Decades too late . . .

An historic act took place in Stormont Castle today. A sight which I never thought I'd see . . . Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting side by side announcing that the DUP and Sinn Fein would form a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland on May 8, 2007.
That date will hopefully go down in history as the beginning of the end of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. I say hopefully because there are many rifts to be healed, many differences to be ironed out.
Paisley will be happy because it makes him Prime Minister designate. Adams will be happy because his party will have powerful positions in the government.
Will the people of the province be happy? Only time will tell . . .
Time.
Sixty years ago this year I was born in Belfast. My late mother was a Protestant Baptist and my father (I don't know if he is still alive or not) a Catholic. In those days Protestants and Catholics did not mix, let alone marry and have children. My mother had helped to build bombers during WW2 and went on to join the Royal Air Force. My father was also in the RAF (I wonder how much castigation he had to endure from the Catholic side because he was "fighting for the enemy"?)
Needless to say my mother never talked to me about why we moved to Bristol, England when I was an infant but I suspect we were hounded out by sectarian bigotry - neither side would want to associate with Papist or Prod scum. We lived in various places until we were taken in by a kindly couple and given a living room and a bedroom in their house. We were to stay for 14 days. In the end we stayed for 14 years. Elsie and the late Ted Essery were our Good Samaritans. In fact Elsie, now in her nineties, is still referred to by my two grown-up kids as "Grandma Essery".
My father was posted to India with the forces and the family was separated. We would get the occasional letter and money for my upkeep but not much else. Then he contracted tuberculosis which, in those days, was considered as much a killer as cancer is today. He survived but with a chip on his shoulder as large as the Grand Canyon. He never came home to live with us. I gather he became a tramp, living on what he could in the way of state handouts.
I have been lucky. My mother sacrificed even her own diet while I was young to bring me up whilst working like a slave for a pittance firstly in a chocolate factory and later in a tobacco factory. She died of cancer at the age of 59 without ever seeing her two grandsons.
Going back to Mr Paisley I remember going to his Free Presbyterian church in Larne, NI in the 1970s. I was curious as to who would listen to this ranting bigot. I entered a packed church and after the obligatory hymns and prayers the "Big Man" rose to preach. I do not remember the words he spoke - just the horror that so much hate could be spewed out in the name of God. I rose to leave in the middle of the sermon and was politely but firmly informed by a "sidesman" who was built like a brick shithouse that Dr Paisley had not finished and it would not be good manners to leave without hearing his whole sermon. I did not argue. I sat quaking for the rest of the service, not hearing a word just fearing for my own safety.
A couple of years later I entered a Catholic church in Belfast. Again I was shocked and saddened to hear hate and bigotry being preached in the name of Jesus. Christianity should not be like that. "Love thy neighbour" - just so long as he is on the right side of the divide.
Back to tonight. I watched Messrs Paisley and Adams and listened to their guarded statements and the tears started to flow down my face. At last some common sense, some realisation that we must work and live together.
I cried. Tears of joy that perhaps at last there could be an end to the bigotry and violence. Tears of sadness that it was too late for my mother and father.
And then I thought "If only this had happened decades earlier . . ."
Perhaps my mother and father would not have been hounded out of the province.
Perhaps I would have been "wee Tommy", living in Belfast and growing up in a vibrant, living society unaffected by the troubles of man fighting man in the cause of bigoted ideals.
Perhaps my mother would not have had to work all her life just to stay alive . . .
Perhaps . . .
But for her, for my father, and for me it has all come decades too late.

It's Not Cricket

Bob Woolmer died last week. Mr Woolmer will be remembered by many as an excellent international cricketer who gave a lifetime of service to the sport, playing for county and his home country England. His playing days over, he went on to coach international teams, including South Africa and finally Pakistan.
It was as coach to the Pakistan team that Bob was in Jamaica with his team for the Cricket World Cup. Somehow Pakistan lost to rank outsiders Ireland, who have never figured at all on the world cricket stage. A day or two later Mr Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room. After long investigations the Jamaican police declared that he was murdered.
The media were quickly rife with stories of how Mr Woolmer was about to blow the gaff on the cricketing Mafia who made millions on betting on, and fixing, matches.
This may or may not be true. There may be corruption within the sport - it has been proved in the past.
If it is true then the old instinct of cricket being the gentlemen's sport of fair play has disappeared for ever. The taking of a life for the sake of monetary gain over a game of cricket is the final nail in the coffin of the concept of sport for sport's sake.
Sod all you greedy money-makers. Especially those in the sub-continent, where betting is banned, both by law and by religious belief. Why should I respect Islam or, for that matter Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism or any other religion that preaches the love of life and then turns its head away from the depravity of the worship of money?
Cricket used to be a sport. Now, along with most other "sports", it is centred on money and greed - the combination of which seems inevitably to lead to violence, suffering and death.

Bear reasoning

"Well Mrs Smith, we killed your son because you were suffering from post-natal depression and rejected him straight after he was born. We know that you now say you've changed your mind and you want to love him and cherish him but at the time we thought you had disowned him. We thought that if his own mother didn't want him who were we to bring him up without the nurture and environs his mother could provide. So it became an absolute necessity to administer a lethal injection. It was for the best."
Knut is not a human baby. He is a baby polar bear born in the unnatural environment of Berlin Zoo. His mother gave birth to two male cubs and immediately showed no interest in looking after them. Perhaps because she could not do the naturally instinctive thing and dig a cave into the ice where she could suckle them and keep them warm and safe. One of the the cubs died but Knut survived and was bottle-fed and is now three months old. He is soon to be shown to the general public and the zoo's director hopes that - with dwindling numbers of wild polar bears - he could be able in future to father future generations of polar bears in captivity.
But animal activists are saying that Knut will be living in such an unnatural environment that it would be better to kill him rather than make him live a life of captivity.
I take no sides except to say that if this was a human baby no one would be even considering killing him. Do we really think we are that much superior to the animals that we have this power? If so we should go about mass euthanasia of every domesticated animal - be it a pet or a farm animal, a camel in the Sahara or a pony in an English paddock, because they are living in an unnatural environment.
I wonder if that activist enjoys his steak?