April, 2016

  Now this is what I call radical thinking. What’s your own response, I wonder?   http://bigthink.com/praxis/should-the-government-pay-everyone-a-basic-income

Is it just me? In the north here, there’s an election campaign going on here, and even though we’re less than a week from voting, I find I’m only marginally interested in it. Not like me. Maybe I’m coming down with something. Or maybe it’s just that the election in the south and the manoeuvres […]

Before the month is out I could almost guarantee that everyone will have something to say about the new crime thriller about to be aired on television. It’s not a new Scandi-noir with a jumper-wearing heroine ,which were all the rage last month, nor is it the new series of the delightfully bloodthirsty Game of […]

In 1929 Erique Maria Remarque’s novel, arising from his experience of  serving with the German army  in the Great War, was published. He had confronted the French, to the West of him, and the book’s title in the German language and in its English translation attested to that fact. In English its title was  ALL […]

Sometimes politicians can be very insulting. Yesterday the Labour MP John Mann was very insulting to Ken Livingstone, when he called him a disgusting anti-Semite and berated him in full finger-wagging, loud-shouting mode as the TV cameras rolled. The Labour candidate for Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said there could be no place for anti-Semitism […]

I was asked to contribute to this morning’s Nolan show on the letter issued by the north’s Catholic bishops, which highlights what they consider important questions in the upcoming Assembly election. Ten minutes ago I got a text telling me I wouldn’t be needed after all. But on the basis that you should never throw […]

There are few things in life, let alone politics, that you can say with absolute certainty. There is one, however, we can this morning say with total confidence: not a single TD in Dail Eireann wants an election. They’ve spent money, they’ve spent time, they’ve smiled and cajoled and shaken hands, they’ve shimmied to the […]

Sovereignty is the Brexit buzzword.  My dictionary suggests  some synonyms for it – supremacy, hegemony, ascendancy  and domination among others. The front men in their campaign, Johnson, Gove, Villiers and Farage  would be quick to assert that they are merely seeking a self-governing state with powers to enact their own laws and control of borders. […]

The BIG headline in the local press reads : “HUGE INEQUALITY CRISIS FOR PROTESTANT PUPILS…” It’s finally filtered down to the local politicians and the parochial press too ,that there is something somewhat imbalanced in the numbers of Protestants and Catholics doing well in higher education .We’ve already heard about this in relation to inner […]

If there’s one thing the British establishment is very good at, it’s lying. They do it with a convincing thoroughness and consistency that makes even those who know the truth doubt themselves. I remember the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry. I was living in Canada at the time and a columnist in the […]