The time is growing shorter. Less than thirteen years lie between now and the centennial of the Easter Rising.

All sides are conscious of the approaching date. Will it be celebrated with another outpouring of lip service to the glorious martyrs, the heroic men and women, the patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice, and all the other phrases that have become the debased coin offered by public platform speakers in the years and the decades gone by?

Or will there be truly something to celebrate?

What gives rise to these questions is the paralysis that continues to halt progress on full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in the Six Counties, the Northern Ireland statelet still under British occupation.

The "devolved" parliament at Stormont, which was suspended by Britain more than a year ago, was finally dissolved in October, with the announcement that a general election will be held in the Six Counties on November 26. It was understood that the main parties in the suspended Assembly had resolved their differences on full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

But, conscious that full participation in the GFA would place them on the slippery slope leading to democracy, the main Unionist Party once again walked away. The old politics of "Not an inch", "No surrender", once again stopped progress toward reconciliation. Paradoxically, the longer they delay, the faster the resolution will come.

Britons are fed up to their national health care teeth with the cost of running the Six Counties. Their taxes are being spent to suppress democracy in the Six Counties and at the same time to introduce democracy in other militarily occupied countries, to wit, Afghanistan and Iraq.

To them, shedding the Six Counties is becoming ever more appealing.

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