Friday 19 December 2008

RIP - Conor Cruise O'Brien

Not without his faults, but probably the only Unionist ever elected to the Dail, so elected on a Labour ticket, known for letting out a mellifluous flow of Irish when asked a difficult parliamentary question (secure in the knowledge that his ardently Republican interlocutors would not understand a word of it), and very much missed for two specific reasons today.

The trial of a gang of "dissident Republicans" has collapsed, and who is there to point out that if they really were "dissident Republicans" then the "non-dissident Republicans" would have taken them out all on their own?

And it is proposed that vacated Strasbourg seats in Northern Ireland, where STV rather than a party list system is employed, be filled by fiat of the relevant Party Leader, without any need of a by-election.

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