One of the many accusations Donald Trump tossed around last night was that the media were biased against him and thus the election was rigged. Was he right? I think he has a case. There were few reports out of the US that didn’t emphasise Trump’s outrageous qualities – building That Wall, making Mexico pay […]
October, 2016
Will the immigrants be asked to say ‘Cheese’?
It would be interesting to know what prompted Monmouth’s MP David Davies to say that they should use dental checks to establish whether migrants from the Calais ‘Jungle’ should be allowed into Britain. Nobody with any sense is saying it’s a good idea, including the British Dental Association, which has declared it’s unethical. It also […]
THE GENESIS OF AN IDEA
Why are religious people and believers in God always so angry and argumentative about life? Apparently David Ford has come a cropper within his church for speaking out of turn about gay marriage.I sometimes wonder why anyone would bother joining a club if they didn’t want to abide by the rules.How simple can it be? […]
‘Ireland and the War against ISIS’ By Donal Lavery
Pearse once wrote that violence can sometimes and when necessary be a sanctifying and glorious force in the world. Undoubtedly he was referring to the process of ‘creative destruction’, where chaos and revulsion are replaced by construction and overthrowing an old order to form a new. But let’s take a look at things in a […]
BREXIT IN IRELAND AND OTHER CONTORTIONS
As with Ulster-Scots before the Good Friday Agreement, I’d never heard of a soft border or a hard border before the Brexit vote. Now everybody’s talking about it and not everybody is in agreement with everybody else. Why is that? Well, it’s a bit like believing in democracy for Northern Ireland. When the Brexit vote […]
“WAKEY! WAKEY!
Way back in the mists of time…somewhere in the 1950’s of my childhood, there was a large walnut -coloured radio with a glowing dial , sitting high up on a plain wooden shelf above my head in our old family living-room. That and a vacuum cleaner might have been the only electrical gadget in the […]
‘Martin Og Meehan: Like Father, Like Son?’ by Donal Lavery
People became accustomed over the years to Martin Meehan addressing a whole range of political issues which impact on Nationalists/Republicans in the North and on the wider island. He was a household name and a well-known face who always held an authoritative sway among the most determined republicans. Undoubtedly, a strong and principled leader who […]
‘TOM ATTLEE, CLEM ATTLEE, “CONCHIES” AND FIREBRANDS’ by Donal Kennedy
The November issue of HISTORY TODAY has landed on my carpet. It has a review of “Citizen Clem” by a peer of the realm, Professor Lord Bew. It says that Clem,who studied modern history at Oxford, “became deeply involved in socialism through the influence of his brother Tom, who was very pro-socialist and anti-war, and […]
‘A Corrupt Little State’ by Joe McVeigh
Is the Free State the most corrupt state or statelet in the EU? I will not refer to it as ‘the Republic’. It is not the Republic that the leaders of the revolution in 1916 had in mind. It likes to think it is a republic – or rather the two main parties in power, Fine […]
NOBEL, IGNOBEL, PROSAIC AND POETIC by Donal Kennedy
When the poet W.B.YEATS was told that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature he uttered the immortal words – “How much?” His reputation for having his head in the clouds was reflected in a cartoon featuring himself and George Russell (“AE”) who lived two doors from each other on Merrion Square. They each […]