January, 2018

A:I know I should be sorry but the truth is I’m glad. B: Glad about what? A: Glad that no unionist leader has sent his/her congratulations to Mary Lou McDonald on having been made Sinn Féin president-elect. B: Why are you glad about such a negative thing? A: Because for one it’ll show how far unionist […]

I’ve met Mary Lou McDonald on a number of occasions. I’ve done an interview with her at least three times – most recently for my forthcoming book on Martin McGuinness – and at this point the Hello-Mary-Lou /Hey Jude exchange is getting threadbare. I still wouldn’t say I know her,  but I can give you a few thoughts on  qualities […]

So – was the civilized exchange on The View between John O’Dowd and Edwin Poots a harbinger of a wider warming of relations between Sinn Féin and the DUP? Before you get excited, maybe have a think back. Can you ever remember seeing John O’Dowd in a debate with unionists where he didn’t behave in […]

Sometimes things just slip out. You’re not concentrating – operating on a kind of autopilot – and next minute you’ve said something that, after reflection, you realize you shouldn’t have said, because it’s not appropriate or because it’s ill-thought-through or because it reveals a nasty side of you. It can happen to an of us. […]

What would the academic world have done without the Troubles? I can think of a number of university profs (well, they weren’t profs when they started out but they soon became same  when they got going on the Troubles) who made a comfortable, sometimes star-quality  career out of the Troubles. Writing papers, organising Peace Studies departments, […]

Dear Arlene, Thank you for your letter of advice, which I received yesterday. It was a thought-provoking correspondence, and I’d like to address a number of the issues which you’ve been good enough to raise. Firstly, I’d prefer if you addressed me as ‘Michelle’ rather than “Blondie”. Michelle is the name I was given, so […]

Dear Blondie, (That greeting, by the way, is just a little joke. Actually, I’ve always thought that as a politician you’ve got lovely hair. And I mean that sincerely.) But to business. I thought I’d write to you personally  and give you the benefit of my more mature experience of politics here and how you can perhaps […]

Did Barry McElduff set out to mock the Kingsmills families? I have from the start been convinced that Barry McElduff didn’t intend to inflict hurt on the victims  by his antics. That’s because I’ve known the man for some time now and I’ve never heard him say or in any way indicate prejudice or dislike of people, […]

“Little darling, its been a long cold lonely winter Little darling, it feels like yeas since it’s been here Here comes the sun, here comes the sun And I say it’s all right” That Beatles’s song seems to have been the theme for Arlene Foster’s visit to Killarney yesterday. In what was described as “a […]

Pic 1  is by Perkin Warbeck                                   “St. Paul brought Christianity to Malta.                             The Devil, alas, is still in the detail.         […]