Piccolo
Chris Sabat
Humour
Last Words
Character Summaries
General Info
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NZ Herald: 7th September 2001,by Mark Steel
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"I am totally ashamed to be a loyalist today after seeing those people attack young Catholic girls. It's a total disgrace. The terror on those children's faces was unbelievable. It sickened me to the pit of my stomach."
- Billy Hutchinson, of the Progressive Unionist Party.
That's not bad going, for loyalists to be so off the scale they're denounced as wild and sick by Billy Hutchinson, who has almost certainly been called "Mad Dog" at some point. That's as if the leader of Taleban said about you, "The trouble with him is he's a bit TOO Islamic for my liking."
But look at what loyalism has become. After the First World War they ran guns to prevent home rule. In the Seventies they brought down Stormont. Now they heriocally stop 5-year-old girls from getting to PE.
No doubt they'll find a historic justification, perhaps claiming that Ulster was only saved in the first place when King William rode through on his white hose gallantly throwing fireworks at a reception class. And each morning, before they go off to the battlefired, does their leader stop for a tense moment before saying "So, good luck. And remember, some of those bastards have got Fuzzy-Felt - so be careful"?
So what a disturbed group they must be, to think this is normal behaviour. Presumably, if some of them have a kid who doesn't want to join in, they shake their heads in confusion and says: "I don't understand it. We brought them up as best we could, with all our values, then one day I meet his headmaster and find out he hasn't been caught trying to burn the school down."
Yet even now statements are made like that of the local Democratic Unionist MP Nigel Dodds, who called for both sides to be given "breathing space to work out their dispute".As if there should be a compromise. Maybe there should be a agreement that they only burn down the science block.
Suddenly, people who have been yelling that there's no point in further talks on peace until the IRA surrenders its weapons are calling for "talks" to sort out these riots. How would these talks go then? Would a neutral observer start by saying softly: "Now, I understand you're both angry. You're annoyed because you feel the presence of a Catholic school somehow contaminates your Presbyterian purity. And you, on the other hand, are fed up because a bomb was exploded on your way to the school which, you claim, was especially frightening since you're only 5. Well, we're both going to have to give and take a little here, aren't we?"...
What must they be chanting out there? "Ulster says no to Papist Playdough?" "Noddy is a Proddy"?
The short term solution may be to send the teachers out to face the protestors. They could stand in front of the howling, wait for a quiet moment and say: "It's your own time you're wasting, you know." Then the PE teacher could yell: "Why aren't you changed into your bowler hats and sashes?" And if any of them reply that they haven't got them, make them all throw rocks in their underwear.
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