A smokey kipper

Nigel Farage’s regal progress was yesterday checked on the Royal Mile. Tee hee! It came down to both sides — Farage versus the “Campaign for Radical Independence” — declaring the other was “fascist” and “racist”. Pot-ism meet kettle-ism.

Let’s not get involved in the semiotics of racism and UKIP. Suffice it to quote a nice throw-away that’s been doing the rounds of late: the English Defence League backs UKIP, presumably because of their shared views on sustainable farming.

However, Farage is quoted in the Guardian‘s story:

“We’ve proved we can get votes in Wales, England and Northern Ireland. We’re still untested in Scotland,” he said. “We’ve not had an opportunity to test Ukip policies with the Scottish people for a very long time.” Asked about Ukip’s chances, he was optimistic. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we did quite creditably.”

At last! a germ of testable UKIP “truth”

UKIP’s “elected” presence in Northern Ireland amounts to one local councillor and one Assembly Member:

• David McNarry was elected the UUP AM for Strangford. There was a rancorous bust-up in the UUP. McNarry was  unstoolled as Vice-Chair of the Assembly Education Committee. He got huffy; and was disciplined by the UUP. It was made clear by Mike Nesbitt that McNarry was unlikely to have the UUP whip restored. McNarry went rogue; and last October announced he had joined UKIP.
• Henry Reilly was also UUP, but is now the duly-elected UKIP Councillor for The Mournes. His address seems to be also that for UKIP NI — which could imply a one-man band. Councillor Reilly is currently involved in a spat with his local press:

A high-profile councillor has been criticised after claims he described regional newspaper journalists as “Provos”.

Cllr Henry Reilly, who is chairman of the UK Independence Party in Northern Ireland, has been urged to withdraw his comments which came at a meeting of Newry and Mourne District Council.

The National Union of Journalists has condemned his comments, saying they were “entirely unacceptable”…

Journalists at the meeting represented the Newry Reporter, Mourne Observer, Newry Democrat, County Down Outlook and the Armargh Down Observer.

NUJ president Barry McCall said the journalists concerned had no right of reply at the meeting and should not have been subjected to verbal abuse.

For the record, at the last Assembly election UKIP stood six candidates and garnered the grand total of 4,152 votes — six-tenths of one per cent of the goal first preference poll. The Kippers didn’t manage quite so well at Council level.

Rejoice! TINA’s back!

It jumps out of the screen (or, if you can find a full text, the page):

If there was another way I would take it. But there is no alternative.

Yes: David Cameron has tripped off to Keighley and made a speech, saying … well, absolutely nothing. Except that he is the current possessor of Ma Thatcher’s handbag, and is prepared to filch the odd trifle therefrom.

Except:

That’s from 1980, when the Tory government was already heading further and further into the slough of despond.

Consider this, from Anthony Wells’s ukpollingreport:

Thatcher’s key economic speech of 1o October 1980 was her  Conference “not for turning” address to the Tory faithful:

If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they are prepared to will the means to keep it great, a great nation we shall be, and shall remain. So, what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again”

And Yogi Berra is still with us (now in his later 80s).

The problem common to Thatcher in 1980, and Cameron in 2013 is: who is their audience?

It is, in short, their own party — and in both cases the speeches are defence mechanisms, self-defences against an increasingly unhappy and fractious parliamentary party. We need to recall that in 1980 Thatcher was not, by any means, the autocratic Tory leader that Galtieri, his Argie military cronies, and near on a thousand unnecessary corpses made her.

Cameron’s electoral problem

It isn’t just the Eastleigh business. The 1979 General Election meant that Thatcher’s Tory benches included 22 Scottish MPs (with 31.4% of Scottish votes) — Cameron has just the one (and 16.7% of the votes). In 1979 Northern Ireland returned five (of the ten in total) MPs as Ulster Unionists (with 36.6% of the poll) — on all matters economic, the UU MPs voted with the Tory Whip: today there is not a single Ulster Unionist MP remaining, despite Cameron’s explicit involvement and rebranding of UCUNF.

Let’s continue.

In September 2012 The Economist had a definitive description of:

The great divide
Economically, socially and politically, the north is becoming another country

The piece went still further back, and deeper into the socio-economics of English history:

The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In 1965 men in the north were 16% more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south. By 2008 they were 20% more likely to, according to a study published last year in the British Medical Journal. This is not just because poor people die young: rich northerners apparently live shorter lives than their southern peers…

Whereas government spending is spread fairly evenly across the country — nurses and teachers are needed roughly in proportion to the population — private-sector growth has been heavily concentrated, mostly in and around London. Between 1997 and 2010 gross value-added, a measure of output, grew by 61% in the three northern regions. In London and the South East, it shot up by 92%. According to a study by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester, the state accounted, directly and indirectly, for 64% of the jobs created in the north between 1998 and 2007, against just 38% in the south.

