January, 2022

Listening to Ruth Dudley Edwards debating with Susan McKay on Talkback  yesterday was – most of the time – like watching a slightly arthritic bull making bewildered lunges at a cool and skilful matador. Ruth thought it was ‘absolutely terrible’ that Susan should refer to the TUV as extremist. “It is a terrible word to […]

Dear Editors Katy Mullin  (February 2022)  tells us that Arthur Griffith became President of the Irish Free State in January 1922. The Irish Free State came  into being in December 1922. Griffith died in August 1922. No such office as President of the Irish Free State existed during its fifteen year existence. The head of […]

The discussion about Irish unity was inevitable after Brexit when the British voted to remove themselves from the European Union. In doing so they also removed the six north -eastern counties of Ireland where a majority voted to remain in the EU. This created a new political and economic situation with regard to the British imposed border […]

It will be 41 years ago in May since THE TIMES on its front page coverage of the funeral of Bobby Sands deliberately published a blatant lie. It will be 40 years ago next month since the publication of the Press Council’s reluctant condemnation of it. I had spent months writing to the Council as […]

How odd that the rule about double-jobbing – being an MLA in Stormont at the same time as being an MP in Westminster – should suddenly be changed. That’s the plan, and of course Jeffrey Donaldson will be a grateful recipient. Did social media play a part in the aftermath of Aishling Murphy’s death? Can […]

It was the sincere prayer of the late Duke of Edinburgh, that, following his demise, he would return to Earth s a bug or a virus and wipe out great numbers of its human population to make room for wildlife,presumably so that his own offspring and their friends would have sport shooting it. The Duke’s […]

“It’s never too early to start lessons on spotting fake news” says Libby Purves in a Comment headed ‘THUNDERER’ in THE TIMES (Friday 14th January 2022). I’ve been spotting fake news and doing my best to combat it for nearly fifty years, inspired by Frank Gallagher, whose memoir “The Four Glorious Years” written under the […]

The 6th of January, the Feast of the Epiphany, or as my late Mother used to call it, “Little Christmas.” I believe the Orthodox Churches, still using the Julian Calendar celebrate Christmas when we celebrate the Epiphany, though the secularists Lenin and  Kemal Attaturk imposed the Gregorian Calendar, decreed by a pope on the advice […]

 The Police Ombudsman has delivered her report on collusion, and it seems that the relatives were right – it was happening on any number of occasions. ‘Informants’, as they call them, who were known to be involved in crime including murder, were recruited by the RUC. There’s more, but just watch the video. The murder […]

In the 1960s Garret Fitzgerald, who regularly wrote on economics in THE IRISH TIMES, became a BBC correspondent on Ireland and shortly after for THE ECONOMIST. He continued in those roles when he sat in Seanad Eireann in 1965. And he contributed a piece to THE ECONOMIST, at that journal’s request, on the Silver Jubilee on […]