Just click the link to this audio track or cut and paste into your search engine. Thanks. https://soundcloud.com/randall-stephen-hall/the-boatyard-28-3-15 If you would like a copy on mp3 just let me know. I wrote a song back in 2011 called “Rain Man”, about a figure, like Noah building an ark. So where that […]
April, 2015
The media and moral outrage
So was Gerry Adams wrong to speak as he did on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was shown last night? Apparently the interviewer, Scott Pelley, speaking of Jean McConville, put the loaded question “How do you orphan ten children? What kind of depravity is that?” Gerry Adams’s answer was “That’s what happens in wars. That’s not to […]
REDEMPTION IN THE AIR by Harry McAvinchey
It’s so still, out here …Oddly hushed for Eastertime.Not a bird is making a sound and if not for my near-neigbour’s sawing inside his garage there is not another sound to be heard .As Tom Waits would rumble…”What’s he building in there?” .I suppose he’s putting up shelves or somesuch.There’s redemption in the air […]
How to spot a party with terminal symptoms
There’s one sure sign that a political party is in trouble: when they start denouncing those within its own ranks. If that’s the case, Fianna Fail are in trouble. Big trouble. ““It is depressing all right. Talking to people on the ground, it is bloody demoralising, to the guys we need to canvass for us”. […]
Learning about cause and effect (or not)
My son and his wife live in London and they like to send us short videos of their six-month-old daughter. In the most recent one, you see her seated beside her father, who has a guitar. Róisín reaches her fingers and plucks at the strings, and you can see her astonishment as they sound. Within […]
How to deal with critics
I was going to blog this morning on last night’s TV debate but there’s not that much to say. The three women – Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood, the Green Party’s Natalie Bennett and especially the Scots Nats Nicola Sturgeon – made the four male leaders look like shop-soiled mirror images of each other. Apart, of course, […]
Timothy Gaston: the kid stays out of the picture
Sometimes I don’t know whether to throw myself on the ground and roll around laughing, or make a fist and punch it through the nearest wall. On Wednesday night Timothy Gaston was elected deputy Mayor of the new supercouncil Mid and East Antrim. Timothy is a member of the TUV party. His fellow councillors politely lined […]
WHAT’S ALL THIS RELIGION ABOUT AND WHO INVENTED IT? by Harry McAvinchey
Well , we may as well have a look at this one as it appears to have such a hold on the imagination and can stir up some very strong emotions, fears , hatreds and even violence .It was pointed out recently that I was very disparaging about those who hold strong religious beliefs .That […]
INVISIBLE COAT by Randall Stephen Hall
Invisible Coat. A song with audio file, by Randall Stephen Hall. © Just click the link or cut and paste it into your search engine. Thanks. https://soundcloud.com/randall-stephen-hall/invisible-coat-28-3-15 When our daughters were young and I was picking them up in our Skoda (embarrassing for them but not for me), I began to notice (ten […]
In praise of Vincent Browne
Vincent Browne is a formidable man. He was at UCD the same time as me, where he was a luminary in Young Fine Gael. When I confronted him with this on a visit he made to Feile An Phobail, he looked at the ground and shook his head in mock shame. “I’m afraid it’s all […]