June, 2012

Small bombs and big bombs – there’s a difference

Even though it’s nearly twenty years since the IRA ended its campaign, there are those in the south and the north who still draw back their garments, as it were, when Sinn Féin passes. As did Prince Philip with Martin McGuinness, presumably because he believed that McGuinness was a leading figure in the IRA at […]

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Small bombs and big bombs – there’s a difference

Even though it’s nearly twenty years since the IRA ended its campaign, there are those in the south and the north who still draw back their garments, as it were, when Sinn Féin passes. As did Prince Philip with Martin McGuinness, presumably because he believed that McGuinness was a leading figure in the IRA at […]

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Putting meat on the bones of a united Ireland

Billy Leonard is a republican. He is also a Protestant. Maybe it’s the Protestant work ethic inheritance that’s prompted him to do what (as far as I know) no one else has done: he’s thought in detail and written about what is meant by the term ‘a united Ireland’. Oh, and he’s outlined in  practical terms […]

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Putting meat on the bones of a united Ireland

Billy Leonard is a republican. He is also a Protestant. Maybe it’s the Protestant work ethic inheritance that’s prompted him to do what (as far as I know) no one else has done: he’s thought in detail and written about what is meant by the term ‘a united Ireland’. Oh, and he’s outlined in  practical terms […]

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Events, dear boy, and how to ‘analyse’ them

Is she gone yet? Can we come out now? Yes I think so.  The ‘analysts’ are busy at work, interpreting the body language and the significance and the symbolism and the rest of it. I watched UTV’s report of the Tuesday visit and I felt it’d be putting impossible demands on my digestive system to […]

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Events, dear boy, and how to ‘analyse’ them

Is she gone yet? Can we come out now? Yes I think so.  The ‘analysts’ are busy at work, interpreting the body language and the significance and the symbolism and the rest of it. I watched UTV’s report of the Tuesday visit and I felt it’d be putting impossible demands on my digestive system to […]

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Doing a victory war-dance: big mistake

‘It’s not what happens to you but how you react”:  I think that was one of Maggie Thatcher’s favourite remarks. She herself reacted to being booted out of Downing Street by famously saying  it was a funny old world and leaving with a tear in her eye, a woman clearly nursing the belief that she’d […]

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Doing a victory war-dance: big mistake

  ‘It’s not what happens to you but how you react”:  I think that was one of Maggie Thatcher’s favourite remarks. She herself reacted to being booted out of Downing Street by famously saying  it was a funny old world and leaving with a tear in her eye, a woman clearly nursing the belief that […]

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