The DUP, eh? Welcome to your new lizard overlords

[newbie]

out of interest, how do they build these engineering marvels? Are cranes involved or is it all done by hand? The core looks empty in that photo, at least at the top. Surely not?

It must take a long time, how do they keep the hedgehogs out?

 

[mojo pixy]

Hedgehogs are all catholic so there's no problem with burning them to death

 

[N_igma]

out of interest, how do they build these engineering marvels? Are cranes involved or is it all done by hand? The core looks empty in that photo, at least at the top. Surely not?

It must take a long time, how do they keep the hedgehogs out?

Mostly by hand you can see in that photo certain pallets sticking out like rungs on a ladder so they stand on them and can pass pallets up to the next tier.

Some of the bigger ones use cherry pickers and what not. There's a surprising amount of help from adults and businesses in this whole enterprise you'd think it was just a bunch of kids but it's not.

 

[Casually Red]

how do they keep the hedgehogs out?

Keep them out ? It's orange tradition that they send out little children who are too small to lift pallets to scour the countryside for hedgehogs and then fill the inside of the bonfire with hundreds of them . It's sort of like the wicker man . They believe the offering will bestow great fortune upon loyalism . And lo and behold Theresa may gives them a magic money tree . There'll not be a hedgehog left at this rate .

They also roast hedgehogs on a stick over the embers and make bowler hats out of them .

 

[CrabbedOne]

And as for the hedgehogs...

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Slugger Five minute guide to building a bonfire

I did hear for some of the bigger ones lately they get in structural engineers, cranes etc.

 

[Casually Red]

Battle of Prestonpans - Wikipedia

 

[newbie]

Keep them out ? It's orange tradition that they send out little children who are too small to lift pallets to scour the countryside for hedgehogs and then fill the inside of the bonfire with hundreds of them . It's sort of like the wicker man . They believe the offering will bestow great fortune upon loyalism . And lo and behold Theresa may gives them a magic money tree . There'll not be a hedgehog left at this rate .

They also roast hedgehogs on a stick over the embers and make bowler hats out of them .

How unfair is that! I wondered why people didn't like the DUP and now I know. I will write to Arlene Foster to tell her that I don't like their treatment of hedgehogs.

 

[Poi E]

So when Foster gets to embarrassing for the Tories I guess they bump her up to the House of Lords, right?

 

[Dogsauce]

too embarrassing for the Tories

I don't think such a concept exists. This is the party that stuck Grant Shalks in a senior role FFS.

 

[DexterTCN]

This was all foreshadowed by that tory who was found dead with a bag over his head and an orange in his mouth ages ago.

 

[moochedit]

How unfair is that! I wondered why people didn't like the DUP and now I know. I will write to Arlene Foster to tell her that I don't like their treatment of hedgehogs.

Someone should start an epetition on change.org against this outrage

 

[moochedit]

So when Foster gets to embarrassing for the Tories I guess they bump her up to the House of Lords, right?

Would mean a byelection though. Although i guess she's in a safe dup seat.

 

[Poi E]

Would mean a byelection though. Although i guess she's in a safe dup seat.

She's not a Westminster MP.

 

[Poi E]

Bit off-topic but a good question from Finton O'Toole. Are the English fit to govern themselves? Perhaps not, viewed through the prism of Irish modern history.

Opinion | Are the English Fit to Govern Themselves?

 

[Dogsauce]

 

[LiamO]

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Slugger As for that RHI overrun, erm, that will be just £2 million per annum thank you very much?

...
Now, if there is a legal challenge, these estimates will be out. That said, and given the transparent change in behaviour the tiering system has brought in, it doesn’t presently seem to be an issue. It still remains a poorly constructed scheme (paying by burn rates, tiered or not, ain’t Green).

But, the 1/2 Billion projected overrun appears now to be more a matter of science fiction than science fact. Tell me, why have the local parties in Northern Ireland hand back the keys of power to the conservatives again?

So Arlene didn't lose quite such a big sum down the back of the sofa. Southern press losing patience with Stormont's well bribed but still squabbling inmates as well.

You have to appreciate here though the devil in the details. Like what percentage of civil service jobs are reserved for Gaelic speakers and how much cash goes to preserving the not exactly dying dialect Ulster Scots that most of Antrim speaks. Essentially jobs for the boys; mostly middle class boys. You wouldn't want trivia like plugging the gaps in the N.I. NHS or lowering rates of child mortality to get in the way of that. The endless zero sum game blethering may be set to run on all Summer.

 

[Casually Red]

'Everybody hates us but we've got the cash,' says DUP's Ian Paisley Jr


Yeah Ian, it's just like Islamophobia

 

[Casually Red]

On Slugger As for that RHI overrun, erm, that will be just £2 million per annum thank you very much?
So Arlene didn't lose quite such a big sum down the back of the sofa. Southern press losing patience with Stormont's well bribed but still squabbling inmates as well.

