‘UUP just don’t get it’

Just after he was forced to resign as NI Prime Minister in May 1968, UUP Leader Terrence O’Neill said in a Belfast Telegraph interview:

“It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that, if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house, they will live like Protestants, because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets. They will refuse to have 18 children.

“But if a Roman Catholic is jobless and lives in the most ghastly hovel, he will rear 18 children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness, they will live like Protestants.”

Almost 40 years later in the 2005 General Election, under the leadership of David Trimble, the UUP showed that they had learned nothing when they erected thousands of election posters declaring that “Decent People Vote Ulster Unionist.”

And now in 2012 another UUP Leader, Mike Nesbitt, wants to be adopted for a day by some poor people in order to learn what it is like to be poor.

The UUP never learn and never change. It is still the same big house, fur coat brigade party that it ever was. They just don’t get it.