Opinion

Sinn Féin’s position continues to be sit back and hope the roof falls in

So here we are with the Brexit election and after three years Sinn Féin’s position continues to be – sit back and hope the roof will fall in and then smugly say, ‘we told you so, let’s have a united Ireland instead’.

All this flag waving will achieve what exactly? Meanwhile what about their voters and constituents?

The fact that everyone will be under this roof and 50 per cent of jobs lost will be non-unionist will just be collateral damage, part of the greater good – donncha know.

Anyone with an ability to count knows a united Ireland before 2030 is unlikely and a possible referendum before 2025 at best, long odds.


So what are Sinn Féin’s policies for the next 10 years?


In five years time a child now in P7 will finish compulsory education, what are Sinn Féin’s plans for him or her? The cosy back room deal with their buddies in the DUP (if one is done  next year) will continue to sell our young down the river, with now two 11-plus systems, for which parents now pay.

Every day voters in West Belfast pass Casement Park, a permanent reminder of Sinn Féin politics in action. In 2012 Peter Robinson pulled the plug on a unified stadium in the Maze. Since then rugby completed the refurbishment of Ravenhill, (capacity 18,000) in 2014, soccer saw the completion of Windsor Park (capacity 18,000) in 2016.

One might argue that the Casement saga sums up the Sinn Féin approach – they know best and the community will get it, whether they want, never mind need, it or not.


The Sinn Féin problem for many, especially in the Irish Republic, is that no-one knows, much less gets to vote for who ‘We’ are?

As to the frequent Sinn Féin  references to democracy, well, the anniversary of the Treaty debate approaches in 2022.


For those with a faulty memory, Collins won the democratic vote but DeValera and Sinn Féin – they knew better back then too – started a civil war. Apart from the resulting deaths and destruction, I can almost hear Lloyd George, Churchill and Carson in a Tory Club cackling into their glasses of whiskey. Speaking of 2022 one does wonder if Casement will be open? If not, who will be laughing then?

FRANK HENNESSEY


Belfast BT9

Brian Feeney’s sharp attack on Estyn Evans is nonsense on stilts

Brian Feeney is often an enjoyably, sharp commentator who usually points in the right direction. But not this time – ‘Pine martens prove Ulster a freak of nature’ (November 20).


If I might be allowed a little sharpness myself, his attack on Estyn Evans is nonsense on stilts, pointing at the wrong man.

The so-called ‘Welsh blow-in’ of 1928 spent the rest of an internationally distinguished academic career at Queen’s. He was instrumental in setting up the departments of archaeology and anthropology as well as geography and for good measure in the 1970s the university’s Institute of Irish Studies (note ‘Irish’ not ‘Ulster’). The notion that he had a project ‘to show six county distinctiveness from the dawn of time’ is complete rubbish, as is the suggestion that he was involved in efforts ‘to call the place Ulster’. BBC NI does get its NI and its ‘Ulster’ mixed up, though the clearest example is probably ‘Royal Ulster Constabulary’, not mentioned by Brian, but it was established and named long before Evans landed in Ireland.

He did indeed help set up the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, but it was inspired by the folk museums of material culture in Scandinavia and by his own research across rural Ireland, rather than by the Irish Folklore Commission’s collection of oral culture (which in any case covered all 32 counties). Crucially, the ‘Ulster’ in the Museum is the genuine nine-county article with material collected and researched across the historic province (and beyond); and some of Evans’s most important research into Ireland’s traditional agricultural practices and equipment was carried out in Co Donegal.

JAMES ANDERSON


Belfast BT9

What’s next to destroy our country?

As we know now  next on the agenda the government for the Republic of Ireland is targeting our schools. The ink was barely dry on the cruel law on abortion when campaigners began introducing their “objective sex Bill” in Dáil Éireann. This is what they are at now. They are already trying to destroy the rights of our schools to say ‘no’ to teaching about abortion and pornography. They describe this as ‘LGBTQI’ issues no matter how explicit the content may be.

They want your children to learn that abortion is simply “a woman’s right”. They are trying to present to your children this as the ‘new normal’.

Moreover, they insist that children no longer be taught that there are two genders – male and female. They obviously don’t accept that God created us male and female and that he said to them increase and multiply.

Don’t let these extremists have their say in what is taught to children. It is time to show that our politicians are not going to destroy innocent children and to demolish the rights of parents and schools to give your children a pro-life ethos.

REV PATRICK MARRON


Fintona, Co Tyrone

Brexit reality and disillusion hit home

I  don’t belong to any political party but have been a fascinated observer of the developing political situation.

The Brexit 50 pence coin meltdown is symbolic of the gradual Brexit meltdown itself as reality and disillusion hit home.

Leading pro-Brexit national newspapers have been impacted. Daily Telegraph pre-tax profits fell by 94 per cent last year, Daily Express, sold to the Trinity Mirror Group and the former extreme Brexit Daily Mail editor moved away from its news pages.

There was a massive difference between more than a million anti-Brexit marchers converging on London recently and the series of damp squib pro-Brexit protests at missing the October 31 deadline – no-one turned up at all to the “huge” one in Doncaster.

UKIP have just lost their sixth leader since the 2016 Referendum. To add to this growing trend, in the general election the Brexit Party plans to fight the Tory Party for the pro-Brexit vote.

Arguably it is the entrenched differing views of extreme Eurosceptics fighting over the shape Brexit should take that underlies this meltdown.

The opportunists like Boris Johnson seeking to exploit the situation add to the general disillusion and discontent.

ANDREW MILROY


Wiltshire, England