Councillors’ Bunting tweet complaints show unfair intolerance of those with views in contrast to theirs

THE lodging of complaints about a tweet from Belfast councillor Jolene Bunting to the Local Government Commissioner for Standards (News, May 4) serves only to highlight the totalitarian views of the complaining councillors.

According to your report, the cartoon frog used in the tweeted picture was used “a number of years ago by farRight social media trolls” to target unfortunate groups of people. As I recall, cartoon frogs were also used by Sir Paul McCartney in a pop video. Is his name to be blackened by association?

You report that SDLP councillor Donal Lyons pointed out that the shared cartoon was used by “racist and extreme-Right trolls”. Sinn Fein councillor Deirdre Hargey branded the tweet as “racist, sectarian and offensive”. Alliance councillor Emmet McDonough-Brown also branded the tweet “... racist and sectarian”.

My understanding is that the cartoon depicted supposed Irish and British attitudes. The vast majority of Irish and British citizens are of the same race, so we can rule out “racist”.

Religion was not mentioned, nor, to my knowledge, were religious symbols depicted in the cartoon. We can rule out “sectarian”.

Cllr Hargey’s assertion of the tweet being offensive may have referred to the reference to the Irish famine, which cost 1.5 million lives. That this reference, far from mocking famine victims, refers to the constant efforts of some republican groups to seize ownership of past tragedies in order to portray Irish people as permanent victims.

It is councillors Hargey, McDonough-Brown and Lyons, whose intolerance of those holding views at variance to their own has no place in our politics.

ALAN LOVE Lisburn, Co Antrim