This is not Hugh Orde's call and he knows it, but once again this top political cop can't resist grabbing a headline. Nationalists who felt Hugh Orde embodied a new beginning policing need to take a look at themselves.

Hugh, me oul' chum,
You'll have to do what you're told and you know it. However, I'm sure you can sit back and relax knowing that any ex-prisoners who would join the PSNI will have a less than amicable workplace to go to and would need the most brass of brass necks, and the thickest of thick skins to stay in the job.

People with any kind of convictions should not be allowed in the police. Republican and loyalists can't have it both ways, they canot claim that they have no convidence in the police and then ask that people with convictions be allowed to serve (thereby unermining everyone else's convidence in the police).

Given the sensitive nature of policing in Northern Ireland, I would make all those applying sign a declaration that they are not members of any political party, paramilitary group, the Order Order, Opus Dei etc.

How can Orde insist that it's time for Sinn Fein to join policing if he doesn't allow men with previous convictions to join? Has noone told him tht the majority of Sinn Fein's leadership has done time?

Keith,

A number of police forces around the world allow people with convictions to join them and if my memory serves me that includes the Met in london

who cares

they'll both be gone when it happens

This is being presented as more than it is.

Orde and Rea said that no one with serious convictions would be allowed to join but there is many a member of paramilitary groups who has never been charged nor convicted.

What do you think of the fact that republicans will be joining the police soon, assuming they haven't already?

I feel that if the British Government are finally prepared to make the necessary legislative moves on policing, then republicans are in for a challenge, I think republicans are up for that challenge.

The question is are unionists? I feel that for some unionists, republican involvement in policing, is akin to Jim Molyneau's comments about the IRA ceasefire ie. the most destablising move since partition. It is clear that for many unionists change equals bad and they have set their faces against change, but unfortunately for them change is inevitable, better that they be part of it than drowned when the tide comes in.

Is the Molyneaux quote the mandatory republican quote of this month?

I know this is man not ball but Jim Molyneaux had the strategic vision and political analysis skills of a lucozade bottle.

Why the hell would an ex-con want to join the police anyway? Just another pointless smoke-screen if you ask me.

I see Levee has missed the whole 'we're not criminals' history in Irish struggle.

Funny, I thought it was a fairly significant part.

Republicans will be in the new force when it arrives. Don't see that happening for a while, but happen it will.
In South Africa, perpetrators of crime on the populace were allowed to remain serving alongside their new black colleagues and under their new black bosses. Neither side liked it at the time, but it was necessary, it happened, and now they are trying to work together.

The problem now is the evolving criminality of the PIRA. SF have no real committment to a stable NI, or Rep of Ireland for that matter. Police officers who owe their primary allegiance to their political/criminal bosses will destroy any confidence in the police force and create a totally dysfunctional state, which would suit SF down to the ground. If people have any doubts as to where ex-prisoners will owe their allegiance, they should refer themselves to Martin McGuiness's statement after his evidence to the Saville Inquiry in Derry - basically that he had taken an oath as a PIRA volunteer which still over ruled any other considerations. This was the reason he gave for his tardy, begrudging and incomplete evidence to the inquiry.

Pacart,

McGuinness was a model of co-operation, honesty and fortrightness in comparison with the British authorities, the Ministry of Defence and the murderers, sorry, British soldiers who shot dead unarmed civilians. He didn't for instance hide guns that were used to murder, sorry, shoot dead unarmed civilians on that day in the far corners of the world.

If convictions by a flawed justice system, reliant on Diplock non jury courts, supergrass evidence and dicey forensic work are to be the arbiter of whether someone or not can join the PSNI (when it's fully reformed and a fit police force), then the future isn't too hopeful. After all the reason that more PSNI/RUC/B Special/RIR/UDR members were not convicted of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries is that they were the ones charged with catching themselves. There may have been a few honest cops in the forces of the British state but, unfortunately, the reverse of a rotten apples spoiling the barrel isn't true.

Hugh Orde is not above spin and deceit as his performance on last Wednesday night's BBC Newsnight signifies. He was asked by Kirsty Wark why weren't the PSNI doing anything to stop loyalist drug dealers etc from being active in Belfast.
Orde responded by claiming that a major drug dealing operation, with drugs worth £30m plus, had been taken off the streets that very day.
What he didn't tell the great British viewing public is that the drugs in question had been taken off the streets months previously and they had been, in fact, bound for Liverpool NOT Belfast. Not to mention that what happened that day is the drug runner had been sentenced to25 years, having been convicted sometime previously. Kirsty Wark hadn't the wit to call him to account for his new Labour style spin but perhaps she might be forewarned the next time.

The reason I mention this is that I have a feeling that Orde's bluster is very much for the unionist optics at the present. As well as not putting unionist paramilitaries, out of the intimidation and petrol bombing business, he wants to send the unionist community a message that they won't be policed by 'provos'.
That was always unlikely given the segregated nature of NI society. I don't see how he can avoid ex provos, those convicted of membership and probably even those convicted of other political offences, being in the PSNI and policing areas where they have traditionally held sway.

At present SF(Rafia) rule their enclaves by intimidation. Allowing ex-prisoners, read, SF placemen, into the police the UK govt. would be rubberstamping that arrangement.

"McGuinness was a model of co-operation, honesty and fortrightness in comparison with the British authorities, the Ministry of Defence and the murderers, sorry, British soldiers who shot dead unarmed civilians"

Is this a late entry for the Booker prize?

No, but Saville sure should get something for being so patronising. Never mind this Clarke QC fellow who should not have been paid for the lousy job he did.