Ah this ever-so-democratic Labour government, which has gone to war in the interests (in part at least) of "spreading democracy" to the middle-east. While I've never been particularly pro-war or anti-war, I do find the way the government have been acting at home betrays a large dose of hypocrisy.

While they're on this crusade in the name of democracy, let's have a look at what their unelected (should I say unelectable?) Peter Hain has been doing in our own little corner of the United Kingdom.

We have:

• the abolition of our grammar schools and moves to increase the number of private schools, despite a government-sponsored referendum, or household survey (see Appendix 1) to be specific, where two-thirds opposed such a move
• the imposition of water charges to pay, largely, to undo the neglect caused by civil servants over whom we had no control
• and today, confirmation that football will be bullied and blackmailed, by any means necessary, into funding a new stadium in the middle of a field so the government can build a museum to terrorists and yet another bland, soulless retail park

Democracy? What democracy?

I've already discussed the rip-off charges imposed on Northern Irish customers trying to order PC components over the internet, but today seems an opportune momoent to highlight an even more reprehensible Northern Ireland consumer extortion - Phoenix Gas.

Last year Phoneix Gas increased their prices by 52% in just four months, blaming the rising cost of wholesale gas (which doesn't explain why this made gas in Northern Ireland two-thirds more expensive than in England, but that's another issue... maybe). Anyway, in recent months the wholesale price of gas has fallen by between 50% and 60%. On the mainland, last week British Gas announced price-cuts of a measly 17% and PowerGen yesterday announced price cuts of an unspecified amount would be implemented next month. So what have Phoenix done.

Well, they've hinted (no promises) that they will reduce prices, by some unspecified amount, as of April. April?! Their wholesale costs have already fallen by over 50% and they're making consumers wait until April before they see any benefit. They must think we're idiots - they're clearly squeezing every last penny they can out of their customers.

David Blevings of the Northern Ireland Oil Federation wants to know why the regulator is not putting pressure on Phoenix to introduce cost reductions immediately. Good question David, it's not like they weren't quick enough to put their prices up.

An admittedly rather simplistic (and/or misleading, depending on your viewpoint) University of Ulster study that denounced Northern Ireland as the "bigotry capital of the world" (reported at Slugger on Friday) and reminded me of some of the other rather neanderthal crap that comes out of people in Northern Ireland: from the minister who thinks Harry Potter is a dangerous "cult" to the supposed statesman who thinks the abduction and murder of a mother is "not a crime". Let's not also forget that Northern Ireland has a potential First Minister in Ian Paisely who thinks that "Line dancing is as sinful as any other type of dancing, with its sexual gestures and touching. It is an incitement to lust." Now, line dancing may be an incitement to a lot of things but I hardly think lust is one of them.

You may be surprised to find out that despite all this I'm not convinced that Ulster is indeed the most backward place on Earth. Why? No, not because we all know that's Co. Kerry, but I was led to some other interesting facts and opinions in the last 24 hours. A news story on Yahoo's US home page points out that currently there are 7 states in the USA where cohabiting, unmarried, with a partner is a crime. In fact, in North Dakota, until the law is changed, this felony is listed as a 'sex crime' up there with rape and paedophilia. I can't help wonder if we don't have something similar on the statute book.

Yesterday I stumbled on an American site called Fundies say the darndest things. As it turns out, they really do.

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It seems to have gone by largely unnoticed (at least to this blogger) but it certainly appears that the DUP, brave custodians of the union, are more interested in blackmailing the average pro-union voter into voting DUP than they are in safeguarding Northern Ireland's position in the United Kingdom. Hands up - who's surprised?

Politicians are famous for having no principles, not least in Northern Ireland, but according to an interesting report in the Republic's Irish Independent, the DUP have happily overseen the removal of a key safeguard from the Good Friday Agreement. That safeguard meant that the First Minister would have to come from the majority community. Fair enough. However, following the DUP's supposed "fair deal" we heard so much about, there's a distinct possibility that we could see a Sinn Fein first minister [free registration required] even though votes for nationalist parties are still the minority.

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This year's mid-winter travels took me to relatively new EU member state, Hungary.

My posting has been so erratic this year that most people probably wouldn't have noticed but, following on from a trend begun last year for visiting cold places in the middle of winter, I was holidaying in Budapest for the guts of a week last week so missed all the exciting events of that time (bar what I happened to catch on BBC World or CNN in the mornings while I munched my breakfast).

Compared to Prague, Budapest seems much less geared up for tourism, certainly in the middle of winter, but (perhaps partly because of this?) I enjoyed Budapest much more. There's so much to see that I think we barely scratched the surface.

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Seems like the BBC sports department were having a rather empty day and needed a page filler. Not sure why Dermot Ahern had nothing better to do in Foreign Affairs in Dublin.

