October, 2010

It’s a dreary, damp October afternoon as I write this. If I raise my rear-end six inches from the chair I can see the back garden – an overgrown tree, a badly-mowed lawn, in the distance Carrickfergus Castle and beyond that a grey strip of Belfast Lough. Bleak. So I turn my gaze back to […]

It’s a dreary, damp October afternoon as I write this. If I raise my rear-end six inches from the chair I can see the back garden – an overgrown tree, a badly-mowed lawn, in the distance Carrickfergus Castle and beyond that a grey strip of Belfast Lough. Bleak. So I turn my gaze back to […]

Great news! What with funding for the arts being cut, promised hospitals being reneged on, jobs being eliminated all the way to the horizon – hooray! QE2 and her ever-faithful husband are among us! Well not quite among us but up at Hillsborough with Owen Paterson and down at UTV with Frank Mitchell yesterday. Frank […]

Great news! What with funding for the arts being cut, promised hospitals being reneged on, jobs being eliminated all the way to the horizon – hooray! QE2 and her ever-faithful husband are among us! Well not quite among us but up at Hillsborough with Owen Paterson and down at UTV with Frank Mitchell yesterday. Frank […]

I first noticed the gap between the media construction of the world and the world as it actually exists when I was living in Northumberland in the mid-1970s. I’d been a Match of the Day  fan for much of my life and had been impressed by the happy chants of the crowds in support of their various […]

I first noticed the gap between the media construction of the world and the world as it actually exists when I was living in Northumberland in the mid-1970s. I’d been a Match of the Day  fan for much of my life and had been impressed by the happy chants of the crowds in support of their various […]

‘Man, know thyself’ was  the advice Socrates gave us and that’s one of the great strengths we have, here in the north of Ireland. People in the south can go in for all that weasel talk and ach sure aren’t-you-great palaver, but here in the six northern counties, in Northern Ireland, let’s call it by […]

‘Man, know thyself’ was  the advice Socrates gave us and that’s one of the great strengths we have, here in the north of Ireland. People in the south can go in for all that weasel talk and ach sure aren’t-you-great palaver, but here in the six northern counties, in Northern Ireland, let’s call it by […]

  The English military are a strange breed, and when they overlap with that equally strange clan the Windsor family,  odd things happen. The latest  example of this whacko relationship has emerged over the Channel 4 drama ‘The Taking of Prince Harry’, scheduled for showing this Thursday.  The film depicts what might happen if Harry […]

  The English military are a strange breed, and when they overlap with that equally strange clan the Windsor family,  odd things happen. The latest  example of this whacko relationship has emerged over the Channel 4 drama ‘The Taking of Prince Harry’, scheduled for showing this Thursday.  The film depicts what might happen if Harry […]