Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has told GB News “our conflict was not about religion... it was essentially around the question ‘to which state to do you belong?’”
The DUP leader was being interviewed by Arlene Foster, who nodded approvingly. Although Donaldson was trying to make a positive point about shared values and the contribution of faith to society, the ghost of the late Ian Paisley still hovered over this simplification.
Paisley unambiguously blended politics and religion, with disastrous results, and it was extraordinary for two of his successors to overlook it. Ironically, this will not have surprised the DUP’s remaining religious hardliners. Many of them still consider Foster and Donaldson to be secular UUP blow-ins.
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Mary Lou McDonald has given a more conventional Christmas interview to the Press Association. Her answers were apparently too bland for the Belfast Telegraph, which reported them under the front page headline: “Sinn Fein still aiming for border poll by 2030.”
As the text below sheepishly revealed, McDonald was asked if a border poll could happen within the lifetime of the next Irish government – something the Sinn Féin president was hardly going to rule out. So instead, she said: “It could be. But it would certainly require a lot of diligence and hard work”.
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Retailers have taken understandable exception to ‘Buy Nothing New Month’, a campaign to be run in January by Keep NI Beautiful, an environmental ‘charity’ funded almost entirely by councils and Stormont’s Department of Agriculture.
Retail NI chief Glyn Roberts told The Irish News it “beggars belief” this could be held in the toughest trading month of the year.
Shops get no January break from property rates, the main tax-raising power at Stormont and the councils, both of which are squeezing town centres to death by treating retailers as a cash cow. On January 18, public sector workers will be striking for more money. Imagine the outrage if ratepayers told them to do less shopping.
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Havelock House, UTV’s former headquarters in south Belfast, is of little historic or architectural merit. The lengthy campaign to save it from demolition and redevelopment has occasionally appeared over the top.
A spokesman for the recently-formed Donegall Pass Residents Association has given an interview that may offer crucial background information.
Darren Leighton, a former DUP election candidate, said there is a “sentimental” attachment to the building but “he also said there was some wariness, as it had acted as a buffer zone at an interface”.
How many people at UTV knew the neighbours saw them as a peace wall?
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- Newton Emerson: Hilary Benn is right to avoid the trap of setting criteria for unity voteOpens in new window
- Newton Emerson: The real Stormont deadline will be decided by the date of the next general electionOpens in new window
- Largest ever cocaine seizure for PSNI after £10m worth of drugs found in south ArmaghOpens in new window
The National Crime Agency has revealed that criminal gangs in Britain are trying to smuggle drugs, cash and guns through Northern Ireland as UK border authorities focus on south-east coast of England due to the small boats crisis.
Members of an English gang received sentences totalling 50 years last month after being caught in the Port of Belfast with £1.6 million of cocaine.
Two weeks ago, the PSNI found £10m of cocaine in a lorry in Jonesborough, 1,000 yards form the border. It was in a lead-lined hidden compartment beneath a shipment of frozen meat.
This is a reminder that Northern Ireland’s special Brexit arrangements, on land and sea and in both directions, are at the mercy of events and of organised crime in particular. Loyalists and republicans might have additional political motivations to sabotage certain arrangements, but the wider economic attraction of unlocked back doors into Britain and the EU could see Windsor Framework mitigations overwhelmed by sheer volume.
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It looks like the knives are out again for Belfast Zoo. The Belfast Telegraph has reported 84 animals died in the past three years, although this level is normal and falling.
Alliance MLA John Blair, chair of the assembly’s all-party animal welfare group, responded with concern and mentioned “differing opinions” on whether zoos have a future.
In 2019, a report on 50 animal deaths in the preceding year caused unionist and republican councillors to call for the zoo’s closure. A Sinn Féin motion to do so failed when other councillors suspected the site was being lined up for sale.
The motion denounced all zoos as “outdated, unethical and wrong”, yet months later Sinn Féin launched a campaign to save Dublin Zoo from closure.
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Queen’s University Belfast has updated its code of conduct on transgender issues – a fact it kept quiet for 12 months, until it was spotted by the News Letter.
The previous code, published in 2016, was balanced and proportionate. It asked staff to refer to transgender people by their preferred pronouns but made this an informal guideline, adding that “if you make a mistake with pronouns, correct yourself and move on. Do not make a big deal out of it”.
The new code is mandatory and applies to staff, students, contractors and campus visitors. It warns that “repeated use of incorrect pronouns is a disciplinary matter”. Queen’s said the code was updated “following further equality screening”, which suggests legal confusion between gender and gender identity. The university is inviting a court case it is likely to lose.
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Nearly 6,000 bus lane fines were issued on Belfast’s Great Victoria Street last year, twice as many as the next most-fined street, on the opposite side of City Hall.
The surprise in these figures, obtained by the Belfast Live website, is how few drivers are being caught: an average of one every 90 minutes on Great Victoria Street, although bizarrely there were three months last year when no fines were issued. Outside the city centre, the chance of being caught is close to zero, as many drivers have clearly realised.
Before the Department for Infrastructure spends £150m on the new north-south Glider lane, it could invest a little more in enforcement to make sure the whole exercise is not pointless.