The Broken Elbow

Thanks to CM for the tip:

What I want to know is why the guy by the door is holding his nose?

This is the poll, commissioned and analysed by academics at Liverpool University, that Sinn Fein and most of the media are strenuously ignoring, possibly because it shows a clear majority of people in Northern Ireland opting to stay within the UK in the event of a Border poll.

(Thanks to DR for posting it on Facebook)

That part of the survey conflicts rather sharply with the more popular narrative, fueled by unfounded  predictions of the effects of Brexit (remember the customs posts on the Border which would reignite the Troubles?) and peddled by assorted instant experts in media land, each feeding off the others’ misunderstood wisdoms.

You can locate the survey here. The relevant section is Chapter Five.

Now that Joe Biden is the favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, expect to see his failing mental powers – his increasingly hard-to-ignore senility to be blunt – assume centre stage.

Democrat bosses would not be human if they were not concerned about how he will fare against Trump in the back and forth of debates. Biden’s mental confusion is now so obvious and embarrassing, even if much of the US media don’t want to go there, that it is enough to make you wonder whether the Ukrainian scandal was really staged to make it appear that Trump was scared of Biden when in fact he wanted him to be his opponent.

This piece in Commonweal magazine mercilessly examines Biden’s mental problem.

According to The New York Times, the Democratic Party establishment spent months discussing who to run for the White House to stop Bernie Sanders. That was their priority, not ousting Trump. What you see below is the best they could come up with; the video below shows part of a speech given in the recent presidential primary in South Carolina by the guy they chose. And that’s before you get to all the lies he has told about his political life and his past. Trump will chew him up and spit him out. He just introduced his family at a victory rally late on Super Tuesday night and mixed up his sister and his wife. Well, it was past his bedtime. If Biden gets the nomination, Trump’s home in a boat.

A long-simmering scandal involving allegations of bullying by an executive at BBCNI Television’s highly regarded investigations department is threatening to become public, with all the attendant damage and embarrassment such exposure inevitably brings.

Sterling efforts by the mandarins at Ormeau Ave to keep the spotlight (excuse the pun) off the affair could now all come to nought following the awards ceremony at last week’s prestigious annual TV jamboree in London, hosted by the Royal Television Society (RTS). A scandal which so far had been successfully kept under wraps could now burst into the open.

A deep and revealing probe of loyalist killings in Mid Ulster, made as part of the BBC’s 50th anniversary of the Troubles series, won the RTS’ prestigious current affairs programme of the year. But strangely, the editor of the department which made the show, the guy who would normally accept the RTS’ plaudits with the appropriate degree of pride and modesty before basking in the more welcome praise of his bosses back home in Ormeau Avenue, failed to appear. Needless to say this went not unnoticed, as they say.

So why the no show?

Perhaps it was because he had just heard that he was facing a disciplinary hearing over the bullying and intimidation of people working for him that has, his accusers say, a history going back an astonishing 20 years.

The award was instead accepted by a freelance producer from the team who profusely thanked the editor under investigation. The speech raised eyebrows among BBCNI colleagues because it is understood that at least 15 of them have made statements alleging a pattern of bullying characterized by regular angry outbursts at the hands of the executive under scrutiny.

The investigation was undertaken by a BBC Human Resources team from London who interviewed staff over 10 months.

The staff are keen to know what happens next and in particular where Peter Johnston, the controller of BBCNI, stands on the matter.

This all comes at a time when the same department is fighting a libel action brought by Gerry Adams, over a programme greenlighted by the same executive.  See the latest: (https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/gerry-adams-seeks-more-information-for-defamation-action-against-bbc-1.4164551)

If the action does come to trial, and Mr Adams’ legal advisers are worth their doubtless hefty fee, they will choose a jury trial on the grounds that any Dublin jury is bound to contain a significant number of people who voted for Adams’ party at the recent general election in the 26 Cos. As the bard wrote: ‘When sorrows come, they come not (in) single spies, but in battalions.’

Reading this extraordinary story in Slate magazine, I was struck by the affinity between Trump’s supporters and Paisley’s, especially in the latter’s early days when he presented himself to his followers as ‘God’s Man for Ulster’.

The story, which bears witness to the terrifying power of organised religion over the human mind, takes place in Dalton, Georgia in the heart of America’ Bible belt. But it could just as easily have happened in Broughshane, Co. Antrim.

