A Tangled Web

'Gizza Job, I Can Do That!'



Anyone over the age of 25 (which includes me, sadly) remembers 'Boys from the Blackstuff'. I can recall the central character, Yosser Hughes, walking around a depressed Liverpool and uttering the oft-repeated (above) request to any public servant unlucky enough to cross his path. Unemployment is a tragedy which affects many genuinely decent, hard-working people who long to earn a crust for their families, but who have been let down by the system.



Why then should decent unemployed folk in Northern Ireland be forced to compete for jobs with people who have terrorist convictions? The new equality legislation (yes, still more 'equality' legislation, folks!!) could stipulate that loyalist and republican terrorists should not be discriminated against because of their criminal records and terrorist pasts. It's certainly refreshing to know our government cares so much about homicidally-obsessed plebs that it is willing to grant them the same rights as people who have been God-fearing throughout their lives.



So, we may be faced with a situation where terrorist activists (who denied hundreds of families the entitlement to see their loved ones flourish), having served nugatory sentences in Northern Ireland's very own answer to the Iroquois, are placed on the same footing as the general populace they attempted to murder over thirty years. A life of penury is what these people deserve, not opportunities for fiscal betterment.