October, 2025

    Well I would say that, wouldn’t I? I was born and raised in Fermanagh near the village of Ederney, beside the old monastic site of Kiltierney where St Tierney (Tiarnach of Clones) founded a Christian monastic settlement around the year 600AD. It is a few miles from Lower Lough Erne which once was […]

          After the first debate on Virgin, it seemed to me that Catherine Connolly was far and away the winner, yet the verdict of “commentators” was that there was no clear winner. The first opinion poll showed that Connolly was the clear winner in that debate and that this was the […]

PAT+JUDE TALK ABOUT STREET SIGN CONSPIRACY, HEATHER & FOX-HUNTING, AND TRUMP FLIES IN TO RESCUE GAZA Over the weekend,some enterprising person took an axle-grinder to a bi-lingual sign for a street in Belfast, cutting off the bit as Gaeilge. Is this a principled stand against the imposition of Irish signage in places that don’t want […]

Did you listen to the Catherine Connolly v Heather Humphreys debate on RTÉ radio today? I ask because we masochists must stick together.  If I said it brought to mind a bull-fight it wouldn’t be totally off the mark.  Not that Heather is a bull, or like a bull, or wouldn’t be very careful if […]

RSH. Riding Rough Shod. 4.10.25By Randall Stephen Hall A nuanced approach in our Belfast street signs is required, where the difference between perceived “introduction” and  “imposition” is huge, with benefits or  lost opportunities for both. I’m all for these new signs but there are those who are not. Where education, combined with friendship and vision […]

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. That is, if you’re a supporter of that fine peace-loving man, President Trump. The winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has just been announced,and can you believe it, they didn’t give it to Donald J! There’s thanks for you.   In the South of Ireland, the […]

    I heard the DUP MP Gregory Campbell on Talkback today talking nonsense as usual-about the danger of even talking about a Border poll and Irish Unity. He felt it was much too dangerous to talk about this issue because, in this very divided society, it would provoke some people to violence. He did […]

It’s hard to think of an election campaign that sank so quickly with all hands on board. If this had happened with a group of innocents who had no experience of the election world, you might excuse it. But Jack Chambers is no fledgling and Micheál Martin is canny old crow.  But this one has […]

This morning (or last night, maybe because that was a better time to break bad news), Jim Gavin tossed in the towel and put away his bid to become President of Ireland. It seems he forgot about some £3K he owed a former tenant. Which means he was a landlord back in the day.Oh dear. […]

“The Church can only be resurrected,” says Canadian spiritual writer, Jacques Gauthier, a 72 year-old Catholic author, preacher and retreat master. Gauthier says that not even the mess the Church is in now, can kill the good news of the Gospel. ‘The Catholic Church is up to its neck in crap,’ says Jacques Gauthier. Actually, […]