It’s pretty unnerving, some of the stuff that the killings in Paris has brought to the surface. Check out some of the Fox News items, for example, and you’ll find pundits who blame the Paris attack on Europe’s lax immigration system and excessively generous welfare systems. Nearer home – in fact at home – my old […]
January, 2015
As the dust settles in France, five questions.
When I was a youngster, there were a lot of cowboy films. Cowboys and the US Cavalry fought and killed Indians, sheriffs gathered posses and pursued bad guys. With the occasional exception of a film like 3.10 to Yuma, the old Western movies didn’t go in for court cases much. The normal climax was where the sheriff […]
SEAS OF CLICHE by Harry McAvinchey
I had barely placed the glass to my lips before I was already afloat in an ocean of cliches. Each lapping, bland wave threatened to sink me at any moment.I ‘d switched the television over to “The View”. The view in question is a weekly televisual study of Norneverland politics. I’d been happily grazing on […]
Nelson McCausland and the need for a nice name
I see the most unbigoted politician I’ve ever met and my good friend Nelson McCausland has been writing about Casement Park. Admittedly the whole project is up in the air with the clash between the Park’s developers and residents, but unbigoted Nelson has said should the development go ahead, this is a good chance […]
Paris and selective sympathy
We are right to mourn the savage deaths of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris yesterday. It was an attack on free speech, as Francois Hollande declared, and so an attack on democratic values. People wearing t-shirts or carrying signs saying ‘Je Suis Charlie’ are indicating their unambiguous support for the rights […]
HUMOUR AND CENSORSHIP by Harry McAvinchey
Humour is a hugely powerful and significant tool. Satire and its efficacy at deflating the pomposity, barbarianism and anti-intellectualism of bloated persons, states or regimes has always been an tool of cartoonists and writers. The kind of people who fear knowledge will always ban books and censor films and art. Their philistinism will […]
Thoughts on the Paris assault
When a dramatic and bloody event occurs such as the killings in Paris of twelve people today, the general reaction is to see it as a single event, mindless and devoid of motivation. It’s also been my experience that for someone to suggest that the event has other dimensions besides a mindless and murderous assault is […]
ONE FOR SORROW by Harry McAvinchey
There’s a huge magpie sitting right outside my window on the garden fence. It’s wonderful to see a creature like that up close. The feathers are the purest white …like blancoed buttons …a shining white contrasting against the glossy boot black of the long tail feathers. He’s a big fellow too ; almost as big […]
On empathy and schadenfreude
Normally when I meet cases of distress or frustration I feel sympathy. Rabbits in snares, birds with broken wing, Orange marchers who want to get home. But today I see a case of frustration which I’m afraid brings out the old schadenfreude in me. It seems David Cameron and his NI Secretary Theresa Villiers have barred […]
IS THIS MAN A TOTAL IDIOT? by Harry McAvinchey
Prince Andrew…? Is this man a total idiot? Discuss. Then again , why bother at all? It’s such a lovely day today .It’s one of those unexpected days in January when the sun is screaming out into a brilliantly clear sky. The post -Christmas doldrums are held in abeyance for a short while. It feels […]