Ulster Says Maybe (Pigs Can Fly)
Aug 17th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
The Economist reports that Aer Lingus will soon operate international flights from Belfast, shifting its Heathrow service from Shannon, and reviving a route dropped by British Airways. It goes on to say
… many unionists felt their Britishness diminished by BA’s relinquishing of the link. How do they feel now that it is to be restored by aircraft with shamrocks on their tail fins and names associated with Irish saints on their bodies?
The fundamentalist Protestant preacher Ian Paisley was all smiles when the deal was announced, for it may bring a million new passengers a year… and kept smiling as … Aer Lingus’s boss said the move would encourage the growing economic relationship “between the north and the south of the island of Ireland”.
Never mind that Aer Lingus is certainly catholic, with a small c, in choosing its saints, i.e., from the whole island of Ireland, and that British Airways was in hot water a while ago with some people for banning the wearing of crosses by its staff… the great fulminator is all smiles?! What next? President Ahmedinejad would like McDonalds to open in Tehran?
Will he commute to London on a plane possibly flown by… papists?!
I met him once, back when I was a lad and he was scarier than the devil incarnate. As he strode toward me on a platform at Euston Station carrying a little brown suitcase and with his gaberdine buttoned up against the cold I noticed something flapping in his wake, trailing from his case.
“Excuse me, Mr.Paisley” I said, as he drew level, “your pajama leg is, ah…” and I gestured… “hanging out.” Without a glance at his little brown suitcase he gave me a baleful look and thundered
Ah suppose ye thank that’s funnay!
As he strode off I pictured him swinging his little brown bag onto his bed later on and finding, to his surprise, a striped elephant’s trunk… his personal airsock, deflated.
They were not union jack PJs.
Quelle surprise, the shouts of NO are from south of the border as employees don’t want jobs migrating from Shannon to the low wage area up north. And the Ulster says NEVER dept. are discovering some advantages of cross-border cooperation.
I think I just saw a pig fly past my window, with a shamrock on his airsock.
