March, 2017

On October 12th 2016 under the heading “John Redmond’s Ambition for Ireland” I quoted a speech made by Redmond in London on St Patrick’s Day 1913 and commented on it. It is not a speech often, or perhaps ever, reprinted during my lifetime, or commented on. Thirty years after Redmond’s speech, on St Patrick’s Day 1943, […]

If I were a unionist, I suspect I’d be feeling unhappy this morning. Unhappy X 3, in fact. The first reason for my unhappiness would be the recent election here. While the DUP is still the largest party elected to Stormont, it’s had a dramatic slide in the number of seats it obtained and its […]

I was watching the Andrew Marr show on BBC ONE   about half an hour ago – or part of it. They had Gerry Adams on. It was a good example of how the north is dealt with by the English media. I knew Adams was going to be on, which was why I made a point of […]

  I’m always interested in the people who are put forward as pundits when politics is discussed on TV. Events happen and pundits tell us how we should think about them. Pundits are very influential people. Some of them are good and some are pretty tedious. Chris Donnelly, for example, is very effective. He knows […]

    The other morning I tuned into BBC Radio 4 and its God-slot “Thought for Today.”  Its female presenter was talking about Fake News and mentioned “Harry Evans” , whom she regarded as the Gold Standard of journalistic integrity. So I got up and went to the bathroom. Harold Evans, since Knighted, edited “The Times” from 1981 […]

Anyone analysing the election results will notice one big trend beyond the decline of political Unionism – the republican vote is alive and People Before Profit’s support is dying. Mr. Carroll is becoming the lone dim candle in the old gothic cathedral, with the wax burning faster than exchequer wood-pellets. Within less than a year […]

Pics 1-4 are by Perkin Warbeck   Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3 Pic 4 “FALLEN ARCH         by     Perkin Warbeck At around 9.30 am on Wednesday morning the huge natural arch in the sea cliffs known The Azure Window, collapsed. After standing for over tens of thousands of years it collapsed like a cheap deckchair […]

So what exactly is this curious border that divides the Irish island for and why is it there at all? The Irish border really is the oddest thing in terms of international boundaries.You might say that it is atypical ; a deviant creation in many respects and on a world-scale something of a unique oddity […]

I see where the widow of a British soldier from here is upset. She feels her husband’s death has been diminished, because she wasn’t invited to the unveiling yesterday of a memorial to the British soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. It must be hard indeed for a younger woman to lose her husband […]