A Tangled Web

And James Kelly Makes Stooges Three



Every week the radicalised readers of the Irish News are treated to their very own media 'Goon Show'. Three 'commentators' (Brian Feeney, Jude Collins and James Kelly) vie to take the weekly title for the most obnoxious, anti-British newspaper article imaginable. Substance differs week on week, but the general themes range from metaphorically crawling up Sinn Fein/IRA's political posterior, labelling the Unionist voters in such a way that comparable stereotypes about black or Asian people would be rightly condemned, and waxing lyrical with falsehoods about the economic and infrastructural 'primitiveness' of Northern Ireland in comparison with its southern neighbour.



On Saturday, James Kelly took on the mantle of the bigoted bete noire. In customary fashion he proceeded to denigrate Northern Ireland as an economic, social, administrative and political backwater (naturally avoiding the reality of Sinn Fein's contamination of an otherwise democratic system). I wonder if Kelly (I won't do him the honour of a titular prefix) has missed the statistics indicating Northern Ireland has one of the UK's fastest growing economies? I wonder if he realises the extent of the middle classes in the Province is about the highest in the UK outside the South East? I wonder if he is aware that the growth of affluent Catholics is still the fastest increasing demographic in the Province? I doubt it!!! Kelly is one of a substantial band blinded by inaccurate perceptions of a land of milk and honey in the Irish Republic, and equally unfounded opinions concerning Ulster's overall health and viability.



However, Feeney, Kelly and Collins have a thread of commonality. They all relish the proliferation of a party linked to a fully-armed terrorist killing machine, to the extent that the establishment of a government in the Republic (a hitherto stable and democratic state) would be impossible without Sinn Fein participation. Why? Because of their stupid, naive belief that a pincer movement of Sinn Fein North and South would somehow subdue Northern Ireland's Unionist majority into surrendering their birthright and constitutional entitlements. I rather suspect each one drank a heady elixir prior to the commencement of their respective commentaries if they honestly think this forecast chain of causation will have the slightest bearing in the real world. As for Kelly's take on 'the demographic decline of Unionism', somebody ought to inform the misguided fool about the results of the 2001 Census. To almost everyone else, the demographic context of Ulster politics was then safely settled with statistical veracity.