There was a lot of talk about abortion on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence this morning, much of it dealing with the case of a woman who came to Ireland claiming she had been raped and that she was suicidal. Fintan O’Toole was on with an anti-abortion woman called Cora (my apologies for missing […]
August, 2014
In Glasgow: hope and fear
I’ve been in Glasgow with my older brother. He was born there and he wanted, as he said, to close the circle. So we visited the house where he was born, the church where he was baptised. Moving stuff, really. The taxi-driver keeps it light by telling us he’d like to apologise for the weather, […]
MURDER IN THE AIR by Harry McAvinchey
The robbers and killers came unheralded as if drawn in by an invisible cord . They arrived initially in ones and twos but soon it got around that there were easy pickings afoot for all with the speed and vigour to take them. Soon bodies were being carried dead or dying across the threshold. Murder […]
Gerry Anderson and Albert Reynolds
Bleak news coming out of my radio this morning – double bleak news. Gerry Anderson of BBC radio and TV fame has died at 69 and former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds has died at 81. I first became aware of Gerry’s existence when he started doing radio programmes from BBC Radio Foyle with Sean Coyle. I was working […]
What Alex said
Alex Kane is a man I like a lot. He’s cheerful, intelligent, accommodating. While he is an unambiguous unionist, he’s frank in his analysis of the need for a recognition of the Irishness of almost half the population here, and a great deal of the time he knows what he’s talking about. But every so […]
Ruthie puts George in his box
“I’ve met ghastly people in my time, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as objectionable and creepy as Galloway.” Not my words, I hasten to add, but those of Ruth Dudley Edwards, writing in The Belfast Telegraph the other day. In the article Ruthie casts her mind back to the ‘West Belfast Talks […]
Because you’re worth it?
“It’s the rich what gets the pleasure And the poor what gets the blame It’s the same the whole world over Ain’t it a bloomin’ shame”. Funny how some old verses remain timeless. Just in case you thought “We’re all in this together” meant “We’re all equally bearing the burden of this recession together”, let me […]
On political violence
I had an interesting discussion the other day with an intelligent friend of mine. (Yes, Virginia, I do have friends and yes, they are intelligent. Or some of them are.) He was talking about the use of violence for political ends and declared that, as a humanist, he rejected it completely. The idea of taking […]
THE PLANTER GENE ? by Harry McAvinchey
Let’s dig into this one . What is it with unionists and nationalists and their belief systems? What for example , is going on in Northern Ireland as regards support for things like Israel , immigration , the Muslim community, racism.? It would appear that one community supports the Palestinians and the other neatly supports […]
Why exams aren’t smart
Exams – don’t you just love ‘em? I did. I was very bad at passing exams during my teen years but I scraped the requisite grades to get into university. Then I realised what the examiners wanted, organised myself to remember what was wanted in each subject, and dutifully delivered it in a high-pressure ejection […]