June, 2023

THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY – Part 1 By Donal Kennedy                   From THE SUNDAY TIMES Culture Section 4 JUNE 2023:-   “Great Coastal Railway Journeys (BBC 2, 3.30 pm Monday 5 June   Michael Portillo journeys to Derry/Londonderry and makes an admission. At 18, on an exchange […]

  Note: In this blog I originally said the workmen were coming from a British army base. That was inaccurate – I had in mind the Teebane killings. I’ve removed the inaccurate item  – and thanks again to Colmain…   Stephen Nolan’s radio show this morning is dipping both arms up to the elbow in […]

    In recent days, there have been voices raised, suggesting that Ian Paisley Jr might have ambitions to replace Jeffrey Donaldson as leader of the DUP. Instead of listing reasons why this might be so, let’s go a bit mad and think instead of things he would never do. Ian Óg would never exclude […]

  The letter below was published in the Tablet (An English Catholic magazine) 27th May 2023. The Tablet has never before published any letters that I sent them. They have often published articles and letters sympathetic to the British government.  A recent example was an article by that well known authority on Irish politics, Malachi […]

       Pat and Jude’s talk this morning had me cast my eyes on other days.   I must be one of the few people who can remember seeing Tipperary beat Dublin by one miserable point in the All Ireland Senior Hurling Final in Croke Park in 1961, the very last year Dublin qualified […]

AS May turns to June, the Twelfth of July looms. The BBC has stopped giving live coverage to the marches, but GB News has said it’s interested. This of course has nothing to do with how right-wing GB News is. Or have I got that wrong? Donna Traynor, the former BBC news reader, was given […]

                  John Alderdice, Former leader of the Alliance Party in NEI came out with quite the statement earlier this week (for an Alliance man) – “The English public’s attitude to Northern Ireland has changed profoundly over the past quarter of a century and there is now no […]

    They’re still at it. – trying to beat up (politically) Michelle O’Neill, because she said that there was no choice but violence for some republicans. Was she right? And how could she be, if there were people like John Hume and many SDLP people who chose to reject violence? Maybe it came down […]

      The so-called “Irish Free State” was not established by an Irish electorate but by a rump of Dail Eireann at the dictation of a British Viceroy (a Catholic, as acceptable to Cardinal Logue as “a Catholic Hangman”)   Neither the establishment of the Republic nor its antithesis “Free State”  can be labelled […]