‘m concerned about this little man called Jeffrey. He has a problem with his identity, which seems to be existentially affected by minor administrative activities affecting some lorry drivers traversing the Irish Sea. Naturally, the only way he could reasonably address this identity crisis was by collapsing the entirety of regional government. Let’s hope he gets well soon. Here’s ‘Jeffrey’s Identity’, a calypso to this stalwart of democracy.
Jeffrey’s Identity
Oh, won’t you help me with Jeffrey’s identity
He’s so confused he don’t know who he’s meant to be
He got upset about this line down the Irish Sea
It blew his mind and he collapsed the Assembly
He’s gone to sulk with his friends in the DUP
Oh, why can’t things just be like they used to be?
Tie up the swings like it’s 1953
What was so wrong with state-sponsored bigotry?
A little man with no connection to reality
He doesn’t seem to see the disparity
With the Democratic Unionist hypocrisy
And its lack of accepting democracy
He lies awake under his union jack eiderdown
He thinks of England – England thinks he’s a clown
He goes on TV and he tries to be sinister
He just can’t deal with being Deputy First Minister
Don’t want to play so you took your ball away
Grow up – we’ve had enough of your holidays
Schools and hospitals, the cost of living
It looks to me it’s not a damn that you’re giving
We’ve heard enough about Jeffrey’s identity
Who cares if drivers sign some papers in the Irish Sea?
Life goes on – it doesn’t matter to you and me
You voted Brexit, what else did you expect to see?
On Brexit.
In the last month I know three local men who have died – aged 84 to early 90s.
One definitely voted Brexit, and his wife, and would quote you back whatever the Express had told him to say that day word-for-word, another (a right-wing journalist) almost certainly would have, and the third one (the one I liked best)? Again, Daily Telegraph reader, it seems highly unlikely he didn’t. His wife died last year, presumably she did as well.
A significant number of people voted for something that has drastically curtailed opportunities of travel and work for generations to come and they were never likely to live much beyond that vote in 2016.
If I was aged, say, 20, I’d be pretty angry.
I am 66 and I am pretty angry. An absolute pile of shite and Cameron and Mogg and Johnson and their ilk should be hung from the rafters.
Same. I can’t see how Britain will recover from Brexit. So many small businesses have suffered so badly. We probably all know people who are in deep shit now because of it. The Leave campaigners are certainly to blame, but as I’ve said before, in 2019 a lot of people thought stopping Corbyn was more important than stopping Johnson and Brexit and I blame them too. But ultimately the blame has to lie with Cameron for holding such an ill-thought out, unprepared referendum. He’s the one who should hang.
I do wonder if the country will ever rejoin the EU? It’d probably mean accepting the Euro, which I imagine wouldn’t be at all popular.
BTW, good song, Colin.
I can tie a good knot, chaps. Count me in.
I admit I know very little beyond the daily hullabaloo but were we to go crawling back cap in hand to the EU, what might they ask of us as the price of re-entry? I am heartbroken by the stupidity cynicism and opportunism of it all and the very real impact it has had on so many, especially small businesses.
There is something really rotten in this country – I can’t define it, its like the idiocy and slyness of the Brexit debate has shaped our body politic
AFAIK, conditions of entry for all prospective members contains things like must join the euro, must become part of Schengen etc. I have also heard that while these are conditions which must be agreed to before accession, there is no ‘end date’, so if one wanted, one could put such decisions on the (very) long finger.
I am 75 and will go to my grave absolutely fucking furious. The sound of me rolling in it will be audible for years.
Even in the over-65 age group only 60% voted Leave. In the 18-24 age group, the ones supposedly betrayed by the decision to leave the EU, 36% couldn’t be arsed to vote at all. A much more interesting statistic is that uneducated or ill-educated people were far more likely to vote Leave; people educated to degree level or above were far more likely to vote Remain.
Yes. Lock – a legend.
Morning after the vote – two old women in Romford asked “When was it wonderful here?”
Very vague.
Interviewer “Erm .. . (long pause) … 20 years ago?” – “Oh, yes, it was wonderful then.”
If one isn’t now dead I’d be amazed.
Incidentally, I’ve stood next to Dean Caffney on a terrace and he was great, the game was shite … QPR 0 West Ham 0.
Surely, Northern Ireland has reached a tipping point. There are now more Catholics than Protestants. Sinn Féin is the biggest party in the Assembly and in the local elections. Local services are crumbling, both because of local issues and Westminster nonsense. Post Brexit, being united with Westminster looks a lot less attractive than with Brussels via Dublin.
A united Ireland is a long way off. The DUP vote held up, without giving them a mandate. Bigotry and violence are dangerous undercurrents. The willingness to compromise in the Good Friday Agreement has disappeared. Donaldson is increasingly looking like a Canute, stubbornly self-interested, a man who couldn’t care less about the people he is meant to serve.
There may be trouble ahead. Somehow, I doubt Jeffrey is going to face your music and dance. If I were you, Colin, I’d consider emigrating.
