September, 2020

Missed Opportunities by Randall Stephen Hall © I see and hear your culture. I cannot know your culture as you know it. It has not been my experience. I haven’t been allowed to share it. But, it has been the same for you. On that we are equals. I get the feeling that You might […]

The President of the United States wanted me dead. Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Trump talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate […]

I read  that  STEPHEN POLLARD , a member of the war-mongering Henry Jackson Society, and Editor of the Jewish Chronicle when it was forced by Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organisation  to publish a 1,300 word condemnation for a series of falsehoods it had published in its campaign to have Jeremy Corbyn ousted from the Labour  leadership, […]

Pat and I had several topics lined up for our chat this morning, but the news  from Westminster changed everything. According to the Financial         Times,  the Tory government is going to go back on its word in terms of goods being checked between Britain and Northern Ireland. Will that  result in a land border in Ireland? If so, what will the consequences be? This is like a hand grenade being rolled under the negotiating table….

So which is it? Are the British simply intent on tying up a few loose ends in the Northern Ireland protocol, or are they intent on removing any trace of a border or border checks between two parts of the UK? There was a government representative on BBC Radio Four this morning saying it was […]

It was very sunny morning when I went to the Braniel estate in east Belfast in April 1984 to pay my respect to a dead young man. I remember it so well, I mean how could one forget it?  My caring, sweet, kindly mother had been murdered the night before in a loyalist bomb blast […]

This blog first appeared as a column in the Andersonstown News There are two ways you can look at politics You can look at who’s up and who’s down, what did so-and-so say to thingummy, and doesn’t your man look daft. In contrast, you can look at politics in a more active, probing way, where you try to get to the heart of the […]

This morning, Pat and I talked about three stories from the media. The first was a question posed by Pat, having listening to RTÉ radio’s Drive Time programme: is there such a thing as a liberal unionist politician? The second story was from the NBC website in the US, and we looked at the defeat of Joseph Kennedy III, who’s in his thirties, by Ed Markey,  who’s  in his seventies. Our last item was from the RTÉ News Now  website , and it considered whether former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott should be employed as a trade negotiator by the British  government.  All highly absorbing topics. Join us, wontcha?

Francie Molloy, Sinn Fein Member of the British Parliament for the constituency of Mid Ulster recently commented,‘We were sold a pup with the GFA no commitment from either Dublin or London to deliver for Nationalists or Republicans it was just a bluff’. The Northern Ireland Executive power-sharing administration at Stormont recently awarded members increases in […]

It was apparent in early March that the COVID Pandemic was set to enshroud Scotland and , given my age , I decided to take things cautiously and curtailed all unnecessary journeys and social  gatherings, including Stirling and District Camera Club which continued to meet until forbidden by Government order.   Lockdown was a catalogue […]