It also considers the electoral impact:

The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, points out that Conservatives held two-fifths of northern seats in 1951. They now hold less than a third, mostly in rural areas. In the cities, and in former-coal mining areas, the party is all but invisible. In July the Sheffield Conservative Party was forced to relocate to nearby Rotherham, as it is so short of cash…

And, of course, so much of what ConDem austerity economics has done disproportionately impacts upon the North and the devolved regions: the attacks on public employment, the squeeze on municipal budgets, replacing poor employment with even poorer-paid part-time work, lower productivity, rack-renting public housing, energy costs, transport costs … What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?

Cameron’s revolting women

This is the most jaw-dropping of the lot: women have turned against the Tories. In every post-War election until 2005 women voters preferred the Tories: it has been a declining gap (it was +12 in 1974), but in the last two general Elections, it has reversed. When one digs down into the most recent YouGov/Sunday Times poll, we find the gender gap is now a chasm:

Note that: a 12 point gender deficit for the Tories.

A curious beast

Peter Hoskin on ConHome finds only luke-warm words for Cameron’s speech (and it was an extended one) today, at Keighley:

David Cameron’s speech on the economy today is a curious beast. Here we have the Prime Minister pronouncing on growth, competition, debt and all that – but it has a thin flavour to it, as though it’s just an appetiser for the Budget in a couple of weeks. There are no new policy announcements, nor anything we haven’t really heard before. Yet perhaps that is the point: Mr Cameron emphasises, à la Lady Thatcher, that “there is no alternative” to the Coalition’s current plan. He speaks of consistency and continuity. It reads like a message telling everyone – from the restless Tory backbenches to Ed Balls and Vince Cable – not to expect a change in course.

That addresses the “what” of the speech (or, perhaps the “what-not?”), but not the more telling “where” (Keighley!)  and “why?” (because he’s dans le merde!). On the other hand, that’s precisely what Nick Robinson has caught on (and saying far more succinctly and elegantly than Malcolm managed here):

Perhaps most revealing, though, is that he feels the need to make this speech at all and who it is aimed at. It is a restatement of the government’s central economic purpose aimed at:

• his own party, which is why he is borrowing Margaret Thatcher’s language
• the North of England
• and women

Look at this paragraph to see what I mean :

“I know things are tough right now. Families are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. Some are just a pay-cheque away from going into the red. Parents are worried about what the future holds for their children. Whole towns are wondering where their economic future lies. And I know that is especially true for people here in Yorkshire and in many parts of the north of our country who didn’t benefit properly from the so-called boom years and worry they won’t do so again. But I’m here to say that’s not going to happen. Because we have a plan to get through these difficulties – and to get through them together.”

A man! A plan! A canal! Panama!

As good a palindrome as you’ll get in these parts to remind us just how much of British politicking involves going round in circles and disappeared up one’s own … canal.

The rule of Humbuggery

I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom.

That’s yer eck-shul Churchill, that is. De reel fing. Pukka!

And the greatest exponent of Humbuggery is, as always, the All-powerful State.

A Malcolmian aside

Here’s one worth the asking: when did the United Kingdom abolish feudalism?

Well, not even yet. There are bods wandering the world, still puffing out chests and conning the natives they are of some importance, because they are allowed to flourish a baronial title.

But, on another level, after 9th June 2000, with the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act. As Clause 1 of the Act has it:

The feudal system of land tenure, that is to say the entire system whereby land is held by a vassal on perpetual tenure from a superior is, on the appointed day, abolished. 

Humbug 101

Here’s a simple example, to become  a British citizen one must demonstrate capabilities in English, for example:

take and pass an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) course in English with citizenship to demonstrate your knowledge of language and life in the UK, before you apply for naturalisation as a British citizen.

Mr Spock would furrow his Vulcan brow and mutter, “Illogical, Captain”. Surely that should be the qualification for English citizenship. For British citizenship it ought to be a degree of fluency in Welsh (or at a pinch Cornish). For Scottish citizenship, the Guid Scots Tongue or Gàidhlig. And then there’s Ian Adamson and his Ullans.

Advanced study

Once upon  a time we had a Freedom of Information Act. The laudable aim was the citizen should have a right to know what the public authorities, operating in her/his name, knew and were up to.

