August, 2017

It’s hard not to join in the schadenfreude as the British people begin to realize the kind of party their government has gone into intimate alliance with, exchanging £1 billion – or was it £1.5 billion? – for their support. The Tories now seem shocked to find that this is a homophobic, fundamentalist and generally […]

Pics 1-4 are by Perkin Warbeck    pic 1   Pic 2 Pic 3   Pi   “THE   SACRED and THE PROFANE (x2) by Perkin Warbeck   A.DIA:                           GOD the FATHER. DAD 666:                THE QUARE FELLOW’S oul fella. (With the arrival of Heatwave Lucifer the local Pulizija are keeping an, erm, weather eye on this […]

There has been a version of history promoted which shows the IRA as a sectarian killer gang who vented their hatred  by the killing of defenceless Protestants in the early days of partial Irish independence. This talk by John Regan provides an informed alternative picture…      

For me, being Irish means that I belong to a people whose ancestors lived and toiled and often suffered political persecution on this island of Ireland and its coastal islands. During the times of persecution of both Presbyterians and Catholics, many were forced to emigrate to North America, Britain and Australia. Just like the refugees today seeking a better future many were […]

  As the Mainland had its War of the Roses it is only fitting that its occidental off-shore island should have its War of the Noses, given as it much is to bending down on one knee and sniffing that by any other name to the east. It is a curious coincidence, not, that while […]

I was at two Feile an Phobail events yesterday, both hugely interesting and raising some important questions which we either don’t think of or try to duck. The first, as I said in yesterday’s blog, was in St Mary’s University College. It was Trócaire’s annual human rights discussion for the Feile. There were two main […]

Note: This letter is fictional. It was written by Danny Morrison for an exhibition last year at Reading Gaol. That doesn’t mean the events to which it refers aren’t factual.  My thanks to Danny Morrison for allowing me to show it here. Letter from Reggie Dunne IRA Wandsworth Prison18th July, 1922 Commandant. It’s all but […]

At six o’clock this evening in St Mary’s University College I’m going to be chairing a discussion of the  Palestinian people in general and in particular their circumstances in Gaza. The discussion is being sponsored by Trócaire The keynote speaker will be Tania Hary, Executive Director of GISHA, an Israeli not-for-profi organisation which works to […]

    When asked why Americans know little about Britain’s plan to leave Europe’s economic union (EU),  I usually  explain  there is none.  The UK was sold fear and imperial nostalgia the way Goebbels sold the Third Reich.  The Wall Street Journal, depicts a grim period of economic challenge if not economic decline for the “Sceptered […]

The Orange Order and some unionist politicians,  when the subject of swaggering parades comes up, like to point out that some people go out of their way to be offended. They may be right. Some people are excessively touchy, just as some people like to remind us who is in charge in  our North-East Nest. I thought […]