I listened into some of the Sean O’Rourke programme from Castleblaney last Friday. It was about the impact of Brexit on the social and economic life of the border area. Some weeks ago, I was asked by the producers, Tara Campbell and Alistair McConnell, to take part in this programme. I agreed and spoke […]
Tag Archives | BREXIT
Monday morning blues or Monday morning blue skies?
“We had a successful election”. “You can’t be worried about something that happened three days ago” If I tell you that these two statements were uttered by the same person, you may be a little surprised. If I tell you that they were uttered before half-past nine this morning on the Nolan show, by Gregory […]
Democracy by Joe McVeigh
For all our experience of elections and referendums here in the six counties there is still in some British and unionist quarters a great reluctance to accept the democratic will of the people. There is a reluctance to accept that in the north east of Ireland there are people living here like myself who have […]
BREXIT IN IRELAND AND OTHER CONTORTIONS
As with Ulster-Scots before the Good Friday Agreement, I’d never heard of a soft border or a hard border before the Brexit vote. Now everybody’s talking about it and not everybody is in agreement with everybody else. Why is that? Well, it’s a bit like believing in democracy for Northern Ireland. When the Brexit vote […]
Thinking the unthinkable
It’s a terrible thing to say, but there must have been newsmen and women who were glad to hear about that huge bomb in Baghdad the other day which killed over a hundred people. Not that newsmen and women are more heartless than the rest of us; it’s just that some of them must have […]
AS THE BREXIT DUST SETTLES…
The BREXIT vote has been like the explosion of a huge bomb – we’re still scrabbling around in the debris, sometimes making happy discoveries of life where we thought there was none, sometimes finding badly- wounded and fearful people. One of the discoveries that’s excited attention is the sight of Ian Paisley Jr urging his constituents […]
Always look on the bright side of BREXIT
Here’s a little paradox to cheer you up this crisis-loaded Monday: July and August used to be known in political circles as the silly season. This Summer, can you think of a description further from the truth? And at the same time, can you think of a description nearer to the truth. Let’s talk about that […]
Nicola Sturgeon: all set to spoil the BREXIT party?
Where’s the euphoria? Are Boris Johnson and Michael Grove doing leps and yips inside but showing the world their sober face, in case people might see them as power-hungry fanatics gloating in victory? Or are they in fact genuinely a bit scared at the monster they’ve created, which threatens to run havoc through Britain, including […]
Dog catches EU truck: now what?
It feels like January 1933. That’s when Hitler was appointed German Chancellor and the road to his becoming a dictator was officially opened. I know that we can pluck a number of positives from last night’s referendumt rubble, but right now I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach by a horse. Stop and […]
Jim Allister and his deep love for BREXIT
If Jim Allister didn’t exist, would we have to invent him so we’d know what a really right-wing politician looked and sounded like? He was holding forth yesterday on his position regarding Britain doing a BREXIT – leaving the EU- and he was passionate in his insistence that this would be a Good Thing. It […]