January, 2014

  Last night’s Paisley programme (From Genesis to Revelation) was astonishing. Astonishingly dull, that is, given the sledge-hammers that were being lobbed from chez Paisley to DUP headquarters. The trouble was, we already knew the juicy bits. BBC NI,  UTV and RTÉ for the last couple of days had been filleting the programme and serving […]

How does a cat get fat? Or a dog or a cow or a hamster, come to that?  Because his/her owner feeds him/her often and usually with food that’s fatty. So when I see a moggie sitting by the fire looking like a portable sofa-cushion,  I don’t get annoyed with the cat.  I blame the […]

    So Peter Robinson thinks it’s not helpful for Martin McGuinness to ‘pull the pin out of the hand-grenade’  with his talk of St Patrick’s Day as a deadline for getting the fiasco of the Haass talks sorted. What an odd image to use, don’t you think? OK, it’s not an odd image.   […]

I was watching a Tom Cruise movie last night (yes, Virginia, I am a sad case), and at one point Cruise joins a local urchin in doing a series of rapid somersaults – about ten in a row – before grinning and high-fiving the youngster. I do hope the southern government watch that movie. It’ll […]

Richard Haass was invited here by DUP leader Peter Robinson and Sinn Féin leader (in the north) Martin McGuinness. He was chosen because of the fact that he was an outsider, someone without a dog in the fight.  He gave us every chance to come to an agreement, and returned after Christmas in the clear […]

How do you deal with a problem called McGuinness? The Deputy First Minister came out a couple of days ago and said what lots of people, including I suspect some unionists, had been thinking: regarding unionist political response to Haas, the tail had not so much been wagging the dog as taking the dog and […]

  Doublethink:  the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination. You maybe missed that interview this morning on BBC Raidió Uladh/Radio Ulster. It was with a man who runs a business which produces knives. Not just any knives – really […]

Did Ian Paisley say Peter Robinson was “a silly ass”? “I don’t think I used that expression – but it shouldn’t have been done”. Paisley was remembering the famous Clontibret expedition, when some 500 men with Peter at their head visited that southern village and trashed it. Unfortunately Peter was apprehended and ended up having […]

In the wake of what UUP leader Mike Nesbitt describes as “the shambles” of the Haass talks, which general direction are we heading now – towards a re-united Ireland or further away? There are republicans who will tell you that the present political arrangement, Sinn Féin sharing power with the DUP, is simply another case […]

Having noted this morning’s Irish Times report that a new archive was launched in Dublin yesterday listing the 49,000 Irishmen who died in the First World War, I went to the website and did a search for a great-uncle of mine. Sure enough, there he was. His name, his home address, the fact that he […]