‘Eaten bread is soon forgotten’. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris could be forgiven for pinning that old saw on the wall behind his desk to remind visitors who might want to commiserate over the heat directed at him these days by Sinn Fein, that he has helped the Provos – IRA as well as Sinn Fein – make a whole lot of money while keeping their grunts under control, and they have a funny way of showing their gratitude.

He did that, with the assistance of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, by legalizing, regularizing and allowing virtually unhindered IRA, UDA and UVF ownership, control and involvement in one of the most corrupted businesses in Ireland – the private security industry.

Drew Harris, Garda Commissioner, helped legalise IRA control of security businesses

For years both Loyalists and Republican groups, primarily the Provos but also the Officials in the latter camp, had established a significant foothold in an industry that was unregulated, easy to infiltrate and even easier to exploit financially.

Customers were either intimidated into accepting the services of such outfits or recognised that they probably couldn’t get better protection than from the people who otherwise might be robbing them.

This is what the Northern Ireland Office had to say about the industry back in 2006:

‘The industry is particularly vulnerable to penetration by paramilitaries because of low barriers of entry to those wishing to provide a private security service. There have been examples in Northern Ireland of private security services being subverted to act as a cover for criminality, for example, the provision of security guards to provide cover for running a ‘protection racket’.

This is a business card for a private security business run by the UDA. The address, 2a Gawn Street was the UDA HQ on the Newtonards Road. I came across it on a visit one day in the early 1980’s. Now, thanks in no small part to Drew Harris, such ‘businesses’ can operate legally.

Come the peace process and all was changed. Under the leadership of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the new power sharing command at Stormont decided to “regularise” the industry by effectively legalising paramilitary involvement.

In fact it was one of Paisley/McGuinness’ first acts, set in motion even before they formally took office. You can read the full story here (in a tale that adds a new meaning to ‘Chuckle Brothers’), in a post I wrote last December, after the Strokestown affair.

That meant drawing up new rules to make that possible. And who did Paisley & McGuinness turn to for help in that enterprise? None other than PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, who was head of crime and the police force’s liaison with MI5, who doubtless had their own input into the whole business.

The key part of the new rules read as follows:

“……that conflict-related convictions of ‘politically motivated’ ex-prisoners, or their membership of any organisation, should not generally be taken into account [in accessing employment, facilities, goods or services] provided that the act to which the conviction relates, or the membership, predates the Agreement.”

In other words, as long as the person applying to own or work in a security firm committed his or her paramilitary offence before the Good Friday Agreement then there was no problem.

So Drew Harris gave the police and intelligence service’s imprimatur to a scheme that would enrich paramilitary groups while giving their former members a) a handy bit of money now and then and b) something to keep them busy and their minds off how the war they had fought ended in a somewhat different fashion than they been led to expect.

One of the first people to take advantage of the new private security regime was a close relative of Martin McGuinness, one of the architects of the new scheme. Another was a west Belfast-based, former IRA prisoner whose door was one of the first to be knocked by the PSNI in the wake of the Northern Bank robbery.

The Provo leadership, both IRA and Sinn Fein, can also be content in the knowledge that their grunts have something to do that sort of resembles what they were doing before the peace process, a few bob in their pockets and one less reason to grumble about the way things ended.

And who made that happen? Well without Drew Harris’ nod, none of this would have been possible.

It has been, what, the best part of three weeks since voters went to the polls in the South and now, finally, The Irish Times, Ireland’s newspaper of record, this morning tells its readers what it should have told them back when the posters were being hoisted on to lampposts, long before voters went to the polls: that the Provisional IRA still exists, is armed, is involved in criminality and that it controls Sinn Fein’s policies and direction, truths that the dogs in the street in Belfast, Tyrone, south Armagh and working class areas of Dublin could have told them, had the paper’s editorial leadership summoned up the courage to do what newspapers are supposed to do, tell its reporters to go out there and dig out the truth.

For what it is worth, weeks after it should have been written, here is a link to the IT’s piece. As I have said before, this used to be a newspaper.

(Having failed to tell its readers the truth about the IRA-Sinn Fein nexus for three weeks, The Irish Times compounds the offence by hiding this article behind a paywall, using software that makes it impossible to copy and paste the contents. It is almost as if they are ashamed to be caught out telling the truth!)