Fire & Brimstone

On his own inimitable way Sean Mallory tries to make sense of the RHI scandal.

Brimestone - Sulphur or a bright yellow butterfly or moth: (are moths not attracted to heat!)

As the DUP, realising that the public's appetites voracious consumption of the DUP RHI scandal was still insatiable , they, post haste, began the desperate action of jettisoning any remaining flotsam that could be linked back to the party and thus scuttle their burgeoning election campaign of better Arlene than ‘Adams’ Michelle O’Neill’. No need to add fuel to the fire!

Quickly out of the starting blocks, Jim Wells publicly admitted that several relatives had availed of the RHI scheme and that he wanted to set the record straight to avoid any future inference of wrongdoing, moral or unethical behaviour. 

Wells, as honest about RHI as Tony Blair was about Weapons of Mass Destruction, in his statement alluded to several relatives as being recipients and explained that he was fully unaware of this until very recently and that a family member realised: "...if they didn't tell me and it came out, I would be in a difficult position".

He went on to imitate Gerry Kelly and his call for republicans to inform, to encourage other MLAs to come clean about any links to the RHI scheme: "Frankly, if you delay and it then comes out, people will then ask, why did you hold back?"

Too true Jim: and good call considering that one of the family members was your brother!

Stephen Brimstone, a former DUP advisor, has also discovered that he was heating his own house with a non-domestic boiler that apparently he had replace an already installed biomass boiler, just to avail of the RHI scheme. This is exactly what Jim is referring to Stephen!

Unlike Wells and more like Brimstone, UVF boss Winkie Irvine decided that coming clean about RHI was certainly not in his interest. 

Irvine, a board member of the Woodvale Shankill Community Housing Association (WSCHA), is running three large wood pellet boilers in the middle of the heavily built-up Woodvale district. Two with planning permission and the third going through the application process at Belfast City Council although the boiler has been running for over a year anyway...without official planning approval. Even more embarrassing is the fact that one of the schemes biggest critics is the UVF linked PUP.

Like Stitt, Winkie, outraged as such gutter sniping, responded to these reports in a Trumphalist manner by declaring it all fake news....lies and fabricated facts to be more precise.

To rub saltpetre into Winkie’s wounds, a WHSCA whistle blower is claiming that WHSCA went through a ‘sham tender’ process in awarding a building firm, WGS, contracts worth millions. Winkie just happens to be a director of this firm also. 

The DUP not content with running one highly dubious and corrupt scheme, embroiled itself in further controversy when it unfolded that DUP Minister for Communities, Paul Givan, has awarded hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Orange Order for refurbishment purposes under the various guises of community groups who use their halls. One of those who received £25,000 was Randalstown Ulster Scots Cultural Agency for an Orange hall that can’t be located at its application address or not even in close proximity. A cultural society of whom the Ulster Scots Agency itself has never provided funds to either. Apparently all those who applied to Givan’s community halls pilot programme have gone through a vigorous verification process. A process that has been vigorously applied to GAA applications judging by the paucity of successful applications from this community!

Maybe Givan's Assembly department should be renamed from Department of Communities to Department of a Particular Community.

Diane Dodds, having idiotically voted herself out of a job, received a very embarrassing slap down for her brazen effrontery from her EU colleagues when she bleated about the disastrous affects that Brexit was and would have on Norn Iron agriculture.

Dodds having acknowledged that she and her party both voted for Brexit and unaccustomed to such a humiliating blunt and frank response, sat, like an embarrassed child while being chided and ridiculed, through the indignity of having her hypocrisy and stupidity exposed for all the world to see.

East Belfast DUP MLA Sammy Douglas has stepped down and in the process launched a strong attack on the courts and justice department, demanding especially that the Assembly be tough on crime and also on the reasons behind crime. According to the Chief Constable and his officers of the PSNI one of those reasons behind crime, Sammy, being the UDA!

Nelson McCausland – BT 02/02/2017 – exemplifies the DUP's understanding of the concept of democracy and majority rule, by demanding that Adams and Co should respect the desire of the people for Brexit, even though the majority voted against it.

Like two pigs in a poke, the DUP's new found friends, the Tory Party, and in particular Teresa May's cabinet were discovered to have kept quiet about the miss-firing of a Trident nuclear missile deterrent which went off course and headed off in the wrong direction. Good news for the Russians and bad news for whoever when it lands!

This only became apparent after a Commons vote on the 40 billion pound renewal project. Defence secretary Michael Fallon, displaying a similar degree of humility as that expressed by Foster refused to answer any questions in the House of Commons on the subject and simply reiterated his and the Prime Ministers faith in the Trident system and the Royal Navy.

Belfast Telegraph – 02/02/2017 Kenneth L Dawson, deputy principal of Down High School in Downpatrick, author of The Belfast Jacobin: The United Irishman Samuel Neilson, gives account of the fallout among United Irishmen while imprisoned in Fort George. 

He describes the lieutenant-governor James Stuart, as a kindly man, that the rebels were given their own rooms with fires and glazed windows and fed a selection (charcuterie no less) of meats all served by invalided soldiers .... at this stage I went back to Roald Dahl's, James and the Giant Peach, as it made more sense and was more in touch with reality.

And to finish off, a wee bird on the street has it that the legal profession and police is about to get hit for several hundred million compensation by those illegally locked up for non-payment of fines ... dating back to the 1960s .... it seemingly was illegal for the police to extract you off the street and straight in to prison for there was no actual court case to establish that by non-payment you had actually broken the law!!!

2 comments:

  1. Can a trident missile land? Omnipresent corruption reminds me of ROI garda force, the legal system and Government. Hey they are going to get to the bottom of it too similar no doubt to the RHI affair.

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  2. ALWAYS enjoy Sean's articles. So funny. Thanks for that!

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