Ian Paisley: an obituary

I’ve just heard the joyous news that Ian Paisley has been taken to hospital after a suspected heart attack, and sincerely hope that it marks the prelude to his imminent and painful death. Politicians are difficult people to like at the best of times, as are clerics, so he’s in a difficult position from the start as far as I’m concerned. But Paisley hasn’t rested on these laurels, and has really done his utmost to achieve a quite astonishing feat of loathsomeness, beating off stiff competition to become easily the most poisonous figure in UK politics in my lifetime – Cameron, Blair, even Thatcher cannot rival him in terms of naked evil.

This is a man who is almost singlehandedly responsible for the bloodshed in Northern Ireland since the mid 1960s. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t been helped in this by the paramilitaries on both sides and by the British government, but the fact is that none of it could have happened without him. When he appeared on the political scene the IRA was virtually dead and Northern Ireland, despite the appalling injustice suffered by the nationalist community ever since the partition of Ireland, was relatively peaceful.

Indeed to use the phrase “nationalist community” may be inaccurate – though quite rightly disgruntled, the Civil Rights marchers who began their campaign in the 1960s were not calling for a united Ireland, merely peacefully demanding to be treated as equal citizens within the United Kingdom. That they were doing so perhaps even indicates that many of them had, if somewhat reluctantly, accepted the legitimacy of the British crown. At no time was the union remotely under threat, in fact until Paisley came along it was barely challenged. The response of Paisley was to do everything within his power to thwart the entirely reasonable and humane demands of the Civil Rights movement, by any means necessary. This meant, above all else, stoking up sectarian violence on the part of both the unionist community and the police.

I have no romantic illusions about the paramilitaries on either side and no intention of defending how they have terrorised each others’ and their own communities, but Paisley’s actions left no alternative to the formation of the Provisional IRA, who for a while became the sole effective defenders of catholics at a time when those who had chosen the peaceful route were being beaten senseless or worse by police or loyalists. It cannot be forgotten that the first terrorist murders of the modern troubles were of catholic men, years before the Provisionals existed. The rest is familiar history – thanks to the sectarianism that Paisley had stirred up, the IRA was brought back from the dead and thousands of people were killed in decades of pointless, tit-for-tat murders.

The fact that this has now pretty much stopped is no thanks to him. Despite his paramilitary links he has always kept the loyalists at a cowardly and hypocritical distance, feeding their idiotic paranoia whilst taking no responsibility for the consequences. When even these organisations tired of their senseless war of attrition and pledged support for the Belfast agreement, Paisley attacked them for selling out. At an anti-agreement meeting he turned his lynch mob on Gary McMichael, the son of a UDA commander who had been murdered by the IRA, for attempting to challenge Paisley’s argument. It may stick in the throat a little to say it, but at a stretch it might be possible to describe the IRA, UDA and UVF, in their support for the Belfast agreement, as peacemakers. In Paisley’s case on the other hand, to use his favourite word, never.

Eventually of course Paisley did accept a form of power sharing, famously or rather infamously developing a smug rapport with former IRA chief Martin McGuinness, but this is hardly anything to be applauded. Power sharing, after all, was what the Civil Rights marchers had been demanding, and without his poisonous intervention would have been possible decades previously. Then he had bitterly opposed it, and in doing so ensured decades of bloodshed. The only way he would accept power sharing was in the form of a sick coalition of his own thugs and the IRA gangsters he had always claimed to despise. Thousands of people in Northern Ireland died for no other reason than to secure Paisley’s coronation as First Minister, with a terrorist as his deputy.

I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface here in terms of cataloguing his crimes. I could also mention his vicious, bullying homophobia, though without wishing to disrespect gay people, I can’t help viewing this as a secondary issue in the light of the sectarian murders he’s been responsible for. His lifetime achievement has been to fuel hatred and frustrate peace. His death cannot come soon enough.

The 2012 New Year's message from TONA: No more Mr Nice Guys

It’s been quite a few days for deaths – Hitchens, the Dear Leader of North Korea, and most significantly for the Czechs of course, Václav Havel. Havel is clearly a revered figure in the Czech Republic, even so I’ve been slightly taken aback by the strength of feeling his death has generated. I don’t really want to join in too much here, from what I knew of Havel I basically liked and respected him but I’m certainly no expert, and more than enough has been written about him this week already.

The reaction to his death has left me with some mixed feelings. There’s evidently no lack of glutinous sentimentality, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that it’s Christmas – aaahh – and this is the time of year when he first became president of Czechoslovakia. There’s also no lack of hypocrisy, since he was often the object of ridicule as president among certain parts of the population. Not only hypocrisy, but in the case of current president Klaus, typically vicious opportunism: no doubt keen to avoid negative comparisons with the much-loved predecessor for whom he had utter contempt (which was quite rightly reciprocated), the incumbent grasps at the chance to bask in reflected glory.

In the midst of all this, it’s maybe not so surprising that a few dissenting voices have been raised, largely from the left. These have ranged from downright poisonous bad taste on the part of oafish, bloodthirsty Stalinists exhorting the nation to celebrate, to the more cerebral, which point out that he was no saint, who at the very least quickly reneged on his promise to serve only a single term as president. There is indeed a danger of Havel becoming the Czech equivalent of Princess Diana, and I have to hope that with Christmas Day immediately following the day of Havel’s funeral, the Czechs will (at least in this respect) return to their generally restrained, moderate selves.

