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Books
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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, built [...] read our review » -
Talking to a brick wall: how to make politicians listen?
It took me a long time to warm to advertising agencies. The first time I worked with one I was working in sales management on Fairy Washing Up Liquid. I was due to attend a meeting at which I was to be told what consumers really thought of the brand. I remember my reluctance to [...] read our review »
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Belfast port celebrated as hopes rise for lower corporation tax
The House of Lords was the suitably grand venue for the London launch of Alf McCreary’s magnificently illustrated tome Titanic Port, a history of Belfast Harbour. Before I got a chance to take a good look at my copy, my ears pricked up when the chairman of the harbour commissioners Len O’Hagan said hopes were high [...] read our review »
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 17 May 2012 at 10:01 pm
Sectarianism exists in all classes, but usually not in the violent extremism sometimes manifested in the lower classes. This is due to traveling and going to university, and growing up in mixed neighborhoods. It is also due to the fact that unlike some in the lower classes, these see a future for themselves and have material comforts that are too dear for them to risk in some long, ongoing, self-destructive and ultimately pointless blood fued.
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Comment on Obama endorses gay marriage
on 10 May 2012 at 5:07 pm
*Carney is WH spokesman
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Comment on Obama endorses gay marriage
on 10 May 2012 at 5:06 pm
Pauluk
‘It has become politically expedient for Obama to ‘support’ gay marriage again in 2012. ‘
Not true. He already has the LBGT vote and their supporters. To win he needs moderates and independents, especially if he is to win states that are in play. Take North Carolina..he won the state in 2008, but the state is clearly on the other side of him in this culture war issue as shown by their 61-39 vote to ban all marriage outside man-woman marriage. His coming out in favor of gay marriage will not help him win any votes he already would be getting, but could potentially cost him in swing states that will be very close.
He was forced to make this announcement due to the idiocy of Biden. Biden’s interview put Obama and his ridiculous “evolving” view right back in the spotlight. The press corp was having a field day trying to get Carney to explain Obama’s ‘evolving’ view, and it got to the point where it was just ridiculous and a statement had to be made.
He may have ‘flip flopped’, I’m not sure. But at least he ain’t an Etch-a-Sketch.
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 10 May 2012 at 4:46 pm
Mark-Where do you live? The States?
Recently in the papers here was the case of MS-13 (an El Salvodoreano gang) of taking in 13-14-15 year old runways, and allowing them with a place to stay, plying them alcohol/drugs, and eventually turning them in prostitutes. They would go to gas stations or drug hangouts and advertise their wares. This was more of traditional use of vulnerable girls as money making machines, but disgusting nonetheless. The young men involved certainly weren’t “well respected in their communities”, however.
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Comment on Community silence starting to break over abuse in Lancashire?
on 9 May 2012 at 9:15 pm
Mark
You’re probably right, but I’m not so sure. I’ve been in the US for quite some time now, and lived in two different cities. For whatever reason, there seems to less an issue of immigrant or ethnic communities assimilating to their new homeland than I saw in the UK. (Not to mention, methinks the latent Islamophobia here would ensure that a women’s claim on this type of crime would be looked at seroiusly). Maybe there is less of them in one place, our “established” culture is less homegenous, I don’t know.
I haven’t been to Dearborn, Michigan which has a substantial Muslim population who (I’ve read) are largely segregated from the rest of the populace there. This could happen there.
As for these men, I hope they get repaid in kind wherever they end up. Absolute scum.
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Comment on For Nationalists Only: What’s great about living in the United Kingdom?
on 17 April 2012 at 3:01 pm
I love the parades on July 12th.
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Comment on Is it time for unionists to make peace with Ireland’s Patriot Dead?
on 5 April 2012 at 3:56 pm
“There is, of course, another way of looking at it. Had the 1916 rising not happened, partition might not have occurred and Northern Ireland might now be part of a Republic of Ireland. Perhaps the Unionists should celebrate the 1916 insurgents for preseving Northern Ireland in the Union.”
Laughable. The Irish played the democratic game by London’s stacked rules for decades, and finally when their overwhelming will was recognized and Home Rule was passed and signed into the law by the King, the Unionists formed an army and vowed to resist it to the last. The British establishment looked the other way as they armed themselvse to the teeth, and the British military refused to stand up to them. This effectively doomed any settlement without partition, which was the whole point of the Unionist rebellion.
It’s a bit much to blame partition on the men of 1916. The seminal moment in Irish history was not the Rising, but the 1912 unionists rebellion. Without that, which brought the gun into Irish politics, 1916 never would have happened.
And here we are today, 100 years later.
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Comment on Is it time for unionists to make peace with Ireland’s Patriot Dead?
on 5 April 2012 at 1:35 am
Neutral observers would recognize the Republicans of the revolutionary era as patriots fighting for their country’s long denied right to self determination against an intransigent Empire who never delivered on promises and ignored democratic results.
To suggest that Unionists, or others, should make peace with the Provos and their fellow travelers is insulting to us all. They fought against the wishes of the majority of the nationalists within the 6 counties, let alone the whole country. They ran criminal rackets, slaughtered civilians, and disgraced the Irish flag they claimed to represent.
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Comment on Why the ‘sacred myth’ matters more than money in politics…
on 22 March 2012 at 2:47 am
“He destroyed this state before he moved on to the Whitehouse”
Reagan destroyed California? There were a lot of factors that led to the current pathetic state of the Bear Republic, but Reagan wouldn’t be too high on that list. Probably the worst offender is the constitution of the State itself. Direct democracy doesn’t work-Proposition 13 onward is good proof of that. Hell, the current governor’s first stint in office included quite a few things that set up California for failure.
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Comment on Peace Monitoring Report: Should there be a strategy to tackle long-term catholic unemployment and deprivation?
on 8 March 2012 at 3:29 pm
All those unemployed Catholics are actually busy in a still active IRA, secretly training for the great Rising of 2016 to take place in Belfast, a hundred years to the day after the epic Rising took place in Dublin.
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