Let's hear it once again for Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who apparently didn't budge a millimetre as she met today with England's equally gutsy Prime Minister, Theresa May; in May's steely refusal to swerve a smidgen from keeping Great Britain together, and in Sturgeon's unwillingness to waver in her resolution to hold another referendum upon Scotland's bid to leave the United Kingdom. My *ROGET'S 21ST CENTURY THESAURUS defines gutsy as 'bold, brave', with these synonyms: 'courageous, determined, gallant, game, indomitable, intrepid, mettlesome, plucky, resolute, spirited, spunky, staunch, unfearful, valiant.' Yeah, all the above - with knobs on: go ye gutsy **'gals'!
While in the spirit of peace and reconciliation engendered over and through the Good Friday talks that finally brought some peace and stability to Northern Ireland's previously fractious politics - and moreover violence-wracked society - and even saw ***'the Reverend' Ian Paisley and his erstwhile, recently deceased, antagonist, ex-IRA *****assassin Martin McGuinness, come together (as, evidently, the best of buddies eventually), and witnessed Paisley's wife, accordingly, recently show up for McGuinness' funeral service, let's hope and wish for that much-troubled land 'the best of British' (greatly excusing my choice of pun here!), as it proceeds to - likewise, please pardon the awful 'modernism' - 'go forward' at this politically-fraught time...
*Edited, Princeton Language Institute, The Philip Lief Group, Inc., 1992/1993.
**Please don't accuse me of demeaning either Ms May or Ms Sturgeon by the use of that synonym for girls, 'gals' (rather than women or ladies); but hey, assonance - good 'ole-fashioned rhyme - is a fairly fussy thing!
***And I'm sure that that Protestant of Protestants himself wouldn't have an issue with my own refusal, as an equally staunch and hopefully as forthright and brave Protestant, to use a term - i.e. 'reverend' - that our Lord and Saviour ****Himself denounced while explaining such terms should be reserved for God (and His Son) alone.
****The Holy Bible (Matthew 23:28-30).
*****While not - remotely - seeking thusly to diminish or devalue the lingering sense of horror and disgust and outrage felt to this day by Lord Norman Tebbit and his wife and the families of those other folk either impaired for life or so savagely blown to smithereens at that terror-ridden Conservative Party conference in England back in the 80s.
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