Yeah! There they are …..They’re a bit like mushrooms , I suppose.I was having my little daily ramble .You’ve got to make some kind of an effort to exercise those flabby muscles….take that old body for a stroll and ” Get a bit of air around you!” …as my late mother would say. Well, […]
June, 2014
Micheál and the interventions
So. Would you say Micheál Martin is a fit leader for Fianna Fáil? Given the abyss of debt into which the party has plunged the Irish people, it’s tempting to say Sideshow Bob would be a fit leader for that party. But the Corkman is currently exercising his leadership skills in an attempt to protect […]
Gerry Conlon: just another unlucky paddy
I enjoyed the movie In the Name of the Father, if ‘enjoyed’ is the word for such a sad, brutal story. But one bit I felt cheated by – the emergence of the Guildford Four from prison and Gerry Conlon’s impassioned speech to the waiting microphones and cameras. Not because his impassioned speech about the […]
If you hate the England team then clap your hands…
If you really want to bewilder and then annoy an English person, one sure-fire way is to cheer against their football team. Root for the opposition and display glee when the England team are (as they usually are) defeated. English people, when they can unclench their teeth, tell you that this is a totally unreasonable […]
THE DOLPHINS by Harry McAvinchey
Did anyone see the recent programme on television”The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins”, concerning Dr John Lilly’s attempts in the early 1960s to communicate with dolphins? The thinking was that because the dolphin had one of the biggest mammalian brains that they could be as intelligent as humans ….just more adapted in evolutionary terms […]
Last night’s game and some clear thinking called for
Before I get to the main business of the day, allow me to linger briefly on last night’s game. First of all, I’m ashamed of myself for being glad England lost. Not only is it verging on racist, it’s also self-contradictory. Because I love the England players. I love Gerrard with his worried little frown, […]
IS IT STILL ALL RIGHT TO LAUGH THESE DAYS? by Harry McAvinchey
I used to love the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy comedies from the 1920s and 1930s.I would watch them on television, as a boy with my father He saw them first in the local cinema when he too was a boy in the 1930s . I could see how these old comedies tapped into […]
Racism, sectarianism and housing need
It’s odd the way stories sometimes intersect. This morning and yesterday, there was much radio discussion of Michael Abiona, a black man who had been allocated a social housing bungalow in East Belfast. When he turned up to claim it, he was met with a house festooned by banners: ‘Local houses for local people’. On […]
WHAT WOULD A NEW RE-UNITED IRELAND LOOK LIKE? by Harry McAvinchey
In one of Jude’s recent blogs there was some crowing that a United Ireland was a surefire inevitability. Well , is it? There is some evidence that nominal Nationalists in Northern Ireland will eventually outnumber nominal Unionists.”North Munsterman” posited that within fifteen years, with Nationalists in the ascendance , unionists will comprise some forty […]
Nelson and class action
Attention please, class. Eyes this way. That’s better. Now. Why is that fine and cultured man, Mr Nelson McCausland, upset this morning with Alliance Party activist Gary Spedding? Anyone? Well I’ll tell you, then. Two reasons. The first is that this young man called Gary Spedding was photographed at a celebration in Newcastle upon Tyne […]