May, 2024

  I read an advertisement in the Irish News on 1st May. “Following Christ as a Catholic in Ireland Today”- Conference and Gala Dinner in Guildhall Derry on Saturday 11 May –with Grace before meals by Bishop Donal McKeown. The first question I have to ask -who is paying for this advert? It is not […]

In an article in the Irish Times on 15th May 2024 the Palestinian ambassador to Ireland, Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid wrote: “Since October 7th 2023, Israel launched a vicious aggression against our people in Gaza, with 35,000 killed and tens of thousands maimed or missing under the rubble, the vast majority being women and children.” “Over […]

The inquiry into how Covid was handled is becoming more and more interesting. Over 1,000 DUP Whatsapp messages reveal something of how they regard Catholics, nationalists and individual political opponents. Then there was Michelle O’Neill’s performance in front of the inquiry, and Baroness Arlene’s. Some contrast, methinks.   Immigration, it appears, is going to dominate […]

        Garlanded with praise by A.J.P. Taylor (Observer), F.S.L.Lyons (New Statesman) and Robert Blake (Sunday Times) on its publication in 1976, George Dangerfield’s “THEDAMNABLE QUESTION”  A Study In Anglo-Irish Relations had lain unopened on my shelves for over twenty years. Until this week.   It’s over forty years since I read and enjoyed THE […]

As you are probably aware, there’s an inquiry being conducted, investigating the way Covid was handled in NEI. Michelle O’Neill has said she was sorry for the hurt her attendance at the Bobby Storey funeral may have inflicted. So has unionism received the apology gracefully? Mmm… How do you feel about weddings? An article in […]

AMERICAN BREXIT COMMITTEE 1919 CHESTNUT STREET, SUITE 1724 PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 19103 May 2, 2024   TO: U. S.  Representative Richard E. Neal, Ranking Member, Foreign Affairs Committee        FROM:  John Corcoran, Chairman RE:  GFA, US-UK Trade, & Legacy Law     We offer some topics for your consideration and action.  We expect these issues will […]

  C Few writers have conveyed the ups and downs of the closely-knit rural life in Ireland before the digital age as accurately as John McGahern from County Leitrim. John who died in 2006, is a keen observer of the eccentricities and foibles of country people -small farmers and their wives and the local characters […]

    Without context quotations attributed to individuals are bunk.   Why would anyone say of a British monarch  – “there’s a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo.”   I quote an unexplained line from “Ulysses as History”  by Daniel Mulhall, in the current issue of History Ireland. It is a superb publication. […]

Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey made a documentary called ‘No Stone Unturned’, which looked at some very suspicious police activity (or inactivity)  in the follow-up to the slaughter in Loughinisland of six people. Since they made the film, they’ve been hounded, imprisoned briefly, their phone calls monitored – the kind of thing you’d expect in […]

I  was out for a walk at lunchtime and instead of listening to the birds busting a gut with their song, I foolishly went to my earphones and listened to William Crawley on Talk Back (British BC), busting a gut to whip up discussion over why  we in NEI tend to ‘see the world through […]