It is hard to understand the mentality of people who are so offended by the sight of Irish translations on street signs that they go home and get a bucket of paint and obliterate the offending words, lest their Britishness be damaged by the very sight of a fada.
The signs for Cranmore Gardens, in Belfast’s Malone Road area, recently met the same fate as those in Haypark Avenue, off the Ormeau. Hopefully it was a nice shade: Bigoted White, perhaps?
It’s probably absurd to imagine those people might be curious to know that the word Cranmore comes from the Irish An Chrainn Mhóir – big tree - as it has no actual meaning in English.
They’re probably the same sort of folk who vandalised signs in Castlereagh for Tullyard Way in the Clonduff estate some years ago because they mistook the Ulster Scots translation for Irish.
It’s probably absurd to imagine those people might be curious to know that the word Cranmore comes from the Irish An Chrainn Mhóir – big tree
Many years ago I asked the former UUP MP for East Londonderry, Willie Ross, why he insisted on pronouncing the Sinn Féin name as Sin, not Shin. “I am not going to speak Irish,” he replied.
But you can’t really decry the sabotaging of Irish signage without saying the same about those who’ve been painting out the English on Letterkenny signposts. Catch a grip lads.
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Tory sleaze has reached new sights now that MP Mark Menzies has had the whip suspended following his 3am telephone call to a party worker, asking for a £5,000 loan to pay a ransom to the “bad guys” holding him captive in his own flat.
There’s been so many lately that it’s little wonder that BBC News had to apologise for accidentally illustrating its story on Menzies with a picture of the MP William Wragg.
Wragg was, of course, the week before’s disgraced Tory. Do keep up. He was the one who posted pictures of his privates and gave out other people’s phone numbers to an online troll - and not to be confused with the other one who was watching porn on his phone in the chamber by accident when he meant to shop for tractors.
Menzies has form. Ten years ago he was accused of attempting to procure drugs from a teenage Brazilian rent boy. He resigned his ministerial position and the party then made him government trade envoy to Colombia and Peru. You couldn’t make it up.
It’s against this backdrop that another Conservative, Richard Holden, is leading a crusade against the deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, claiming variously that she owes HMRC for capital gains tax over a property she sold, and that she’d lied to the electoral office about her actual address.
It’s been red meat to the Daily Mail which has published more than 50 stories about it. They haven’t had as much fun since Holden’s last campaign, “Beergate”, when he accused Keir Starmer of breaking Covid rules by having beers and curry with party workers.
That took two separate investigations which came to absolutely nothing. Now we learn that the inquiry into Rayner – the second by Greater Manchester police - is being staffed by a dozen officers. Local people must be thrilled at that news. The force receives around 200,000 reports of crime a year.
There are now a total of 18 MPs, of all stripes, who’ve lost their party whip for a variety of alleged offences, most of them sexual.
Back in the 1960s, the most famous scandal of the era was the Profumo affair, when the then War Minister, John Profumo, had to resign after he lied to the House about his liaison with a call-girl, Christine Keeler, whom he shared with a Russian diplomat.
The difference between him and the current cadre is that he accepted he had done wrong and resigned from politics, going on to spend the rest of his life working for the poor in London’s East End. He was appointed a CBE for his charity work and died in 2006, his honour restored.