Brexit
Out of context: Reply #524
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- kingsteven5
The DUP then, these guys only exist to exploit the good friday agreement. If you remember that in the 90s, the DUP was the only party to oppose the agreement. They exploited problems in IRA decomissioning of arms to destroy the main unionist party at the time (the UUP) and take power (the rules of the local assembly are designed so that this guarantees the biggest party the "first minister" role).
They exploit the political tension here to keep people protest voting and stay in power (vote DUP to keep Sinn Fein out... ) but are not at all representative of political opinion here. They are quite happy to destabilise NI as a region as it is guaranteed to benefit them - they would love for the region to be ruled directly from Westminster so they have no incentive to negotiate anything.
And predictably, they're getting paid to do shit all right now... we have had no assembly for nearly a year. Which gives them all the hours they need to concentrate on this shit.
The DUP refuse to negotiate over a bill that protects Irish (up here Ulster Gaelic). Insisting that a language bill must protect "Ulster Scots" - essentially a dialect that unionists have promoted in order to split language funding so that it doesn't all go to the nationalist side. Ulster Scots is heavily politicised but essentially it's the dialect that derives from Scottish Gaelic speakers' speaking English. but because Irish and Scottish Gaelic are more or less interchangeable they are vey careful not to adopt any words that are actually derived from Gaelic!... The kick in the teeth for Irish speakers here is that Scotland even have Scottish Gaelic protection but with less speakers there than Irish in NI.
TBH, I don't speak Irish, don't have a nationalistic bone in my body and I don't care that much about languages but that should give you an idea of how nationalistic things are here in general. If you are just a regular person with a normal sized dick (I don't pretend to understand nationalists) things can be very difficult. A few years ago our Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure became the department of Communities and was given to the DUP, they sliced Arts funding (on top of existing austerity cuts). Allocating massive funds to Orange marching bands. We've now got actual arts organisations that have their entire budgets allocated to staffing/ running costs and young creative talent is fleeing like it's the feckin 80's again.
So, that's the reason our parliament is still fucked... why did it collapse in the first place? Because of a massive fiscal fuck up by the DUP where they botched a renewable heating scheme. Arlene Foster refused to stand down, Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy first minister (and pure just died like a feckin drama queen)...
On top of all this most of our media comes from the British press who treat the DUP like a serious political entity (backed up by the tories' decision to put them in government) while treating Irish nationalist politicians like terrorists and while moderate politicians very little but running between them trying to maintain government.
Did I mention they're also evangelical christians that continually veto changes to our laws that will bring us in line with the rest of the UK by exploiting a mechanism designed to protect their "community".
Things that are fine in the rest of the UK that DUP has blocked:
- Abortion (nope, not even for foetal abnormalities)
- Gay people donating blood (even though there is a shortage of blood)
- Gay marriage (even though who gives a shit)
Accountability (yep, they veto investigations in to their own members misconduct)
- Shared education (the vast majority of schools are Catholic/ Protestant here)
- Alchohol Licensing (finally eased up last year but our pubs still closed on christian holidays!)Anyway, that's just a primer... there is so much other cuntery I could go on about but it requires a bit more knowledge of the political situation here... but on to brexit.
The DUP were key...
Routed money for brexit advertising from saudi billionares through their party (doners to political parties here are not disclosed for security reasons) - paid for the majority of advertising in the UK press.
As a region we voted 54% remain but even though we have a "power sharing government" as I mentioned our first minister (currently Arlene) is always loyalist/DUP (British nationalist) and our deputy first minister is always nationalist/Sinn Fein (Irish nationalist). McGuinness' health coupled with Sinn Fein not taking their seats in Westminster meant that the DUP were able to misrepresent us as a region in the negotiations -really the vote may as well not have happened here.
Formed government with Theresa May. If it wasn't for the DUP, Labour would have formed government and most likely Corbyn would have gone for a similar border deal (without being propped up but the DUP - it's insane she thought she could do that with them on board) or been ousted by neo-libs that would drop brexit entirely.
Blocked the deal... they probably threatened to withdraw from government (that would trigger a general election right?). The fact is that anything other than this deal will be blocked by the Irish govt (and not just Sinn Fein, who May has totally screwed over in the North during this process.)
So it's no brexit or hard brexit... and apparently May likes it hard (hence why she walks like a tangled marionette)
Sorry, bit of a rant but all the aforementioned can get fucked. Locally I'm a bit more worried about the fact that the DUP have been allocating money for years to organisations openly fronted by the active leaders of 100k+ strong Loyalist terrorist organisations.
- how Arlene foster can be still in government after wasting nearly half a billion of tax payers cash on the RHI is beyond. some brass neck.lowimpakt
- pretty good as rants go. depressing as fuck, though.Fax_Benson
- zero accountability, not even to their vote base. it's terrifying.kingsteven
- Great post but yep utterly depressing. thanks for sharing.fadein11