The UK's Wild West
From Mark Wilson Sir: The rosy illusion of prosperity in urban Ulster for which Leo McKinstry Mister is all right', 4 December) seems to have fallen is founded on a bloated and bloodyminded state sector which has exploited both direct rule and devolution to enrich itself. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland faces a doubling of local taxes and a vast increase in the charges which we already pay for water and sewerage services.
This government intends to force our grammar schools to convert to comprehensives and to drive state education in Ulster down to the appalling standard of that in the constituency of our Secretary for Education.
Even in these days when the holders of the great offices of state make the flesh creep, Labour is able to find a small hand of even creepier no-hopers to lord it over us as direct rule ministers, the only alternatives offered being devolution staffed by unrepentant criminals or absorption into the Eurozone.
Added to this is a social structure which encourages large families, and a benefits system which encourages the adult component of large families to stay at home. We can only thank the Almighty — and at least most people here still believe in Him — for the eastern European immigrants now flooding the province because without them the place would grind to a halt.
The IRA has given up nothing but clouds of hot air and a few rusty rifles, but has gained the replacement of a fairly competent police force with one no more attractive, but much less effective and headed by an unctuous Englishman obsessed with the traffic problems of his native place. Many of the murderers and thieves released by this government are employed at public expense to agitate and subvert, while others have gone back to their criminal careers.
Viewed from the Wild Western edge of the UK, the licence granted to a fully armed IRA for effectively unlimited criminality seems less trivial than it does from the forsaken reaches of Metroland.
Mark Wilson
Armagh, N. Ireland
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