June, 2019

With the Tory party contenders for leadership, something sort of weird has happened. Instead of pointing to their past achievements, they’re falling over each other to tell us how bold they were when they were young. There’s a leadership contender for every drug, and a drug for every leadership contender. Boris? Put me down  for […]

Imagine this. You’re earning between £50,000 and £80,000 a year. Not just that, but you’re a registered member of the Conservative Party.  You switch on your radio this morning and you hear that Boris Johnson has promised that, if elected Tory leader, he will move the upper band of income tax from £50K to £80K. […]

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA                                                  The D-Jubilee of  the D-Day Commemorations at the Naval-gazing base in Blighty could only be summed up in the mighty, diamond-bright  lyrics of Cole Portsmouth, oops, Porter: ‘It’s delightful, it’s delicious   It’s delectable, it’s delirious It’s dilemma, it’s delimit, it’s deluxe   It’s de-lovely’. Der Perkin himself, not at all […]

A wise man once said that “there is no such thing as objectivity in political journalism.” Therefore, I would like to make clear in writing this that I am someone who has been affected by the whole Loughlinisland affair. Indeed, my family have been referenced in the explosive but remarkable 2017 documentary that is “No […]

 How many times did David Cameron have sex with a (dead) pig’s head? I ask the question to see if we can get into perspective Michael Gove’s revelation yesterday that he took cocaine several times when he was “a young journalist”. (See what Michael did there? No, not take another snort, Virginia. He implicitly raised […]

Letters to Editor. Irish News. Belfast. Published Monday, June 3, 2019 I always read Patrick Murphy’s column. He is a very clever writer but in some instances, he may be ‘too clever by half’ which could be the occupational hazard of clever writers. I refer to his column ‘Time to decide if we want religious belief to take precedence over democracy’ (May 25). He […]

S Sir, – The Belfast Agreement is intended to allow people to inhabit their constitutional and national identities securely and without fear. There is a right to choose to identify and be accepted as British or Irish or both. Constitutional aspirations are supposed to be equally legitimate. But what do we see in practice? Those […]

Did George Hamilton give the thumbs-up to  the raids on the homes of  Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney? If so, it’s a good job he’s leaving (in both senses of that statement) and the next guy in the role of Chief Constable will need to whip off  his coat and get stuck into the Augean […]

PART ONE From THE IRISH TIMES 18 MAY 2019 “The Southern Taskgroup on Abortion and Reproductive Topics (START), an organisation representing 250 abortion providers, recently estimated that that they are providing between  800 and 900 abortions per month. If that figure is accurate, over the course of a year there will be between 9,600 and […]

On the question of “Reproductive Rights” the still venerated pioneers of “Planned Parenthood”  Margaret Sanger in the USA and Marie Stopes in Britain did not espouse “Freedom of Choice.”  They vehemently opposed it. Both advocated  forced sterilisation, Sanger with great success, Stopes unsuccessfully in Britain. How Marie Stopes International fared I don’t know. Both were […]