The 5th Column

Citizenship tourists

FIANNA FÁIL/PD MINISTERS banging the drum in support of their racist referendum ploy have been at pains to tell us they're worried about preserving "the integrity" of Irish citizenship.

If that's the case, then why have shed-loads of Irish passports been doled out to white supremacist Rhodesians in years gone by and to Apartheid-supporting South Africans more recently searching for escape routes to Europe even though they've NEVER set foot in Ireland?

And what about the integrity of the Irish citizenship of media barons, who wield enormous influence in Irish affairs yet take knighthoods from what's left of the bloody British Empire, insist on Irish citizens addressing them by their aristocratic British titles and stash their cash in the West Indies as a tax resident?

Take a bow 'Sir' Anthony O'Reilly, knight of the British realm, billionaire bean baron, owner of Independent Newspapers, part-time Irish citizen when it suits and always a tax exile in the Bahamas.

Frazer IS Charles Bronson

WILLIE FRAZER, Harry Potter look-alike head of the anti-republican SAS/UDR cheerleaders in FAIR (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives), now fancies himself as another movie screen idol - Charles Bronson.

Willie is wild about a wave of anti-social behaviour in the County Armagh village of Newtownhamilton, where hoods have smashed up a number of homes and eleven vehicles. One attack happened within 300 yards of a PSNI barracks. Furious residents told reporters that they never felt so scared, even at the height of the conflict.

Willie thunders: "If the police can't give us a guarantee that people can be safe in their homes, then we will have to do something about it ourselves."

Hang on, doesn't that sound like vigilante talk, people taking the law into their own hands, undermining the forces of loyalist law and order?

Isn't that the sort of thing Willie calls for the PSNI to smash in nationalist communities?

Will the Peelers now show parity of esteem and feel the furry collar of our little friend Frazer?

Roy joy

BALLYMENA DUP Councillor Roy Gillespie is struggling with parity of esteem and wants to force meetings to be held under the gaze of the anti-democratic head of the Protestant supremacist monarchist mammy, Mrs Elizabeth Windsor.

Roy is beside himself with glee that he managed to get a small meeting moved from a council ante-room to the much bigger main committee room at Ballymena Council's Ardeevin HQ. As a result, the few participants had to do their business under the Union Jack and under the nose of the British queen.

Battle of the Boyne it ain't, but it does for the DUP.

Halley's vomit

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT hackette Gwen Halley is the latest back end of a pantomime horse who wants to curry her bosses' favour by writing any old tripe just so long as it's attacking republicans.

Gwen's sensitivities are offended by the thought that anyone could embrace the Peace Process and the likes of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Last weekend, she nearly fell into her pink martini because Marina Guinness (of brewing family fame) dared to reply to the tedious tidings of the previous week of Sindo hack Barry Egan aimed at her presence at a Gerry Adams book launch.

Standing up for Egan gave Gwen the excuse to fill half her column with what he had written already (handy number that, Gwen).

Gwen reveals her shock at Marina Guinness's supposedly outrageous adulation of republicans by recounting the following:

"I visited Marina's Celbridge home a few years ago as a friend of somebody else in the Guinness extended circle. Chez Marina is a spirited, chaotically welcoming place. Hence, I'm certain that many others have noticed that Marina Guinness's kitchen wall had been transformed into something approaching a SF/IRA shrine. To me, it was all as puzzling and perverse as the women I read about in the National Enquirer who end up marrying their rapist attackers." Puzzled is not the word for you, Gwen.

Gwen tells us that on the wall were posters of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley. "Poor Rev Ian Paisley was also up there with a red cross painted through his face. That's how politicians with real democratic credentials are treated in Chez Marina."

So Gwen worships at the altar of the democratic credentials of self-styled Reverend 'Carson Trail' Ian 'Third Force' Kyle 'Ulster Resistance' Paisley. And perhaps the good Reverend Paisley was responsible for the miracle of restoring poor Gwen's speech after she was struck dumb (or dumber) by Marina's kitchen décor "A FEW YEARS AGO". What took you so long to speak out, Gwennie?