Ho, ho, ho

JUST imagine any of this lot coming down your chimney on Christmas Eve!
We’re told that some of these members of the Eamonn Lafferty Sinn Féin Cumann (renowned for getting well stuck into the Christmas spirit) had to bulk up for their part in Derry City’s bid to get into The Guinness Book of Records for the most Santas in one place. MLA Martina Anderson (she’s the slim, good-looking one in the middle) won’t tell us who.
Well done to all of them anyway.

Sash Gordon’s secret identity

THE Orange Order’s cartoon super hero, designed to lure impressionable young children into the lodge, has already been given a make-over.
‘Bigoted Sectarian Man’ makes a flying visit to YouTube with his orange quiff giving way to the more realistic grey hair and a few extra pounds in the super-short animation, Super Orangeman.
Creator Quentin Devine says:
“The Orange Order super hero is laughable and a bit disturbing.
“I cannot see this Buzz Lightyear/Mr Incredible-esque character being enough to convince the savvy, intelligent youth of today to be part of a group hell-bent on marching for the sake of a tradition that wants everyone never to forget we were all once divided and hated each other.”

UDR poser

FROM the Irish Times/ireland.com website last Wednesday, 12 December, ahead of the unveiling by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of a memorial to victims of the 1975 Miami Showband massacre.
“The band was told to line up while UVF members, posing as Ulster Defence Regiment members, tried to plant a bomb inside the minibus to explode later on as the musicians headed home to Dublin.”
“POSING” as UDR members? At least two of them WERE serving soldiers in the Ulster Defence Regiment. They had no need to “pose” as UDR, Irish Times editors should note – they were the real British Army deal.

Doc Martens for Dick?

JEAN-MARIE Le Pen’s announcement that he is to bring  his natty Nazis from the French Front National and other mainland Europe bigots to sieg heil their way into Ireland’s Lisbon Treaty referendum sometime in February has met with opposition from Sinn Féin.
And even Fianna Fáil sounds like it’s going back to the good old days when republicans went toe-to-toe with the fascist Blueshirts. European Affairs Minister Dick Roche has issued a warning using the sort of language employed by the militant street-fighters of Anti-Fascist Action.
“We will deal with these people in a robust manner if they come to Ireland,” warns Dick darkly.
“Robust”, eh? Let’s get ready to rumble.

Bugs money

DECEMBER may be Prisoners’ Month in Irish republican circles but one Israeli prisoner is celebrating a windfall after successfully suing the Israeli Prison Service for having to share his cell with cockroaches.
Mordechai Yehudai was awarded $1,000 due to poor hygiene in the jail, broken windows and because some of the other prisoners smoke.
The Fine Gael Justice Minister, Paddy ‘Cockroach’ Cooney, wouldn’t have seen any cockroaches in the republican wing of Portlaoise Prison in the mid-1970s. He didn’t see any, but they were there. Is there a statute of limitations on cockroach cases?

Three Wise Men hit the wall

A BETHLEHEM carpenter’s hand-carved wooden nativity scenes have all the elements of the Christmas story - the baby Jesus in his crib, Mary and Joseph looking on, the animals in the stable... and a huge security wall separating them from the Three Wise Men.
Palestinian craft-worker Tawfiq Salsaa says that the wall is based on the Israeli Army’s West Bank Barrier, which is up to eight metres high and 700 kilometres (430 miles) long.
Tawfiq has already sold 400 of his novel nativity scenes through a British NGO, The Amos Trust. Tawfiq explains:
“I want to give the world an idea of how we live in the Holy Land.”
And does the story of how Mary and Joseph fled from Bethlehem still have a resonance?
“I was thinking about how Jesus escaped from here 2,000 years ago,” Tawfiq says, looking at the suffocating Israeli military checkpoints and patrols. “It wouldn’t be so easy now.”