"Dear Mr Smith,
Thank you for attending for interview in relation to the position of PSNI police officer. The appointments panel was impressed by your attitude, skills and educational qualifications, but unfortunately you were unsuccessful because you are not a Catholic.
The demand by Sinn Féin and the SDLP to reserve 50 per cent of PSNI places for Catholics means that we cannot appoint you. In fairness, some members of the panel observed that you looked a bit Catholic, but when asked to recite the Lord's Prayer, you included at the end, "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory". This immediately ruled you out as a suitable candidate for a post which would require you to keep the community safe.
Your case was not helped by the fact that you knew all of Martin Luther's 95 Theses from 1517, but you were rather hazy on the details of the Council of Trent's counter-reformation initiatives in 1537. You will appreciate that such an imbalance in your knowledge and understanding would render you unfit to issue speeding tickets and indeed would prove detrimental to your ability to direct traffic.
You were also unable to explain the process of genuflection and when pronouncing the eighth letter of the alphabet, you displayed distinct Protestant tendencies of a verbal nature.
You may, however, wish to re-apply in the future. To facilitate this, we enclose leaflets on, 'How to become a Catholic', and 'Why Catholics make better police officers'. You will also have to learn the traditional Catholic practices of prayer, meditation and not bothering to go to Mass any more and you will, of course, have to undergo some minor plastic surgery.
Thank you again for your application.
Yours faithfully, A rather junior clerical assistant (because we have no chief constable since Mary Lou McDonald told Gerry Kelly to reject everyone who applied for the job.)"
You will realise that, like a political cartoon, the above letter is exaggerated to make a point, which in this case is that the nationalist argument for 50/50 recruitment to the PSNI is seriously flawed.
Yes, the PSNI has been involved in the cover-up of the loyalist killings at Sean Graham's bookmakers. That is what police forces do. They did it in the West Midlands on the Birmingham Six, in South Yorkshire on the Hillsborough tragedy and in Dublin, where almost one million drink-driving tests recorded by gardai did not actually happen.
In all three cases the solution was greater accountability, through accepting political responsibility, appointing a police chief, criminal prosecution, effective governance and/or new line management systems.
Because sectarian elections here mean they will not be held accountable, the SDLP and Sinn Féin have apparently failed to implement adequate oversight and management systems as members of the policing board. Thus they have argued not for more accountability, but for more Catholics and thus more votes.
They appear to suggest that Catholics do not do cover-up, or at least that they would not be as good at it as Protestants. This is a novel theory with just one flaw - Catholics, particularly those at a high level in the Church, have a pretty good record in cover-up.
The SDLP and SF will presumably argue that this is not their reason for demanding 50/50 recruitment. That leaves them with an even more damning argument, which is the belief that all our political and civic systems should be based on institutionalised sectarianism.
Why not go the whole way and argue for two separate police bodies and two legal systems - one for the Protestants and one for the Catholics? That is how they carved up our local government system and even academic selection.
Are SF and the SDLP suggesting that young people here hoping to become nurses should study biology, chemistry and sociology, while aspiring police officers should concentrate on theology, canon law and Church history? What a sick view of society they offer us - a view shared by the DUP.
In 2001 Sinn Féin assured us that we had a wonderful new police system, but what we got was an institutionalised sectarian police force to defend an institutionalised sectarian Stormont. Both Stormont and the PSNI have failed, because sectarianism, however it is dressed up, does not work.
The answer to our policing problems and all our social and economic problems is not more Catholics or more Protestants. It is more political and administrative accountability, personal and professional competence and less sectarian politicking. But as the local government elections in May will prove, that is all highly improbable. You are more likely to get a Catholic parking ticket.
