Ach, you couldn’t make this excrement up, you really couldn’t. From a report by the British Guardian newspaper on the cabinet reshuffle in the dysfunctional regional government at Stormont:
“Northern Ireland’s new health minister is a Democratic Unionist party assembly member who believes that women made pregnant through rape should not be allowed an abortion.
The first minister, Peter Robinson, appointed Jim Wells, the DUP member for South Down in the regional parliament, to take up the devolved health portfolio as part of a cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday.
Two years ago Wells said that he opposed Northern Ireland’s abortion laws being changed so that rape victims could get a termination in local hospitals.
“The stats are very low for pregnancies which arise as a result of rape…”
Just in case you are puzzled by that last line, don’t be. It is a repetition of the argument favoured by the extreme Christian Right in the United States which insists that women rarely get pregnant after rape (or as they put it “legitimate rape”). Yeah, I know, but a lot of those DUP folks really do believe all that moderately insane evangelical stuff (just look as Nelson McCausland). Talking of crazy theories, via the Newsletter:
“THE future DUP health minister has entered the escalating row about an acknowledgement of creationism in the Giant’s Causeway visitor centre, defending it as “perfectly legitimate”.
Although the National Trust – which opened the £18.5 million centre on Tuesday – endorses the scientific view that the rocks are about 65 million years old, an audio exhibit in the centre informs visitors that some believe the earth is 6,000 years old.
…DUP MLA Jim Wells told the News Letter: “There is a perfectly legitimate point of view, which I hold, that life is so complicated that it simply could not have come together by pure chance … I believe that is a legitimate point of view, it is held by millions, and it has a right to be heard, along with the view that we all originated through microscopic cells which evolved into monkeys and so on.”
The South Down MLA welcomed the “very tangential and not very hard-hitting reference to creationism” at the Causeway and said he would like to see a creationist viewpoint in the Ulster Museum.”
Why is it that parts of Antrim, Down and Derry function as Ireland’s “Alabama”?
By the by, since we are in the land of myth and magic, the new Irish-Scots dialectal spelling of the name “First Minister” is no longer First Meinister. Yes, those creative people at the Ulster-Scots agency have now decided that the term should be written as Heid Männystèr. Apparently they lurved the double-dots over certain letters that they saw in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies and that “y” makes it just so damned Elvish. Though this is definitely not about making a dialect of English look less like English by changing spellings and adding random dots or accents to certain words. Honestly…
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
but this is exactly the same legal situation as in the republic.
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On abortion, yes we have extremely limited and limiting laws nationally which I disagree with (and have expressed so here). On the opposition to evolution, gay rights and casual misogyny I hope we are not so backward nationally as some people are regionally in the north-east.
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am not sure what the new law on getting an abortion in the republic entails – examination by 7 psychiatrists or something similar?
neither government can claim their laws incorporate compassion and understanding of women. Both are mysoginists!
Anyway my position on abortion is set out clearly. I hope you all read it and reflect on the information! http://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/abortion-on-demand-now/
As far as the Creationist tales are concerned – as a child I could never tell the difference between bible stories, folk tales and fairy stories. My sister was 13 before she could differentiate between a fairy and an angel! She did much better in algebra!
But as the Good Book says ” When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things”
The DUP in NI are probably textbook example of mass arrested development – in fact I am sure they are!
why doesn’t the Government of the Republic send their teams of 7 psychiatrists up to examine them?
At the very least they’d get some great papers published and invitations to world conferences!
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🙂
It would be genuinely hilarious if it weren’t for peoples lives being effected, especially that of women. The DUP will find ready coalition partners in Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil in a reunited Ireland. God help us…
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PS – forgot your last point Séamas – the double dots (umlauts?) are to Germanicise Allster-Scatts – in keeping with the Nazi salutes we saw in Glasgow last week. Beating up people who hold different views is just par for the course – move along here, nahim da see! they had to do something special to show their support for the Union!and the double dot was the cheapest option going. watch out for excessive use of Ks!
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And people accuse me of being harsh! 😉
Yep, I guessed the use of the diaeresis/umlaut was to give the “language” a more Germanic/Scandinavian look (resembling Old English / Anglo-Saxon I suppose). Though it’s just as likely that it was done to make the words “look pretty” (hence the Tolkien jibe). Frank McNally on his encounter with Ulster-Scots via the pages of the Irish Times:
“Anything that leans one way or another in the North is open to suspicion: including, as I mentioned here before, a notorious punctuation mark in the title of the [Ulster-Scots] language agency, the Boord O Ulstèr Scotch.
At a press event promoting the Boord some years ago, I asked – out of genuine curiosity – what the effect of the accent on the E in Ulster was. Whereupon a spokeswoman admitted it had none: “we just thought it looked good”. And so it does. But I couldn’t help noticing that the accent pointed in the opposite direction from the Irish fada, which was hardly accidental.”
I suspect the new-found liking for the diaeresis/umlaut serves the same purpose. Courtesy of Irish and British taxpayers to boot.
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As has been pointed out above – ‘the South’ cant laugh too laugh too loud at ‘the North’.
… but the South is however moving slowly in the right direction – but I’m sure the Guardian has(deservedly) given the South similar treatment.
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“Creationist lunatics” -can’t see anyone using that sort of abuse about Moslems somehow….fundamentalist Christians are fair game for those who think of themselves as liberal and tolerant though…
An sionnach has frequently also referred to people like Jim Wells as “the colony” not sure how someone whose ancestors have (a) lived there for four centuries and (B) were partially descended from Ulster Gaels who originally colonised Scotland from Ireland a thousand years earlier, could be described as “colonists” – maybe his relatives in New York and Boston should “go back home” and hand the place back to the Indians?
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Well you will certainly have seen it here when it was appropriate to the matter under discussion. Extreme followers or proponents of any faith regularly get a verbal kicking around these parts. I’ve discussed IS several times and made clear my view of them.
If the DUP or FG folk get a sharper going over on ASF it is because they are Irish. It’s of more relevance to me.
I’ve never referred to people like Jim Wells as “the colony”.
I have stated that the British administrated territory in the north-east of Ireland is the historic British colony on our island nation whittled down to a more defensible enclave. Hardly controversial even if the terminology may be for some. That is quite a different thing.
Nor have I referred to the contemporary British Unionist community as “colonists”. On several occasions I have discussed their mixed ancestry, Irish and British, which I share like many other people in this nation. My grandmother’s own family are a Ulster Scots-Irish and Protestant one from Fermanagh.
On the last point we can agree. Give America back to the Americans! 😉
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if jim wells and co dont meet the criteria of being described as colonists i dont know what does because they have not evolved their mindset in 400 years,anna lo got it spot on.
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Wells and co. exist within a colony, and some may indeed have colonial ancestors, but I would not describe them as colonists. Even when they act and behave as such. The anachronistic colonial-era attitudes, prejudices and supremacism I certainly draw attention to – and condemn.
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https://mail.virgin.net/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=2c24241415&view=att&disp=emb&realattid=ii_148ae136b216384e&zw
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