February, 2024

This Monday, Pat and I focus our massive brains on several matters. We start with Tucker Carlson (yes, Virginia, TUCKER), who got a two-hour interview with Putin. Should we be opposed to interviews with dictators?   Rishi Sunak and senior Tories, in the past year, have been in and out of Rupert Murdoch’s mansion like […]

I had two encounters, both pleasant, with John Bruton. The first was when he attended a service in Enniskillen following the cenotaph bombing. I’d been interviewing someone else and tape-recorder in hand, was on my way to my car when I noticed An Taoiseach standing with a number of his followers/minders. I nipped across the […]

It’s early days, but both Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little Pengelly seem to be conducting themselves which may not qualify for the Chuckle Sisters award but will receive a thumbs-up – civilized, tolerant. More, please.   John Bruton died in the past week. Pat and I recall meetings with the man, along with his attitude […]

                Making war on the world is not new.   Britain has being doing it for centuries, but she has imitators.   From 1904 she determined to destroy Germany and, at least from 1911 the Manchester Guardian’s C. P. Scott knew of the joint French and British schedule […]

1. Don’t call President Biden. ‘Genocide Joe’.  Name-calling is school-yard stuff for children. And besides, it’s the favourite rhetorical tool of Donald J Trump.  2. When making a decision, you have to weigh up the potential advantage to others and to yourself. In this case, what going to Washington will do for the Palestinian people […]

Dear Ruthie,  I hadn’t heard from you for some time, to the point where I wondered if you were perhaps unwell.But thanks be to God, you’re back in The News Letter now, as full of piss and vinegar as ever. In yesterday’s column, titled ‘Relationship between O’Neill and McDonald will come under great strain’,  you provide […]

          The Duke of Wellington remarked of the MPs elected following the “GREAT REFORM ACT” of 1832, that he had never seen so many Bad  Hats in his life.   The Iron Duke, whatever else may be said of him, never posed as a Democrat.   It is Ironic that lesser […]

BLOGS from JANUARY 2020 by Donal Kennedy                   After 13 weeks confined to home by the outbreak of the Covid Pandemic I was beginning to forger which BLOGS of mine had been been submitted and published, and which   I had considered writing but had not completed.   […]

      By European standards Ireland records some fairly low voter turnouts. The most recent North East Ireland(NEI) assembly and Irish general elections both had around a 63% turnout. If the non-voting majority united under one banner in either jurisdiction they’d represent the largest political force.   Historically speaking, two seismic political events on […]

Our menu for today’s podcast is short in terms of subject but (of course) long in terms of eloquence and wisdom. Not surprisingly, we focus on the events at Stormont on Saturday. We have a look at the First Minister’s speech and that of the Deputy First Minister, comparing and contrasting. And we wonder aloud […]