June, 2023

                            I don’t always agree with President Michael D Higgins – I’ve an  aversion to people who get elected saying they’ll do one thing (In Michael D’s case that he’d serve just one term as President) and then do something else (Michael D is approaching the end of his second term).  But […]

  “Paramount among the responsibilties of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of government from   deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell ” –     United States Supreme Court Judge when the Court by a 6 to […]

        On the centenary of the 1916 Rising a contributor to the IRISH TIMES “Rite and Reason” slot assured its readers that Daniel O’Connell never shot any man.   Two hundred and one years earlier, in February 1815, Daniel O’Connell famously shot dead John D’Esterre in a public duel.  The  Catholics’ political […]

      President Michael D Higgins has said that the south of Ireland is drifting dangerously towards NATO. Micheál Martin has said the President shouldn’t intervene in politics. Is he right?  Is it possible to be neutral? Should Ireland do something radically different?   The gardaí in the south are unarmed and proud of […]

.       I’ve lived in Loyalist towns almost my entire life.  From Carrickfergus to Larne to Ballymena and I’ve driven the length and breadth of Ireland and the length and breadth of NEI now as part of my job.  I travel through towns and villages every day in this lovely land of ours, […]

Boris Johnson – what a guy, eh?  The man who said there were no Downing Street parties, despite the photographs of him with a drink in his hand and the table littered with bottles. The man who thought nothing of misleading the inquiry into his conduct as well as Parliament. Now  he’s gone from politics, […]

                  At this point, I’m surprised any Unionist MP, MLA, Councillor or indeed Loyalist hanger-on would dare to criticise the Irish language community or those who want the Irish language included in our lives for forcing their culture down Unionist gullets.  It’s simply not true. We consistently […]

Note: Donal has asked me to reprint this blog he did first on June 27, 2020 by Jude Collins on June 27, 2020   On June 26 Stephen Collins writes of Daniel O’Connell 1775-1847 and his opposition to slavery.He ignores Mary Anne McCracken 1770-1868 who campaigned for its abolition while O’Connell was still a child and distributed papers […]

    It can be fairly said of C.P. SCOTT, Liberal MP, (1895-1906) Editor, then owner of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 to 1929, that like the proverbial pox-doctor’s daughter, he knew all the men that mattered,in Britain and Ireland, and many  further afield.   Scott kept occasional political diaries from the days of Asquith’s […]

          On 7th April 2016 I had a BLOG here, which you can easily access :-   “JOYCE’S MARTELLO TOWER REVISITED (BY THE TIMES)”   The Joyce in question had written a book whose first pages had introduced us to Haines, a young Englishman  with money (reputedly extracted by his father […]