Profile for David Crookes
Latest posts from David Crookes (see all)
David Crookes has posted 4 times (0 in the last month).
Could it be a UFO?
Tweet Between 11.40 and 11.44 tonight what looked like a fiery disc or sphere pursued what looked like a slow curvilinear course across the sky over South Belfast. Did anyone else notice it, and can someone explain it in unspectacular terms? more »
Cleaning up the Augean stables with a feather-duster
Tweet In responding to the crimes of its clergy, the Vatican has chosen to operate at an almost unimaginable level of triviality. First of all the Irish bishops fly over to Rome and MEET THE POPE. Then the Pope announces that is going to WRITE A LETTER.I’m reminded of a passage from Sir Walter Scott’s [...] more »
What happens to UCUNF now?
Tweet The NI tail of the UCUNF dog has gone against the Conservative party’s policy on P&J for NI. Sir Reg Empey has seriously embarrassed Mr Cameron, who is now seen both by Democrats and by Republicans in the USA as a dog who can’t control his own tiny tail. How long can UCUNF survive [...] more »
TUV councillor apologizes for comparing police officers to the Gestapo
Tweet According to the BBC, a statement recently released by the TUV includes the following passage. “Considering some of the extreme comments made in the past about the police by DUP leadership figures, we take no lectures from the DUP, but commend Alderman Calvert for acknowledging that his remarks were inappropriate.” More than a few [...] more »
Latest comments from David Crookes (see all)
David Crookes has commented 1,058 times (18 in the last month).
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Books
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Death of Dolours Price – opens up possibility that her taped oral history will be published (or not)
Tweet Dolours Price – sister, mother, bomber, prisoner and a thorn in Gerry Adams’ side – died in her Malahide home on Wednesday night. The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald writes: Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey in 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to [...] read our review » -
“Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
Tweet I initially wrote this when the book was first published three years ago; whilst certain elements of it now sound dated, its basic premise that the period of 1997-2007 was a period of irreversible decay for Northern Irish Unionism can still be argued as a valid opinion. My own feeling is that it did [...] read our review » -
The First Shades of God (Jamie Bryson): unremarkable theology, but an insight into the mind of the protest-organiser
Tweet Jamie Bryson has come to prominence recently as one of the leaders of the flag protests across Northern Ireland. As Chris Donnelly pointed out in his post (and was echoed later in the Belfast Telegraph), Jamie Bryson is a well known loyalist in North Down where he unsuccessfully stood at the council elections under [...] read our review »
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 21 May 2013 at 4:39 pm
ayeYerMa, you’re right to complain about the people who make out that “the agreed solution must not be spoken of or stood behind with pride.”
After all their lovey-dovey talk on the plane back from St Andrews, SF still can’t call the state of Northern Ireland by its proper name.
Some of us, whom you would call not-actual-unionists, are British in our hearts and souls. Our families have served in the Crown forces for generations. We are reluctantly coming to realize that people on the mainland don’t want the union. That realization, along with our conviction that the UK is becoming a cold house for Christianity, leads us to explore some kind of monarchical all-Ireland solution.
Any such solution will require the electoral neutralization of SF. If SF is malignantly anti-British now, what will it be like as a major player in a unitary state?
Clever people often say that SF has no serious plan for a UI. That is stupid. Of course SF has a plan for the sort of UI that it wants. Robert Mugabe had a plan for the sort of Zimbabwe that he wanted, but he was clever enough not to tell any of his fellow-negotiators what it was. No one should object to that adduction. Many of my own folk, especially in border areas, lived through something that was close to genicidal war.
Thanks for your posting, and I’m sorry if you think I’m selling the pass.
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 21 May 2013 at 2:01 pm
Blue Hammer, you say, “…..when I spoke of change, quite clearly the BIGGEST change would have to be in me, in conceding the principle of an agreed unitary Ireland as the solution to the violence here.”
Agree 100%. But unionists may find that playing that hand cuts the ground from under SF. Transmuted unionism might confound SF and old-fashioned republicanism by knowing where it wants to go.
Your penultimate paragraph really says it all.
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 21 May 2013 at 10:53 am
Many thanks, Blue Hammer. If we unionists do decide to go for what you call ‘that future’, then SF may become a minor quantity in the overall equation, and the AP may disappear altogether.
