Here's to you, Mrs Robinson

Ok, let's leave the schadenfreude to one side for now. Iris Robinson is, apparently, an ill woman with a recent history of suicidal ideation.

Of course, she's now utterly ruined as a politician and probably in her personal life too.

Her husband, the first minister, is hanging on tenaciously after a heart-rending performance on TV. But with the fundie Free Presbyterian Paisleyite moralists in his party to answer to, not to mention more questions coming about his family finances, that may not last long.

So where does this leave us? What have we learnt?

Well, firstly we now have first class proof, as if it were required, that the DUP are NOT holier than thou. They are not more upstanding or of a higher moral calibre. They are just as prone to sin, sex, and screwing up as everyone else.

We also have evidence of the dual standards operating in terms of gender. If a 59 year old man, who had been entrusted with the care of a teenage girl by her dying parent, then went on to fuck the girl for a period of time, what do you imagine the headlines might look like?

If the genders were reversed, and it were Peter and not Iris who'd had the affair, he'd be pilloried in the streets of conservative, religious, judgemental Northern Ireland. In fact, his life might even be at risk.

No matter how ill Iris is or claims to be (now, ten months after her apparent suicide attempt), her mental condition cannot excuse how she manipulated and abused her relationship with a much younger man who was effectively under her guidance and care.

I don't think it's too strong to say she groomed this young lad. Looked at through the prism of gender reversal, the scale of her wrongdoing becomes clear.

Finally, we have the prospect, in a British general election year, of NI's three biggest parties all changing their leadership.

Gerry Adams has been fighting a rearguard action for sometime against those in Sinn Fein seeking a change of leadership. But revelations about his child-abusing brother have stuck fast, and will be hard for him to shake off. Plus, there is a lot more to come out about Liam Adams. So Gerry may be forced to step down sooner rather than later.

Peter Robinson, who does appear to have been seriously wronged by his wife's behaviour, is also on a knife edge. He must explain his involvement in his wife's financial shenanigans, which comes on top of criticism of their lavish expense claims - the 'Swish Family Robinson' tag.

And then he must talk the fundies in Unionism into forgiving and forgetting. Meanwhile the TUV will snipe from the wings, and recent DUP converts will sigh and return to the UUP fold. It seems like he is a dead man walking.

Only the SDLP actually are choosing to change their leader.

Now is a moment of transition and possibility for NI, but also a dangerous time therefore. And there are still a lot of guns out there, especially UDA ones, despite their little PR stunt this week.

So here's to you, Mrs Robinson, for blowing holes in all the known assumptions about Northern Irish politics. If you achieved nothing else in your political career (and you did achieve nothing else) at least your sordid abuse of a young man has led to a moment of potential positive change.

And that change involves the eradication of pocket-lining big house Unionism in its modern DUP form - the Swish Family Robinson with their massive expenses and multiple luxury homes, or their predecessors the Paisley clan, with their multi-million church and dodgy property dealings.

Can Unionists turn their backs on such representatives for good? Or how many more such sordid revelations of DUP improbity can they stomach?

Does spouting about Christ in front of a Union Jack really excuse the dodgy pocketlining and sexual predation on a young Catholic man in the eyes of Unionism?

Let's hope so.

PS: I'm surprised to see that www.DUPcougars.com has not yet been registered by some enterprising porno king.

Tis the season to be clairvoyant

It's that time of the year again, when most people defer cynical normality until the New Year, eschew common sense and start spouting goodwill to fellow men.

But not Skinner, no sirree bob.

For me, it's the season for casting a gloomy, pessimistic, jaundiced eye over the year to come, read the runes, scatter the entrails, gaze into the crystal ball and attempt to predict what the year ahead has to offer.

We'll hold fire on last year's predictions until this year is officially up. (Though nothing's stopping you checking now.) Instead, it's full steam ahead with what's ahead in 2010.

1. I can haz double-dip recession? Sort of inevitable at this stage, really. Credit card debt should do it for Ireland, which is tragically appropriate for what has happened to us as a nation in the mass delusion of the 'Celtic Tiger'.
In America, it will be the ongoing slide in dollar value, while Britain will simply run out of cash. China is hamstrung by its dollar exposure, lack of Western demand for plastic tat made in sweatshops and the fact that the rest of the world will be slow to forget how China stitched up Copenhagen for its own ends.
In short, more red lines on the charts, more capital flight to precious metals, more lost jobs, more housing price decline, more negative equity, more foreclosures, more unemployment and more excuses from those responsible.

