a MOPE and unionists are in his view irreformable, this despite the fact that every suggestion of introducing opposition at the Assembly has been presaged by an acknow...

One of the most noxiously abhorrent Bloggers on Slugger O’Toole is Sinn Fein mouthpiece and separateness fetishist Chris Donnelly. His grasp of Byzantine Shinnerspeak constructions isn’t complete or cunning enough to distort the underlying poison they contain. Reading Mr Donnelly’s bigotry can provide a clear and undistorted picture amongst the cleverer republicans’ hall-of mirrors. http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/a-november-night-revisited/ Under the guise of “equality rather than neutrality” it is Sinn Fein’s intention to advance a joint-sovereignty agenda under the disingenuous guise of parity for political symbols, thus undermining their rhetorical acceptance of the principle of consent. This process basically involves accepting any un-inclusive aspects of nationalist culture without complaint, because they are legitimate “symbols” of that tradition whilst maintaining persistent attacks on unionist equivalents. So we have a defence of the GAA’s political constitu...