October, 2014

Sometimes pragmatism is a hard medicine to take . A week or so ago ,DUP Health Minister Jim Wells, in his first appearance after the sacking of Poots,  conceded that the only viable option for the treatment of heart disease in children was to use the facilities in Dublin. It was a practical decision.This hardly […]

From time to time, you’ll hear people bemoan our dreary obsession with partition and the constitutional question. “Why can’t they address the real issues, things that matter to people? Jobs, the cost of living, housing – real politics!” Such people are  half-right. It hardly needs reaffirming that jobs, housing etc  are matters of the utmost […]

No …I can’t really do it . It simply doesn’t work for me. I’m talking about the “Nolan” television show on Wednesday nights on BBC 1 , Northern Ireland. Yes, I know Mr Nolan  has a very popular radio show every morning on Radio Ulster and he calls it the” Biggest Show In The Country” […]

Blades of one sort or another have been featuring of late in the news. Almost coincidentally sentences are being handed down by judges in two trials in which the image of a blade has featured heavily .There is the Bladerunner  Trial  and then there is the Assault with an Orangeman’s  Ceremonial Sword Trial. One is […]

I was on the Nolan Show last night. Well more in the audience, really. They’d miked me up and everything, but as is sometimes the way with live shows, Stephen never quite made it to me. The topic was the Mairia Cahill affair, so here’s what I would have said.   1. At the centre of this case is a man accused of rape over a 12-month period. When the case eventually came to court, the man was acquitted – that is to say, there wasn’t the evidence to support the claim and the man was found not guilty. I think that bears repeating. I read at least one report yesterday that forgot to mention that vital fact.   2. On the BBC website, it talks of Mairia at the time of the alleged rape being opposed to the RUC. It also, in the same sentence, says that she was afraid to go because of the IRA. There’s an obvious contradiction there. Not like the BBC. 3. Maria says she was ‘interrogated’ over several days by the IRA. It’s an interesting word, interrogated. In some people’s minds it conjures up images of Castlereagh, with the interrogation accompanied by blows and even torture. Mairia doesn’t allege any physical attack or threats during interrogation but she does say she found it very stressful. I’ve spoken. to people – honest people, speaking the truth – who were interrogated in a court of law by a barrister. They said it was absolutely exhausting – you felt like a wet dish-rag afterwards, even though you’d nothing to hide. I can only guess that’s the kind of feeling Mairia had after her interrogation. 4. All the reports make mention of the fact that Mairia is a grand-niece of the late Joe Cahill, a revered figure in republican circles. I suppose it’s to indicate that the House Cahill is one divided – one pro-republican, one anti-. None of the reports mentioned that a niece of Joe Cahill’s is Eilis O’Hanlon, who writes a column for the Sunday Independent. Has done for decades. And in it, year after wearisome year, she has fired everything but the kitchen sink at republicanism in general, and Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams in particular. If family background is seen as important to mention in these matters, it helps to give the complete rather than partial picture. 5. There are few sights more heave-making than that of a politician being morally indignant. All four politicians on the show last night expressed admiration for Mairia’s courage in coming forward with her accusation and several – including Stephen – called on the IRA to apologise for the ‘kangaroo court’ they held, to establish the veracity of Mairia’s claim. No one mentioned that Gerry Adams has already apologised for her ordeal. Jim Allister stressed that not reporting such matters to the police was a crime. Oh dear. This was 1997. Pre- the Good Friday Agreement. Pre the PSNI. Anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the conflict knows that distrust of policing ran deep through the nationalist and republican community. To expect that the IRA would do the RUC’s work for them and hand over one of their, the IRA’s alleged members, is to show naivety of profound proportions. And to show you’d never read Anne Cadwallader’s book Lethal Allies, with its documented cases of RUC/UDR/British army collusion with extreme loyalist gangs like the Glenanne gang. So the IRA we’re told held instead a kangaroo court. And when they’d finished, they said they didn’t know who to believe. Later, it appears, the legal system showed less uncertainty: it acquitted the alleged rapist of any crime.   Last time there were efforts to tie Gerry Adams to a vile crime, he was arrested in the mouth of an election, with the obvious hope that this would damage Sinn Fein. It did the exact opposite. This time we’re just after an election and another attempt is being made – one joined in enthusiastically by the leader of Fianna Fail – to link Gerry Adams with an alleged vile crime. I suspect this one too may boomerang.  

Compare and contrast. If someone had suggested this idea back in the  late 1960s or the  very early 1970s  there would be much winking, nodding and  chortling at the mad addled hippies and their high-falutin’ ideas , but listen to this one …..Bolivia is about to pilot  a  “Law of Mother Earth”. It’s  a  new […]

It doesn’t happen often but when it does, let’s fling our caps at the moon. The Health minister here, Jim Wells of the DUP, today told MLAs he was recommending a cross-border model of co-operation that would “deliver safe and effective cardiac care to children in Northern Ireland”. In short, sick children would be treated […]

There are some of the Protestant faith who believe that Catholics are not Christians. Sometimes, thinking of nobody and looking at no one, I wonder if they may have a point. But could someone be a Protestant and not a Christian? I ask the question in the light of Peter Robinson’s recent behaviour. Some time […]

Well, that’s it. End of story, end of party. The Shinners are finished. And this isn’t just me saying it, it’s the IRISH Daily Mail. “HUMILIATION FOR SINN FEIN” is its block-capital headline this morning. And it points out that “Sinn Fein’s seemingly inexorable march to power juddered to an ignominious halt yesterday”. This despite […]