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31 January 2008 Edition

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Fifth Column

To boldly go...

STAR TREK star Colm Meaney put a stop to any snide remarks about republicans when he appeared as a guest of RTÉ’s The Panel chairperson, Colin Murphy, last week, getting the biggest ovation of any guest yet.
Meaney – who plays Chief Petty Officer Miles O’Brien in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine  –is one of the Irish co-stars of the American version of the hit BBC show, Life on Mars.
The Dubliner – who has also notched up a rake of TV and film appearances from Z Cars to Die Hard 2, Con Air, and Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van – made some frank observations about fellow thespians like Tom Cruise (“a strange dude – the most intense human being I’ve ever been around”).
He recalled his school days and how he was on the verge of being expelled “for political activity”. “Were you in Sinn Féin or something?” Neil Delamere asked mischievously. Our Star Trek trouper smiled back across the table, equally mischievously: “I was, actually.”
And Mr Meaney hasn’t been afraid to tell the media that he still holds to his republican principles. In 2005, he praised the Sinn Féin leadership for keeping the Peace Process on track despite what he called unionist “obstruction”. He said unionists had no right to have photos of IRA weapons being put beyond use.
“It’s so ironic to be lectured by people who created a false state, gerrymandered and denied nationalists the vote to be now lecturing us about democracy,” Colm said. “It was the democratic choice of the people of Ireland in 1918 to separate from the United Kingdom.”

Love Ulster leader says it’s war!

WHILE some unionists are in a blue funk over talk about the conflict being officially designated as a “war”, hardline unionist campaigner Willie ‘Love Ulster’ Frazer is clear that it was a war.
Willie opposes the Bradley/Eames Consultative Group on the Past about dealing with the legacy of ‘The Troubles’.
As head of the unionist Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, he says that people have seen enough memorials of the past in the shape of plaques and gardens but what is needed is “a living memorial”, where citizens can go for all sorts of help.
“We need a place where people can go and tell a few war stories.”
You can’t have war stories without there having been a war.

Police lip service

THE PEELERS have been given a handy little booklet by PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde instructing them that they shouldn’t call people Fenians, Taigs, spongers or Huns (I shouldn’t think they use the last epithet too much anyway).
The booklet, Guide to Appropriate Language, advises that it’s unacceptable to call people of Chinese or south-east Asian origin “Chinky” or “boat people”. Nor should they call people of Asian or Arabic appearance “Ali Baba” or “Osama Bin Laden”.
Likewise derogatory references to people who are gay should be refrained from, officers of the law have to be told.
Terms of endearment like “love” are out too, so no more should we experience the sweet delight of a Peeler cooing in your ear: “I’d love to kick the shite out of you, you bent Fenian f****r!”

Digging a bigger hole

THE Green Party’s ludicrous line on Lisbon is descending into greater farce as its leaders try and prevent any further embarrassment.
You might recall that John Gormley and his bunch failed to win the two thirds majority needed at the Greens’ convention on backing Lisbon, so they have decided that they can take the Fianna Fáil line anyway and sod what the members think. And just in case any greenhorn is confused, the Green Party Management Committee has spelt out to all party officers and members what is the party line.
“The party has NO position on the Treaty,” an internal memo insists. “Party policy in neither in favour, nor against, nor neutral.”

Lights, camera, apology

NO sooner had we reported in last week’s paper that former RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan refused to apologise for his officers making a pig’s ear of the Omagh investigation than he went and did it.
As An Phoblacht was rolling off the press, Purple Ronnie told reporters after meeting the father of 12-year-old James Barker, killed in the 1998 bomb:
“I absolutely apologise to those families in Omagh and I feel desperately sorry that we have not, to this point, brought people to justice for that attack.”
“Absolutely apologise,” he said. “Without reservation.” So that should meet the families’ wishes, shouldn’t it? No.
James Barker’s father, Victor, still wants Flanagan to resign as head of the quality standards inspectorate for all the police forces in England and Wales.
“He did not apologise to me [in our meeting] and I was very cross with him,” Victor Barker said. “He only apologised outside when there was pressure from the cameras.”
Barker also said:
“Ronnie Flanagan said he would fall on his sword if anything was wrong with this investigation. I will give him the sword.”
So will Ronnie resign? Er, no, because, in his view, that would achieve “no positive outcome”.
So much for the word of the former head of the RUC.


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