Just click on the You Tube link or cut and paste it into your web browser. Thanks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQEKFbYjreA Willie Nelson was a sixteen year old during the time of the 1798 Rebellion. He lived in Ballycarry (the townland of the weir), with his mother and family. He was hung […]
April, 2015
Fifty years from now?
I’ve just listened to a report on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. It dealt with politics here and for the umpteenth time I heard presenter and those vox pop-ed declare that they had no one to vote for, the old politics was sectarian, it was all about what religion you were. I think it’s time […]
ONLY A POOR HOBO by Harry McAvinchey
Tramps, hoboes, bums, gentlemen of the road….I suppose it starts right there. The differences in perspectives. I always thought of the “tramps” of the highway as the good guys in the story .Sure , they might be poor, smelly and ragged .They might be down on their luck in some way .They might […]
Roberta McNally, David Simpson, Catherine Seeley and two people
First person: Have you heard? Roberta McNally has declared that Catherine Seeley, the Sinn Féin candidate for Upper Bann, is a tramp. She’s also spoken of the nationalist/republican population of that area as ‘taigs’. Second person: And your point is? Roberta McNally isn’t even a DUP member. First person: True. But she did sign the […]
‘Save me a Seat Beside You’ by Randall Stephen Hall
AUDIO LINK. Just click the audio link or cut and paste it into your web browser. Thanks. https://soundcloud.com/randall-stephen-hall/save-me-a-seat-beside-you-7415 Ever since I was a wee boy I have found trains a comforting thing for they will take you somewhere, with a whole group of strangers. In a sense they are no longer cutting […]
The Indo and child soldiers
The Irish Independent has been getting into a moral lather of late about ‘child soldiers’. It is expressing its horror that as many as nineteen republican ‘child soldiers’ died during the years of conflict here. Closer reading reveals that most were killed by the accidental discharge of guns or bombs and six were shot dead […]
THE JUDAS KISS by Harry McAvinchey
In the 1960s my first art instructor was a very good local painter called Hugh Largey, who gave me some idea as to what was possible.. The first thing he asked me to read was a book called from “Giotto to Cezanne” by Michael Levey, a distinguished supporter of the Humanist Association, who had also […]
Book review: ‘West Belfast’ by Danny Morrison
Danny Morrison, West Belfast . Elsinore Press, 2014 (First published 1989) Despite living in and around Belfast for some thirty-five years, I find the city difficult to identify with. “Where are you from?” is more likely to get “Omagh” than “Belfast” from me. So I depend for my sense of Belfast on writers. Two spring […]
Why no British political parties (worth talking about) here?
A thought struck me the other day: why do we have unionist parties here? After all, we know that David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage all believe in the United Kingdom. And unionist leaders repeatedly insist on the degree to which we in the north are an integral part of the UK. So why […]
Talk about morality
Q: Can you give me an example of a group of people intensely interested in linguistics? A: Yes. Some prominent members of the unionist community here. Q: Give me an example of this. A: When they raise the case of Jean McConville’s death, for example, they make a clear distinction between the words “killing” and “murder”. […]