June, 2017

‘I want Scotland to be at the heart of Europe’, the young Mary Queen of Scots tells her courtiers in David Greig’s fine production of Linda Mclean ‘s play, ‘Glory on Earth’,  at the Lyceum Theatre. Sharing the stage for most of the action is volatile preacher, John Knox , who viewed Mary as a […]

I’m standing on the threshold of another trembling world… These few words are seared into the consciousness of a whole generation of us, the conflict generation, who stood in awe of the selfless sacrifice of the first of our 10 Hunger Strike Martyrs. Well a chairde, today I feel that we are again standing on […]

I see Arlene Foster , the one-time First Minister and Queen of Norneverland , has popped -up again after awakening from another three -month sleep where she’d lain comatose right through the recent elections , awaiting a prince to come along and kiss her awake. It had been a long wait and it might have […]

  “The business of America” said President Calvin Coolidge, “is Business.” And it was the boast of  Lina Lamont in “Singin’ In The Rain” that she was “as rich as Calv’n’Coolidge,combined.” I’m not joking when I suggest that the Business of Britain is Making a Killing. Mega Killings to be more accurate, and gleefully contemplating more. […]

As Dominic wrestled with the cap of the petrol tank in my car , I studied his appearance. He was a medium-sized young man, aged between twenty-five and thirty, with sleek black hair. He was obviously a non-national. So, after initial comments on the weather , I asked him where he was from . Poland […]

  I was raised in Omagh, ten miles from Dromore, Co Tyrone. When my brother learnt to drive, we would make frequent visits to Dromore, which had what was then the wonder of the townland, a new Cinema. Cowboy films were frequent, and some locals were said to be amazed and even nervous  that the […]

What year is this? Oh right – 2017. That means it’s nineteen years since the Good Friday Agreement and fifty years since the beginning of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement, you’ll remember, was sparked by an injustice in allocation of public housing. The Good Friday Agreement was built on the motion of […]

  It is understandable that most of the media attention has been focused upon the hocus pocus of what is quite possibly the Plight of the Century currently being played out in the circus tent at Ten, Downing Street. It is certainly the most lucrative P of the C as an extra few noughts seem […]

“Whom the gods would destroy, first they make mad.” Anyone watching the face of Tory leader Theresa May in recent weeks must be tempted to cast her as a classical tragic heroine, who a short few weeks ago was happily reading about the incompetence of her opposite number Jeremy Corbyn while she was presented as a […]

  (first published as a letter in the IRISH EXAMINER in September 2013) “Professor John A Murphy has called on the Government to honour Daniel O’Connell, whom he deems the father of democracy in Ireland, with a national holiday.  Now, when the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which attempted to strangle Irish democracy […]