Opinion
25 Feb 19

Soapbox: Paul Connolly from Wood Burning Savages, on reckless words from the DUP

The Wood Burning Savages frontman writes about the latest insensitive comments from Sammy Wilson.

“To live outside the law you must be honest…” – Bob Dylan.

When you leave a supermarket in NI today, you’ll pass a trolley loaded benevolently by strangers for strangers. This food is distributed via foodbanks. You know this already, but it seems that Sammy Wilson of the DUP doesn’t. When discussing the already very real problem of food shortages post-Brexit in the House Of Commons, he let fly with this month’s Callous-And-Borderline-Sociopathic-Life-In-A-Bubble-DUP-Remark: “Go to the chippy.”

Wilson was like an irascible schoolchild, unburdened by genius or compassion. It was a disgusting belch of an utterance, showing contempt not just for the continually growing number of families in Northern Ireland relying on foodbanks, but for those in the wider UK also.

Where is this magic chip shop, Sammy? With plentiful stocks of cod for Ulster, once we crash out of the EU with all the grace of a diarrhoea episode high up in the first-class cabin of a transatlantic flight. Is this chippy next door to the shop that NI’s previous First Minister quipped patronisingly, he would trust Muslims to get his groceries from and give him the correct change?

Perhaps it’s near the proposed English nuclear waste dumping ground in Newry, which was open for consultation by NI’s current First Minister while serving as Minister For The Environment in 2007.

Is it behind the sleeping bags and tents of NI’s town and city centre homeless? Or Derry’s River Foyle, where epidemic numbers of people have taken their lives; because carving out a life in Northern Ireland, without a mature and humane government to put its citizens rather than its tribalism first, has become too difficult. Because while the DUP and other main parties skip around scandals and dole out disgusting jokes, we the people are literally fucking dying.

The deluxe edition of Wood Burning Savages’ debut album Stability is available now. Wood Burning Savages play Ward Park, Bangor on May 25 with Snow Patrol.