The Supreme Court ruling on the Ashers Bakery case was a chance to tighten up Northern Ireland’s unique law against ‘political discrimination’, which can and has been interpreted to mean just about anything.
In one way the court obliged, finding political discrimination had not occurred for the same reason religious and sexuality-based discrimination had not occurred - that is, because Ashers would not have baked a gay cake for anyone, including someone politically opposed to gay marriage (people opposed to gay marriage order gay cakes all the time. They’re just so delicious.)
However, in another way the court made things worse, affirming at the highest level that the law against political discrimination is a “constitutional” underpinning of Northern Ireland, no less, and that the range of political opinion it protects covers all topics of public or assembly debate.
The court also ruled that the fundamental rights to freedom of thought, belief, conscience and expression permit anyone to deny a service to everyone (as opposed to denying it to someone, which would be discrimination.)
Fortunately, there is no way this can end in tears. We may all now consider the matter closed.
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East Belfast woman Jemma McGrath has won a Prince’s Trust Award for her successful beauty business, five years after being shot nine times by loyalists, presumed to be from the UVF. One bullet remains lodged in her stomach.
Nobody was ever prosecuted for the attack and McGrath says she has had to learn to “let it go”, which must be a great relief to the PSNI. Its inability to catch the culprits is a lamentable failure of policing, not helped by an unexplained two month gap after the shooting when there were no public appeals, reconstruction or any of the usual media engagement that would be expected - and expected promptly - for such a profoundly serious offence.
Of course, we do not live in a Sharia law jurisdiction, so the victim’s magnanimity does not absolve the PSNI in any way of its fundamental duty to solve a crime. However, we do live in Northern Ireland, so without a victim pressing their case, the matter really is closed.
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Theresa May is planning to step over the DUP’s blood red line on a regulatory sea border by asking Labour MPs to back her Brexit withdrawal deal. The prime minister’s appeal is falling on fertile ground - 30 Labour MPs have reportedly signed up and it should be remembered that 172 Labour MPs voted against their leader Jeremy Corbyn in a no-confidence motion just after the EU referendum. The DUP’s 10 MPs no longer look decisive, yet with between 30 and 40 Tories threatening to rebel, Sinn Féin’s seven MPs still could be decisive.
A cynic might suspect Connolly House needs May to fail by a number greater than seven.
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To the RHI Inquiry, where chair Sir Patrick Coghlin has asked “what is it about Mr Bryson?”
This referred to loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson, one of whose articles alleging corruption in a wind farm scheme was emailed to Arlene Foster by a DUP special adviser. Foster replied “that’s not good.”
Sir Patrick wondered why a blog was being forwarded “to these dizzying levels of government” when special advisers claim to have kept “all the discussion about RHI, about spikes, about hours, about impact” among themselves.
One answer the DUP may be keeping to itself is that it suspects its own members of briefing Bryson, or even authoring the blog.
If so, there would be a great irony in the party that refused to reform libel law in Northern Ireland having to cope with the one person, Bryson, prepared to thumb his nose at libel law in Northern Ireland.
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Sinn Féin national chairperson Declan Kearney could almost be suspected of joking, were he not such a terribly serious figure. In an article published online and highlighted as politically significant, he wrote it is “no longer clear” who leads the DUP and called on “whoever is in charge” to do some soul-searching.
Is Kearney implying the DUP’s nominal leader has her strings pulled by a shadowy group behind the scenes? Imagine.
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Northern Ireland’s academic selection farce has descended even further into Swiftian absurdity - quite an achievement, with official abolition of the 11-plus already creating privatised Protestant and Catholic versions.
So many children are now sitting the Protestant test that some in Lisburn are having to do so at their local technical college, rather than their current primary or preferred small-town Hogwarts.
The mere prospect of setting foot inside the dreaded tech has upset parents and grandparents and could cause further anxiety to children, according to pro-selection pressure group the Parental Alliance for Going to Hogwarts (or Parental Alliance for Choice in Education, to use its muggle name.)
Clearly, this can only be resolved by creating a test to select where to take the test. Or indeed, by creating two tests.
newton@irishnews.com
