April, 2017

Last night I finally caught up with the movie Selma on BBC iPlayer. It’s a splendid re-enactment of the famous civil rights marches in the 1960s, led by the great Martin Luther King. The acting was outstanding, especially the playing of King and Lyndon Johnson by David Oyelowo and Tom Wilkinson respectively. The film raised […]

I always feel a little uneasy at this time of year –not sure why. Maybe there’s a sense of being suspended between winter (it’s grey and damp outside today) and Spring (my flowerbed in the rain is still stuffed with colour). Should I be gritting my teeth for the tail-end of dark evenings or singing […]

Britain has engaged in murderous repression in many places since 1945 in which scores of thousands of non-British civilians or resistance fighters have been killed by British forces. For various reasons including propaganda the British do not call them wars. In Malaya (1948-1960) the rubber planters and other merchants would have been refused insurance, or […]

What I’m writing here I have to tell you is not to imply panic but rather caution; I write as a patriot first; a citizen second and as a voter third. Someone who simply wishes to plant seeds and see them blossom into ideas burning in the minds of other men and women who care […]

(Extract from a Homily I gave at the funeral service for Vinny MacDonald in Hilltown, County Down on 13 April 2017) On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was preaching in his church, The Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, Georgia (where I visited a few years ago). He said on that day in February: “Every now and then, I guess we […]

I’m no historian and not even a paid counsel would describe me as one, but I have a pretty good memory. Russia suffered disproportionately during the Second World War and her troops suffered severe losses in taking Berlin. In 1955 I recall hearing that they vacated Austria on condition that that state became neutral. I […]

I was on Thursday’s Evening Extra  with my dear friend Nelson McCausland, discussing the need for Acht na Gaeilge. I’ll put the link up below, but after we’d shaken hands and man-hugged in the Green Room before the show, Nelson told me some really interesting thing I didn’t know. Sinn Féin will never get as […]

Tom: I see where ETA have packed it in. Dick: About time. I’m sick of looking at those ads of dragged fur coats leaving a bloody trail behind them. Harry: Not to mention those insulting captions, like ‘It takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat, but only one to wear it’. […]

Pics 1-8 are by Antrim Lens.       Pic 1   Pic 2 Pic 3  Pic 4 Pic 5  Pic 6   Pic 7 Pic 8 “I went over to the fox den to see if anything was about and I met this beauty well after dark, images a bit grainy. Saw a bird […]

  Christian Faith can be threatening to those in power but, alas, not in Ireland – yet. The cosy relationship between church and state and the kind of safe theology and preaching presented in Ireland has prevented that from happening here – yet. The story is different in some places in Latin America. In Guatemala in the 1980s, the dictator […]