JURASSIC WORLD

Season's Cheatings!

Today's scoundrel always gets himself in the papers for all the wrong reasons. While we're all told that Northern Ireland is moving on and there's adverts inviting us over for holidays and trying to tempt businesses into setting up there, in some ways things haven't changed at all. A lot of time is wasted at Stormont in point-scoring and complaining about slights, real or imagined. One man in particular is still stuck in the old days of the Protestant Ascendancy and believes that upholding this is what he's been elected for. Presenting the Derry Dinosaur Jockey, Gregory Campbell.

At Stormont, Campbell stands for things that most Protestants and Unionists find embarrassing. He belongs to some fundamentalist sect that believes in the literal truth of everything in the Bible. That means that the creation story is true and Bishop James Ussher's calculations about the age of the earth are true. Campbell and his ilk don't let scientific evidence get in the way of their beliefs, calling biologists, palaeontologists, geologists and the like nothing short of liars. In fact, they believe that dinosaurs were around up until a couple of thousand years ago and were probably domesticated by man. No wonder you get joke cartoons of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a Tyrannosaurus Rex! One of Campbell's demands is that this stuff be taught in schools and that Creationism be given equal status with Evolution, not just in schools but in natural history museums as well.

Of course, it could be argued that Campbell is just looking for parity of treatment for his beliefs, which are shared by many in the USA, if not in NI. When it comes to others looking for parity, however, Campbell is dead against it; even when what they want is far more reasonable than his demands. For example, any calls for the promotion of the Irish language are met with nothing but scorn and ridicule from Campbell. He was actually censured by the Speaker at Stormont for making jokes about a member saying something in Gaelic. In other words, most of his stances in Stormont have nothing to do with the good of Northern Ireland and everything to do with bigotry.

When he's at Westminster, Campbell has to watch his step. Calls for Creationism to be taught in schools would be laughed out of the House, while lambasting Irish Gaelic would probably see him expelled. He has to keep his bigoted supporters onside, though, so he has decided to pick on a different target, one that they all hate just as much. That target is Celtic FC. It almost seems as if Campbell talks of nothing else when at Westminster. Oh, tell a lie...a few years ago Fiat brought out a new car called the Provo; not surprisingly, Campbell blew a gasket! Anyway, he's forever asking the House to condemn the 'behaviour' of Celtic supporters in Europe and usually gets shouted down for his trouble.

Campbell colludes with the sad, wee, Belfast man that calls himself PZJ, desperately trying to find something, anything to use against Celtic. In one pathetic manoeuvre, Campbell put a written request to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, demanding that Celtic be investigated as part of the enquiry into the Co-Operative Bank (Ignoring the irony of this, given the relationship between Rangers FC and the occupant behind Door Number 8). To his, and The Peeppul's, disappointment, a Treasury spokesperson told him that the customers of the Co-Op Bank were not in the remit of the enquiry and were nobody's business.

Undaunted, Campbell persuaded his DUP colleagues in Brussels to bring up some cock-and-bull story about dodgy land deals between Celtic and Glasgow City Council to the European Commission. Unfortunately for Campbell and his accomplices, there was nothing for the EC to find. There was the same outcome when their last resort, Audit Scotland, took up the investigation. PZJ, of course, thinks the whole thing is a travesty and has promised not to let it rest. No doubt Campbell is champing at the bit to get going, though who the hell is going to listen to them, let alone act on their fantasies, is another matter.

Predictably, those among The Peeppul that believe all PZJ's pish don't see anything wrong in either him or Campbell getting involved in these obsessive vendettas. Isn't Northern Ireland a part of the UK? Doesn't Campbell have a right, as an elected member of the UK Parliament, to be 'concerned' about anything 'untoward' going on in his country? Strangely, these particular arguments evaporate when it comes to Alex Thomson. The argument then is that for an Englishman to be interested in Rangers and Sevco he must be inspired by bigotry. As we all know, a sense of irony is not one of The Peeppul's strong points.

So, while implicitly condoning the cheating of Rangers and Sevco, Campbell has tried his best to malign and cause trouble for a law-abiding Scottish team. And this hasn't just started recently, as a consequence of his own team dying; he's been doing this for years. The House of Commons has long been bored to tears with his calls for something to be done about Celtic's supporters, while the supporters of his own team go round trashing cities and assailing everyone's ears with their sectarian bigotry. He might describe himself as a politician but, in reality, he's just another bigoted, cheating member of The Peeppul.

"I'm just on my way to buy up as many of Pat Anderson's books as I can. Then we're going to have a big bonfire in front of the Guildhall in De...Londonderry."