The irony about citing Canute (Cnut?) is that his ‘attempt’ to hold back the tide was really to show how powerless he actually was. Unlike (probably) Donaldson, Cnut didn’t believe what he was doing would succeed.
I would be wary using Catholic & Protestant relative population numbers as an analogue to how a border poll vote may go. There are an awful lot of neither/other voters here now. I would tend to see a lot of the SF vote as almost as much of a protest vote against the antics of the DUP as it is an endorsement of SFs position. This tends to happen if one of the 2 big parties is seen by ‘the other side’ as getting too big for their boots.
I have seen some interesting OP polling which seems to show a sizable minority of SF voters currently not in favour of a UI.
SF very sensibly campaigned on current issues and barely mentioned UI. Brexit is driving a change in perception comparing Westminster less favourably than Dublin. SF is just letting Brexit’s impact play out. The Alliance, now the third biggest party, is constitutionally neutral. As I said, UI is a long way off but the scales are very slowly tipping in its favour and certain Unionists won’t go down without a fight.
Devil’s advocate: If the rest of the UK had any grit, they’d be unilaterally following Paul McCartney’s advice. Get it over with and make it clear there’s no way back. Once Scotland has made a break for it, that route potentially becomes more likely?
I think it’s inevitable, but over a longish time scale. Personally, I don’t care either way – I really don’t. We are all just custodians of bits of Earth – the flag waving is, as long as the bins are emptied and society functions to some degree, completely daft.
I have a feeling some situation like Hong Kong (leased from China for 100 years – which at the start was kicking the can so far down the road it ‘solved’ a problem) will eventuate – any unionist with a problem has three or four generations to move somewhere else….
I agree it’s inevitable, I’m just not sure those in favour of a UI would be so sanguine with a (say) 100 year timeline like you suggest.
Also, with every passing year the UK gets less attractive, especially when compared to an Ireland which has changed out of all recognition in the last 40 odd years. Most ‘loyalists’ would be hard pressed to explain why they are ‘loyal’, apart from tradition.
I think Brexit has played a huge part, and I also don’t think the passing of HMQ has been examined closely enough WRT changing attitudes towards the UK here.
All astute points.
Maybe not 100 years but there will certainly be a significant period of adjustment required.
If anything, Dublin would be a more sympathetic ear to Northern Ireland than would the rest of the UK and a United Ireland would probably transform Northern Ireland into being an important part of an economically successful country rather than, as it is now, a drain on the finances of the UK.
The actions of the DUP are, if anything, disengaging Northern Ireland in an emotional level from the rest of the UK and I would thinning that we wouldn’t be much missed if we left.
I’m somewhat biased in this as I work as a nurse coming up through emergency departments to where I am now. I used to work in the Ulster in Belfast but now work in Dublin, still with a house in the north and splitting my time between the two.
It’s certainly more expensive in Ireland but wages are greater – I earn £12k more in Ireland than my equivalent in the HSC does. My wife also works in Dublin and, again, earns more than double what she would if she worked in Belfast. There’s certainly an economic case to be made for a united Ireland but decisions are never so straightforward.
I recall some figures from 5 or 6 years back showing that if ‘none of the above’ was a party in the Westminster election, it would have won every seat in NI bar West Belfast (SF). Trouble is, most sensible people have given up voting in NI because DUP or SF keep winning in their constituencies because of hard core tribalist minorities. An extreme liberal is, alas, an oxymoron.
Ultimately, most people just want their bins collected and a quiet life. And those for whom schools and hospitals are currently important want these things properly funded. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid (food and shelter as the foundational layer) somehow missed the layer below that for Jeffrey and his gang: ‘tearing up minor administrative issues in the Irish Sea before all else’.
It is, of course, absurd – and it’s both absurd and infuriating that this man has collapsed (via the fiendishly complex provisos of the GFA) an entire regional govt until someone ticks that box for him. Whereas every other democracy in the world has these bitter differences debated within democratic assemblies. So we have 90 MLAs getting paid because an annoying little man has taken his ball away.
Most of the songs I’ve written on the subject have been sparkled by making the mistake of turning on TV and (before I can switch over) seeing Jeffrey whining about his ‘British identity’. It’s ironic that these days anyone can ‘identify’ as anything they like – and yet Jeffrey needs minor administrative issues reversed until he can identify as whatever floats his boat.
My view is that he’s run out of road now – and he knows it. He’ll currently be trying to find some form of words that will allow the NI Assembly to re-start without him looking like a busted flush. Good luck with that, Jeff.
Seems to me the DUP are out on a limb now with what they want for Norn Iron.
The UK government will not accomodate them any further and neither will the EU/Eire.
They’ll have to either climb down or get chopped off by the NI electorate, eventually.
The trouble with the DUP’s collapsing of the executive is not just the damage it is doing in the here and now, but the trouble it is causing for the future.
Capital spending projects are on hiatus for so long that it will take an age to catch up. Meanwhile in the education sector, where I work, the slashing of services has already begun. Headline a few weeks ago was 800 SEN new pupils without a school place for September. That’s not a problem that has just happened, but without a functioning executive the big decisions to accommodate the needs of those kids just can’t be made.