October, 2010

Is the VO having another fit of the vapours ? “CHAOS” is its big, big front-page headline this morning, with underneath a big photograph of people milling around street barriers. At first I assumed this was a picture of that bomb in Derry last night, but then I looked closer and it was Belfast city […]

Is the VO having another fit of the vapours ? “CHAOS” is its big, big front-page headline this morning, with underneath a big photograph of people milling around street barriers. At first I assumed this was a picture of that bomb in Derry last night, but then I looked closer and it was Belfast city […]

Is there a species on the planet, with the possible exception of suicide bombers, less loved than school inspectors? It’s one thing to read about them in Irish short stories, where the schoolmaster likes a nip of whiskey and the kindly inspector turns a blind eye; it’s another to encounter them in their suppurating flesh. […]

Is there a species on the planet, with the possible exception of suicide bombers, less loved than school inspectors? It’s one thing to read about them in Irish short stories, where the schoolmaster likes a nip of whiskey and the kindly inspector turns a blind eye; it’s another to encounter them in their suppurating flesh. […]

I see my dear old friend Ed Moloney has been writing about when it makes sense to negotiate with terrorists.  Ed and I, as they say, go back a long way  – back to the days when Anthony McIntyre was a republican critic to be reckoned with. That is to say, he was critical of […]

I see my dear old friend Ed Moloney has been writing about when it makes sense to negotiate with terrorists.  Ed and I, as they say, go back a long way  – back to the days when Anthony McIntyre was a republican critic to be reckoned with. That is to say, he was critical of […]