I suppose my use of the word UKASE will offend some sensitive people. It is a Russian word which may place me beyond the Pale. It is an old-fashioned word and it betrays my unenlightened age and ideas. Historically UKASE was a Czarist decree, which enforced severe penalties on those who ignored it. The […]
May, 2022
Letter to the Irish Times – by Donal Kennedy
Sir, Even if Ireland wanted, she could offer no significant armed force to any alliance. Ireland never wanted to, and on establishing a Republic at the polls in 1918 it could and did offer moral support to all peoples seeking liberation from subjection. When India became a Republic her leaders visited Ireland to register their […]
GRAHAM GUDGIN AND OUR ‘MARGINAL’ ELECTION
“The changes in this [recent] election are rather marginal”. That’s Graham GudgIn, once adviser to David Trimble, talking about the impact of the election to the Assembly. Graham is a very smart man – he’s currently got a post of some sort in Cambridge – but he’s a very stupid man if he really believes […]
THE RUSSIANS, KIEV AND WESTERN SPECULATION – by Donal Kennedy
I don’t believe a word of what the anti-Russian propagandists have been telling us. Some of those from NATO countries may believe the scripts they are given. But I doubt that any of the intelligent script readers believe a word of their scripts. I’m no expert on warfare and my involvement in military matters was […]
PAT+JUDE TALK ABOUT BORIS’S VISIT, ASSEMBLY 2017 & 2022, JOINING NATO, & A DEAD JOURNALIST
To what do we owe the honour of this visit from Boris Johnson? Are the Tories and DUP in cahoots? Is the problem the protocol, that republican First Minister, or both, or neither? Should we give out about the DUP not allowing an Assembly to function, when Sinn Féin brought down the Assembly in 2017? […]
Red Ellen and I by John Patton
I went to see ‘Red Ellen’, at the Lyceum yesterday; it told some of the story of Ellen Wilkinson, working class MP for Jarrow and main organiser of ‘The March for Jobs’, the North East Crusade for Work. Wilkinson operated on many fronts, trying to liberate Jewish refugees in Nazi Germany and fighting Fascists in Spain. Constantly […]
TV REVIEW: THE KEITH BARRY EXPERIENCE
THE KEITH BARRY EXPERIENCE (RTE ONE) is probably a thrill-a-minute for regular viewers of the programme, since it has a prime Saturday evening slot. I watched it for the first time last Saturday and my central experience was one of embarrassment. One of the signs of a slightly dopey, down-market programme is when the […]
In defence of defiance
Name? Northern Ireland (NI) – although really we’re the six north-eastern counties (NEI) Age? 101 years State of health? Not good. Sinn Féin aka IRA have taken over our country. A coup d’état, then – Stormont was stormed with shot and shell? Ehm, not really. Selective assassination of innocent people, then? Ehm, no. So what happened? There was […]
What has the protocol ever done for NEI?
Why is the DUP refusing to return to Stormont, when it ran in an election which was to elect people to sit in Stormont? The DUP says it’s because the protocol is damaging NEI both in terms of trade from Britain to NEI, and more generally because it detaches NEI from the UK and makes […]
Self-Destructive Unionism – by Michael Lagan
The self-destructive nature of Unionism had a massive spotlight shone on it on Nolan the other day (yeah, yeah, I know). The Right Honourable and highly esteemed Jamie Bryson was on the Nolan Show talking about the NI Protocol, about the Act of Union, and how it supersedes and overrides the NI Protocol in most, […]