December, 2018

Almost exactly 100 years ago there was a general election in which Sinn Féin won a huge majority – 73 of the 105 seats involved. In their manifesto, Sinn Féin had promised to abstain from the Westminster parliament. After their election, they set up Dáil Éireann. So what happens next? You guessed it, Virginia. Unionists […]

    One thing the Brexit debate has made clear is that the border in Ireland, imposed by the British government almost 100 years ago, has to be the most artificial and farcical border in the world. Many borders have emerged over the centuries by agreement or because of the circumstances of geography. Others, like […]

  Nearly six decades ago Anthony Sampson wrote a classic examination of those working the levers of power in Britain and in later decades updated it. It was called THE ANATOMY OF BRITAIN. I salute his work and, in tribute, name this much lesser effort THE LOBOTOMY OF IRELAND. I’ll limit my comments to a […]

OK, OK. We’ve all done the sympathy-for-Theresa thing, vicar’s daughter, what a stayer, such guts, such resilience. Take that as read. The big question now is: what next? The people in the Conservative Party who are passionately opposed to the Bill appear to have no plan other than to storm out of the EU and […]

  Could Theresa May be smarter than we think? No, I didn’t say ‘stupider’, I said smarter. I’m not saying it’s probable, I’m just suggesting it might be possible. Given that it’s in the interests of the UK and the EU that the former leaves on amicable terms, the vote on May’s leadership last night […]

Most of the following I gleaned from WIKIPEDIA so it’s not exactly Holy Writ. Like the Curate’s Egg in the Punch Cartoon I have found Wikipedia good in parts. Three hundred plus years after the scoundrel’s death the story of bobbing and weaving, perjury, buggery, jiggery-pokery and anti-popery you may find both funny-peculiar and funny-haha. […]

Leo Varadkar said something very sarky in the Dail yesterday. He told Mary Lou McDonald, after she’d urged a border poll, that if he didn’t know her better, he’d think she wanted a hard border to further her pet project, a reunited Ireland. Was he right? I doubt it. Few constituents think more highly of […]

  I mentioned (THUNDERING LIARS Part 1) being vindicated by Britain’s old PRESS COUNCIL when I complained of  a false report in THE TIMES. The morning the embargo on the Council’s adjudication was lifted I stayed at home with ‘flu and turning on Radio 4 was delighted to hear that the first item on the […]

  In 1887 when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister and his nephew, Arthur Balfour, was Chief Secretary for Ireland, Balfour was about to introduce a Coercion Bill in the House of Commons. To help the Honourable Members’ deliberations, THE TIMES published allegations of criminal misconduct by Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, […]

                                                                                                        The electric  pylons above  […]