Ulster: could that man on the radio help?

So, what do you make of the situation in Northern Ireland, then?

Nothing.

How do you mean, nothing?

I mean that, as the man said, anyone who says he understands the situation there shows thereby that he doesn't understand the situation.

So, to have a view on Northern Ireland is a waste of time?

To try to have a view on Northern Ireland is the first sign of insanity. It's like having a view on the afterlife, or on the future of the game of marbles. Unthinkable and, in the long run, unknowable, and, in the even longer run, unimportant.

Unless you live there.

Ah, well, that's the fallacy of the whole thing! We are always told by people from Northern Ireland that unless you know the place and the people and the history and the geography, you can't understand what it's about. This means that the only people who know what it's all about are the ones living there. And they're the ones who are causing all the trouble in the first place! So, as the man said, it's the so-called experts who are causing all the trouble!

Maybe we should call in the non-experts. Get some advisers who don't know that the situation is impossibe and get them to sort it out!

It's been tried.

They got in some total amateurs to sort it out?

Yes.

Who?

Mr Major and the British Government.

Isn't that a bit gratuitously insulting?

No. Mr Major keeps referring to something called the "peace process". Everyone in Northern Ireland knows that there is no such thing as the peace process, so they don't believe anything else he says.

So what's the answer?

That depends. What's the question?

The question is: How do we get peace in Northern Ireland?

You don't.

Never?

Not unless you do the unthinkable.

Meaning?

Send the Protestants back where they came from.

Meaning?

Well, the reason there are Protestants in Northern Ireland at all is because, as the man says, Ulster was once upon a time the most Catholic and most troubled of all parts of Ireland, and when the Tudors were trying to sort the place out, they thought it would keep the Catholics in their place if they brought a load of Scottish Protestants over the water and put them in charge. Or at least give them all the best land and jobs. Well, after 400 years it hasn't really worked out. So why not send them all back to Scotland?

You can't just uproot a whole population!

Oh yes, you can. That's how they got to Ulster in the first place, by uprooting. Anyway, the British built their Empire by uprooting people. Indians to Trinidad, Africans to the Caribbean ...

Yes, but if you sent them all back to Scotland, you might not have a Northern Ireland problem any more, but you would have a big South-west Scotland problem.

Well, wouldn't that be better than a Northern Ireland problem?

And you would have people in South-west Scotland marching through Dumfries in silly hats playing fife and drum music looking like idiots.

People in Scotland are used to that. They would think it was either the Edinburgh Fringe parade or people practising for the Edinburgh Tattoo.

And that is your solution to the Northern Ireland situation?

Oh, no. There is no such thing as a solution to the Northern Ireland situation. As the man says, when you have got a right and wrong situation, like apartheid, you can do something about it, but when it's a right against right situation, war is the only solution.

Which man is this that you keep quoting?

The man on the radio. The wise man you keep hearing on discussion programmes and news reports, saying, "If you think you understand the situation, you don't", and "What we have here is a conflict between myths", and "Whatever else we've got in Northern Ireland, it's a very bad advertisement for Christianity", and "It's a political problem, so there has to be a political solution," and sounding very wise the whole time.

Who is he?

Just a man.

Do you think he could come up with a solution to the problem? Do you think HE is the only man who could clear it all up?

No. Even if he was, he wouldn't want to give up his job.

What job?

Being the man on radio who knows about Northern Ireland.

To be continued, but not in this space ...