Non-election day May 29... that was the day the Brits told the natives in the Ulster Coconut Colony that they must not go out to vote. The election to the Stormont assembly was off again because of the rumour that two sets of roughs might top the polls and land us all in a right old mess.
It was a day of sharp contrasts. In far off Basra Tony Blair was telling the victorious British army units that May 29 was a 'defining day for democracy' and the beginning of peace in the Middle East. On the same day demonstrators were out in the streets of Belfast claiming that Blair had pulled the rug from under democracy thereby closing down the polling booths until God knows when.
Most protests came from Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party, whose boss man Ian Paisley was televised looking only a shadow of his old ebullient self, leaving the likes of aide Nigel Dodds to argue his case on the BBC's Hearts and Minds while Trimble relied on mild-mannered Dermot Nesbitt to rebut the DUP onslaught on the Good Friday Agreement.
The SDLP staged a mock election and their leader Mark Durkan, placing his voting slip in an election box, told us that the Unionist Party's 'soap opera' was about to bore us stiff again.
It's the same old story, Jeffrey Donaldson MP clutching at a new straw, the decommissioning yarn about 500 home-based Royal Ulster Rifles, to stir up trouble for Trimble inside his Yes-No party. He wants the famous unionist grass-roots Council of Hillbillies from the sticks to ride into town once again to begin the covert dismantling of the agreement.
That's been his aim all along. The end result? Better to suffer higher rates on the UK pattern through direct rule than share power in self-government with the old enemy. This is the crazy policy of the disguised bigots and has been at every twist and turn from the overthrow of O'Neill and Faulkner. It has left the six counties behind the rest of Ireland economically, deprived of the full fruits of the worldwide goodwill which followed the signing of the peace agreement. Under direct rule the tourist trade is limping along, soon we will be paying through the nose for water on the UK scale and rating on property going up and up until the orange pips squeak.
The latest row is turning logic upside down. While ranting on about private armies, they want to retain the local RIR, allegedly to man the border, just like their other old private army, the B Specials.
Meantime, crossing the border apparently held out no danger for mass murderer Michael Stone. It was a shock to find RTE featuring this weirdo on its Late Late Show to publicise his appalling book.
Publishers are surely plumbing the depths of infamy and hundreds of viewers like me cringed at the spectacle of RTE presenter Pat Kenny treating Stone like one of his usual pop stars, blurbing on about their forgettable 'charts' and 'albums'.
Here was this psychopath coolly discussing the shocking funeral massacre at Milltown Cemetery, Belfast and glorying in the fact that he rubbed shoulders with his intended targets – Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness – in the chapel before the funeral! We can't forget too that this crime led to the horrible sequel of mass hysteria when two soldiers who blundered onto the crowded scene at Casement Park were dragged from their car to be brutally murdered elsewhere. Two awful chapters of the troubles which we would like to forget.
A cruel memory only partly relieved by an act of humanity in the almost miraculous appearance on the scene of the saintly Fr Alex Reid of Clonard Monastery who has played such an amazing role in the peace process.
Here he was bending over the unfortunate victims praying or administering the Last Rites to fellow human beings, who like so many other unfortunate victims of our tragic times died when they found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Someone has asked, was even one such death in the troubles in the end worth what we have got?