Officialdom and bureaucracy loathed it.

So Humbuggery set about by-passing it by any means, fair or foul.

An obvious means was to classify anything that wasn’t screwed down as “commercial confidentiality”. This could vary from government Department to Department, largely depending on whether or not the responsible Minister wanted to keep a job. That one was traipsed out, recently and notoriously, in the cover-up over the West Coast Main Line:

The independent report into the fiasco of the franchise for the West Coast Main Line, which runs through the West Midlands, was altered by the Department for Transport (DfT) before it was published, MPs were told.

There had been “redactions” by the department to “remove the identities” of certain civil servants involved in the flawed franchise bidding process, said businessman Sam Laidlaw, the author of the report…

Mr Laidlaw told the committee he presented his report to the DfT on November 28, the department published it on December 6, and there had been redactions to his report made by the department which were “a matter for the department”.

Asked about the changes made, Mr Laidlaw said they were done “to protect the commercial confidentiality of bidders” and “to remove the identity of certain individuals”.

“Redactions”

Now there‘s an interesting term.

As far as Malcolm can recall it is a respectable academic expression meaning no more, no less than “editing”, particularly in the sense of cleaning up meaning and expression for a final published version. As the OED has it:

1.
a. The action of bringing or putting into a definite form; (now) spec. the working or drafting of source material into a distinct, esp. written, form. Usu. with into, (occas.) to.
b. The action or process of revising or editing text, esp. in preparation for publication; (also) an act of editorial revision.
c. A new version of a text; a new edition; spec. an abridged version.
2. The action of driving back; resistance, reaction. Obs. rare.

That, of course, is the Oxford English Dictionary: the term “redaction” implies assisting the reader’s comprehension. In British officialese, of course, the term means precisely the opposite.

At least in Tristram Shandy ,the blank pages and other devices convey some meaning. Compare and contrast the BBC’s Pollard Report (as right). For a prime example of Humbuggery consider this from the first paragraph [1] of that BBC document:

The BBC sought advice from external counsel to identify text that should be redacted in accordance with the legal grounds for redaction. The proposed redactions were considered by members of the Executive Board before being reviewed and approved by a sub-committee of the BBC Trust to ensure the Trust was satisfied that these were in line with the expectations of transparency previously set out. Then, individuals who participated in the Review were provided with an opportunity to read the material in redacted form and make representations concerning the redactions that had been applied. Those representations were then considered, with advice again taken from external counsel, before a final package of proposed redactions was reviewed by members of the Executive Board and approved by the same sub-committee of the BBC Trust.

At a quick check, that’s six separate layers of bureaucratic scrutiny and Humbuggery, before anything could be made public.

Secret courts bill

No, let’s no go there — yet.

Let’s start instead in 1166, at the Assize of Clarendon. Whether or not Goveian history embraces this seminal event, it certainly featured in Malcolm’s schooling. [On the TCD History course, it reappeared, courtesy of Stubbs's Charters.] The significance was that it, in effect, “nationalised” the law of the land; and it led to trial on evidence, before juries, rather than the mumbo-jumbo of trials by ordeal or battle. It was, of course, something of a power-grab — not just taking authority from the baronial courts, but also from the Church’s “kingdom within a kingdom”. King Henry II was destroying an existing arrangement; but also reaching back for an older one: the juries of the Saxon tunmoots.

The Assize of Clarendon was the first of many small advances to creating the Rule of Law that we have known and loved.

The processes of recent years — getting rid of the flummeries of Latin expression and the like, but, above all, the idea of human rights — have made the law more accessible. In a world ruled by Humbuggery all that has to be put into reverse.

Yesterday the Commons retreated on so much of historical procedures. In four votes, LibDem MPs — in grotesque rejection of anything that could be “liberal” or “democratic” — were whipped to support the Tory Humbuggers. Outside Westminster the average LibDem activists must be weeping into their skinny lattes:

Its’s not been the easiest 24 hours to be a Liberal Democrat. It was very hard to watch the majority of our MPs vote to remove the right to a fair trial in civil cases where national security is deemed to be a factor.  Just seven MPs voted in favour of amendments advised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The fact that the JCHR had a different view from the Government should surely have raised a huge red flag. An even bigger signal that our MPs were on the wrong course was the fact that Labour were voting in favour of the JCHR amendments. The Bill as it stood was too illiberal for the Party who thought it was ok to lock people up for 3 months without charge.

