If doctors differ and patients die, what do members of the public do when they come up against sharply differing opinion polls? In November, an RTÉ Liveline and BBC Nolan Live poll of over 1,000 people in the north and 1,000 in the south found that Just over a third of those surveyed in the […]
November, 2017
Bullies and moralisers – take your pick
There are many things that make me froth at the mouth and make my buttocks clench (or is it the other way round?), but pre-eminent among these is people balloon-tight full of moral indignation. In recent weeks this has been the sexual harassment/bullying/rape thing(at least until the Paradise Papers story broke). We’ve had the unpleasant […]
A tale of two Paul Gs
My thanks to the kind person who explained to me I didn’t know my Girvans from my Givans. And my apologies to Paul G 1 for saying he was Paul G 2, and of course vice versa. What follows is the definitive version. Paul Givan is the former Minister for Culture whose idea of being […]
SATURDAY PICS OF THE WEEK
Pics 1 and 2 are by John Patton Pic 1 Pic 2 “Blast from the past, Jude. Hope they are relevant. You may recall that the collapsing pound had forced Denis Healey to impose strict rules on the export of currency. It meant that British travelers abroad could take only £50 Stg out in […]
Walter Ellis: a lone voice in the wilderness?
Life is full of surprises. Today the News Letter, a frankly unionist newspaper, has a front page story written by a Lundy….No, wait, hold on. That’s not what he is. But Walter Ellis, a journalist and author, was brought up a Protestant in East Belfast. And what has he done? He’s written a piece headed ‘Within […]
Richard Benyon MP and getting away with state murder
Richard Benyon is a Tory MP with an overheated imagination. He is keen to prevent “bogus” legacy cases from breing investigated and those responsible charged. It’s hard not to agree with Mr Benyon. If a case is bogus, it has no place in a court room. The only thing is, how does Mr Benyon know […]
So tell me: how do you feel about a border poll?
A friend has drawn my attention to an opinion poll conducted by Lucid Talk recently. All opinion polls are capable of getting things totally and/or partially wrong, but it’s reasonable to assume they are fair guides to the future, otherwise polling companies like Lucid Talk would rapidly find themselves out of business. The most striking […]