The 5th Column

News Letter's shame

THE NEWS LETTER front page reporting The Twelfth featured a full-page, full-colour photo of nationalists in hand-to-hand combat with British soldiers who had escorted 400 Orange Order hangers-on while they marched past Ardoyne shops to taunt locals with sectarian and loyalist death squad slogans.

The News Letter headline read: "What a shame."

Just WHAT was a shame?

That British soldiers still suppressing nationalists so that Orangemen can lord it over their Catholic neighbours?

That the PSNI and the British Army conspired to force a 400-strong unionist mob through Ardoyne in a mirror image of last year's provocation by loyalists in contravention of a Parades Commission decision?

When you Gotha go...

TWELFTH SPEECHES are big on noting historic events important to those loyal to the British crown. Strange to report, then, one glaring omission in solemn pronouncements by Orange Order chiefs.

In the Twelfth Week, back in 1917, following the very strong anti-German feeling at the height of the First World War, the British royal family changed their name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.

Basil Fawlty would have been at home with the Orangemen's royal line: "Don't mention the war!"

Fun Boy One becomes two

WE ARE OVERCOME with the news that the DUP gospel singing funster, Paul Berry, tied the knot last week.

The puritanical Newry/Armagh MLA and Orangeman is so smitten with his Omagh bride that he joyfully swapped the Twelfth in Tandragee for a honeymoon in the Caribbean. But Rockin' Berry has words of reassurance for the lads in the lodge.

"I'll be missing the celebrations back home but I haven't ruled out slipping on the collarette over there and trying to get a few of the locals to join me."

Don't wait up, Mrs Berry. Trying to find a Catholic area to march through among all those islands could take some time.

Drawing conclusions

IRISH NEWS Chief Reporter Sharon O'Neill's piece on Saturday focused on the rising tension caused by the Orange Order ahead of the Twelfth marches on Monday.

Recalling previous years of violence emanating from the Orange Order's defiance of the law that they insist the rest of us abide by, the Irish News scribe wrote that a "loyalist source" had said:

"These protests have been called by the Orange Order and I don't think loyalist paramilitaries will be drawn into them.

"Thirty years ago, the DUP led the loyalist paramilitaries by the nose and trampled all over them. They will not be used again."

The DUP using loyalist murder gangs? Surely not.

RUC's 'right to remain silent'

RUC OFFICERS who have left the paramilitary force or moved sideways into the PSNI were encouraged by their union's former chief last week not to cooperate with Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan.

Finlay Spratt, former chairperson of the RUC Police Federation, is upset at the Ombudsman's office describing the RUC as providing a "fire brigade service" during the conflict. Spratt has contrived to take offence at this, saying:

"Given the number of inquiries in the pipeline, I think it would be very dangerous for former RUC officers - be they retired or currently serving in the new PSNI - to cooperate with an office that is so political."

Isn't there something a bit suspect about a police union figure inciting serving police officers not to cooperate with 'the law'?

Mr Spratt and other RUC constables must surely be familiar with the term "perverting the course of justice".

Gazza's IRA hallucinations

PAUL 'GAZZA' GASCOIGNE, the England soccer legend and wife-beating beer monster, but still a fans' favourite, has claimed that it was the IRA that made him turn to the booze.

Pushing his soon-to-be published autobiography, Gazza claims that he was put on an IRA hit list (while the IRA was on cessation) after he mimicked playing an Orange flute in the Glasgow Rangers team in front of Celtic fans in January 1998. Gazza must have thought the sectarian wind-up was really hilarious because he'd pulled the same stunt three years earlier and had no qualms about repeating it, despite the ensuing outrage.

The second outing provoked some irate mail.

"One letter was from someone claiming to be from the IRA, and he said they would get me," the gormless Geordie recalls in his book. "I was so scared I reported it to the police, who came to my house and showed me how to open letters in case they contained a bomb.

"I was taught how to look under my car before getting into it in case someone had attached an explosive.

"I got really worried about the IRA so I was trying to escape from my problems through binge drinking."

And what about all his wife beating and beer-fuelled, boorish, crass antics before his Rangers days?

Ex-wife Sheryl has branded Gascoigne's book a "catalogue of half-truths".

Dirty money

THE SUNDAY LIFE newspaper has reported that Six-County veterans of the British Army, RUC men lured to Iraq to work in the so-called "private security" (ie. mercenary) business for wages of up to £700 (€1,000) a day have been short changed and are clearing a take-home pay of less than £10 an hour (providing they make it home).

One ex-RIR soldier is said to have been offered a job in London by the prestigious Control Risks Group as a security advisor on Iraq's new railway reconstruction programme. After working out insurance, tax, accountants' fees and other deductions, the RIR gun for hire said: "I would have been on call 24 hours a day and at risk every minute of every day. But when I totted the figures up, I discovered I'd be making less than £10 per hour."

The Sunday Life exclaimed (with their emphasis):

"They may be risking their lives - including the possibility of being kidnapped and beheaded - for no more money per hour than a council BINMAN."

Surely even an RIR soldier can do the sums then - get a job as a binman and go home with a clean conscience.

Restoration once again

RESTORATION, Griff Rhys Jones's surprisingly popular BBC TV series in which viewers vote to save an historic landmark, is back on our screens and has an added interest for Irish republicans.

Armagh Jail is one of three buildings in the Six Counties battling against 18 rivals in England, Scotland and Wales to come top of the pile and win a cash regeneration in the save-a-ruin telly poll.

Republicans who have been inside, outside and over the walls of Armagh Jail might have mixed emotions about the prison. Can they be tempted to rally behind a previously unthinkable slogan: "Save Armagh Jail"?