March, 2015

My apologies for the double vision blog – I thought I’d entirely lost the first so hastily wrote the second, using what shreds of a memory are left to me. Since a number of people have commented on both, I’ll leave them up. Anyway, the sun is shining, I’m in Dublin, and all’s right with […]

  The sky is clean , clear blue, so it’s time at last. Time to get a  particular job done . They’re arguing away on the radio as usual, so i already know from past experience how this will all pan out .Sinn Fein and the DUP at at it again. This time it’s about […]

  OK. I’m under time pressure here – my laptop has just swallowed a completed blog and refuses to cough it up again. Anyway, for the benefit of those doing other, more  life-enhancing things last night than watching RTÉ’s Prime Time, or who are suffering from hearing loss or are in need of a map […]

  OK – for those who chose to spend yesterday evening doing other, more life-enhancing things than watching RTÉ’s Prime Time, and for those of you who may have watched it but suffer from a hearing defect or  are in need of a closer relationship with Specsavers – here’s what I wanted to emphasise then. And now. […]

  OK, guess who the speaker is and who he’s speaking about: “[This man] is the leader of the peace process”.  No, not someone at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis talking about Gerry Adams. Nor someone describing Nelson Mandela. The speaker is the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu and he’s talking about Arnaldo Otegi. […]

  Imagine if Gerry Adams’ head was somehow transposed onto Jeffrey Donaldson’s body or if Ian Paisley Junior was the recipient of Gerry Kelly’s  head .The old  original brain might be the same as before , but there ‘d be some novel thoughts rattling through it.  Things like ….What did these hands in former days […]

I remember a UTV programme some years back where I asked the expert panel for a three-fold comparison between the levels of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, by clergy from other Churches, and by the general population. Afterwards I was reprimanded by three Protestant clergymen. This was not a problem for other Churches, they told […]

I recently made a brief mention of Nursery Rhyme characters  in relation to the naming of play parks for children. Given the hullabaloo over a park being given the nomenclature of a republican hunger striker ,  I made comparisons  to the fact that many  divisive “heroes” have been eulogised in a variety of ways , […]

  With all the fur and feathers flying over Sinn Féin’s refusal to go along with the kind of welfare cuts that the DUP seem  keen to  implement, let’s cut to the chase: is this going to bring down the Stormont Executive? Will we be saying bye-bye to the House on the Hill inside the […]