For their part FF and FG will have to change beyond recognition. (Their present predication on the Civil War would be an absurdity in a new Ireland.)
One thing we can say with certainty. NI’s unionists are not going to be absorbed in a Gaelic republic.
If a UI project ever gets under way, the preternatural self-importance of our present political parties will be unable to impede its progress. In fact, if sufficient numbers of ordinary unionist voters make the leap of faith that I see as necessary, the local parties will have to choose between change and death. All of them. Especially SF.
No NI party will be ‘owed’ anything in a new Ireland: but the party that sees the future and goes for it may in time consign its weary old rivals to the Ulster Museum.
Oul wild talk! But somebody has to come out with it.
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 21 May 2013 at 12:45 am
Many thanks, Red Lion. What the SAA gave us was a new political structure with the old politicians in charge. Inevitable, of course: but I reckon that weariness with these museum pieces lies behind the unwillingness of many unionist electors to vote in elections.
Rip-van-Winkel thinking is still displayed, even by younger MLAs, on both sides of the house. One lot refuses to support the Parades Commission. Another lot refuses to say ‘Northern Ireland’.
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 20 May 2013 at 7:02 pm
Thanks, Mick. ‘Precious delft’ will have to be smashed in the course of any seriously new approach. For people on my side of the fence, it’ll mean admitting first that our emotional affinities with the mainland constitute a case of unrequited love, and secondly that we have a great deal in common with citizens of the present RoI. For everyone else on the island, it’ll mean admitting that everything must be negotiable, including even the idea of a republican constitution.
The clever people, the academics, and the political theorists will have their own delft to smash: notably the idea that ordinary people can be told what to do. Whatever new all-Ireland alloy comes out of the melting-pot will probably surprise all of us to some extent, but it will work only if it represents something that ordinary people can buy into. A melting-pot works because of energy that comes from below, not from above.
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Comment on After the political victory of the GFA is Northern Ireland slipping back into another ‘big sleep’?
on 20 May 2013 at 3:12 pm
Great posting, Mick: thanks.
Part of the trouble is that even the middle ground is clogged with ‘weary old knights’. Another part of the trouble is that these particular knights want us live in an intellectual limbo, with the big constitutional question left on ice.
What we really need is a bold new constitutional doctrine. I don’t want to bore you and everyone else by repeating at length things that I’ve said before, so let me have a shot at saying multum in parvo.
I want my own folk in East Belfast and Ballymena to have as much political power as people in East London and Billericay.
My own folk are never going to have any power in a union for which the mainland population has no enthusisam.
My own folk are already living in limbo.
If they voluntarily make their future in an all-Ireland context, they will be able to make positive things happen. At present they can’t.
The ‘big sleep’ that you talk about favours only tired old politicians who believe that they own the electorate.
Tinkering with the present union is a bit like tinkering with a corpse. Tinker tinker tinker, and let the ‘big sleep’ continue.
No, thanks.
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Comment on Taking years off your life – NI life expectancy deprivation gaps show increase over last decade
on 18 May 2013 at 2:45 pm
Would it be fatuous to factor the degree of alcohol and tobacco consumption into the various equations?
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Comment on Radical Independence & The Jamaican, Ugandan & Pakistani UKIP candidates
on 18 May 2013 at 2:41 pm
Agree 100%, Red Lion.
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Comment on Increasing numbers of passengers let the train take the strain … apart from a 10 year decline on the Enterprise
on 14 May 2013 at 11:52 am
Tremendous posting, Alan, many thanks.
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Comment on Presbyterian Church Punishes Ford for Marriage Equality Vote
on 30 April 2013 at 3:44 pm
No, babyface, but Christians are allowed to vote coolheadedly against things which they honestly believe will destabilize their own societies irremediably. If Christian legislators get it wrong, electors can vote them out.
That is as far as you can go in a democracy.
Some angry persons scornfully attack both the MLAs who vote in a certain way AND THE ELECTORS WHO SUPPORT THEM. Such angry persons come across to ordinary people like me as proponents of a minoritarian dictatorship.
It is a fact that several MLAs and many electors feel a sympathy in their hearts for flags protesters who recently committed illegal acts. I can deplore that fact, but I have to address it in a democratic manner.
Illegal activity can threaten democracy. So can the conceit of people who believe themselves to constitute the intelligentsia. Democracy is a balancing-act.
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