The Banríon Uladh has been renamed the Queen of Ulster
Connla Young
IT cost almost £7,000 for a DUP-headed Stormont department to change the name of a fisheries patrol boat from Irish into English.
Nationalists reacted angrily last month after new agriculture minister Michelle McIlveen revealed the name of the Irish Sea vessel had been translated from ‘Banríon Uladh’ to ‘Queen of Ulster’.
The DUP minister said the decision was taken because the department has a “single language policy”.
She also said the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs – previously the Department of Agriculture – had a “fresh identity”.
Irish language group Pobal said at the time it “deplored” the name change.
Mid Ulster SDLP assembly member Patsy McGlone last night said he had now learned that the cost of changing the name was £6,835.
Details were revealed in a response to an assembly question.
“It was petty in the first place to go about changing the name of a boat but to waste taxpayers’ money makes it even more ridiculous,” he said.
“Aside from the slight it is to Irish speakers, it says a lot for parity of esteem for other people’s culture and languages around Stormont and government in general.”
A department spokesman said: “The change of lettering was carried out at a scheduled annual maintenance event involving repairs, repainting and antifouling.”
The boat was originally named by former Sinn Fein agriculture minister Michelle Gildernew after it was bought in 2010
On today’s(10/18/16) Jeopardy game show the host, Alex Trebek defamed the Irish. At the point in the show where he interviews the contestants, he said to the reigning champion whose name is “Shannon”, Alex said with a name like that you must have a connection to Ireland. I’m sure these questions are somewhat rehearsed. Shannon stated that he has hill walked all of the highest points in each of the 26 counties of the republic and he also said that he could say he’s seen every inch of those counties. That was nice, but Alex T brought it down when he asked Shannon if he was sober when he did all that. That was certainly a defaming comment and I would suggest that the AOH should ask for an on air apology for that terrible comment by Alex Trebek. The show airs daily nationally on the ABC network.
Neil Cosgrave Natl. AOH Chair Anti- Irish Defamation Committee responds.
I have a call into Jeopardy productions 310-244-8855. What would help is if we can get multiple call in to them tomorrow expressing our outrage
Bedfordshire Chief Constable Jon Boutcher (left) is leading Operation Kenova, the investigation into the activities of the alleged Army agent known as Stakeknife.Police Service of Northern Ireland
The officer leading the Stakeknife investigation has been assembling a group of some of the most senior figures in international policing to act as advisors on the case.
Bedfordshire Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, who is heading Operation Kenova, an investigation into several IRA murders and the role of alleged Army agent known as Stakeknife, has been gathering an outside detective team of nearly 50 officers as well as an Independent Steering Group.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counter-terrorism John Miller and Mike Downing, Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, will join the group, which will also include Kathleen O’Toole, part of the Patten Commission, former Police Ombudsman Dame Nuala O’Loan, Iain Livingstone, who is Deputy Chief Constable with Police Scotland, and Nick Kaldas a former Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales who has been working with the UN.
Said Boutcher: “Each of those members has experience of complex investigations that will have engaged similar legal challenges and have involved historical cases.”
He said the group is to act as a “sounding board” or “critical friend.”
“There is an absolute determination to get to the truth for the families,” he said – and he promised “a meaningful, honest, authentic investigation to get to the heart of what happened”.
Stakeknife is the code name for the Army agent who infiltrated the IRA, operating inside its “internal security,” the division of that organization responsible for the interrogation of suspected informers often leading to execution.
Freddie Scappaticci, a Belfast republican interned in the 1970s, has denied he was the agent, ITV.com reports.
The investigating team will begin by assessing relevant documents and information held across the intelligence agencies—Military, MI5 and the then RUC Special Branch.
Boutcher has been meeting families to brief them on the progress and has also assembled a Victims Focus Group to advise the investigation.
“I am committed to doing all I can to find the truth for the victims and their families. It is them who we should be thinking of throughout, said Boutcher, when he received the appointment in June.
“It must be extremely hard to have listened to various commentaries within the community and the media about how and why their loved ones died. I hope this investigation ultimately addresses the uncertainties
The tragedy claimed the lives of 12 firefighters.Credit Larry Morris/The New York Times
Oct. 17 is a sad day for the New York Fire Department. Monday is the 50th anniversary of the fire that, until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, claimed more firefighters’ lives than any other disaster in the city.
The short trip that the firefighters made from nearby firehouses on Oct. 17, 1966, started around 9:30 p.m. when they headed to a fire at a building on East 22nd Street, just east of Broadway.
Despite the heat and smoke they encountered, firefighters who were there said the source of the blaze — its “seat,” in firefighters’ parlance — had not been obvious. Several firefighters were sent around the block, to 23rd Street, and told to pull a hose through a drugstore there in an attempt to approach the fire from the rear. They went in, and never made it out.
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Firefighters removed their helmets as the body of a colleague was removed from the site of a 1966 fire at 22nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan.Credit United Press International
What was burning in the 22nd Street building, a subsequent investigation showed, was paint and lacquer that had been stored in the basement by an art dealer. What the firefighters who went into Wonder Drug & Cosmetics, at 6 East 23rd Street, across from Madison Square Park, had no way of knowing was that the store and the 22nd Street building shared a basement, and that an interior basement wall had recently been moved to give the 22nd Street building more underground storage space.
That meant that the drugstore’s thick floor was poorly supported, and as the fire burned below it collapsed, sending 10 firefighters plunging into the basement. Two others were caught by the flames that quickly roared up to the first floor through the huge hole left by the collapse.
The death toll was 12: two chiefs, two lieutenants and eight firefighters.
The five-story building that housed the drugstore is long gone. In its place is a high-rise apartment building that covers 22nd to 23rd Streets. On its 23rd Street wall is a bronze plaque that reads, “In tribute to our comrades,” with the date of the fire and the name and rank of each of the 12 victims.
The Fire Department’s current commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, whose father was a captain in the department, visited the scene the day after the fatal fire, and speaks often of the tragedy.
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A funeral service for four of the firefighters was held on Oct. 21, 1966, at St. Thomas Church in Midtown Manhattan.Credit Neal Boenzi/The New York Times
“It made a lasting impression on me,” Mr. Nigro said last week.
He attended the funeral of several of the men a few days later, which he recalled as “a very sad day.”
Mr. Nigro became a firefighter three years later and was assigned to a Midtown Manhattan company. At the time, he said, the deaths were “still on the minds of the firefighters in that area.”
The memory has not faded. “Any time I go on 23rd Street, which is fairly frequent, whoever I’m with, I tell them” about the fire, Mr. Nigro said, adding, “Every once in a while, I see somebody who was there, and we talk about it.”
Every Oct. 17, firefighters who helped battle the blaze, department commanders and current members of the companies whose members died gather in front of the bronze plaque for a solemn ceremony for what is remembered as the 23rd Street Fire. They will do so again on Monday.
