Anthony McIntyre thinks the brouhaha around Belfast mayor John Finucane is a sectarian pissing competition. 

Image @ Brian John Spencer

There has been quite a lot of fun poked at mayor of Belfast, John Finucane, for a bit of dicking about. Caught pissing in the street by cops in Belfast, the social media hordes have swarmed all over him with memes and ribaldry. Much of what I saw was witty and not the faux outrage we tend to see from puritans, eager to be offended that a man might have such a thing as a dick. The mayor has become the Urinator, the chain of office has given way to Schwarzenegger type fatigues, his battle cry "Bits Out" signed off on by Pee O'Neill.

An observer really would need to get up first thing in the morning in search of being offended before anyone else, if they are the type to take serious umbrage at the barrage of banter lobbed Finucane's way. Conversely, there are to be found those who rather than taking the piss seem to have been drinking it. Traditional Unionist Venom (TUV) has put on a particularly sour face for the occasion. Jim Allister has went as far as to write to the Standards Commissioner contending:

that Councillor Finucane has manifestly failed to maintain the standards of the Code of Conduct and that the gravity of the offence is magnified by the fact that he was holding the post of Lord Mayor when it was committed. Accordingly I invite you to initiate an investigation into the matter.

The pious and the puritanical, pulling faces that look as if they have been mightily battered with a bible, will row in behind the Voice of Venom.  The know-nothing lobby, not remotely concerned about serious matters like rising sea levels - the Ark will take care of it all -  are distraught by a miniscule flow of urine. 

I would like to meet a man who hasn’t been guilty of it. And pity the women who don’t have the same latitude. Finucane said he is sorry, but he is hardly sorry for having a piss when he needed one, merely for getting caught. Even the first citizen has to piss, and in unlikely places if the need arises. He tried "to find somewhere as discreet as possible off the main street.”  Not much point in running around the city with a pained grimace that might lead the citizens to think he had been sucking lemons.

On the beer in Dublin and waiting at Custom House for a bus back home, the Liffey looks a place where a quick pit stop is not going to alter the course of history. Even if Lyra McKee was standing on the other side of the road behind me, equally inebriated, laughing at the thought of it and not remotely considering running off to the NUJ Ethics Council.

It is one of those situations where let he without sin cast the first stone. Can’t imagine wanting to hare off in pursuit of Nigel Dodds were he to have a street piss … as long as it wasn’t over some Catholic.  If Nigel was really a sport he would share his stories about the time he needed to use a street wall, even if the Free Ps might regard it as a hanging offence … for Catholics.

So rather than tell John Finucane to piss off, he should have our approval to piss on if he is bursting and gets caught short. I can think of a lot of public figures who have done much worse with their dicks than piss. Orange Order luminary Thomas Passmore once pounded Finucane’s constituency soliciting votes.

At the heel of the hunt you would imagine that peeping tom peelers, rather than wasting police time pursuing pissers, would have more serious business to attend to. The mayor is not pissing heroin, causing people to drop like flies on the streets of Belfast. Having seen uniformed RUC men piss on the street - because they needed to - it amazes me that cops would not simply turn a blind eye unless of course it was being done at a crowded bus stop, in front of children or outside a convent where a crowd of dickie dodgers had gathered for the Mother Superior’s evening talk on how to safely dispose of dead children in the septic tank. Maybe green piss is more toxic to those public guardians who still piss orange. 

Besides the Good Friday Agreement prohibits taking the piss out of Catholics!


Piss Hate Scandal

Anthony McIntyre thinks the brouhaha around Belfast mayor John Finucane is a sectarian pissing competition. 

Image @ Brian John Spencer

There has been quite a lot of fun poked at mayor of Belfast, John Finucane, for a bit of dicking about. Caught pissing in the street by cops in Belfast, the social media hordes have swarmed all over him with memes and ribaldry. Much of what I saw was witty and not the faux outrage we tend to see from puritans, eager to be offended that a man might have such a thing as a dick. The mayor has become the Urinator, the chain of office has given way to Schwarzenegger type fatigues, his battle cry "Bits Out" signed off on by Pee O'Neill.

