Back in the 1970s, the English TV playwright Dennis Potter wrote a column in The Guardian. In it he said that the one thing the general public cannot bear is to hear the truth, and those who try telling it will, metaphorically if not literally, have the flesh torn from their bones. The latest example […]
March, 2019
NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL AND THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAYED by Donal Kennedy
THIS PIECE WAS PREPARED ON 10 MARCH BUT WAS INADVERTEDLY DELAYED . As I start this piece (in London) it’s an hour to go before the Kick-off, in Lansdowne Road of the Ireland vs. France International. It’s also seventy years since my father took me to Lansdowne Road to watch Ireland, captained by Karl Mullen play an […]
LAPDOG BITES BULLDOG (33) by Perkin Warbeck
SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA So then, why precisely did a yelping lapdog with a laptop choose one Charles C. over a contemporary Charles C. as a target for a prolonged skelping with his cattleprod-shaped crozier in The Unionist Times ? That targeted Charles C. would have been Father Charles Coughlin, the RC radio demagogue on Stateside […]
“Riffing on the Licker” by Randall Stephen Hall
Not fit for the licker You give to cows to chew and suck. Helps pass the time Makes me think of thon things As they pass their auld muck.Now they’re out in the fields With a touch of the green. St. Patricks likes pints of That beer that’s gone green..Passes time with St. Brigid Oh […]
THE GREEN AND BLUE by Randall Stephen Hall
T Song for the Refugee. By Randall Stephen Hall © You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZtpCKYmkU Lyrics below this short article. Firstly I must thank Mr. Paddy McGarvey for commissioning me to illustrate thisIrish Parliament Trust Map in 1998. For giving me such a free hand and the opportunity to help visualise the possibility of a different peaceful […]
What did St Patrick ever do for us? Apart from the snakes…
He’s said to have died on 17 March AD 460, and pretty well ever since we’ve been celebrating, at least in Ireland. The St Patrick’s Day parade, though – that’s a relatively modern invention. It began in America, on 17 March 1762. Some Irish soldiers serving in the English military were given permission to march […]
Is it right or wrong to refer to Martin McGuinness’s ‘military service’?
About a week ago, an event occurred thousands of miles away and instantly created anger and a sense of outrage here. No words will change that anger or outrage, but the situation does bear examination, because it tells us something we should (if we don’t already) know. The events, as you may have guessed, was […]
Who financed the Christchurch killer(s)? And the Derry killers?
I wonder who paid for the guns used by the man or men who shot dead over forty innocent Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand yesterday? And who paid for the bullet-proof vest he was said to be wearing? And for the camera attached to his helmet? Who taught him to shoot, who bought the car […]
Time to forgive by Jude Whyte
Time to forgive …….. In September 5th 1972, I was walking to school from the Lower Ormeau Road to St. Marys Christian Brothers’ Grammar School Barrack Street. I was 15 years old exactly, it was my birthday. At 8.45 a m a UDR patrol pulled up in front of me at the top of Ireton […]
Fionola and the nut-house
Whatever is the reverse of patriotism, Fionola Meredith appears to be in its iron grip. This morning’s Irish Times carries an article by her headed ‘Southerners should be careful what they wish for in a border poll”, and in it Fionola lists the many things that make the north of Ireland a bloody awful place. […]