Needless to say they just don't get it. Having recognised Northern Ireland's right to exist in the Belfast Agreement, the Republic's government now want us to abolish our national football team in favour of some contrived, feel-good, all-Ireland, bullshit team despite the fact that neither Northern Ireland fans nor the Republic's football fans want it. Of course this call has nothing to do with the fact that Northern Ireland, in the midst of a good run of form, recently passed their less in-form neighbours in the FIFA rankings.

Keep your nose out of things that don't cont concern you Ahern. Maybe you should stick to sorting out your own side and stay the hell away from ours. We will not stand for the abolition of our national team just to please some bullshit, political, feel-good agenda.

The following post was sent in all the way from Budapest by Paul, the Northern Irish Magyar.

I have a confession to make: I believe in the "secular society."

Secularism has become a bit of a dirty word recently in certain circles, so what exactly do I mean by the "secular society"?

Quite simply, in my version of secular society, there would be the closure of all "faith-based" schools, abortion (and beer) on demand, the legalisation of gay marriages, the de-nqabing of Muslim females, the decriminalisation of drugs and brothels, Irish League matches being played on Sunday....and it should go without saying, the complete removal of Christ from Xmas.

*Stunned silence from the collective EU readership*

Before "Enraged of Bushmills" leaves an abusive comment, that last paragraph wasn't exactly(!) what I meant by "secularism" and anyway even if it was, that kind of scenario ain't going to materialise in N.Ireland any time soon.....

In a modern western democracy, everybody has the right to believe anything they choose, no matter how reactionary or ridiculous those beliefs may be. Indeed, tolerance of such beliefs is the cornerstone of civilised society- but that is definitely not the same as saying that those beliefs should form the basis of that particular society. A person's religion (or lack of) should be their own private affair. The state's job is not to "safeguard" such beliefs, but solely to set the widest of legal parameters to govern society. Within those parameters, it is up to each individual's conscience and moral judgement how they conduct themselves.

What would all this mean in Northern Irish context?

Well, in practical terms, here's three examples: giving women the 100% reproductive rights, the removal of state support for "faith-based" education and the full implementation in N. Ireland of all UK legislation in areas such as homosexual rights. So, basically I’m looking to set up a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, right here, in our wee province? No.

By advocating that it is the woman concerned who alone has the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion, I'm not arguing that termination in every case is the correct
or moral option. I'm also not forbidding our "moral guardians" from presenting their arguments to the individual. I'm simply saying, that, in the end, it is solely up to the woman's individual conscience- but she should have the option, if she so desires, of terminating the pregnancy in her own country. Similarly, I, in no way, would deny parents their democratic right to send their children to a "faith-based" (be it Roman-Catholic, Free-Presbyterian, Islamic, Jewish, Moonie or whatever) school. It should, however, not be the state's responsibility (using my taxes) to subsidise such schools. And if Westminster decides that in the 21st Century, certain rights should be granted to certain groups, then unless we want to live in some kind of fundamentalist, redneck ghetto, those exact same rights should also apply to Northern Irish residents.

But what would be the implications for the Union of such a "secularisation" of N. Ireland?

I believe that in certain "non-national" areas (e.g. abortion), then more radical Unionists should not be afraid to make informal alliances with those we would normally consider our political opponents. I despise much of what Sinn Fein stands for, but in the area of women’s reproductive rights, their views (now) are much closer to my own than the DUP's are. Apart from the fact that you should always follow your heart and not necessarily the rest of the herd in such matters of conscience, more Unionists getting involved in this type of campaign can only help our overall image in the rest of the UK. Also by building up a society model which is closer to what is found on the mainland secular, multicultural Britain than that in the Republic of Ireland, then we are ensuring that an even bigger proportion of our society feels more comfortable within the confines of Northern Ireland.

Even if could, I don't want to ban conservative "religion" from Northern Ireland, I'm simply saying that it must share the open spaces of society with the rest of us. Secularism is the way we can both protect society from religion, but also protect the right of all to practise their chosen religion within that society.

The bullshit 50-50 recruitment discrimination legislation is making it more difficult for migrant workers to get jobs in the PSNI, which can't possibly help the service when it's trying to deal with members of the ever-growing ethnic minority group in Northern Ireland.

It's fairly common knowledge that the legislation was ridiculous enough to start with by virtue of defining only 2 groups of people, Catholic and 'other,' for the purposes of police recruitment. Now Miss Fitz at Slugger O'Toole has pointed out the relevant part of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 which shows that Polish applicants, despite being overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, are lumped in with the already oversubscribed "non-Roman Catholic applicants" group, which makes it more difficult for them to gain employment in the force. Admittance to the Catholic group for 50-50 recruitment is reserved for those defined by monitoring regulations as "belonging to the Roman Catholic community in Northern Ireland". Why they didn't just go ahead and say nationalist, I don't know. It's probably more accurate and a damn sight more honest.

