April, 2017

  I was at a recycling centre yesterday where I came on a copy of yesterday’s Venerable Organ The Irish News. In it was a letter by a man called Jim Hendron, in which he chuntered on at tedious length about the orgins of the Alliance Party. You’ll note below that he also mentions my […]

There are few politicians on this island who are duller, in a long variety of political categories, than Mark Durkan and his nephew, Mark H. Durkan. They exhibit a certain bleak and strengthless persona which renders them utterly incapable of rising to any political occasion – national or local. In any other political context, it’s […]

Well, who saw that coming?  Nobody. But then you look at it through the rear-view mirror and it makes perfect sense to May. (No, Virginia, the general election is in June. May is the British PM who’s called the June election…Oh forget it.) She’s got an opposition she thinks is really weak, led by Jeremy […]

  Father Joe MacVeigh in his blog “Ten Uncomfortable Questions for Nationalists”  suggests that in the event of Ireland’s coming together that London might be minded to contribute funding our Northeastern area for 50 years. I’m no theologian but remember a Christian Brother explaining the clear difference between the virtue of Hope and the folly […]

Anyone familiar with the details of the Kincora affair won’t be shocked by the title of this article. William McGrath, a noted associate of Ian Paisley and Unionist paramilitary was also an MI5 operative; having smuggled in guns for Ulster Resistance from apartheid South Africa. McGrath was also involving Unionist politicians in the rape and […]

Nelson McCausland the ex-DUP politician, is still beating his “Culture” drum. It has become a kilted obsession with the little, bearded red-cheeked man . He’s been banging on about Ulster-Scots; paradiddling and drumrolling his tartan roots and promoting this odd, local lucky-bag dialect as an independent language ,for a few years now .It’s all a […]

In the thunderstorm of unionist criticism over Martin McGuinness’s headstone, I find myself in total agreement with a statement by the UUP’s Doug Beattie: “What is on his headstone is exactly what I would expect to see on his headstone”. Every single unionist politician who is now crying “Outrage!” knew that Martin McGuinness was in […]

Date: 23 December 2007 at 21:33:28 GMT To: editor@observer.co.uk Sir If, as you say,Gordon Brown has always claimed to be the author of the slogan “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” he must be more solemn and po-faced than I had imagined. If you think it a nifty soundbite you must lack all imagination. […]

  What kind of Ireland do you want?   How do you define Irishness?   Will republicans reach out to include Unionists and the Orange culture in a reunified Ireland?   Can London be persuaded to hand over sovereignty to Dublin and to make a contribution for a period of, say, 50 years?   How will Unionists be accommodated in a united Ireland by […]

Harold Wilson once remarked as a left-winger that he was a “Bolshevik in a Tsarist cabinet.” He was of course referring to the fact that the Labour Party was then and remains still dominated by an unrepresentative class of right-wing MP’s, who are not accountable to ordinary party members. Indeed, all three main parties in […]