I spent a bit of yesterday talking to some MPs. I appreciated the time they spent discussing with me but despaired at the way they had swallowed some of the lines they had been given on the Bill. I was asked what my response would be to the “we’re paying money to terrorists and can’t prove our innocence” line. Well, my instinctive counter to that was to say:

If I’m suing you cos you tortured me and you put up a defence that I can’t see, how am I supposed to let the Judge know that you are talking hogwash?

I have been told today that a Very Clever Person thinks that’s a good summary of what this Bill means, and why the shredder is the only place for it. There is no amendment that can make it acceptable.

Thank you for that, Caron Lindsay at LibDemVoice: it’s warming to know your party had a shred of decency left. As she goes on:

At one point, our Dr Julian Huppert asked a very important question of Ken Clarke  about whether the Bill covered civil habeas corpus – whether people could be locked up without being told the reason why. Clarke didn’t  know and he laughed about the fact that he had to get it checked out.

We really have reached the pits. The shivering spine recalls it was Hendrik Verwoerd, the primary architect of apartheid, who responded to British government criticism by saying he would give up his restrictive legislation in exchange for the British tolerated Northern Ireland Special Powers Act. That Act was designed to give maximum, even unbridled power to the Ulster Unionist ascendancy. It permitted closing pubs and clubs at a whim, banning meetings and gatherings, closing roads, occupying premises, destroying any building without any sure compensation, enforcing oaths of allegiance (the Lady in Malcolm’s Life had to take one), prohibiting inquests, outlawing “false reports or make false statements by word of mouth or in writing, or in any newspaper, periodical, book, circular, or other printed publication” (the judge of such “falseness” being the persons complained about). All to be enforced by “ if a male, to be once privately whipped”. If all that wasn’t enough,

any act if done without lawful authority or without lawful authority or excuse is an offence against the regulations, the burden of proving that the act was done with lawful authority or with lawful authority or excuse shall rest on the person alleged to be guilty of the offence.

Humbuggery hasn’t gone that far, yet …

Except this new bill allows any — any — trial which could cause political embarrassment to be held behind closed doors, unreported, with all involved (except the arraigned) declared Persil-clean and hoovered by the security services.

As the Guardian editorial has it:

The justice and security bill was cooked up in rage and embarrassment after a run of cases revealed, or threatened to reveal, UK collusion in torture and wrongdoing. There was Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who British judges ruled ended up being tortured in a Moroccan jail with the connivance of British intelligence, and then a string of others whom ministers preferred to pay off and shut up before the facts could emerge. Rather than asking what corruption of culture had embroiled a once-decent state in such indecent things, the government’s instinctive response was to ask the judges to hear the arguments in secret. When the supreme court said no in ringing terms – Lord Hope warning secrecy “cut across absolutely fundamental principles, such as the right to be confronted by one’s accusers and the right to know the reasons for the outcome” – ministers again refused to stop and rethink, but instead resolved to rewrite the law.

That editorial refers back to a Liberty pamphlet, written by Jesse Norman (now a Tory MP) which celebrates Churchill’s stand for human rights, and is prefaced by a quotation from his Fulton, Missouri, speech:

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Oddly enough, Mr Norman does not seem to have found himself able to vote, or express a view in Monday’s debate on the Secret Courts bill.

The numbers game

As Malcolm was saying elsewhere, there’s a smidgeon of suspicion over the division voting for the Tory attempt to reboot the constituency gerrymander. It came out at 334 to 292 to accept the Lords amendments, so nothing changes until at least 2018.

What’s a bit odd is there are 303 Tory MPs. This must have been a heavy three-line Whip, so we are ten or a dozen short. Meanwhile the combined Opposition is around 347 (omitting, by convention, the Speaker and his Deputy). We further deduct another five for the abstentionist Sinn Feiners and their Mid-Ulster vacancy: we’re now at 342. All the minority parties seem to have piled in — even the DUP who, we were told, were getting serious courtship over the weekend, up to and including an exemption of Northern Ireland from the cull.

That leaves just eight non-Tories unaccounted for. Even if all those were “paired” (and the tellers for both sides would be, so cancel out), there are four Tories off-piste, presumably abstaining. That would match the reports from earlier today that four Tories — mostly named “Davi(e)s” — were trailed to be crossing to vote with the Opposition.

We also now know that Wee Willie Hague was one of the Tory absentees for today’s vote. He’s away to DC and wishing Hilary Clinton a fond farewell — so presumably would be “paired”.

One other missing name (so far) is Helen Grant, the A-list replacement for Anne Widdecombe as MP for Maidstone and The Weald. She’s on the payroll, as understrapper for Women and Equalities at the Minister of Justice. This one certainly needs explanation.

