April, 2019

 The funeral of murdered journalist, Lyra McKee, ‘a gentle, innocent soul’ , in her family’s  words, will take place in Belfast  today. A group, calling itself ‘the New IRA’ , has claimed responsibility for her killing. Lyra McKee’s death in Derry was not an accident.  The partition of Ireland in 1922 created a sectarian state […]

‘Mindless violence’ is a term that’s often used to describe violence we disapprove of, whereas ‘We will fight them on the beaches’ and ‘No surrender!’ are used in relation to violence we (or others) approve of.  There are some who disapprove of violence of all kinds, but they tend to be rare. The almost-universal existence […]

There used to be a programme on BBC Radio called ‘Ask the Eperts”.  I can’t remember what the experts were experts of, but people would write in and have their questions answered.  These days there are all sorts of experts, more than willing to answer the question de nos jours: when might we expect a […]

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA                                                        So,  the question on everybody’s lips, microchips and macro-hips / an cheist atá ar liopai na coitiantachta ná, is: -What will be Jeff and Mutt’s follow up single to the duo’s debut monster smash-for-cash  hit: –Ebony and Irony-free. Yes, indeed, the notoriously  difficult Second Single Syndrome, not least for the duopoly […]

Do you know why Easter is celebrated on different dates, dependent on the year?  Maybe you do but I don’t. Or didn’t, until I heard an item on the radio this morning: it had something to do with a royal couple, where the king was ending his Lenten fast and celebrating Easter on a different […]

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to have been. When Nancy Pelosi flew into London,  Belfast and Derry, the focus was to be on the border and the danger that the Brexiteers posed to a seamless border and the peace. Instead, the media spotlight swung away and focused on the death of a young […]

We have few details of what happened during rioting in Derry last night, other than the shuddering sadness that a young journalist lost her life. But there are some things it’s reasonable to assume. The first is that Lyra’s death will give some people hope. Hope that this tragedy will drain support from the New […]

 Beautiful Cathedrals, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples and music uplift the human pirit, as their creators intended. Massive, unbeautiful edifices which inspire fear and despair often seem to have been built with those intentions. And three that I have visited I consider blasphemous. One in Paris, one in Lyons and one, a Basilica in the municipality of […]

Didn’t Nancy Pelosi look small beside Simon Coveney yesterday? Small and waif-like, disguising the fact that if, by some tragedy,  Donald Trump and Michael Pence were to stop breathing and go to a better place, Nancy would automatically become President of the United States. It was also a bit of a nostalgia-fest to see her […]