Blasted Boris’s “first priority”?

It’s Thursday evening.

Three month’s gone, and still …

That’s a litre of Malibu. We’re onto the hard stuff now.

See also:

http://redfellow.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/so-boris-hows-the-policy-going/

http://redfellow.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/a-toast-to-boris/

The old ones are the best ones

Everyone knows the old Ulster crack:

“Are you a Prodasdant atheist or a Carthlick one?”

Well, it’s come true.

Professor Roy Greenslade, journalist supreme and former newspaper editor, went to Rath Mealtain, a.k.a. Ramelton, on Lough Swilly, to bury his atheist mother, Joan. Commiserations all round.

Then the fun began.

Cue Patsy McGarry in today’s Irish Times:

A humanist funeral service for Joan Greenslade took place last Monday but, her son told The Irish Times, that “according to the church people I approached — and underlined by the undertaker — an atheist cannot be buried (in Donegal) because the churches, Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian, own the graveyards. Therefore, unless one is willing to compromise one’s beliefs by agreeing to a religious service, it is impossible to be buried.”

He spoke to a former Church of Ireland rector on the matter who advised him it was “out of the question” for his mother to be buried in a Church of Ireland graveyard there.

Solution:

His mother was buried in Derry on Tuesday.

Ah! The progressive Six Counties!

Except:

The city council’s cemeteries department, when asked if they could bury an atheist, said they had different areas in the municipal graveyard for Catholics, Protestants and even Muslims.

Asked whether they were starting an atheist section for Mrs Greenslade the reply was: “No, we’re putting her in with the Protestants.”

Now let the exculpations begin:

• The C of I Bishop’s spokesman is “mystified” about any “strictures” on burials in Churchyards.
• The Catholic spokesman seems to be quite breezy: ownership and administration of its graveyards could vary from parish to parish and diocese to diocese. “Such diversity is one of the glories of the Catholic Church.”

Can anyone point the way to the Enlightenment?