Saying “different things”, South Antrim

There was a brief note on ConHome:

Boundary changes blow

“David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.” - The Times (£)

 Malcolm hadn’t seen this elsewhere, apart from below the fold on page 17. So he thinks The Times pay-wall should give way:

Unionists deal blow to Tory boundary plan

Roland Watson Political Editor

David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.

The Tories need support from across the minor parties if they are to see through the changes after Nick Clegg said he would no longer support them following the defeat last summer of his plans to reform the House of Lords.

But William McCrea, the DUP MP for South Antrim, said he would not back the changes, which would cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600, and in Northern Ireland from 18 to 16.

Mr McCrea also told The Times that the boundary review process should be halted quickly to prevent public money being wasted.

Government sources who have tried to canvass support from the DUP said that “different Unionists say different things”.

The Tories would need all of the eight DUP MPs and six SNP MPs to have the chance of overhauling the 312 combined tally of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Mr Cameron had been pressed by the 1922 Committee to force boundary changes through before the election, thus boosting Tory hopes. But Labour and Liberal Democrat peers are expected to win a vote today that would delay any changes until 2018.

Dr McCrea may have the dogma, even if the hair has AWOLed over the years. Explaining the abstruse connection must await the end of this post.

The devil is in the numerical detail

Anyone with half a wit knew that, once Clegg had pulled the plug, the baby was out with the bath-water. Subsequently Paul Goodman came up on ConHome to regurgitate his calculations, which amount to 320 for the Tory gerrymander and 321 against. His punch-line acknowledges potentially-defaulting Nadines:

On the darker side, the biggest Commons obstacle to the new boundaries could be Conservative MPs themselves.  More gain than lose from the changes, but not all losers can be guaranteed to vote for their likely or certain removal from the next Parliament.

Doing the maths while minding mice at the crossroads? [See The Hair of the Dogma, page 171, and all is apparent.]

A ‘minor’ study in relativity

From the running strap-line, across the BBC News website:

LATEST:

Nine police officers were injured and 18 people were arrested during minor rioting in Belfast last night

Now, if it had been in Brixton, or Tottenham …

What’s in a name?

… That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Juliet’s soliloquy, (II, ii, 44-45), of course and now so clichéed as to need an occasional reference for respectability.

And then there’s the vexed question of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. In English, this is “Northern Ireland”  — though the most northernly part of Ireland is Malin Head, which is in Donegal — and so, in the parlance, paradoxically in the “South”. Nor, of course, is a Northern Irishman exclusively an “Ulsterman” — because Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan are in the ancient province of Ulaidh, but are not in Northern Ireland.

My passport’s green

Even among the northern (missing capital deliberately so — see more on this below) Irish there is no agreement on what one is: British? Irish? Northern Irish? Ulster Scots? When Penguin Books included Seamus Heaney with Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon, in the The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, he was the one who famously objected:

Don’t be surprised if I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.

He made up for it, though, at Dublin Castle in May 2011.

The People with No Name

That is the title of a fine book by Patrick Griffin, in Malcolm’s view the best account of the Ulster protestant diaspora who occupied and extended the Western frontier of the American colonies. It is subtitled: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689-1764.

The opening paragraph of that book illustrates the nominal confusions with a variety of names:

BETWEEN 1718 and 1775, more than 100,000 men and women journeyed from the Irish province of Ulster to the American colonies. Their migration represented the single largest movement of any group from the British Isles to British North America during the eighteenth century. In a first wave beginning in 1718 and cresting in 1729, these people outnumbered all others sailing across the Atlantic, with the notable exception of those bound to the New World in slave ships. By sheer force of numbers, this earliest generation of migrants had a profound influence on the great transformations of the age. Even before they left Ulster, they contributed to the triumph of the Protestant cause in Ireland, paving the way for an unprecedented extension of English power into the kingdom. They also figured prominently in the British transatlantic trading system by producing linen, one of the most important commodities exchanged throughout the empire. Sailing when they did, Ulster’s Presbyterian migrants played a formative role in the transition from an English to a British Atlantic. Before their migration, Puritans and adventurers leaving England during the seventeenth century for the North American mainland and the Caribbean dominated the transatlantic world. After men and women from Ulster boarded ships for America, the cultural parameters of the Atlantic broadened, as they and thousands of land-hungry voyagers from the labor-rich peripheries of the British Isles sought their fortunes in a vast, underpopulated New World. In America, Ulster’s men and women again had a hand in a number of defining developments of the period, including the displacement of the continent’s indigenous peoples, the extension of the frontier, the growth of ethnic diversity, and the outbreak of religious revivals. In the abstract, therefore, the group contributed to the forces and processes that dwarfed the individual but yoked together disparate regions into a broad Atlantic system.

