Micheál Martin has it badly wrong on Irish unity | The big cat and dog debate - I love dogs!

Micheál has it badly wrong on Irish unity:While no-one was able to travel to the USA this St Patrick’s Day because of the pandemic restrictions it was still nonetheless a good couple of weeks for the peace process, the Good Friday Agreement, the demand for the referendum on unity and for the campaign for a United Ireland. Friends of Sinn Féin successfully fund-raised the money to pay for major adverts in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Irish American papers. Under the banner headline: ‘A United Ireland: Let the People have their say’, the message was clear.An Taoiseach Micheál Martin, in response to the Irish American ads, again rejected any possibility of planning for the unity referendum or even planning for a united Ireland. Instead Martin stuck to the line that now is not the time to talk about unity. He told an audience in Washington: “I think it is divisive and puts people back into the trenches too early.” His strategy – if it can be called that – is to put reconciliation and a unionist majority in favour of unity as preconditions to any discussion or planning on unity. This is a clear breach of the terms of the Good Friday Agreement which require a simple majority in favour of unity. It is undemocratic and would hand to unionism a veto over future constitutional change. Martin’s stance fundamentally subverts a key component of the Good Friday Agreement.The big cat and dog debateI love dogs. I have a slightly different relationship with cats. I respect cats.There were feral cats in Long Kesh. They used to hoke in the bins. Maybe they are still there. Like wee ghosts haunting the place. The odd time a few were persuaded to accept titbits from cat-loving or mice- and rat-hating political prisoners who looked to the cats for rodent control. That was in the Cages. I think of them when I see a cat slinking along the yard wall in ambush mode for the wee birds feeding at the birdtable.  A bell around the cat’s neck would even things up. Make it a fair dig.