Nevertheless, some of the criticisms of him strike me as somewhat mean-spirited. Although I was disappointed by his eagerness to join NATO and his slavish support for Bush’s foreign policy, I can’t agree that this entirely discredited him as a humanitarian, and have no reason to doubt the sincerity of his belief. The fact is I simply don’t agree with him on this and probably many more issues. So much for his opinions. In terms of his personality, however, I don’t find it so difficult to admire the man, and the contrast with Klaus could not be greater. Klaus, an egomaniac and slave to dogma very similar in spirit to the communists, kept his head down and worked in a bank during the years of normalisation. He subsequently dismissed Havel as a “half-socialist” and never tires of posing as the scourge of the totalitarian left, though this naturally didn’t stop him twice being elected president with the help of the communist party. Havel on the other hand, whilst evidently a flawed man, could have had quite a comfortable life had he kept his mouth shut, but was prepared to put his head on the block and suffer the consequences. RIP.

“...I blame their parents...”

“...failing on the part of our schools...”

“...total lack of discipline...”

“...there can be no excuses whatsoever...”

“...opportunistic, copycat looting...”

“...mindless, recreational violence...”

“...thoroughly organised, cynical attacks...”

“...feral youth...”

“...shallow, greedy individuals...”

“...trashing their own communities...”

“...intent on causing misery...”

“...this is criminality, pure and simple, and it has to be confronted and defeated...”

“...huge sympathy for the families who have suffered...”

“...law abiding people are appalled...”

“...need for a swift, robust response...”

“...police working with the full support of the local communities...”

“...impose martial law...”

“...I see it’s mostly blacks that are at it...”

Aaaah, fuck off you bastards!!!

Tona - Shooter (live at EXIT 2011)

They're back, and they're fucking evil. Damn, I wish I hadn't missed Exit this year.

Has Thatcher of all people been the one to bang the final nail into the coffin of Sarah Palin's political career? Fucking hell, I'm now forced to contemplate the notion that I might actually be pleased the old bitch isn't dead!

The summer is a period of glorious laziness for Czechs. In some professions this starts earlier than in others. The teaching profession, for example, is one that provides for vast expanses of sloth. By this time of the year any teaching that is going on has descended to the level of the farcically tokenistic. Lectures have of course long finished in universities, whilst in regular schools students are either taking or have already taken their exams, and so now, since attendance is mandatory, both students and teachers are irritably killing time as parties to a do-nothing pact until school breaks up at the end of June, after which there follows a summer holiday period of two full months. In language schools, where attendance is voluntary, students are few and far between at this time of the year, despite having paid for their courses. Easy money for the teachers, if rather demoralising and potentially maddening if only one student turns up to class.

Although an extreme case, teachers are not the only lazy bastards in this country. For the whole of July and August the entire republic seems to grind to a halt, as families go abroad or off to their country cottage to fart around in the garden for a couple of months. Even those who go to work during these months spend most of their time there piddling about on the internet and drinking slivovice. This is a country where many people complain of being poor in comparison with their Western counterparts, but can nonetheless evidently afford not to work for enviable lengths of time. Hey ho, if you can’t beat em, join em.

Being self-employed these days I have no choice over this anyway. During the holiday season my orders for work simply dry up, and with the superb weather we’re having it seems to have started early this year. This has suddenly left me with a bit of extra time on my hands to trawl the net, during which I’ve recently come across this little gem – which MP would you rather shag? There are sometimes quite hideous choices to be made, but with humour and a strong stomach on the part of the voter it can actually become quite addictive. It was the Guardian that drew my attention to the website, which has predictably raised eyebrows in polite, politically correct circles. Its detractors can hardly complain that it’s sexist, since, given the male/female ratio amongst MPs, men are much more widely represented here than women. However, many protest that it’s demeaning. Well I should fucking well hope so! Let’s just remember who these people are for a moment – MPs, the scum of the earth! Shouldn’t we find this opportunity to humiliate them rather empowering? After all, why should us little people be denied the pleasure of cracking off a spiteful wank over Caroline Flint, for example? Or perhaps, now that Labour are out of power, there might be added spice to giving one of those nasty, prim young Tories a good facial – Priti Patel and Penny Mordaunt are most certainly in the bank for a rainy day. These days I have more or less equal contempt for all three main political parties, so politics doesn’t really come into it that much. Labour, Tory, Lib Dem (although the best the latter can do seems to be 60 year old gilf Lynne Featherstone) are all surely thoroughly deserving of a good pasting, if you’ll pardon the expression. There’s also a personal advantage for me, living outside the UK, in that in the great majority of cases I’ve never heard these women speak, which would no doubt put me off my stroke a fair bit. There may be drawbacks – of course it’s juvenile and essentially ineffectual, furthermore it debases the wanker at least as much as the wankee. Still, even if it’s not a particularly mature or dignified way to get revenge, with the next election still 4 years away what else is left to us?