An observer really would need to get up first thing in the morning in search of being offended before anyone else, if they are the type to take serious umbrage at the barrage of banter lobbed Finucane's way. Conversely, there are to be found those who rather than taking the piss seem to have been drinking it. Traditional Unionist Venom (TUV) has put on a particularly sour face for the occasion. Jim Allister has went as far as to write to the Standards Commissioner contending:

that Councillor Finucane has manifestly failed to maintain the standards of the Code of Conduct and that the gravity of the offence is magnified by the fact that he was holding the post of Lord Mayor when it was committed. Accordingly I invite you to initiate an investigation into the matter.

The pious and the puritanical, pulling faces that look as if they have been mightily battered with a bible, will row in behind the Voice of Venom.  The know-nothing lobby, not remotely concerned about serious matters like rising sea levels - the Ark will take care of it all -  are distraught by a miniscule flow of urine. 

I would like to meet a man who hasn’t been guilty of it. And pity the women who don’t have the same latitude. Finucane said he is sorry, but he is hardly sorry for having a piss when he needed one, merely for getting caught. Even the first citizen has to piss, and in unlikely places if the need arises. He tried "to find somewhere as discreet as possible off the main street.”  Not much point in running around the city with a pained grimace that might lead the citizens to think he had been sucking lemons.

On the beer in Dublin and waiting at Custom House for a bus back home, the Liffey looks a place where a quick pit stop is not going to alter the course of history. Even if Lyra McKee was standing on the other side of the road behind me, equally inebriated, laughing at the thought of it and not remotely considering running off to the NUJ Ethics Council.

It is one of those situations where let he without sin cast the first stone. Can’t imagine wanting to hare off in pursuit of Nigel Dodds were he to have a street piss … as long as it wasn’t over some Catholic.  If Nigel was really a sport he would share his stories about the time he needed to use a street wall, even if the Free Ps might regard it as a hanging offence … for Catholics.

So rather than tell John Finucane to piss off, he should have our approval to piss on if he is bursting and gets caught short. I can think of a lot of public figures who have done much worse with their dicks than piss. Orange Order luminary Thomas Passmore once pounded Finucane’s constituency soliciting votes.

At the heel of the hunt you would imagine that peeping tom peelers, rather than wasting police time pursuing pissers, would have more serious business to attend to. The mayor is not pissing heroin, causing people to drop like flies on the streets of Belfast. Having seen uniformed RUC men piss on the street - because they needed to - it amazes me that cops would not simply turn a blind eye unless of course it was being done at a crowded bus stop, in front of children or outside a convent where a crowd of dickie dodgers had gathered for the Mother Superior’s evening talk on how to safely dispose of dead children in the septic tank. Maybe green piss is more toxic to those public guardians who still piss orange. 

Besides the Good Friday Agreement prohibits taking the piss out of Catholics!


5 comments:

  1. Your article, funny as hell. Just never imagined you taking the piss out of anything.It put a smile on my partner's face when she read it. Seriously why would anyone, puritan or law or both, regard this as a public offence?!


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  2. Kevin, some think I do little else but take the piss! Thanks for that. Puritans regard any form of pleasurable relief as a grave sin. And there is nothing more pleasurable than letting it flow when the belly is full of beer. The bus driver once tried to stop us getting off the bus for a piss at Dundalk until we told him we would piss over the half door he sits behind. We had been boozing all the way from Southampton and he was going to tell us when we could piss. FFS it is not as if John Finucane is a flasher. The guy needed a piss. Simple as. The puritans would prefer he do it in his trousers.

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  3. Bloody Free P's, the 'looking to be offended' mob and their predictable tripe. Who hasn't been caught short?

    Did think some of the sleggin was quality though!

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  4. As somebody with two urinary tract conditions and as a consequence increasingly needs to pee at every available opportunity because of decreasing access to public loos, I totally empathasise with John Finucane's travails.

    But what a wonderful ;piss-take, Anthony!

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