Last year nearly 1000 Poles applied for jobs in the PSNI (12% of all applicants). It certainly would be helpful to have a few officers who understood Northern Ireland's newest residents and one of the largest minority communities here, not to mention ones that are more removed from the sectarian crap that goes on here. At the very least they should be exempted altogether from the 'positive' [sic] discrimination imposed on the police.

The 50-50 recruitment policies may have been a necessary evil at the time, but with Catholic officers already numbering 20% after such a short space of time there will soon be no justification for it and this situation just highlights the blatant hypocrisy. As of 23rd March 2006 there were a total of 21 ethnic minority officers, only 2 of whom were Seargents. Apparently it's not just Protestants getting the raw deal here.

Here's what needs to happen, as I see it. In the next couple of 12 months Sinn Fein will slowly begin to back the police. At this stage the numbers of Catholic applicants will most likely increase significantly. Shortly afterwards (6-12 months) there must be an announcement that after another 12 months, the discriminatory recruitment procedures currently in place will be ended. By that time the number of Catholics in the PSNI should have edged to somewhere between 25 and 30% and can therefore even out naturally over time without discriminating against and alienating the other 55% of the population.

I came across a report on Protestant Alienation in Northern Ireland yesterday and, although it was originally published 12 years ago, much of it still resonates today.

One factor in particular identified as a source of alienation is entitled "The High Profile of Nationalist/Catholic Culture." Even within Northern Ireland it's fairly obvious that one culture is considered more 'acceptable' than the other, and that is the gaelic/celtic culture.

The Red Hand, long-since removed from the NITB logo.

In July 1990 the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, even before it began promoting "Ireland" as a destination, replaced the red hand on its logo with the current shamrock (with a red central leaf). Today, as I looked at a PSNI constable's business card I realised that despite using 6 separate symbols for the PSNI badge (scales of justice, crown, harp, shamrock, laurel branch and torch) the designer managed to completely ignore one of the only symbols that uniquely identifies Ulster/Northern Ireland - the Red Hand (admittedly it would need to be clawed back in popular opinion from the paramilitaries, but this will never happen if we abandon it to them). Christ, even use of the term Ulster itself is usually avoided, despite being much more marketable than "Northern Ireland."

The "Taste of Ulster" shop at Belfast International Airport seems to almost exclusively offer traditionally "quaint Irish" souveneirs of Ireland rather than Ulster or Northern Ireland. At Glasgow airport I noticed one shop selling some great T-Shirts with English definitions of Scots dialect words (blether, eejit, numpty, steamin etc) all of which would sound perfectly familiar in Ulster. We've had the assault of the Irish Gaelic language to the point where it receives £18 million a year in funding (in NI, from the British government) and we're looking at some kind of Irish Language Act in the near future which will doubtlessly increase this figure dramatically. That's a lot of endulgance for a language which probably doesn't have a single monoglot speaker in the country. Oh, and I'm not even starting on Saint Patrick's day or a certain council's last-ditch attempt to consign the name of the city of Londonderry to history.

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Could a healthy dose of violence be good for Belfast?

It's obvious really. Too much time and energy in this country is wasted on politics, on sectarianism and on mindless thuggery and petty crime. The solution?

I think Belfast needs a healthy dose of competitive violence; not the kind where you go out and throw hard, heavy objects at your neighbours and/or the police. Belfast should have a Street Fighter tournament for all us 20-something old fogeys who whiled away many an hour beating the crap out of each other on our old Super Nintendos and Sega Mega Drives. In fact, I spent most of my year in Upper 6th form challenging all-comers at Street Fighter II Turbo in the common room.

If you're too old or too young to remember, Street Fighter was one of the most important video games of its time (which I suppose encompassed most of the 1990s) and it's long-past time Belfast recognised that.

What would it take? 32 people and a SNES or two? I'm salivating at the prospect. I've dreamed of it for a long time, but only tonight did I realise that there is precedent. Apparently between 2002 and 2004, Belfast's Film Festival included an "International" Pong tournament and in the USA, competitive tournaments built around Street Fighter (and similar) series seem to be quite well-established.

Imagine a 32-man Street Fighter 2 Turbo marathon in Belfast. Dare we dream? OK, maybe it won't solve any of the ingrained societal problems I mentioned, but it'd be damn good fun.

While on the topic I'd just like to settle an age-old debate as well. The best version of Street Fighter 2 ever was SF2:Turbo (or Hyper Fighting for readers across the pond).