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Douglas Murray – Bloody Sunday: Truth, Lies and the Saville Inquiry, Book Review
The aftermath of the Saville Inquiry into the events around Bloody Sunday has left me, and I suspect many others, with one enduring image: Prime Minister David Cameron’s apology in the House of Commons, where he says that the actions of the British Army were ‘unjustified and unjustifiable.’ But there’s a lot more to the [...] read our review » -
Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011
Writer Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was as contrary as he was brilliant. Here is a brief In Memoriam from Vanity Fair (his outlet of choice since 1992) and, here, a longer tribute from his friend Christopher Buckley Stanley in The New Yorker. Better, perhaps, though to post one of Hitchens’ own writings in [...] read our review »
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The Irish political journalist’s problem with partial disclosure…
The nod and wink politics of Ireland’s last two or three decades as practised par excellence by Bertie, Albert and Charlie is ultimately what has the Republic in the stew it’s in. Don’t get me wrong, the effective monitoring of those exercising of power does not demand full disclosure of everything all the time. But [...] read our review »
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Comment on Did the DUP ask the nice lady if she would ACTUALLY vote for them?
on 14 April 2010 at 9:49 pm
Neil – I don’t actually know what DV had to say in his last post – his argument may well have been a perfectly good one. The problem is that I had to stop trying to read it because it was so difficult to scan. Don’t know what kind of breach of etiquette that is!
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Comment on Did the DUP ask the nice lady if she would ACTUALLY vote for them?
on 14 April 2010 at 9:29 pm
DV – If you really want people to read what you have to say, please start using capitals, reasonable punctuation, and a spelling and grammar checker.
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Comment on Overheard on the plane out of Belfast…
on 2 April 2010 at 2:05 am
I can’t resist – belatedly – adding one to the pile. A big bruiser of a man walked into a greegrocer’s and asked for half a cabbage. The shop assistant said he was sorry but they only sold whole cabbages. The customer repeated, in a threatening voice, that he’d come for half a cabbage and wasn’t leaving without it. The assistant tried to reason with him, but to no avail. In the end he said he would go into the back of the shop and consult the boss. Unknown to him the customer followed him. Look, said the assistant to the boss, “What am I going to do: there’s this big f…ing bastard out there looking for half a cabbage”. Just then he caught sight of the large customer out of the corner of his eye, and continued “and this gentleman wants the other half.”
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Comment on “There is something innately toxic about a public position that demands of all of us…”
on 31 March 2010 at 1:52 am
Would someone in Slugger admin please have Musterview’s last post removed. It is not only inaccurate but is deeply offensive and libellous.
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Comment on Sinn Féin’s sole Banbridge District councillor resigns from party
on 30 March 2010 at 1:41 am
Michealhenry
Bit of whistling in the dark going on there! Why did you bother?
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Comment on Belfast’s ‘Magic Jug’?
on 29 March 2010 at 9:27 pm
Oh dear! I’m not a Belfastman, but Belfast pleases me when I visit, often for architectural reasons. Ugly Belfast? Certainly not. Provincial Belfast? Yes – but why is ‘provincial’ being so obviously used here as a (patronising) insult? I must also announce that if the artist’s impression is anything to go by, I’m quite taken by the ‘Magic Jug’ – and, like Joe, look forward greatly to seeing the finished article standing in Fountain Street so I can make my definitive judgement.
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Comment on Adams ordered McConville execution, says ex-IRA leader…
on 29 March 2010 at 1:57 am
A lot of wasted words on this thread – though also some stuff with which I can agree. Cutting through all that, however, the most significant contribution that Brendan Hughes made before he died – in railing against the awful waste that the armed struggle represented – was to chime with Seamus Mallon’s claim that the GFA was “Sunningdale for slow learners”. Hughes is reported as saying that: “From a nationalist perspective what we have now we could have had at any time in the last twenty-five years”. I concur as well with Seosamh913 that it is crazy to give credit to Gerry Adams for bring to an end something that he and his comrades ought never to have started. And I agree too with Turgon that those who actually killed Jean McConville are as guilty as whoever ordered it – even if they have recourse to the ‘only following orders’ defence.
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Comment on Robinson: “They have not laid a glove on me…”
on 28 March 2010 at 2:01 am
Harry J – If, as you concede, “breaking the ministerial code…was the BBCs ONLY allegation about Peter.”, do you accept that his attack on Martina Purdy was not only shockingly bad-mannered but also inaccurate? (By the way, more power to her – she was completely unfazed by his offensive treatment of her.)
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Comment on An honourable farewell – Chris Mullin MP
on 27 March 2010 at 11:54 pm
Intell-I
You surely owe us an explanation for your dismissive comment.
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Comment on Grand Opera House to workshop “the Unionist story’…
on 27 March 2010 at 1:44 am
Catinhat & Drumlin’s Rock
Thank you both. Delay in response due to me having other things to do than sit in front of this machine! The info about the Reivers was particularly interesting, and I have followed some of the very informative links from that. What becomes clear is that the great majority of the settlers/planters were Scots – Presbyterians in particular, although there were Scottish Episcopalians among them. I was also surprised to find – though on reflection I ought not to have been – that so many highlanders (who must have been Gaelic-speaking, and perhaps some of them Catholic) had been emigrating to north-east Ulster from long before the Plantation. Indeed the traffic was not just one way.
However, although the Church of Ireland was tithe-supported, it must have had enough of its own adherents to fill churches. For example it was partly because the lovely wee Anglican parish church of St Augustine on Derry’s Walls (the Walls of course built after the church was) was overflowing that the initiative was taken to erect the new St Columb’s Cathedral (also before the Walls were begun) little more than a hundred metres away. And of course the early Presbyterian church that was eventually replaced by the present First Derry was not in fact completed until after the Walls were up – in ’16 and 90 famous’ would you believe.
But some puzzles remain. Firstly, you say, Catinhat, that “The Presbyterian/Anglican divide is, and probably even then was, a very flimsy divide in terms of preventing intermarriage.” That’s plainly true now, and has obviously been so for some time. (It’s also true, of course, that until the Ne Temere decree there was significant Catholic/Protestant intermarriage as well.) But until the early 19th century the Presbyterian/Anglican divide must surely have been socially strongly marked by the legal disadvantages which Presbyterians suffered together with Catholics – and indeed with all dissenters from the Established Church, including, as I now know, those from Cumberland and Northumberland. Also surely a mark of difference was that the first great wave of emigration from Ireland to North America was by Presbyterians frustrated by their second-class citizenship.
Secondly, you are obviously correct to say that whatever cultural differences there may have been to begin with were quickly subsumed into a new and shared culture, especially as regards speech patterns – my late father-in-law, a Tyrone Catholic, was a mine of what we would now call Ulster-Scots usage. What I still don’t quite understand, however, is why all the emphasis is on the Scottish tradition – unless it is because it is so much more flamboyant!
Joe
I’m sorry you have been deprived; but so too have I. Despite RTÉ’s declared intention to permit Northern Ireland internet users access to the RTÉ Player, because I have a UK IP address I cannot get near it. Representations containing accusations of partitionism have been to no avail. However, one small window will soon open of which you too will be able to avail. From 1 April I think it is, Irish language station TG4 will permit international access to its view-later thing; I know it’s not BBC Alba, but there are lots of goodies available, especially musical.
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