February, 2014

Last night on Nolan

Oh dear – wasn’t last night’s Nolan Show  compulsive viewing? For all sorts of reasons. Some on Twitter compared it to Butlin’s Holiday Camp entertainment, some produced extracts from Jonathan Powell’s book (OK, I was one of those), others spoke of the core elements of Arlene Foster’s debating style, with emphasis on her finger and […]

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What makes Peter, Tom and Jim mad

  I have no doubt that Peter Robinson does as he claims have real sympathy for the victims of what he calls terrorism, and that he’s horrified on their behalf at the collapse of the case of John Downey at the Old Bailey for the Hyde Park bombings in 1982. I ‘m equally sure the […]

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‘On the Table’ by Randall Stephen Hall

      On the Table. By Randall Stephen Hall. draft 5.4.11. Typed 21.7.11 Written just up above Breeze Mount/ Mallusk. Co.Antrim. Standing by a gate.   Link for audio file from the “Hugh Midden Speaks” collection. https://soundcloud.com/hugh-midden-speaks/on-the-table-6-5-12   Some people miss out. Miss out the starters The main course The meat and potatoes. Turn up […]

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High court judges and bare-bones pay

  Democracy – we all agree it’s a good thing, right? And we all agree that it’s exemplified once every few years when we put our mark on a slip of paper and decide who’s going to run the state.(Which assumes, of course, that the big multi-nationals don’t run it already.)  But if you were […]

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Tweets and thoughts

It’s funny the ways  people react to the smallest things. Yesterday I took the train down to Dublin and tweeted about passing the wet flat glow of Malahide and the pleasure I felt in just looking at it. Any number of people responded positively to those few words. Later yesterday, I picked up on a […]

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Two big words

  I sometimes think we under-estimate words. To say of someone “S/he’s all talk” is to dismiss them, see them as armchair generals,  sofa socialists, full of empty verbiage. That’s one interpretation of words and their use. The other is  that they give us a  toe-hold on reality and help us on our way to climbing […]

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Morphine’s a bugger! by Harry McAvinchey

    Morphine was a bugger! ….My uncle ‘s tipple of choice had been a good full-bodied  red wine or a G and T …maybe a wee “toddy” on  a cold evening. He loved that. He introduced me  to those  same pleasures when I was a teenager back in the 1960s .This morphine , though,was […]

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Inequality: a fact of life?

I was reading an article recently about two of my favourite TV programmes: Downton Abbey  and House of Cards.  The writer of the article was a fan as well but she was fiercely critical of the world they presented. Downton Abbey  showed a world of the privileged and invited us to sympathise with the problems […]

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About last night: five questions

  I stopped watching The Nolan Show  last night when the young Irish woman began singing in an American accent, but even that half-viewing brought to the surface a number of interesting questions. Is it illegal to attach a flag to a lamp-post?  Yes it is, says Alliance’s Anna Lo. Billy Hutchinson of the PUP […]

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