November, 2016

Eddie Whyte was born and brought up in the Bone and Ardoyne. He is an elected national officer in Fagforbundet, Norway’s largest trade union and is active on Palestinian and human rights issues. He recently returned from a fact finding delegation to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon where he saw echoes from Belfast streets […]

The UUP’s Danny Kennedy has made a declaration: sectarianism “is alive and well” in the middle classes here. Well hey – who’d ever have thunk it? But let’s look a little closer at what people believe is sectarianism. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, then the Chancellor of Ulster University (at the time the University of Ulster, if […]

  This Saturday afternoon at one o’clock  I’ll be in the Kennedy Centre with Jo Spain, author of two novels, With Our Blessing and Beneath the Surface.  I’ll be asking the questions (or some of them) and Jo will be responding. There will also be a chance for members of the audience to ask questions, but just in […]

  I believe that the tsunami of Tripe and Treason will blow its own sources away. Sources such as the risible pseudo-religious “Rite and Reason” column in the IRISH TIMES, the Gang of Headbangers in the Sunday Independent, the ever-buoyant former Corkman of the Year John A Murphy and a Monstrous Regiment of Chancers in […]

I believe that the tsunami of Tripe and Treason will blow its own sources away. Sources such as the risible pseudo-religious “Rite and Reason” column in the IRISH TIMES, the Gang of Headbangers in the Sunday Independent, the ever-buoyant former Corkman of the Year John A Murphy and a Monstrous Regiment of Chancers in the […]

Got your breath back yet? Yeah – me too, just about. A year ago The Simpsons did a spoof of Donald Trump running for President. The show featured DT ( he doesn’t get the DTs, he gives them) standing haranguing at a podium, with underneath the slogan “America – you can be my ex-wife!” The […]

I must say I have great difficult understanding Unionism even though I have lived with Unionists all my life. I had Unionist neighbours growing up in north Fermanagh. They were good neighbours. As a boy I used to work on their farms during the summer holidays. I learned to drive the tractor and to drive […]

I expect many of you are like me: having said your morning prayers and switched on the radio, you are now clutching your head and saying “WTF??? I mean, What The Trump???” Then, having wandered around the kitchen in a daze, bumping into things and staring out at this wet November morning, you’ve fallen to your […]

DUP MLA Adrian McQuillan is not a happy bunny. That’s because he’s noticed that republicans (he claims) have been painting out the ‘London’ in Londonderry road signs. “I have written to the Infrastructure Minister about removing spray paint blocking out ‘London’ from Londonderry on road signs” Adrian says. He wants the paint-out to be removed […]

  One great English poet, Edmond Spenser described Geoffrey Chaucer as “the Well of English undefiled.” In Ireland Spenser’s reputation is of a man who advocated genocide, and in England it is thought that Chaucer, when a public servant, was on the fiddle. But that’s all by the bye. With a good conscience I will […]