Politics
Out of context: Reply #25120
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- kingsteven1
So, you wouldn't know it from the British news but Northern Ireland had a general election yesterday, We've had total political stagnation here since the peace process (turns out appointing opposing groups of ex-terrorists to piss their own regional budget up the wall is good for stopping them blowing up London's financial institutions, but not much else).
Anyway the assembly lost it's Unionist (British Nationalist) majority yesterday... It's being reported as a massive success for Sinn Fien (Irish Nationalist party) but actually it's now fairly evenly split 3 ways between Irish, British Nationalism (both ugly as fuck world views if you ask me) but also the moderate parties... it's because of this the main parties loose what's called the "Petition of Concern" - a bit of legislation introduced during peace negotiations which allows parties to veto legislation change on "community grounds". The POC has been used to block anything the two big (ultra religious, right wing) parties can agree on.... to the point where we're decades behind both UK and Irish law on anything progressive like government transparency, marriage equality, womens rights, entertainment licensing.
I mentioned way back in the Brexit thread that it would cause a massive surge in Irish Nationalism in the North - we're a long way from Irish unification - but basically this happened because in the last year our Unionist (British Nationalist) first-minister failed to represent the >50% of people here that consider themselves Irish in Brexit negotiations (we voted 54% remain in the ref) and at the same time (among many other scandals) her party operated as a backdoor for over 500m funding the leave campaign from a Saudi prince, ran a corrupt renewable heating scheme (it seems mostly benefited her cronies) which fucked our regional budget to the tune of 450m - and continually exploited the political situation dodge accountability.
So aye, I actually feel like I voted and it did something for the first time in my life. But lets see how they fuck it up.
- what;s your take on that lady leading Sinn Fein? is she new generation with no hands on experience of conflict?lowimpakt
- only in the north of course... gerry is still pulling the strings. she seems decent, she has a lot of political experience + her da' was in the 'ra :-Dkingsteven
- Dear God, that bracketed aside in your first paragraph!detritus