January, 2021

I’ll plead old age and  the loss of short term memory and pretend I don’t know the name of the pundit who recently wrote – “Nationalists who had sought from 1870 to have a measure of Home Rule for Ireland, rejected the 1920 Act. The cheering crowds which  had filled O’Connell Street in 1912 in […]

Mairead Corrigan Maguire submitted a letter to the American Consulate in Belfast on Tuesday, January 26, 2021. In her communique, she encourages the new President of America, Mr Joe Biden, a Democrat, to free Julian Assange and help end the war on Yemen. America stands accused of prolonging the conflict by continuing to supply arms […]

Ian Paisley Jr was on The Claire Byrne Show  last night, and if there’s a unionist politician more devoid of charm than Ian Óg, I wonder where s/he is.  Ian was asked about the idea of combatting Covid-19 on an all-island basis, so naturally he answered by way of telling the south that they were […]

In 1966 Garret tFitzgerald, then a Senator wrote an article for the Economist, a British magazine regarded as serious, for the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Garrett’s father, Desmond Fitzgerald, had fought in the GPO, had been elected to the First Dail Eireann, had been responsible for its publicity and edited THE IRISH BULLETIN and […]

 “It’s a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”, so declared James Craig/Lord Craigavon in April 1934. As far as Craig and the Unionist party and the Orange order was concerned political Protestantism ruled in the six county statelet. Others, especially those of the large Catholic denomination, were considered ‘enemies of the state’ and were treated as such. […]

There is more and more talk of the disintegration of the UK. But hold! Who is this we see galloping to the rescue? Why it’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Hooray! Irish people are used to being identified as boozers – but in fact research indicates that English people drink far more than […]

 Between 1916 and 1922 democratic Ireland, though almost totally unarmed, won a brilliant victory. All wars involve propaganda, which, properly understood, means the publication of messages. The word has come  to be understood as lying. Within weeks of arranging the execution of the leading Insurgents of Easter Week, Britain’s General Maxwell said they had achieved more […]

In 1921, Edward Carson warned his successor as the political leader of Ulster Unionism, James Craig: “From the outset let us see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from Protestant majority.” Contrary to Carson’s advice, Craig was to boast in 1934 of having created in Belfast “a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.” […]

Workhouses and the enforced breaking up of families by the state, “reformatories” and Industrial Schools long pre-dated  Britain’s partial withdrawal from Ireland. Father Joe MacVeigh, whose blogs I admire, seems to have taken his cue from Fintan O’Toole and  The Irish Times, from Eoghan Harris and the Sunday Independent, Colm Toibin and The Sunday Times, […]

The Covid 19, British-variant strain is causing havoc among the population, damage to the economy and distress to the rest of the world. It is believed this new mutation, which developed in the British Isles, may be up to 30% more dangerous when it comes to survival rates and up to 70% more transmissible. A […]