June, 2011

Sinn Féin hosted a conference in Dublin yesterday titled “Unifying Ireland”. It had an impressive array of speakers – Gerry Adams, Pearse Doherty, Mary-Lou McDonald – but it also had non-Shinner people – Dr Pádraic White, ex-Managing Director of the IDA and Dr. John Bradley, an economic consultant who was formerly an ESRI Research Professor […]

Hang on a second until I climb up on this rooftop…There we are. Now I can shout it: ‘WELL DONE LISBURN CITY COUNCIL!” Other councils may be petty and squabble over six-inch union flags (Are you listening, Limavady?) but in Lisburn things get done differently. And bigger.  And more permanently. The statue unveiled  at the […]

Hang on a second until I climb up on this rooftop…There we are. Now I can shout it: ‘WELL DONE LISBURN CITY COUNCIL!” Other councils may be petty and squabble over six-inch union flags (Are you listening, Limavady?) but in Lisburn things get done differently. And bigger.  And more permanently. The statue unveiled  at the […]

Would you like to be a judge? Mmm, me too. “All rise for His Lordship!”  – what fun! Nearly as good as being a bishop visiting a classroom in the old days. And think of the pay. That said, the south of Ireland is having a hard time financially these days so the Minister for […]

Would you like to be a judge? Mmm, me too. “All rise for His Lordship!”  – what fun! Nearly as good as being a bishop visiting a classroom in the old days. And think of the pay. That said, the south of Ireland is having a hard time financially these days so the Minister for […]

I nearly did my hip this morning. Fell off the chair when I read two side-by-side articles in the VO, both of which – can you believe it? – said negative things about Sinn Féin!   I was dizzy for at least ten minutes. One of the articles focused on the recently-installed Sinn Féin Mayor of […]

I nearly did my hip this morning. Fell off the chair when I read two side-by-side articles in the VO, both of which – can you believe it? – said negative things about Sinn Féin!   I was dizzy for at least ten minutes. One of the articles focused on the recently-installed Sinn Féin Mayor of […]

Michael D Higgins, Fergus Finlay, Kathleen O’Meara, Mary Davis Pat Kenny had several presidential candidates on RTÉ’s ‘Frontline’ last night,  most making the same noises: ‘Vote for me, I’d be great up in Áras an Uachtaráin’.   What else can they say? The president doesn’t have any executive powers, so what matters is not any policy […]

Michael D Higgins, Fergus Finlay, Kathleen O’Meara, Mary Davis Pat Kenny had several presidential candidates on RTÉ’s ‘Frontline’ last night,  most making the same noises: ‘Vote for me, I’d be great up in Áras an Uachtaráin’.   What else can they say? The president doesn’t have any executive powers, so what matters is not any policy […]

Lesbian Arab blogger They lie to us. Sometimes we find out and, I suspect, most of the time we don’t. The latest example is a young  lesbian Arab blogger,  who was claimed to have been kidnapped in Syria last week. All sorts of people were outraged at her fate and calls were made for this, […]