July, 2018

    I was on the Nolan Show on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster on Tuesday morning,  and there was a man called Sammy speaking. He told how, as a 12-year-old boy, he saw his father being forced to his knees, then shot in the head. I missed whether Sammy’s father was in the ‘security’ forces, […]

Nature compensates, they say. The gorgeous young woman may prove as dumb as she is beautiful, and Stephen Hawkings was no beauty but he was really smart. We probably should keep that in mind when reading what David Davis has done and says. He was a member of the SAS in his younger days, and […]

POTUS and FOTUS are more than just a rhyming couplet. Take POTUS, for starters. The Donald, indubitably,  was aptly named with the correct baptismal water:  incessant criticism rolls off him like the exact same kind of  water (identical formula: H2O) which  rolls  off the proverbial back of the legendary duck. So also with the Linguistic […]

Success has many parents, failure is an orphan. So if , as is looking increasingly likely, Britain leaves the EU with no deal completed and thus no two-year period of grace AND  a hard border in Ireland, who will be to blame? Well, you could start with the British public, which voted for Brexit in […]

    A common expression amongst Cockneys, “Gordon Bennett!” is a relic of “auld dacency” when blasphemy was considered bad form. It, like “By Jove” among the even politer classes saved them taking their Divine Lord’s Name in vain. It seems that in today’s Ireland such control of one’s tongue is considered  politically incorrect by […]

Well – Britain’s new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, hasn’t been long about telling the EU there’ll be no more Mr Nice Guy. The good cop David Davis is gone, the bad cop Dominic Raab is now installed. He’s made his tough-knuckled approach clear by telling the EU that the UK will refuse to pay its […]

    The first time I visited Rome it was a very hot day and I bought myself a cheap t-shirt depicting the Sistine Chapel. Five minutes later as I was walking through a piazza a stranger called to me, pointing and holding his nose. I didn’t know his language and could not recall witnessing […]

Donald Trump brings a warehouseful of faults with him, and one that many people find particularly distasteful is his habit of lying. When accused of sexual misconduct by a range of women, he says they’re making it up. He tells the British media that Theresa May didn’t take his advice about how to do a […]

  I  attended a few meetings in London’s Trafalgar Square during the early days of the Irish Civil Rights movement. Gerry Fitt spoke and some Labour MPs and there was no disorder. Like Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square was long considered a venue for peaceful assembly and free speech. But after Bloody Sunday, […]