2. What does Africa need right now? You were thinking 'major soccer tournament', weren't you? Isn't that top of their list of needs?
Africans agree, of course, which is why they're having two in six months. Never mind the HIV epidemic, the grinding poverty, the neverending wars, famines and disease. I must haz mi football. Right?
South Africa 2010 will see predictions of violence against the occasional drunk affluent visitor sadly fulfilled. Stadia will be full of white people flown in for the occasion. A European team, likely Spain or Italy, will win, though an African team, likely Nigeria, will get to the semis.

3. General election in the Republic of Ireland.
Seriously, this government wouldn't even have lasted this long were it not for the dire standard of political opposition in the Dail, and the utter disorganisation of political opposition outside of it.
Enda Kenny is as effective and reliable as the Billings method, while the beards running the unions have already shot their bolt and allowed their campaign to be cleverly cut in two by a government sneakily talking up public sector V private rivalries.
But to hold together an administration this flimsy, talentless and aimless would require both the cunning of a natural alliancemaker like Bertie Ahern and endless pots of overflowing gold to pay everyone off and keep them all happy.
Cowen has neither Ahern's touch nor any money whatsoever, since Ahern spent it all already. So it's inevitable that sooner rather than later the faeces will fly into the fan.

4. Result of election? Fine Gael and Labour, that unhappily married couple, back in the saddle again, this time minus the self-exploded Greens.
Stasis for the Shinners, though a few new faces in their line-up, including Joe McHugh. A move against Churry as leader of the party finally coalesces around someone other than the unelectable Mary Lou. Toireasa Ferris, perhaps?
Fianna Fail to regroup around a new leader - with Martin facing off against Dermot Ahern for the job and Martin winning. Most of the current cabinet retire to count their ill-gotten gains.

5. A general election is already scheduled for next year in Britain and the North, so they're already in mid-campaign.
The toff Tories to edge it in a surprisingly close-run thing after an initial rally of the British economy in the Spring. But they will claim no seats in the North, leaving their alliance with the UUP in tatters.
Lady Sylvia to win as independent in North Down, taking their last seat, leaving them behind the TUV, for whom Allister will ascend Paisley's old throne in North Antrim.
Alisdair McDonnell to become the next SDLP leader, and subsequently hold South Belfast. A resurgence for this party might then finally be possible, especially if a Shinner generation shift starts to coalesce.

6. Post-Lisbon, the EU will grow ever more important. Initially in Ireland this will either not be noticed or welcomed when spotted, since it will come alongside support for our comatose economy or will be warmly contrasted with our indigenous mismanagement of our political affairs.
But elsewhere, the twin-track Europe does begin to finally emerge. Eager to push on with the long march to federalism, the elites of Brussels will seek to seduce an inner circle to move faster. Welcome to the beginning of a Europe of the centre and the fringes again, just like the Roman Empire.

7. Poor ole spook kid Barack just won't catch an even break in 2010. With the messiah sheen of his election campaign long lost in most memories, Americans will get on with the fact of confronting growing poverty and unemployment, a reduction in international relevance alongside a growth in international danger, not only in current war spots but also in some new ones too.
I'd expect more Islamoterror next year, likely of the old Nineties format of attacks on foreign -based US troops. And that will of course stabilise Pakistan hugely.
Not.

8. China realises its dollars are worthless and we don't want their tat anymore, and there's only so much African resources and commodities you can stockpile for future good times, so it belatedly decides to spree its dollar mountain on Western assets.
This overt accumulation of Western trophies, akin to the Japanese intervention into California in the Eighties, will be the first sign for many of the Chinese century everyone was suspecting might come about.

9. Chelsea for the league, Barcelona for the Champions League, Rafa for Real and Mourinho for Anfield after an Arab buyout of the bankrupt Yanks.

10. Russia will play silly buggers with the gas pipeline to the West again as it tries and largely succeeds in splitting both Georgia and the Ukraine in two.
Everyone talks tough, but the Kremlin ain't listening. Once again, decadent old Europe realises too late that the Eastern threat to its stability has never gone away but merely morphed into yet another totalitarian guise, following the Tsarism and Sovietism of the past.

Should be a good year.

Sinn Fein Unionist Outreach Programme

Churry gets hands on and grapples Unionism at close quarters during a recent visit to Knutts Corner 'international' airport.

Let's ditch England

As I wandered around the sunny squares of Glasgow today, I couldn't help but recall that once upon a time Belfast sort of looked like this, before it all got blown up.

As I wandered the redbrick Victorian squares and terraces, I remembered that Belfast has much in common with this town, just as Dublin and Edinburgh architecturally are so reminiscent of each other.

Outside the Buchanan galleries, laden with bottles of whisky, I overheard a lost Japanese tourist ask two smoking old dears how to get to the Holiday Inn.

'Sure we wouldn't know,' they told him apologetically. 'We're not from this part of the world at all.'

After I pointed the Japanese lad in the right direction, I corrected the two old ladies.

