1. Nothing Martin McGuinness may do will ever be enough for unionist politicians. If he were to walk naked through the streets of Windsor, wearing only a placard saying “I am a mindless terrorist – please forgive my misguided campaign and lock me up for life”, there would those like Nigel Dodds, Arlene Foster and […]
April, 2014
Jim among the GAA tops
Admittedly I’m biased. Having worked for nearly thirty years in the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, I cock my ear when some piece of information from that place makes the headlines. So when Jim Allister said there are too many students there wearing Gaelic sports tops, it snagged my attention immediately. Jim’s reason for objecting […]
On getting over it (even when it’s hard)
There’s an article in the Irish Times this morning. The peg on which it hangs is the visit of President Higgins to Britain and the extent to which English people tend not to understand Irish people. At the same time it’s undeniable that English people are generous in their applause for Irish achievements, notably in […]
Michael, Martin and the Windsor gig
When he wanted to know what the Irish people were thinking, de Valera is said to have gone off and looked into his own heart. Not a particularly democratic way of working but sometimes it can unearth truths. Which is why I’m looking into my own heart with regard to the big Irish week […]
The end of Irish history
Paul Nolan made an interesting comment the other day. He was talking about the report he compiled for the Community Relations Commission and its reference to the 49%-42% of Catholics-Protestants respectively in Belfast. He noted that the flag protest took place a month before these figures were released and he suggested – rather poetically – […]
‘The View’: finally someone speaks out.
We’re very lucky to have the BBC. Yes, it’s the British Broadcasting Corporation, but it produces programmes of a quality and range that no other broadcasting company I’ve come across can begin to match. But it is obsessed with balance. We saw it the other night in political editor Nick Robinson’s commentary on the Clegg-Farage […]
Simon says
Don’t you just love devolution? We’re able to make our own decisions on all sorts of things – health, education, welfare – instead of dancing to the tune of our Westminster masters. Except for some reason our feet keep making dance-like gestures. The NHS here suffers from the same problems as the NHS in Britain: […]
‘Dead Badger’ by Randall Stephen Hall
“Dead Badger” was the first poem in a collection I called Dam Bursting from 1998 ©. My first trip to The Gothenburg Irish Festival, in 1997, resulted in a rush of poetry, shortly after returning home to Northern Ireland. These 14 poems written in a concentrated period of two weeks, enabled me to focus on […]
Prince Charles and his second wife: what a life!
I was talking to a man yesterday and I was startled when he asked me a question: “Why are there not more unionist republicans?” I assumed I’d misheard him but he repeated it – yes, he’d been talking about unionist republicans. Why was it that those who want to maintain the link with Britain all […]
Jim’ll fix them
Jim’s on the warpath again. It seems there was a ‘commemoration and celebration event’ held in the Whiterock Leisure Centre by ‘Remember our Volunteers Committee’. Jim didn’t like that. For all sorts of reasons. He didn’t mention that there are elections coming up next month and all politicians want to highlight what champions they […]