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<h1>Political deadlock in Northern Ireland</h1>
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<time title="Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 00:08">Fri, Feb 16, 2018, 00:08</time>
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<p class="gmail-LETTER gmail-selectionShareable">Sir,
– What puzzles me is why the Taoiseach cancelled a planned visit with
the First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones, scheduled for Monday in
Dublin, rather than invite him to attend informally in Belfast, where
his silent presence might have signalled the amicable relations between
ourselves and our British neighbours; and, who knows, he might even have
had a chance to whisper into the paranoid ears of backbenchers that not
speaking English exclusively had no negative effect on his Welsh
countrymen’s British identity. </p>
<p class="gmail-LETTER gmail-selectionShareable">Mr Jones is on record as wanting a
soft border between Wales and the Republic, post-Brexit. It appears, as I
suspected when first hearing of the cancellation, to have been another
missed opportunity to apply a nanogram of political imagination to this
constipated “debate”. </p>
<p class="gmail-LETTER gmail-selectionShareable">One thing is for sure, the whole
fiasco indicates that when it comes to begrudgery, the DUP are surely
“more Irish than the Irish themselves”. – Yours, etc, </p>
<p class="gmail-LETTER gmail-selectionShareable">D FLINTER,</p>
<p class="gmail-LETTER gmail-selectionShareable">Headford,</p></div></section>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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