January, 2022

I wonder does Jeffrey Donaldson have a Dominic Cummings. I mean the Dominic Cummings who once was the go-to man inside the No 10 tent, not the Dominic Cummings who’s presently outside and raining heavy urine on Boris’s tent. If Jeffrey had this benign form of Cummings, you may be sure he’d take pains to […]

Regular readers of my BLOG will have detected mistakes which have eluded myself before I send them to Jude. I don’t know how to install OFFICE and  because of the pandemic cannot invite anyone who knows how into the house. When I try to correct a draft I occasionally erase a key phrase. I’m tempted […]

Gissajob – or when you’re at it, gissatwo. Double-jobbing looked like it’d save Jeffrey Donaldson the perils of a by-election in Lagan Valley. Not no more it ain’t. William Wragg MP  (he’s a Tory) says that MPs are being threatened with smear stories, the loss of funding for their constituency, if they dare call for […]

On 2nd February the centenary of the publication of ULYSSES will be marked by informed and misinformed commentators in many countries. Much as the centenary of Michael Collins’s visit to Dublin Castle on 16th January has been. To borrow a Joycean expression, the misinformers would give you a Heartburn On Your  Arse. The publication of Ulysses on 2 […]

Sent: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:08 Subject: The Derryard Attack Sir, What a blast from the Past! I’d thought the King’s Own Scottish Borderers had long since vanished together with other vestiges of a sad past. They were best, if that’s the right word, remembered in Ireland for firing on unarmed Dubliners, killing four and wounding […]

If you were watching Boris Johnson’s interview with Sky News, you’ll have seen that Over the Rainbow moment. In the movie, that’s when the curtain is pulled back and what has pretended to be a mighty terrifying force is shown to be in fact a puny unimpressive little man. Johnson the blusterer, Johnson the joker, […]

AMERICAN BREXIT COMMITTEE 1919 CHESTNUT ST, SUITE 1724 PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103 John M. Corcoran Esq, Chairman Michael J. Cummings, Secretary January 18, 2022 Editor COMMONWEAL 475 Riverside Drive New York , New York 10115 Dear Editor: This is a response to Professor Connolly’s book review ( “A United Ireland?”) of  A Troubled Sleep by James […]

AMERICAN BREXIT COMMITTEE 1919 CHESTNUT ST, SUITE 1724 PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103 John M. Corcoran Esq, Chairman Michael J. Cummings, Secretary January 16, 2022O One year on, the folly of Brexit endures; its benefits, not so much!  For Ireland there is good news and bad news.  Thanks to the European Union’s demand for the Northern Ireland […]

JANUARY 30th will be the 50th Anniversary of events in Derry that so pleased the British Monarch that she awarded Orders of Chivalry to Lt Col. Wilford, commanding the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, and the then Brigadier General Frank Kitson, the mastermind of the failed British terrorist campaign to crush Irish resistance to tyranny. Wliford’s […]

Letter to the Irish Times Sir,The name of the State is IRELAND or, in its first official language, EIRE.Its citizens in 1937 enacted a Republican Constitution.A decade or so later a Taoiseach labelled the state a Republic.  There was no change of name. The Republic of Ireland, according to an unchallenged judicial ruling in Dublin, […]