October, 2016

Pics 1, 2 and 5: by John Patton (phototilly.eu) John’s comment: BRIDGE OF TEARS Place-names are often singularly emotive. This is Droichead na nDeor – ‘The Bridge of Tears’ in the lee of Muckish Mountain. So called because it was the parting place from loved ones for those making their way from this part of […]

At one point in his campaign, Donal Trump boasted that he could go out and shoot someone in the street and people would still vote for him. Yesterday, a taped conversation from eleven years ago showed him shooting himself in a vulnerable area. Will people still vote for him? It’s fair to say that reaction […]

    A few years ago, I had the privilege of meeting a man named Roy Garland at a cultural talk in North Belfast. Little did I know that this mild mannered and pleasant man was the infamous whistle-blower, dubbed ‘’Mr. X’’ by the journalist Chris Moore’s book, who exposed the paedophile ring operating at […]

Ahhhhhhh! Politicians!!!!!! I see that two members of UKIP have had a little “altercation ” of sorts which has left one of them , Steven Woolfe ,recovering in hospital. This all happened, naturally enough,as you might imagine with a party such as UKIP, in Strasbourg, so , as they say over here in Norneverland , […]

I had an interesting morning today. I travelled with a friend to Newry, where Dr Kurt Heubner of the University of British Columbia was talking about his study on the economic implications of Irish reunification. His study has been public for about a year now, but since the occurrence of Brexit, the practical implications of […]

Polonious:    “What do you read, my Lord?” Hamlet:         “Words,words, words”. P.                  “What is the matter, my Lord?” H.                  “Between who?” P.                  ” I mean the matter […]

One of our unionist political thinkers (yes, there are so many of them, Virginia, I can’t remember which and I’m too lazy too check ) has come up with a solution to the problem of our border post-Brexit. This Thinker figures that drones should do it. This is an advance on the thinking of Arlene Foster, who […]

I was only ruminating in jest recently that the border between Norneverland and the rest of the Irish island was really only a state of mind. At best it is an imaginary construct anyway . Northern nationalists never really bought into it ,no matter the political machinations in the UK, the current shape of the […]

I recently put up a guest blog by a man called David Hawkes. It was titled ‘Diminishing Returns’ and it dealt with the devaluing of intellectual contribution to national and international debate, and the rise to dominance of material and economic concerns. Its central point is summed up in a comment made by one of […]

  In a letter written in 1927, T. S. Eliot described the majority of contributors to the Criterion as men who were “supporting themselves and their families in the Civil Service, or in museums, or in universities, or in banks and commercial houses; and are thus able to think, and read, and write independently of a livelihood”. […]