'You're from Ards or Bangor, I'm guessing' I said to their astonishment. 'To my mind, that's definitely this part of the world.'

Sure enough, they were indeed from North Down. Their accents - effectively lowland Scots with an Irish lilt - gave that away. It's one I'm fairly familiar with.

And that got me thinking about the sphere of influence that goes back all the way through the medieval kingdom of Dalriada to the Red Branch cycle of mythology and Cuchullain's time with Scatha the Witch on Skye.

The same sphere of influence that the descendants of the Scottish planters of the Hamilton-Montgomery plantation of 1609 now wish to parlay into a quasi-nationhood - the so-called Ulster-Scots.

But the links go further and deeper than the ongoing and divisive effects of that particular plantation. The Scotii were in origin Irish themselves.

A deep shared culture, encompassing forms of the Gaelic languages, whisk(e)y distillation, croft farming, and continual cross-pollenisation of people and culture has created a bond between the two nations that is perennially sublimated by the fact that both remain culturally and politically dominated by England.

Just as the riches of Ireland - its great forests, its manpower, its food - were denuded for English benefit, so have the Scots suffered greatly through that unbalanced power relationship with their southern neighbour.

The highland clearances are no less a holocaust than the repeated attempts at Irish genocide concocted in London in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And the daylight robbery of their massive North Sea oil reserves parallels the lengthy theft of Irish resources for English gain during the past umpteen centuries.

It's self-evident to all but the Tory rump of the UUP that partitioning Ireland hasn't worked and never will. Even the self-denying Ulster nationalists within the DUP are coming to a slow realisation that their economic future and well-being is utterly and inextricably tied up with that of the rest of the island.

The question remains how to square the circle - how to encompass the stern and implacable opposition to the perceived 'Rome rule' of a unified Ireland that unionists espouse with the undeniable reality of their Irishness?

Perhaps the answer is a union of a different sort. Scots and Irish, Ulsterman and Highlander, Aberdonian and Corkonian can all agree on one simple fact - England never did you a single favour, but used you to their own benefit.

Maybe the answer is to ditch the English. Would the unionists accept a different type of union - one with our historical brother Scotland rather than the isle of Britain as a whole?

Those who espouse Irish unification always point to the fact that unionists would be kingmakers in Dail Eireann - driving coalitions from the minority position as the PDs did for the past decade.

But this is not sufficient for our unionist brethren.

So why not ditch the English?

We could have a union of over 11 million people, with stunning natural resources, and benefit from the boosted economy of scales that would provide. A true Celtic homeland, one made up of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter in even enough numbers to threaten no one.

The poor lost hybrid souls of Ulster would have both their parents back together, married for the first time without a third abusive and dominant partner involved in the relationship.

The Scots of Irish descent could finally feel truly at home in their homeland, no longer sickened by football thugs telling them to 'go home, the famine's over.'

The Scots do not benefit from their association with England under the British banner. They never did. Many, likely a majority, would support independence from London and the English yoke.

The English will always be with us. We are both, Scotland and Ireland, firmly within London's sphere of influence. But England's greatest fear has always been a coherent and strong rival culture located on its Celtic fringe.

Why not have a new unionism - a marriage of Scotland and Ireland - and find out just what it was that has been frightening England down through the many centuries?

We asked the Japanese tourist what he thought.

'If you say you are from Ireland, then you are Irish,' he answered slowly. 'But you sound like the Scots do to me. You look like them too.'

Even outsiders see the family resemblance, it seems.

A question for unionists

I have a question for anyone who considers themselves to be a Unionist. It's something I've always wondered about, so I'm putting it out there now.

What aspects that you, as Ulster Unionists, envisage about the prospect of a United Ireland make you opposed to it?

It seems to me that given the lack of any actual presentation of a vision for unifying Ireland by either Sinn Fein, the SDLP or the Southern parties, that there is no actual vision on the table. Rather, the idea of a United Ireland is a vacuum, an absence, a tabula rasa.

So since a unified island nation could potentially be anything you wish it to be, what is it that you, as Unionists are concerned about?

Rules of Engagement: Entitlement to British citizenship is already secured under the GFA, and the Republic isn't a Catholic theocracy.
Therefore arguments based on an attachment to a British (or to be accurate a Northern Irish or British-Irish) identity or opposition to the Catholic Church aren't valid for the purposes of this discussion.
Trolls posing as Unionists and those suspected of being such don't get to play, and non-Unionists don't get to second-guess or mindread what they think Unionist opinions on the issue really are.

What I'm really curious about here is what do Unionists believe a United Ireland might look like, what do they fear or oppose in that, is there a form of United Ireland acceptable to Unionists, and if not, why not?

I await your answers with eager interest. The floor is yours.