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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 37m

Some executions in the United states are by firing squad, five states allow it. They are rare, and not the primary method used in any state. The most recent was in 2025 in South Carolina. The most recent before that was in 2010 in Utah. Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma also allow it.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 5h

I've been to San Diego. I remember watching jets taking off from the nearby Top Gun airbase. It is a military town, a navy base for about 60 ships and 24,000 military personnel. He is asking Iran to kill the personnel at the second largest naval base in the US.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 5h

Yeah, Rosa Parks wasn't first minister, and Michelle O'Neill is not a private citizen. I believe that the Garvaghy road residents' cause is righteous. Private citizens breaking the law in a righteous cause is a different matter to public officials doing so. O'Neill is undermining the rule of law.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 16h

Sunak's government passed a disgraceful law forbidding British judges from ruling that Rwanda was unsafe. This blatant interference in an independent judiciary didn't work in Northern Ireland because of the GFA and the ECHR, so to enforce it in NI would have meant an Irish Sea immigration frontier.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 17h

A test to distinguish dangerous lunatics from harmless ones. A guy with public order convictions for stuff he did when he was already completing a suspended sentence for possession of an illegal weapon. Or A woman who makes faces behind court step speech makers and flashes boobs at an orange parade.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 18h

Is he the new leader of the DUP ? Perhaps he'd like a team of dedicated close protection officers and human shields and an SAS motorcycle escort for his motorcade. I don't think even Donelson had any of that. If he'd had police around him they might have noticed something criminal. Or maybe not.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If they have spiralled so far out of control that they no longer respect the decisions of judges then they must be disbanded. Potential recruits know exactly how ICE operates and have for ages. It is infested from top to bottom with power-hungry abusers and racists. You can't weed them all out now.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's true. Plane loads of fake financial accounts and bungs to players and managers have been flying into Manchester City FC for years from the Emirates.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Except the diaspora. I'm Irish and live outside Ireland but am still really interested in Ireland.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Can he do another bogus hunger strike ? Bogus hunger strikes which end that same evening with a curry are a form of protest which is: peaceful, lawful, and only undignified insofar as it spoils the fun of a few cruel heartless people who would prefer to see him actually starve for a while.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fortunately British military authorities didn't discover that World War 2 codebreaker, Alan Turing, was gay until after he had helped them win the crucial U-Boat battle in the Atlantic.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In Ireland it can come down to one or two independents with a very specific ask in return for their voting support on other issues. 24 hour cardiac cover at a Waterford hospital, or a flood defence barrier along the river Shannon at Athlone.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The gender mechanism awards up to 12 seats to female candidates if the proportion of women elected falls below 40%. It would do the same for males if they were less than 40% but this never happens.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There is also a mechanism in Malta which awards seats to a party whose seat tally under STV grossly underrepresents its vote share.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Interesting too is that Malta's STV system doesn't ensure balanced gender representation. This is why not all the 79 seats are elected by STV alone.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

That is how it sometimes works in Ireland. Not always. Larger parties don't have a crystal ball to know which smaller parties who might become coalition partners to cozy up to. Surprises happen. In Northern Ireland it doesn't happen at all because a D'Hondt mechanism replaces coalition building.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Malta uses STV for 65 of its parliament's 79 seats. 13 constituencies elect 5 STV seats each. In the 2026 general election all the STV seats were filled by just two parties. Partit Laburista won 36 out of the 65 STV seats, Partit Nazzjonalista won 29. So STV doesn't necessarily kick any party out.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Oh, I wasn't passing judgement on the merits of the decision above. In my opinion rerouting the parade is the only decision which both safeguards the right of the Orange Order to parade, and safeguards the residents' equally legitimate right to protest against the Orange Order.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The cost of insuring against Paramount defaulting on its debts is increasing. In other Ellison related news the cost of insuring oneself against an Oracle debt default is also increasing. In yet more Ellison related news CNN is being taken over by the same family whose creditworthiness is in doubt.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Since 2016. Isn't it reasonable to speculate that Brexit caused a one-off spike in pro united Ireland sentiment by remain-voting unionists and non-aligned. The theory until recently was that demographics would move the sentiment. There was no bigger demographic change in 2016 than before or since.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So you are correct there are no good grounds for a ban. But given that 18 people have died including three children in previous conflicts over that route, there are very sound security rationales for re-routing.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In principle as a liberal I am opposed to banning a non-violent parade, however obnoxious, unless it causes harm. But the parade has never actually been banned, simply re-routed. There isn't a sound free speech or free expression rationale for Garvaghy road if a reasonable alternative route exists.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They didn't exactly change their stance. Their previous decision was disputed on the grounds that they had not followed correct procedure, and that challenge succeded. This opened the door to a new Orange Order parade proposal, which was very much scaled down, and which therefore succeeded.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

At the end of any Irish national election you need to form a government, and if there are too many elected members on the various and mutually antagonistic fringes of whatever political consensus can be negotiated then that government can be very fragile. In Malta it would just be more of the same.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Malta (where I now live) is an entrenched two party system. Ireland (where I lived until 2025) is a three party system with some small left-wing parties and right-wing rural independents. Once there are more than six seats per constituency then a quota of less than 15% can elect a fringe candidate.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Too many seats per constituency doesn't really buy better representation. I've lived in two states (Ireland and Malta) which use STV, and even though I was never a permanent resident or a voter there, I've spent plenty of time as a student and a worker in Northern Ireland. Three to five is enough.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

