Allister answers Poots' Maze propaganda in News Letter
06 September 2010
With no answer to the points made in my earlier letter Edwin Poots in his reply last week resorted to the habitual DUP tactic of playing the man rather than the ball. Hence his personal invective against me and TUV rather than addressing the critical issues raised on the Maze.
So, let me restate the unanswered questions:-
- Was Nigel Dodds MP wrong and scaremongering when he said, ““However it is dressed up, whatever spin is deployed, the preservation of a section of the H-Blocks – including the hospital wing – would become a shrine to the terrorists who committed suicide in the Maze in the 1980s. That would be obnoxious to the vast majority of people and is something unionist people cannot accept.” Or, is it only scaremongering and wrong when TUV says it?
- Why does the ‘Conflict Resolution Centre’ have to be built at the Maze if there is no nexus with the ugly prison buildings, the Provos’ citadel of rebellion?
- If there is no connection between what is proposed and the prison site, why are Provo prisoners to sit on the management board that will oversee the development?
- Is it seriously contended by the DUP that the whole Maze site will not be branded and thereby blighted by retention of the Provos’ citadel?
- How is such branding and blighting not going to extend to housing built on the site, creating a chill factor for unionist house buyers and producing a new Poleglass in Lisburn Borough?
- Why, while DUP politicians were posturing to talk tough against Maze development if the prison shrine buildings stayed, including rejecting the stadium, were DUP First Ministers all the time negotiating with the EU to gain support for a Maze sited Conflict Resolution Centre?
- Given that the DUP claims it is in Stormont to undo the wrongs of direct rule, why have 3 DUP Ministers at the DOE failed to take any steps to delist and then demolish the prison buildings?