The editor of Gaelscéal, Ciarán Dunbar, has picked up Griffin’s essential thesis, inverted it, and now puts up a ruminative thread on Slugger O’Toole:

Whilst working on Gaelscéal on Tuesday last I realized that I did not know the correct Irish term for ‘Northern Irish,’ so I quickly checked focal.ie, the ‘National Terminology Database’ for Irish.

That was a fruitless journey for they had no such term, I requested they provide one.

The term was one I have strangely never needed in Irish and I have never thought about it to date.

On the day, we simply used the English term in single speech marks.

That night I heard two terms used on TG4, ‘Tuaisceart-Éireannaigh’, agus ‘Éireannaigh Thuaisceartacha’, both translating into English as  ‘Northern Irish’ but with a subtle difference in meaning in Irish which the English doesn’t capture.

One implies a mere geographical distinction, the other, perhaps, a clear political distinction.

A meaningless distinction for most but one could argue that constitutional  future of the Northern Ireland state rests on this distinction, whether the Northern Irish are ‘Tuaisceart-Éireannaigh’ or ‘Éireannaigh Thuaisceartacha’ at the end of the day.

Malcolm queries whether English cannot capture precisely the distinction between Tuaisceart-Éireannaigh, and Éireannaigh Thuaisceartacha by doing what he did above: capitalising or not the “n” of “northern”.

Proconsul

Beyond that, the thread provided Malcolm with a bit of further diversion, the Latin version of wikipedia. Yes, indeed: there is one — even if somewhat abbreviated for the present. And here is its definitive statement on the topic:

Hibernia Septentrionalis, quondam (H)ultonia (Anglice: Northern Ireland, Hibernice: Tuaisceart Éireann) est provincia in Hibernia et Regno Britanniarum. Caput est Belfastium et dux gubernationis est Petrus Robinson; ille est dux factionis civilis qui appellatur Factio Unionistarum Democratica. Successit Reverendum Ioannem Paisley, qui abdicavit in Iunio 2008. Proconsul est Martinus McGuinness. Ille est membrum factionis civilis Sinn Fein (Latine: Nos Ipsi), olim dux Exercitus Republicani Hibernici.

Apart from stroking Malcolm’s self-esteem (that even after half-a-century, his TCD Latin, ever so rusty, can still cope), there were several amusements in that.

One was Máirtín Mag Aonghusa transmogrified from the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland into the far more concise, even poetic, ‘proconsul’. Which instantly directed Malcolm’s butterfly mind to Kipling:

The overfaithful sword returns the user
His heart’s desire at price of his heart’s blood.
The clamour of the arrogant accuser
Wastes that one hour we needed to make good
This was foretold of old at our outgoing;
This we accepted who have squandered, knowing,
The strength and glory of our reputations
At the day’s need, as it were dross, to guard
The tender and new-dedicate foundations
Against the sea we fear — not man’s award.

The subject there was originally Sir Alfred Milner, who was the British High Commissioner in South Africa during the Boer War. The “Oh, gosh!” thing is, stripping from one context to the other, the elevation of  Máirtín to ‘proconsul’ almost works.

“Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”

Moving swiftly on, there is the conceit of Petrus Robinson, dux Factionis Unionistarum Democraticae (3rd declension, feminine: genitive case!). Thus rendering the DUP into Latin gives us the acronym FUD:

generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor’s product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.

In the case of the DUP, precisely.

That was easy

Malcolm enjoys his sallies into Slugger O’Toole’s fragrant boudoir. At its best (and that’s frequently), Mick Fealty’s little empire provides some of the best on-line discussions on things Northern Irish and beyond. There’s been an uplifting one, these last few days, on Eric Hobsbawm, no less. Any thread initiated by Brian Walker is well worth the study.

It is a very well-run joint, too: disrespect and naughty words earn a yellow, red or — perish the thought! —black card.

Yet in Sluggerdom Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies is never far below what is actually said. This is, after all, a place of resort for the knuckle-draggers and sash-wearers of the most unreconstructed statelet in western Europe. Their wrap-the-green-flag-round-me bhoys opposite numbers are none the better.

At which point, temptation strikes. And Malcolm inevitably surrenders:

For the record, Malcolm’s current score is two yellows and one red — largely because there is at least one Slugger administrator with an abysmally-low threshold of irony.

