One minute you’re up, next you’re down. Peter Robinson was just hitting that expansive unionism-is-safe-with-us-and-Catholics-are-lining-up-at-our-door note when boom! Mein gott, donner und blitzen! What kind of democracy is this, that votes to not have a 365-day flag at City Hall? This is a crisis, a political tsunami!…Except. Don’t the Chinese have the same word for […]
December, 2012
Change comes dropping slow.Oh so slow.
One minute you’re up, next you’re down. Peter Robinson was just hitting that expansive unionism-is-safe-with-us-and-Catholics-are-lining-up-at-our-door note when boom! Mein gott, donner und blitzen! What kind of democracy is this, that votes to not have a 365-day flag at City Hall? This is a crisis, a political tsunami!…Except. Don’t the Chinese have the same word for […]
Are you Northern Irish?
Are you Northern Irish? Well if you come from the north of Ireland, it seems a reasonable claim to make. But the way the demographists have been going on since the latest release of census figures, you’d be pardoned for assuming it meant someone who votes unionist. Why all the excitement over what people call […]
Are you Northern Irish?
Are you Northern Irish? Well if you come from the north of Ireland, it seems a reasonable claim to make. But the way the demographists have been going on since the latest release of census figures, you’d be pardoned for assuming it meant someone who votes unionist. Why all the excitement over what people call […]
A tale of two men under threat
I’ve just listened to two men talking on the radio. One was on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh – Jeffrey Donaldson- and he was talking about the death-threat that he and his family, he says, have received, probably from dissident republicans. If they don’t leave the north of Ireland, the threat says, they will be killed. […]
A tale of two men under threat
I’ve just listened to two men talking on the radio. One was on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh – Jeffrey Donaldson- and he was talking about the death-threat that he and his family, he says, have received, probably from dissident republicans. If they don’t leave the north of Ireland, the threat says, they will be killed. […]
Let’s count some sectarian heads, shall we?
Well, it’s nice to have something to smile at for a change. All the people who go ‘Tut-tut!’, shake their heads and mutter about the neanderthal thinking of those who go in for sectarian head-counts are now…um, well, busy licking their little pencils and doing a sectarian head-count of the freshly-released census figures. OK. What’s […]
Let’s count some sectarian heads, shall we?
Well, it’s nice to have something to smile at for a change. All the people who go ‘Tut-tut!’, shake their heads and mutter about the neanderthal thinking of those who go in for sectarian head-counts are now…um, well, busy licking their little pencils and doing a sectarian head-count of the freshly-released census figures. OK. What’s […]
From spoof call to utter futility
There’s futility and then there’s utter futility. When I first heard of that spoof call from Australia, impersonating Her Majesty (God bless her) and enquiring after her daughter-in-law, I said “I wouldn’t like to be the nurse that fell for that one!”. What I had in mind, of course, was that the unfortunate nurse or […]
From spoof call to utter futility
There’s futility and then there’s utter futility. When I first heard of that spoof call from Australia, impersonating Her Majesty (God bless her) and enquiring after her daughter-in-law, I said “I wouldn’t like to be the nurse that fell for that one!”. What I had in mind, of course, was that the unfortunate nurse or […]