M any will have felt strangely let-down by Ian Paisley’s grovelling apology to News Letter journalist Sam McBride – and by Sam’s dignified acceptance of the hateful wee shite’s mea culpa. (The fact that he’s a misshapen lump of mendacity doesn’t mean he’s not a wee shite. Wee shites come in all shapes and disguises.)

The Ballymena bigot had gotten all uptight when Sam drew attention to the Democratic Unionist Party’s improbable gyrations over abortion and an Irish Language Act.

Nowhere else in the known world could these two issues be entwined. But we are, as they say, where we are – viz. Northern Ireland.

The Paisley nose had been put out of joint by the News Letter man pondering in print whether the DUP would put a higher premium on preventing abortion than on denying official status to the Irish language.

Abortion is a “devolved matter” – within the remit of Stormont, not of Westminster. But Stormont hasn’t been functioning for the last three years. So the House of Commons laid it down last spring that if the regional parliament is not back in action by October 21, Westminster legislation will come into play – and abortion will no longer be a criminal offence in the North.

You’d think, then, that if the abortion issue were uppermost in its mind, the DUP would be scampering up Stormont hill to get the show back on the road and abortion off the agenda.

Then again, this would require DUP agreement to an Irish Language Act – a Sinn Féin precondition for restoring power-sharing and thus the Assembly. Sam suggested the Paisleyite party would imminently have to decide which was the more important – keeping abortion out or refusing official recognition to Irish. And, he speculated, the DUP would likely go for gagging the gaelgóirí.

(Maybe we should campaign in the North for the right to choose to have abortions carried out in Irish.)

STRAIGHT TALK

Paisley’s reaction to these ruminations was as extravagant as his taste in holiday freebies. McBride was “a despicable and low character”, spreading “a lie from the deepest pit of hell.” He had been brought up a Christian: “Those who know him must be thoroughly ashamed of him”. Paisley’s capering sidekick, Ballymena councillor John Carson, took up the cudgels to belabour the miscreant who had disrespected the man with the black scowl and the Maldives tan.

Let’s all boycott the News Letter, Carson shouted, so as to deprive Sam McBride of a job…

In the course of assailing McBride, Paisley demanded “straight talk.” So here we go, again.

Paisley is a liar and a hypocrite who doesn’t care two balls of blue about the Protestant people of North Antrim, or of anywhere else either. He returned from his ill-gotten sojourns in Sri Lanka and the Maldives surfing on sleaze. He is a man with a poisoned mind and a corkscrew soul. The public figure he most closely resembles physically is Prince Andrew. He’ll probably take that as a compliment.

Paisley’s apology came just three days after his frenzied attack on the mild-mannered McBride: “I accept that it was wrong of me to describe Mr McBride as a ‘despicable and low character,’ or to say that, ‘Those who know him should be thoroughly ashamed of him’ or to accuse him ‘of hating… those who defend the unborn’.”

I don’t believe he meant a word of it. The statement had all the hallmarks of having been dictated by a DUP lawyer. Sam should have told him to take a hike to whatever hidey-hole he keeps the dosh he’s defrauded from the taxpayers of at least three countries in and send a cheque for some suitably colossal amount made out to “Sam McBride Esquire,” or face ruination.

But very soft-hearted and forgiving, these Newsletter journalists. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

Within 24 hours of the Paisley apology came news that fifteen hundred jobs at Ballymena’s Wrightbus plant were about to go wallop. But what’s that compared to saving Northern women from the perils of choice and the Protestant people from having to hear terrorists jabbering Conas atá tú? to one another on the public street?

Pig-shit comes no thicker than Ian Paisley.
____________

Part of my function on earth is to blaspheme at least once a day. Paul Anka’s big-band swing-song version of “Wonderwall” is better than the Oasis effort.

Frank Sinatra’s “Old Man River” is better than Paul Robeson’s. Marianne Faithful’s “Working-Class Hero” is better than John Lennon’s. That’ll do for now.

_____________

We came back from the climate demo to discover that Leo Varadkar had opened another airport runway. A lot of people didn’t like that. Too obvious a contradiction. .

Making it worse were the antics of a sky-pilot who, having sprinkled droplets of magic Catholic water onto the massive slab of grey concrete slapped down on the beautiful Mayo countryside, passed a phial of the wondrous fluid to the Taoiseach, suggesting he use it to ward off the evil spirit of Boris Johnston.

Screw the climate, pollute the countryside, spread superstition, sure isn’t it great crack altogether?
______________

“Buckingham Palace” has said it again: Prince Andrew never did any of the things his victims say that he did.

Doesn’t this make the Queen part of the cover-up? Will Knacker of the Yard come aknocking?