The Portadown News is a cracker this week.
“Ian Paisley has promised to keep Sinn Fein out of government by keeping himself out of government. “There will be no surrender to the IRA’s surrender,” the leader of Northern Ireland’s largest party said. “After fifty years, republicans are just as dangerous as I have always needed them to be and it’s still not my fault.”
On more serious NI-related business, the three alleged IRA men who vanished from Colombia have appeared in Ireland and have said they don’t consider themselves on the run. I wonder. I seem to recall hearing on a squaddie site couple of months back that one of them had been sighted in South Armagh, but checking I can’t find any reference to it…you do wonder how long the preparations for the super-statement had been going on. In a deep historical sense, I’d say since 1973, when both the UK and the Republic joined the then EEC. Without the IRA and hence the army presence on the border, the border will rapidly lose reality, especially with the Common Travel Area. Especially with SF in government on both sides of it, the remaining flags’n’anthems stuff isn’t much to fight over.