You have to appreciate here though the devil in the details. Like what percentage of civil service jobs are reserved for Gaelic speakers and how much cash goes to preserving the not exactly dying dialect Ulster Scots that most of Antrim speaks. Essentially jobs for the boys; mostly middle class boys. You wouldn't want trivia like plugging the gaps in the N.I. NHS or lowering rates of child mortality to get in the way of that. The endless zero sum game blethering may be set to run on all Summer.

They aren't preserving a dialect . They're equating an accent with a bit of slang to an indo European language . For purely ...blatantly..sectarian reasons . Most people in Antrim ...by far..live in Belfast and it's environs and most certainly do not have this particular accent which is confined to a few rural backwaters. Its quite understandable 95 percent of the time to anyone who speaks English . Because it is English . Geordie is harder to understand . All their doing is over emphasising an accent and throwing in a few archaic verbs no longer in common usage and calling it a fucking language . And it's not just the loyalists responsible for this shit . The nationalist GFA types signed up to this parity of esteem shit and dignified it, legitimised it in their own rotten persuit of their slice of the British pie . And now it's cemented and normalised along with all the other sectarian , identity politics nonsense . A myth was given credence .

I think it's more correct to describe the whole rotten sectarian mess as a race to the bottom rather than zero sum . There is no way the DUP are engaging in any rapprochement with the shinners over the marching season . Not a chance . And yet again it's " competing cultures " rather than sectarianism being fostered by foreign rule in Ireland . This is precisely what's meant to happen under the GFA . It's entire narrative was the conflict was down to" competing cultures" , not British rule . Not part of Ireland being occupied . Nobody should be surprised that cultures compete till the fucking cows come home . It's exactly what's supposed to happen . None of this will change under British structures . They foster it , deliberately .

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A language is a dialect with an army.

 

[likesfish]

unfortunately the glorious Irish peoples army liberation bus stalled somewhere outside Dublin.
so the peace process was buying off two sets of thugs and their hangers on so shit like this and community workers are the result still cheaper and less bloody than the alternative.
without a genuine non sectarian approach to kicking the UK out republicanism was on a hiding to nowhere it never had the numbers to win it didn't have the support of the south regardless of if it wanted it or not. Tory s fucked this up at the end of the 20th century and everyone is still paying for it. slighter smarter people and we could have had an alcoholic Canada as a neighbor.
rather than the shithole we got.

 

[Idris2002]

unfortunately the glorious Irish peoples army liberation bus stalled somewhere outside Dublin.
so the peace process was buying off two sets of thugs and their hangers on so shit like this and community workers are the result still cheaper and less bloody than the alternative.
without a genuine non sectarian approach to kicking the UK out republicanism was on a hiding to nowhere it never had the numbers to win it didn't have the support of the south regardless of if it wanted it or not. Tory s fucked this up at the end of the 20th century and everyone is still paying for it. slighter smarter people and we could have had an alcoholic Canada as a neighbor.
rather than the shithole we got.

"My Da saw an advert that said "Drink Canada Dry" - and he said CHALLENGE ACCEPTED"

 

[Idris2002]

There must be at least a fraction of the Protestant community who are at best uneasy with all this pallet collecting, surely? I once had a student in Queen's tell me about how her Da, a lifelong Orangeman had resigned in disgust over the 'criminal element' who had come into the order at the time of Drumcree and after.

 

[Poi E]

Got to think positively. As England enters the existential crisis of identity and self recrimination that starts wirh Brexit, and when the DUP votes are no longer needed, NI will be asked to fuck off. Or paid to do so.

 

[N_igma]

There must be at least a fraction of the Protestant community who are at best uneasy with all this pallet collecting, surely? I once had a student in Queen's tell me about how her Da, a lifelong Orangeman had resigned in disgust over the 'criminal element' who had come into the order at the time of Drumcree and after.

There is a sizeable minority of mostly Middle Class Protestants who just want to get away from it all. For instance on the 12th two years ago I met two Protestant teachers in a pub in the heart of south Armagh who came up for the day to do a bit of hiking and then a few drinks after in a pub, in one of the if not the most Republican area in Ireland.

 

[Idris2002]

There is a sizeable minority of mostly Middle Class Protestants who just want to get away from it all. For instance on the 12th two years ago I met two Protestant teachers in a pub in the heart of south Armagh who came up for the day to do a bit of hiking and then a few drinks after in a pub, in one of the if not the most Republican area in Ireland.

And that was the first time ever you'd met a Prod, right?

 

[N_igma]

And that was the first time ever you'd met a Prod, right?

Lol yeh strange beings they are. Eyes too close together and can't pronounce the letter 'H' properly

 

[Idris2002]

Lol yeh strange beings they are. Eyes too close together and can't pronounce the letter 'H' properly

I thought it was us lot who can't pronounce "H" properly.

 

[N_igma]

I thought it was us lot who can't pronounce "H" properly.

No we're always right