December, 2010

I was scheduled to do an interview for Don McGurgan in Omagh yesterday, remembering what it was liking growing up in Omagh, particularly at Christmas-time. Alas, the weather intervened and even though like everyone else I’m wildly excited about the new road between Dungannon and Ballygawley, I decided to stay put in Greenisland. I’m sorry […]

I was scheduled to do an interview for Don McGurgan in Omagh yesterday, remembering what it was liking growing up in Omagh, particularly at Christmas-time. Alas, the weather intervened and even though like everyone else I’m wildly excited about the new road between Dungannon and Ballygawley, I decided to stay put in Greenisland. I’m sorry […]

Here we go again. Like the Troubles, abortion in Ireland is a topic that practically everyone is happy to pile into but which virtually no one likes to  look at.  Let me explain. This week in the south of Ireland, three women who took cases to the European Court of Human Rights got a judgement. […]

Here we go again. Like the Troubles, abortion in Ireland is a topic that practically everyone is happy to pile into but which virtually no one likes to  look at.  Let me explain. This week in the south of Ireland, three women who took cases to the European Court of Human Rights got a judgement. […]

So  – is Peter Robinson the Bill Clinton of the north?  Now I’m not suggesting that Peter has any of Bill’s  appetite for interns. For a start,  he doesn’t quite have Bill’s personality or pulling power. In fact a year ago Robinson looked like a dead man walking: those suspect deals about the sale of […]

So  – is Peter Robinson the Bill Clinton of the north?  Now I’m not suggesting that Peter has any of Bill’s  appetite for interns. For a start,  he doesn’t quite have Bill’s personality or pulling power. In fact a year ago Robinson looked like a dead man walking: those suspect deals about the sale of […]

Any day now I’m expecting to see a headline saying ‘Kitchen sink narrowly misses Gerry Adams’. That’s about the only thing the media, north and south, haven’t thrown at him. Bloody Friday, Robert McCartney, the Hunger Strike, the Disappeared, his brother, the Northern Bank robbery, economic illiteracy…It’s been going on for so long, it makes […]

Any day now I’m expecting to see a headline saying ‘Kitchen sink narrowly misses Gerry Adams’. That’s about the only thing the media, north and south, haven’t thrown at him. Bloody Friday, Robert McCartney, the Hunger Strike, the Disappeared, his brother, the Northern Bank robbery, economic illiteracy…It’s been going on for so long, it makes […]

‘Sexual relationships’ are two words I seldom use without thinking…No, sorry, that’s an old Donovan song, isn’t it? ‘Sexual relationships’ are two words that helped form the motion for a debate I was involved in on Monday night at Queen’s University: ‘That belief in God brings order and discipline to sexual relationships’. It was run […]

‘Sexual relationships’ are two words I seldom use without thinking…No, sorry, that’s an old Donovan song, isn’t it? ‘Sexual relationships’ are two words that helped form the motion for a debate I was involved in on Monday night at Queen’s University: ‘That belief in God brings order and discipline to sexual relationships’. It was run […]