May, 2017

Alan Titley                                                               Bob Welch  This is the first Memorial Lecture for Prof Bob Welch, who taught at Ulster University (Coleraine) for many years. Alan […]

Many years ago a crawling letter in THE IRISH POST in London sneered at the Irish soldiers who faithfully served Ireland  during 1939 -1945, comparing them unfavourably with those Irish who joined the  British Forces. WHY HITLER DECIDED TO MARCH ON MOSCOW?I wrote  to the paper recalling that in 1940 the veteran Dan Breen had […]

  Obedience was always taught in the Christian churches to be a great virtue. In fact, it was often presented as the essence of being a Christian. It certainly has its place in the way St Paul understands it as conforming to the mind of Christ. I never believed in blind obedience. I agree with […]

Gerry Carroll of People Before Profit (PbP) is in a dark mood this sunny morning. He’s been called ‘A Brit’ by Sinn Féin councillor Ciaran Beattie, who has since withdrawn the comment. But Gerry is still deeply upset. This is “A pathetic slander, and outrageous slander” and is “gutter politics at its worst.” Now as […]

The greatest compliment ever paid to me in my life was by a friend who once said that the Bible should be rewritten to include the name “Donal” as one of the Prophets, given that the anglicised variant “Daniel” already encompasses it. While I think it a very generous thing to say, I can’t reconcile […]

The greatest dividend of the 1916 Rising for Ireland was peace. Nobody living in Ireland was conscripted in the 101 years since. Irish recruitment for the British forces dropped off dramatically after the Rising. Irish soldiers – I.e. soldiers in Ireland’s service, bombed no Arabs, starved no Indians, tortured no Kenyans, oppressed no Egyptians, hanged […]

  Imagine, you’re being escorted into a Jury deliberation room by a court usher and when you ask for some parting words of wisdom she leaves you with this worldly wise dictum: “When those charged with upholding the law break the law in the name of the law, there is no law.” Having summarised the […]

Five things worth pondering re that Blonde Interview. It was done by an Irish Independent journalist with the obvious intention of presenting Arlene Foster in soft-focus – that is, something to smudge the hard-edged image that came with the Crocodile Thing. The published article had a picture of Arlene and journalist Niamh Horan, sitting together on […]

The Pseudonymous Giordano Bruno takes issue with my description of some paid “Analysts” as “whores in their hearts.” I’d thought the name meant Gordon Brown, but it seems it was the name of an Italian, who, less prudent than my cow’rin, tim’rous critic, was burned at the stake in ( more enlightened?) times gone by. […]

This morning’s Irish Times has an editorial headed “Northern Ireland: divining Sinn Féin’s intentions”.  Even from the heading you might be tempted to guess what was coming up, and if you succumbed to that temptation you’d probably be right.  The editorial criticises Sinn Féin for not getting on with the job and setting up a new Executive. […]