Dinosaurs Roar

11 June 2017, 01:08 | Updated: 11 June 2017, 01:12

In the run up to the election, Britons became very familiar with the phrase "coalition of chaos".

What we did not expect was that the coalition would be between the Conservatives and another party, least of all The Democratic Unionist Party.

We heard time and again that Jeremy Corbyn is a friend to terrorists, what we did not expect was that Theresa May would place herself in the position of being a friend to those that are friends to terrorists, but that is the unexpectedly desperate position she finds herself in.

If Mrs May was a teenager, she would be referred to a shrink for self-harming and her parents would take her computer away.

The day after the election, many people woke to the news that the Tories would be in bed with the DUP and thought: what's the DUP?

Good question. A better one is: what do they believe in?

In a nutshell, the DUP want to party like it is 599.

They are religious. Very religious. This is not unusual for Northern Ireland, which has lagged behind the rest of the country in embracing the modern world for that very reason.

Religion is also the superficial cause of the "Troubles" as they are benignly referred to.

The DUP does not like the gays, of course.

This is the standard default position of religionists.

My personal religious belief is that being gay is anathema to believers because the union of same sex couples does not produce more potential converts to the cause. There won't be the patter of tiny feet swelling the ranks of the faithful if two men or women get together.

I think the same reasoning applies to birth control.

The DUP are not shy about expressing their distaste of the LGBTTQUI's (I hope that is a fully inclusive set of initials).

The founder of the party was the shouty Ian Paisley, a reverend. His son said that homosexuality was "immoral, offensive and obnoxious".

He called them repulsive, presumably because that's what Jesus would say!

The DUP are also against abortion, causing those women of Northern Ireland that want or need one to leave the country to find help.

This is also standard practice for those that think they possess the final word on What God Wants.

More alarming is the party's attitude to science: they don't believe in it.

Just as Donald Trump has done in his cabinet of chaos, the DUP appointed the climate change denier Sammy Wilson as Environment Minister.

Wilson said it was a con to suggest that humans had changed weather patterns and that cows were more to blame.

If that's their plan, it's a good job we eat so many of them.

The DUP's religiosity goes deep. A significant number of their senior members believe in creationism. That is, they are firmly of the belief that the earth is a mere 4,000 years old and that, therefore, Man used to run with dinosaurs, like in Jurassic Park, but without the stirring music.

Some of their members want this to be taught to children in schools, so that it might counter evolutionary teaching, which is just a theory that does not appear in the Bible, so it can't be true.

Many of their beliefs seem from a different age, and now they will be part of shaping the current one.

If all that sounds like the basis of a strong and stable government, rather than a coalition of chaos, I'm a brachiosaurus.