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    Fear of an Orange Planet

    Right, so there's a deal. Any news yet of the detail?

    #2
    £1bn in cash, notably over the next two years so either the Tories are banking on another election in that timescale, or there will be another £1-2bn to follow in a longer parliament.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40403434

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      #3
      Oh and no change to pensions triple lock, and retention of the universal winter fuel allowance.

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        #4
        And some Military Covenant nonsense is being extended to NI.

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          #5
          https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...rn_Ireland.pdf

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            #6
            There is no magic money tree.

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              #7
              Thanks all.

              The first specific mentioned in VTS's link. York Street in inner-city Belfast doubles as both motorway slip road and access route for local traffic to and from the center. Once it's been upgraded to separate the two, drivers can negotiate the entire island from Cork to Derry (actually rural county Derry) without stopping at any traffic lights. All good, if you like that sort of thing- although there'll still be rush-hour queues at the motorway exit of course.

              I'm not into military fetishism, but if you must have that sort of thing you can hardly leave NI out.

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                #8
                hah, So that's the limit of the DUP's world view, Don't cut our social and don't cut the money spent on high tech weaponry. And improve rural broadband because gregory Campbell is bored with having to order his kitten snuff porn by post. He's a big boy and is ready for the Dark Net.
                Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 26-06-2017, 13:16.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                  hah, So that's the limit of the DUP's world view, Don't cut our social and don't cut the money spent on high tech weaponry. And improve rural broadband because gregory Campbell is bored with having to order his kitten snuff porn by post. He's a big boy and is ready for the Dark Net
                  Sounds like a quiet night in in rural Connemara to me I believe Ad Hoc and family are holidaying locally, don't give them any ideas.

                  Anyway, Fenians will be pleased with this deal. They mainly live in caves in yer Sperrin Mountains, so improved broadband is a bonus. Plus the inner-city traffic mgmt mentioned above. Think the least SF can do is reaffiliate to monarchy, as they did in the early 20th.

                  Last time over I stayed at Beech Grove Farm, which sounds a bit Glasto-Woodstock but is just outside Bel Air. Broadband was fine.

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                    #10
                    It'd be great if the £1 billion in cash was literally that; used, non-sequential notes delivered by a convoy of SUVs to a deserted aircraft hangar somewhere.

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                      #11
                      I suspect that certain Good Old Boys would prefer that.

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                        #12
                        I'm amazed that we've managed to get this far into discussions between the DUP and the Conservatives, with very little discussion as to why the Northern Assembly has collapsed. I don't understand why the UK isn't talking about the naked bigotry in their illegal opposition to an Irish language act, or the massive stink of corruption surrounding Arlene over RHI, or all the questions about Nama, that Peter Robinson is going to avoid by pretending to have alzheimers.

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                          #13
                          Because their mates in the media aren't pushing them on it.

                          The only Tories that I've heard criticising it are long out of office.

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                            #14
                            Right, but what are the labour party doing? The DUP are mired in a massive corruption scandal, involving the top echelons of their party. They should be untouchable.

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                              #15
                              Stong tweet here.

                              https://twitter.com/mrchrisaddison/status/879325384294248448

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                                #16
                                It's hard to slag off the party without slagging off the 292K who voted for them despite all that, and it doesn't look prime Ministerial to be doing that, I expect. The media outlets who might have an issue with the pork barreling share too much worldview with the DUP (not to mention being likely part of the shady Brexit funding web) to be covering it anytime soon.

                                I think that's aided by a good many people's first thought about NI to be that if the answers to 'are they killing me?' and 'are they killing each other' to be 'no', then that's just great, and the more interest we take in the place, the more that takes us to a place no-one wants to go anytime soon for all sorts of historic and well as prospective reasons.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                  Right, but what are the labour party doing? The DUP are mired in a massive corruption scandal, involving the top echelons of their party. They should be untouchable.
                                  Didn't Brown send out some signals that he'd be prepared to deal with them?

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                                    #18
                                    Aye, Foster should have resigned when the RHI story broke (as would have happened almost anywhere else). Why didn't she? Two broad reasons. First, the DUP were able to define the story as a sectarian dispute, rather than managerial incompetence with suggestions of fraud and nepotism. Once that happens, it's difficult for SF to take a moral high ground when their leader is frolicking in a graveyard with men in balaclavas. And second, the Shinners were slow to react in the first place- the smaller parties (and Foster's own DUP critics) were much readier to press her.

                                    I doubt the Irish Language issue is a deal breaker any more. Foster has been putting out feelers, visiting Irish medium schools etc. since the March election. There seems to be an increasing acceptance by Unionists that since nobody outside primary school and the Donegal seashore actually speaks it conversationally, throwing them a few baubles won't actually cost very much.

                                    Anyone visiting Ireland can test the scope of and demand for the language. How many shops, restaurants etc. provide anything more than 'Cead Mille Failte' in Ogham script? The answer is close to a big fat zero because people in Dublin and Cork just aren't interested. So why would anyone in Derby or Coventry be?

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                                      #19
                                      NHH makes fair points. DUP's vote rose sharply between March and June, as SF's did before the previous election. This had basically nothing to do with gay marriage (1), abortion (2), climate change (3) or how old the Giant's Causeway really is (4)- 90% this time chose negatively (or tactically, as you English voters oddly call it) for the reasons suggested in thread title.

