Conditional support for policing

Just being questioned by the PSNI tarnishes your character, according to a veteran East Belfast Orangeman.

Hugh Hamilton was quizzed by the Peelers about an Orange march in February last year that was originally declared unlawful by the Parades Commission because the application to parade had been judged to have been wrongly completed. NIO minister Shaun Woodward later said this wasn't the case. Since then, Hugh and his band of brothers have been campaigning for an apology. Last week, they got a personal apology face-to-face from the PSNI commander in East Belfast.

Never mind what nationalists and Sinn Féiners think, East Belfast Orangemen obviously don't think it's their duty to 'help police with their enquiries'.

Whatever happened to the unionists' "unconditional support" for the PSNI in what they do?

All-Ireland policing museum

RUC veterans are looking for Irish taxpayers' money to help one of the most repressive and notorious paramilitary forces in the world set up a museum in Belfast "to celebrate the history of policing on the island of Ireland".

The RUC old guard wants to show off not just the uniforms and equipment that they lavished so unreservedly on nationalists but also the pre-partition, 32-county RIC, the notorious Dublin Metropolitan Police of 1913 Lock-Out infamy, and the Garda and the PSNI. Interestingly, there's no mention of the infamous unionist stormtroopers, the RUC B-Specials.

The RUC George Cross Foundation has even been down to Áras an Uachtaráin with the begging bowl for their black museum.

RUC Foundation chairman Jim McDonald said:

"We want to develop a new museum of policing covering the history of all of the island, north and south. I'm sure it will be a unique visitor attraction."

I'm sure it will, Jim. Maybe it will be one of those state-of-the-art interactive museums. In between helping elderly unionist ladies across the road, special visitors can take turns CS gassing the Falls Road or machine gunning nationalist homes from the turret of an RUC armoured car.

And maybe Catholics coming through the doors of the RUC museum can be met with a hail of plastic bullets and a head-splitting baton charge, just like the old days.

RUC appeal

The RUC Foundation has also appealed for people to donate memorabilia like old uniforms and buttons.

And if the UDA and UVF would like to hand back some of those uniforms as well as the guns, files and photos on nationalists that RUC members gave them down over the years, that would be nice too.

Old soldiers

Martin McGuinness was taken on a trip down Memory Lane when a Metropolitan Police SWAT squad appeared at the Sinn Féin offices at the Palace of Westminster recently.

The SWAT team were as surprised by the presence of the Sinn Féin team — in town for a meeting with Tony Blair after the British queen's opening of parliament that day — as the republicans were to face the polite but heavily-armed gang.

Gerry Adams was taken aback to see Martin McGuinness shaking hands with a "white-haired, fresh-faced owner of a clipped English accent" who was chirping to the famous former IRA figure in Derry, "I'm really pleased to see you. I served in Derry for seven years: a lovely place. I was with the Duke of Edinburgh's Regiment. I loved Derry."

As Gerry Adams chipped in from behind his desk, "I'll leave you old soldiers to it," the head of the SWAT team, stunned by the republican group standing between them and their objective, asked, "Sorry, Mr Adams... Could we take some people out on the roof?"

Adams smiled back. "You can take some people out on to the roof... but I hope you don't take anyone out on the roof."

All the queen's men were not amused.

Great expectations

Minutes later, Gerry tells last week's Village Magazine, one of the men from the Met returned to announce triumphantly, "Her Majesty's due soon."

"Good," the West Belfast MP responded. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

Erection campaign

Like the RUC, one of the mayoral election candidates in Taiwan's capital city has a fondness for CS gas, having used it in parliament to highlight his grievance.

Li Ao is blaming the health service for the loss of his sexual drive after a cancer operation in 2003. He is 71.

"I have no chance of winning the election," Mr Li said in Taipei. "My main motive is to raise my voice."

He can still do that.