Are Brexit rows leading to insecurity and mayhem?

Few of us would want Theresa May's job at the moment. Not only has she a rump of Tory MPs who disapprove of her Brexit tactics but the unelected Lords are making life difficult for her too. Brexit could have been straightforward if they had all been of one voice but Brits, by nature, are a contrary race, believing that nothing matters in the world except their rights.
Sandra ChapmanSandra Chapman
Sandra Chapman

Maybe they spend too much time looking back in history when ordinary people had very few rights and power was held by a few such as Royalty – Henry VIII was a monster who murdered at will - or the military. Rome was built by military men who gave themselves grand titles such as Emperor, and grabbed the power to go with it. Along the way millions of ordinary people died at their hands. They had no rights and lived by fear. The loathsome Henry VIII felt important enough to attempt to dismantle the Catholic Church so he could divorce one wife and marry another.

Today rights reside with the people and one would think that they would have learned something from the past. In so many ways we are sophisticated but we are a creation of our DNA which holds the secrets of our past and every so often they show us what we are, people who have the capacity for evil as well as good. A troublesome Brexit has unsettled us all and brought evil in its wake.

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This week we balked at the sight of two fugitive sex offenders, tied to a park bench, beaten and with paint thrown over them in what is one of our quietest village, Mullaghbawn in south Armagh.

Brexit.Brexit.
Brexit.

This is no innocent place of course and was a hotbed of murderous IRA activity during our Troubles.

Then there was one of our most prominent seaside towns Bangor, tainted forever by the appalling sight of a young girl being kicked and beaten by another girl not any older than the victim. Another newspaper headline had the story of a desperate mother trying to save her 12-year-old daughter from bullies in a Newtownards school. She claimed they alleged they would kill her little girl.

A 20-year-old woman from quiet Irvinestown ventured into Enniskillen only to be viciously attacked, with parts of her hair torn out at a dance. Her attacker was a woman. Where is all this rage coming from? We can’t blame it all on social media or bad diets. Our Troubles lasted nearly 30 years – though many still believe they never really ended. We achieved peace of a kind, though it was far from perfect and many of the youngsters now savaging each other in streets up and down the country won’t even remember how bad it was here in the 70s and 80s.

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Has the whole Brexit issue destabilised the country? I rather hope not but see some of the problems born out of the in-your-face politics practised by Sinn Fein. Tell enough untruths, blame the Brits for everything and invent a problem where there isn’t really one, i.e the hard/soft border issue and the ‘hardships’ endured through lack of an Irish language. They tell the world their land was ‘invaded’ by the British and they want them out and gullible foreigners believe them. With another tongue they try to explain how important unionists are to them and why we can all sit down together and create a ‘new Ireland’.

Shinners believe, and the Irish political hierarchy sometimes sing from the same hymn sheet, that a border poll is essential to protect their rights. The EU’s Brexit negotiator and bully boy in chief Michel Barnier is beguiled by all this Irish blarney. Red lines are everywhere on both sides.

Technology can solve the border problems but that’s not what SF want to hear. It’s a United Ireland or nothing, their arrogance reaching down to the brawlers on the streets, to the schools and dance floors of the province because if it’s alright for the politicians to brawl then it’s all alright for them to brawl too.

Currently we have no Government to speak off at Stormont, the civil servants have no power to take any important decisions and Secretary of State Karen Bradley looks as though she wishes she was anywhere but Northern Ireland.