A bit of background here:

• The Ulster Unionist Party is as fissiparous as orgiastic amoeba in eukaryotic ecstasy.
• The UUP is engaged in one of its twice-monthly spats.
• David McNarry, the MLA for Strangford is flying the coop, into the arms of Nigel Farage’s little coterie of miscreants, gay-bashers, chauvinists and golfers.
• Malcolm was awake much of the night with gout. He was not a happy bunny this morning.

And so to the post:

Which means, apart from here, that thought will never been seen again.

No road through Knockmore

Here’s an awful warning:

That’s from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch web-site. The RAIB is — finally — being allowed into the secret, two months on.

Yesterday evening, the BBC News website had picked up the story and published this:

More than 100 people escaped injury after a train ran over a section of damaged railway in County Antrim.
However, the full incident, which took place on 28 June, was not reported to an investigation team for two months.
The driver was unable to stop before the first of six carriages had run onto an unsupported section of track.
The train was bound for the Irish open golf tournament, over a line not normally used for passenger services.
The train did not derail and was reversed away.
The Rail Accident investigation Branch (RAIB) is looking into the incident at Knockmore, outside Lisburn at 07:05 on 28 June.

So that’s all right, then?

Not really.

At first sight this looks like a repeat of another near disaster when the Broadmeadow Viaduct, near Malahide, north of Dublin, was washed away. That was on the main Dublin-Belfast line (and on a major commuter route). Iarnród Éireann hadn’t inspected the viaduct, which was known from previous erosion to have stability problems, for three days.

The Knockmore line, of course, does not have that strategic importance — though, arguably, it has considerable potential:

It could provide a corridor through Antrim to the north coast and to Derry. Currently the intention remains to upgrade the A5 trunk road  from Derry to the south. This involves a total cost of at least £850 million — that estimate is already three years old. And only last week, the lead constructor, Mouchel, went bust. Meanwhile the fragile rail link along the spectacular coastline of County Londonderry is closed for many months — while the grand and long-overdue sum of £75 million is spent on it. Do the comparisons.

Beyond that, Belfast has two under-used airports (City of Derry is NI’s unsatisfactory and even more under-used third — it is right on the rail line, too): the Westminster Northern Ireland committee is taking minutes and lasting months chewing on all this. Dublin airport, by comparison, is heavily patronised, and — until recent cut-backs — was going to get a second runway, long enough for direct flights to the Far East. The Knockmore branch runs immediately behind the terminal at Belfast International: it could easily connect with central Belfast, and Dublin (particularly so, if and when the Metro North plan were implemented).

Politics. Politics. Politics.

The old Unionist regime at Stormont disgracefully ripped up the Ulster rail network. There may have been an economic case for retrenchment and “rationalisation”; but the main issue was to break unnatural connections with those damnable Fenians in the Free State. So a whole swathe of natural links were abruptly severed. Anyway, the motor car was the future.

From that, notice how , when the Malahide viaduct went down, so did any north-south link. Any rolling stock north was stuck there.

That map is unfair in that it omits the real improvements in the Dublin commuter belt — unlike Belfast which is liable to a daily tail-back along every arterial route. North of the Dublin commuter lines there isn’t a millimetre of electrified track; and any mass transport system to alleviate the Belfast photochemical smog — an airport tram, for one obvious example — is systematically rubbished. The present “dynamic” pie-in-the-sky is a “rapid-transit”, based — believe it or not — on Las Vegas. It amounts to a bendy-bus.

Knockmore is a symptom of wilful neglect

In this climate, the rail sector in Northern Ireland will continue to decline and decay.

Malcolm is left bemused left bemused by the bizarre insouciance evident in the Knockmore incident:

• A span of some fifteen sleepers and tracks was unsupported. A train was seemingly sent down that track, which is usually-unauthorised for passenger service, apparently without proper inspection. For heaven’s sake, were there any doubt s over the security of the line, why not run a pilot loco along it? That (and proper daily inspection by linesmen) was the Victorian approach — and still (linesmen apart) the norm for many lines.

• The collapse and a near calamity has gone two months without being reported or (apparently) investigated.

Questions (as they say) must be asked.

Butch

Please, Miss! It woz that Andrew Pierce what started it!

Indeed, in the Mail, a week ago:

Mr Balls was economics adviser, while Mr Miliband was a mere special adviser. Ed Balls, now 45, loved to lord it over his staff, just as he does today. 

Colleagues at the time recall he treated Mr Miliband, 42, like the ‘office boy’. Mr Balls liked Mr Miliband to make his coffee every morning. ‘He loved to bark out “coffee time”,’ says one well-informed source. ‘Ed sheepishly got up to make it.’ 

