This review first appeared in The Andersonstown News IRELAND, CANCER AND ME (RTÉ ONE) starts with Tommy Gorman standing on the balcony in Bedford Street, making his last report as RTÉ’s Northern correspondent. “When I think of the Northern Ireland I came to first in 1980, it’s a better place now. The killing has stopped and the likes of Arlene Foster and […]
May, 2021
A PLAGUE OF PHILANTHROPISTS – by Donal Kennedy
“IF I HAD MY WAY I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, in which the sick, the halt and the maimed would be exterminated.” D.H. Lawrence, Novelist. Quoted in a Sunday Times review of “BURNING MAN -The Ascent of D.H.Lawrence” by Frances Wilson, 16 May 2021. “IN THE EVENT THAT […]
The Good, The LCC and the Ugly – by Michael Lagan
What have young Loyalists learned from their elders? That violence works! Or more so the threat of violence works to get their way whenever diplomacy or politics fails. Well, that’s what Joel Keys seems to claim. Joel Keys, from Taughmonagh in South Belfast, was arrested during rioting in Sandy Row in North Belfast, before which […]
Interview with Eamonn McDermott
Eamonn McDermott was one of the people I interviewed for my book Martin McGuinness: The Man I Knew. He was a doctor’s son, grew up in Derry and joined the IRA in his teens. Along with Raymond McCartney he was arrested and served in all seventeen years in prison. He was released from prison in […]
OKLAHOMA OKAY? – by Donal Kennedy
What picture does the word “Oklahoma” conjure up for you? A wonderful musical celebrating the inauguration of a brand-new state where the cowman and the farmer can be friends and folk don’t claim to be better than anybody else but will be danged if they’re not just as good? A story of farmers ruined by […]
America: Little Israel – by Michael Lagan
There is a Christian belief, believe it or not, to return the Jews to the ‘Holy land’, which pre-dates both the establishment of the Zionist movement and the establishment of Israel. Lobbying by these groups, to influence the US Government in ways similar to Zionist ideology, dates back to at least the 19th century. In […]
On gloating and gays
OK – hand on heart: how did you feel that time when Arlene Foster (remember her?) said that the north had some surplus vaccines and would be happy to pass them to the people in the south who were short of vaccines. Did your little features light up with pleased anticipation? Here was unionism discovering […]
Force Majeure You Say? – by Michael Lagan
3 of 67,230 After the British Government was warned and warned…and warned some more, that pushing ahead with Brexit was going to cause untold damage to both the Good Friday Agreement, peace in Ireland and indeed the prospect of trade into and out of the UK, they went ahead with it anyhow. Academics, British Ministers, the […]
Klondike Irish-style – by Toni Devine
Pic: irishcentral.com I thought that living in beautiful Inishowen, with plenty of flags on the map for scenery, beaches, conservation, protection, heritage, wild fowl sanctuaries, oyster beds, and protected water sources, we were safe from the gold seekers. I thought that tourism, farming, fishing, small, innovative and developing businesses, were the foundations of our economy, […]
PAT + JUDE TALK ABOUT THE DUP’S NEW LEADER, THE HORROR OF GAZA, AND WHAT TO WEAR ON A BEACH….
So we both got it wrong about the DUP’s new leader: God’s ways are mysterious ways and so are the ways of the DUP. Watching TV reports from Gaza is an exercise in horror: entire buildings demolished, children’s corpses being extracted, uncontrollable grief. Why is Israel allowed to act in the way it does? And […]