Equality and our Summer Tag Team
It's Mark, not Martina. I'm just back from a typical Irish beach holiday, which involved being rained off the beach once and on another occasion being advised by a lifeguard to seek shelter in order to avoid being hit by lightning. This after purchasing a metal fishing net for Devenport junior which no doubt would have acted as an excellent conductor.
I'm back for a while, but my blogging tag partner Martina is promising to fill in again during August when I shall abscond once more. So you can look forward to some more quality entries then.
All fairly quiet on the Stormont front today with the exception of Peter Robinson's assault on the Equality Commission and its 34% Protestant workforce. The DUP leader makes no secret of his intention to ensure that a unionist is appointed he points out that Shaun Woodward is due to appont four Commissioners in September. "This is an opportunity for the Secretary of State to address the shameful past legacy of this body. I would strongly urge him to fulfil his legal obligations to ensure representativeness on the commission: something that has been absent up until now."
But during the European election campaign the DUP briefed that they wanted a "Commission Cull", merging the Equality, Human Rights and Children's Commissions (the policy was illustrated by an axe in a tree stump which Mr Robinson assured us was not intended for Monica McWilliams personally. So if the party gets its representatives on these bodies will it remain so keen on their cull?
Last week when I was away the TUV's Karen Boal (no relation to the lawyer Dessie Boal I am assured) challenged the DUP to say what has happened to their promised Unionist Academy and Equality Unit. Today Mr Robinson assured Martina that the plans are still on track and we shall hear more detail on them in September.
On a quite separate theme, yesterday's Observer story on Labour combining the general Election with a referendum on electoral reform sounded vaguely familiar to me. Then I realised that the memory it had triggered was of the old Trimble-ite wheeze that an Assembly election should be held on exactly the same day as a "border poll". The theory was that such a poll would bring out all those garden centre unionists who would also mark their preferences for UUP candidates.
Of course the "border poll" idea got no further than the old UUP HQ drawing board. It will be interesting to see if the AV referendum makes it any further. What the UUP then and Labour now have in common is that both were/are in a tight corner and both were/are compared to contemplate fairly far fetched tactics in a last ditch attempt to change the electoral realities facing them.
I'm 
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Mark
ROBINSON'S BIGOTRY CONTINUES TO SHINE BRIGHT
And he misses the point as well.
Surely the main issue is whether or not the Equality Commission is doing a good job and delivering on its remit. Believe me, he would be better served attacking the effectiveness of the Commission given that a number of its members are career quangoists par excellence, in other words, wastes-of-space.
Robinson's polemic against the composition of the Commission is simply about maintaining sectarian divisions: a continuation of 'us and themuns' to assuage his redneck grassroots but clearly the road to nowhere.
There again, that's what Fascists do. Create problems where none exist.
Susie
Carryduff
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Crazy. Peter Robinson seeking greater unionist representation on an equality commision is like the KKK seeking greater representation on a Race Relations Panel.
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