By a strange coincidence £3.7 billion is about what the UK currently spends on pensions and related benefits in Northern Ireland. If the pound had parity with the euro the amounts would even out.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The UK national debt is currently more than £3 trillion. So maybe as much as a €100 billion apportioning if that happens. But Ireland is considerably more creditworthy than the UK at present. Irish 10 year bonds are 3.7%. Cost to Ireland could be ~€3.7 bn p/a. UK 10 yr gilts are more than 5.4%.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I expect that the UK will view the ongoing state pension spend as a bargain compared to the current annual subvention bridging the gap between revenue collected and notional spending. There is also the tricky matter which may arise of apportioning a share of the UK national debt to Northern Ireland.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If it works out as you predict, then the big picture Continues to be a ~10% shift from unionist to other, but hardly any significant increase in the nationalist vote since 1998, < 1%. It will be interesting to see how closely the 2027 Assembly election matches that.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

One which has nothing to do Lutnick's visits to Epstein's island and other properties after Epstein had already been convicted of a child sex offence.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

And then there are all the unexploded munitions.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Kind of reminds me of some of the scenes in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Carla Lockhart was pictured alongside masked men at a counter demonstration at Scarva against a Parades Commission permitted March for Gaza. She has no credibility when it comes to criticising counter demonstrations against the Orange Order by the residents of Garvaghy road or their supporters.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is worse than the fiasco of the wrong team. That was merely stupid. Standing by an allegation which has been proven to be false is not merely incompetent. Deliberately maintaining a false accusation without an apology is both dishonourable and malicious. He is not only mistaken, he is lying.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is a peculiar kind of unlawful activity: Civil Disobedience, nonviolent refusal to obey laws as a protest (similar stuff is happening in Britain at present with 'Palestine Action' placards). Rightly or wrongly the purpose is to shame the legal system into changing what it deemed to be lawful.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Takes too long to count more than six. And extreme example: A European Parliament election was held on May 29 2019. Ireland South (5 seats, electorate 1.4 million, 24 candidates) there were twenty counts. By June 4th with only 358 votes separating Greens and Sinn Féin a recount was requested.🙄

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

He also shouldn't join any charity Land’s End to John O’Groats charity rowers passing by Rupert Lowe's constituency.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm an atheist and I reject any presumption that any NI group labeling itself Christian is presumed to have more good will towards its victims than a secular group would. Re: her use of the word: unlawful. Civil disobedience is by its nature deliberately unlawful. Rejecting unjust law is the point.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I don't like unnecessary border checks. But the most important part is the ability for people and freight to commute daily across the land frontier unimpeded. And many people do, often several times a day. I know a man who lives in Derry but the tourist business he owns is located in Donegal.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes, and it doesn't ruin their lives anyhow. Being a rapist doesn't necessarily for example ruin the chances of someone becoming a judge on the United States supreme court, or even President of the United States.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not convinced that linking the campaigns to each other is wise. There are people in Scotland and elsewhere who favour Irish unity but oppose Scottish independence (or vice versa). Also a complete breakup of the UK is a harder sell than ditching a remote province with only 1.5% of the UK population.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes a two way street. However obnoxious their motives, and they are a loathsome bunch of despicable sectarian bigots, I support the right of the Orange Order to hold peaceful parades and demonstrations. I also support the right of the residents and their supporters to peacefully counter protest.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It is a lobby group for cryptocurrency tycoons and money launderers (which is basically the same thing).

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The main use case of cryptocurrency these days is money laundering. If your business is legitimate, there is no possibility of prosecution, and you don't mind that legal authorities know where the money is going, then just use regular banks and currencies as most non-criminals do.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Reform is now just a lobby group for the kinds cybercriminal scum who con trusting people out of their life savings, or launder ransomware profits destroying business computers, or who smuggle drugs or people across frontiers. If the money can't be laundered the crime is easier to prosecute.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Musk is such a miserably inadequate waste of human DNA. No redeeming qualities whatsoever, and his nazi salutes insulted six million murdered jews, and other victims. I did have some regard for him, but he descended into a Twitter rabbit hole of conspiracy theories after Vivian came out as trans.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

None of the 9/11 attackers was Iranian. Nor was anyone accused by the US or other states of involvement in the attack. Of the 19 hijackers: 15 were Saudi, 2 were Emirati, one Egyptian, and one Lebanese. Osama Bin Laden was Saudi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef are Kuwait-born Pakistanis.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Two ways to look at this. One argument against Irish unity is a perception that Northern Ireland is heavily subsidised by the rest of the UK. If Northern Ireland is now collecting more tax at the 40% rate because more of its residents earn more than £50,271 then that argument diminishes somewhat.

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bendav.bsky.social @bendav.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It doesn't seem like she became wealthy by owning a plantation and slaves in the Caribbean, or by starving millions to death in India, or as an absentee landlord in Ireland. if she did represent any of those then her statue would be a sacred monument to the blackshorts.

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