                                      You can't blame mere voters for giving NI the cold shoulder when people who should know better-political journalists like Kay Burley, smaller party leaders (Caroline Lucas) are ill-informed or exaggerate to the point where even Berba might blush...

                                      1 Legal in England for hundreds of...weeks (ie since 2014). Still not so in Germany

                                      2 Restricted across Ireland with support of most political parties

                                      3 Denial is not DUP policy

                                      4 Not actually taught in the vast majority of NI schools, despite DUP supposedly running them for the last 20 years
                                      Last edited by Duncan Gardner; 26-06-2017, 16:05.

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                                        #20
                                        PS Labour and Tory leaders are always prepared to deal with Unionist parties (and any Irish Nationalists that actually turn up). We've had minority governments after two of the last three elections, while there'll always be that bloc of about 10 MPs looking to hold the balance. Happens everywhere else, why are people pretending to be shocked by it?

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                                          #21
                                          Not any more I think. My understanding is that Labour would have - and still might, given the chance - put forward their proposals, to be voted on bit by bit by the HoC. No deal necessary.

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                                            #22
                                            This deal is going to be incredibly expensive, £1 billion to Northern Ireland, the same again not being saved on winter fuel allowance cuts that won't now happen, possible loss of corporation tax revenue, and the triple lock on pensions.

                                            The deal is contingent on the DUP agreeing a power sharing deal with Sinn Fein so there's one possible positive.

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                                              #23
                                              I think that's aided by a good many people's first thought about NI to be that if the answers to 'are they killing me?' and 'are they killing each other' to be 'no', then that's just great, and the more interest we take in the place, the more that takes us to a place no-one wants to go anytime soon for all sorts of historic and well as prospective reasons.

                                              This is the whole problem right here. Northern ireland could never have turned out the way it did, if people in the UK were in the slightest bit aware that they had a jim crow statelet running in a little corner of their country. If in 1945, Northern Irish catholics had been given equal access to the welfare state, and equal rights under the law, equal representation in local govt, with a non-sectarian police force, that whole troubles thing would never have happened. Northern Ireland would look an awful lot like scotland. This appalling deliberate avoidance of Northern Ireland, crushed the development of anything approaching modern politics, and consequently leaves everything in the hands of the worst cunts you can find.

                                              If the Scottish assembly broke down for months at a time, because Nicola Sturgeon refused to step down over a massive corruption scandal, and was doing something awful to discriminate against english people, I think we would have heard a lot more about it, and I don't know if anyone would be queueing up to do any deals with such a compromised figure. It is rather telling that the focus in the UK has been mostly on how weirdly religious they are, to the almost complete exclusion of their fairly naked and primitive corruption, and their open sectarian bigotry.

                                              And Duncan, while Arlene has tried to portray this RHI thing as a sectarian thing, she has clung onto the leadership at the cost of power, and it played a big part in her party having the shit kicked out of them in the assembly elections. A lot of DUP voters didn't buy it. Just because the DUP say it's a sectarian issue, while the irish language bill isn't a sectarian issue, doesn't mean that anyone else believes them. What I want to know is why have the DUP not been hammered for shutting down democracy in a constituent part of the UK for such appalling reasons? (Similarly why haven't Sinn Fein been properly hammered for the IRA shuffling paedophiles around like the Catholic Church)

                                              I doubt the Irish Language issue is a deal breaker any more. Foster has been putting out feelers, visiting Irish medium schools etc. since the March election. There seems to be an increasing acceptance by Unionists that since nobody outside primary school and the Donegal seashore actually speaks it conversationally, throwing them a few baubles won't actually cost very much.

                                              duncan, please don't dignify this bullshit by even considering it on its own terms. It's got nothing to do with money. It's naked sectarian bigotry. Nothing else. It has nothing to do with Money, and it has nothing to do with Unionists, it's because they're Cunts, and it's obviously illegal. This is not going to be a concession by the DUP. It's part of the fucking st andrews agreement, They have to stop being sectarian bigots. it's a big problem.

                                              Anyone visiting Ireland can test the scope of and demand for the language. How many shops, restaurants etc. provide anything more than 'Cead Mille Failte' in Ogham script? The answer is close to a big fat zero because people in Dublin and Cork just aren't interested. So why would anyone in Derby or Coventry be?

                                              This has literally nothing to do with the question at hand. The Irish Language bill isn't up for discussion. It's in the st andrews agreement, and vetoing it is an act of naked sectarian bigotry, and also illegal. and it's a disgrace that the UK govt have allowed this to go on for so long. They have to stop pretending that they're an honest broker in northern Ireland.

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                                                #24
                                                Calvert hasn't surfaced on the new forum yet, has he? Mibees a mildly lengthy Berba post might summon him back to otf.

                                                And heh, enuf with that "Scottish Assembly" trolling pal. Yi ken fine well it's a Parliament.
                                                Last edited by Lang Spoon; 26-06-2017, 18:20.

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                                                  #25
                                                  And heh, enuf with that "Scottish Assembly" trolling pal. Yi ken fine well it's a Parliament

                                                  You can lie to anyone, but you shouldn't lie to yourself.

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