Even today, to the obvious irritation of Miliband, he is the one who always buys coffee for Balls and is often seen queuing at Westminster coffee bars such as the ones in Portcullis House. Balls never buys Miliband a cup. The reason has never been unexplained — and students of Sigmund Freud would struggle to give an answer.

 Out of little beans, great cantinas and cantatas grow:

What a performance!

And that’s only Part One.

Our domestic Kaffeeklatsch were back in business for PMQs today, and Cameron reckoned the coffee-buying showed:

That’s just how assertive and butch the leader of the Opposition really is.

Even Tom Chivers, at the Telegraph blogs, remained unimpressed:

A few thoughts there: one, is “butchness” an especially desirable quality in a politician? Or is it only for leaders of the opposition? Should we expect, for instance, under-secretaries of state to be faintly camp, while, say, the Chief Whip should be a muscle Mary? And is making coffee or otherwise a good indicator of one’s level of butchness? One wonders at the sexual politics in the Cameron household, as Dave veers desperately away from the cafetière each Sunday morning, eager to maintain his reputation as a stone rather than a sponge.

Mark Ferguson, at LabourList, made a very telling and unpleasant comparison, suggesting that this show of macho strength could amount to Cameron’s Mission Accomplished moment. Reminder (probably unnecessary, but still):

Meanwhile, let’s divert to the OED for a clarification:

butch, n.1

slang (orig. U.S.).

A tough youth or man; a lesbian of masculine appearance or behaviour. Also attrib.or as adj. In the U.S. also applied to a type of short haircut, crew-cut.

Yep. Thought so.

Oh, Mary Ann!

There is, as always, a bit of history to these things. Cameron’s is not a happy one:

What a leader doesn’t say is often more telling than what he does say. When Ed Miliband failed to turn on Tony Blair’s booers last week, we learned that he wasn’t prepared to stand up for Labour’s most successful leader. When David Cameron failed to turn on the sexist boors a couple of weeks before, we learned more than we wanted to about his attitude to women.

In response to a question from Tory MP Nadine Dorries, he began, “I know the Honourable Lady is extremely frustrated,” at which point the Labour guffaws erupted. Instead of berating the lads-mag louts, he chuckled, “I think I’m going to give up on this one.” Dorries was left humiliated: not only was she demeaned by sexual innuendo but her leader neither stood up for her nor answered her question. She sat looking mortified, chewing her nails, for the rest of PMQs. Up in the press gallery, I felt mortified for her too.

It’s good that Cameron apologised yesterday both for that incident and for having told the shadow Chief Secretary, Angela Eagle, to “Calm down, dear”. Channelling Michael Winner is never a good electoral ploy; when you look as if you are patronising 51 per cent of your potential voters, it’s political madness.

Mary Ann Sieghart does not feature in Malcolm’s Top Twenty of commentators, but she is mining a vein of truth there. Now we can add to her 51% all those “new age” men who are not too proud to make, or buy the coffee.

Don’t you bother your pretty little heads

Before we wrap up here, it’s worth considering what Cameron for women did in his reshuffle.

Accepting that Theresa May was immoveable (despite clearly having pissed off her junior ministers, who seem to have begged — with success — for a move), the other three women in the Cabinet were all shuffled off into supporting roles:

¶ Maria Miller as Culture Secretary. This is no big job now the Olympics are done, and the Leveson fall-out will be handled above her pay-grade. Probably a mistake, because this looks like a lady who could take ‘em all on.

¶ Justine Greening demoted and sidelined at International Development. Think Clare Short: this job looks more and more like a parking spot. With the Tory right so exercised about Indian space programmes etc., DfID comes down to emergency and rescue only, with lots of lovely air-miles attached.

and

¶ Theresa Villiers hand-holding in Northern Ireland. Her brief amounts to (1) be nice to each other; (2) no, you’re not getting differential Corporation Tax; but, (3) yes, we are cutting back on the hand-outs — so get over it.

Owen Paterson found the job a doodle, allowing him oodles of spare time to paddle his own canoe in home waters, to preen and groom the ConHome crowd, and obsess about non-Northern Irish issues. So he gave us his best on pylons in Shropshire; scrapping Green taxes, and all energy subsidies (he has a brother-in-law to load the bullets for him); damning wind-farms; dashing for gas, even if it requires lots of fracking; gassing badgers; building the third runway; and some nifty backstairs footwork on Lords reform. Yes, Mr Paterson found a lot of time away from the office.

And, for an afterthought …

Perhaps Dave has some explaining to do.

Because we have the evidence.