There is no point uin trying to push on with a reformed police force in Northern Ireland if it fails to win the acceptance of Sinn Féin. However unfortunate it may be, the SDLP and the Catholic Hierarchy don't matter. They went along, for the most part, with the reformed RUC of 1970 and remember what happened to it?
Vincent Browne's column (Irish Times 22 August)
It is a pity the Dublin government, the Catholic Hierarchy and the SDLP have encouraged the British to proceed on the basis of their currently flawed package when such minorr changes could make all the difference.
Browne again
``On Monday they talked about these people out dealing with drugs, and that turned out to be bunkum. On Tuesday they talked about some video evidence, and we have yet to see any of that. And there was an attempt to try and sell one of these people as a Sinn Féin representative in Cuba, which has proved to be rubbish. The people who are spinning these stories are the very people who are justifying their presence and their very existence in the North.''
Sinn Féin Assembly member Conor Murphy, accusing the British of using the arrests of three men in Colombia as an excuse to delay demilitarisation in the North (Irish Times 17 August)
``I was punched and kicked as I left the chemist's and then a crowd of men were shouting and waving iron bars and cudgels outside the shop. I was very scared and thought I was going to be beaten to death''
Sixteen-year-old Mary Jo Harvey from North Belfast, giving an account of when she was attacked along with her 13-year-old friend in North Belfast by a loyalist mob (Irish News, 16 August)
``The implementation of internment didn't go as well as it should have done.''
Understatement of the year by former RUC Chief Graham Shillington to the Saville Inquiry in Derry. (Irish News, 16 August)
``My body shut down on me! I was a bit of a workaholic''
Minister for the Environment Noel Dempsey, who says he suffered from exhaustion because of his workload. Who's he kidding? (Daily Star, 17 August)
``Disgraceful! It has gravely overreached itself''
A report in Garda News slams the Garda Complaints Board for publishing their annual report revealing that complaints against the force are skyrocketing.
``We will not be making appointments to the Police Board and we will not be recommending support within our consituency to the policing plan as it stands. It's a flawed document; it represents a failure of British political leadership.''
Sinn Féin party Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin (Irish Independent, 18 August)
``Companies come to their global decisions and we are not in a position to have any discussion about it.''
A strange response from an IDA spokesperson in response to the loss of 1,500 Irish jobs in the past two weeks in the IT sector. (Sunday Business Post, 19 August)
``It would seem that dissent is a crime punishable by surveillance, which is ironic given the dubious records of certain `G8' leaders.''
A spokesperson for the Irish Council for Civil Liberties slams a report that EU police and intelligence agencies are to implement a pan-European surveillance system on anti-globalisation movements. (Irish Examiner, 20 August)
``We have had elections recently and we will have elections in the future. We'll see who the nationalists and the republican community are taking their leadership from.''
Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughl responds to reports that Sinn Féin was coming under pressure from the Catholic church hierarchy to support the British government's controversial policing proposals (The Guardian, 21 August)
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