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Books
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Kevin Myers’ ‘Watching the Door’: Book Review
This reads as if a mad picaresque tale. Myers as first a reporter for RTÉ and then as a freelance journalist with no real experience, finds himself wandering into savagery as he hastens north as the Troubles explode. A soldier dies next to him; he witnesses an IRA ambush; he sees children shot to death [...] read our review »
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Have we Learned our own Lessons? Book Review of John Brewer’s Peace Processes
Northern Ireland’s peace process has been promoted as an international success story. The Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs has its Conflict Resolution Unit, which aims to disseminate the ‘lessons’ of the Northern Ireland peace process. And some of the prominent players in our peace process have travelled abroad to other troubled spots to share their [...] read our review »
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Sunday Supplement
It being Sunday, we’ve all got time to consider and ponder things at greater length than during the working week, yes? If it’s good enough for the Sunday papers, it’s good enough for this guest blogger. So here’s the review section… Actually, it’s my introduction to a book published last year, Goin’ Down Slow: selected [...] read our review »
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Comment on Case for unification: “I sense that republicans don’t actually know the answer themselves”
on 13 February 2012 at 8:34 pm
lover not a fighter
That kind of assumes that the Larne / Stranraer ferry route, or all the other ways goods can flow between NI and GB, is some kind of massive barrier to trade, while the NI / RoI border with it’s different currency and tax regimes either side is scarcely a barrier at all. The logic seems to say that Japan should be administered as four different economic systems and New Zealand as two.
In fact in many cases the Irish Sea is no real barrier for fresh perishable food, never mind non perishable objects or call centre services.
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Comment on So what’s the formula for a referendum, Owen?
on 6 February 2012 at 11:55 pm
Anyone at all sane would have to accept that the chances of a united Ireland vote succeeding right now are essentially zero. On a good day unionist parties, not including Alliance, still bring in >50% of the total vote. This is before we discuss the nationalist party voters who may vote for the union or the Catholic non-voters who may vote for the union, or the relative voting differential.
The chance that the people of Northern Ireland would right now vote for a united Ireland is pretty much zero. Sinn Fein should address themselves to that fact and try to change it rather than calling for referendums that will humiliate them (under present circumstances).
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Comment on The UK comprises four nations not two and its history is a lot more complicated than many seem to appreciate
on 6 February 2012 at 3:10 pm
sherdy
Yes Scotland is ruled from Belfast and Cardiff, and Birmingham and Dundee and Truro. People from all of those places go to a room where they vote on what the laws and policies in Scotland should be. The fact that that particular room has a geographical grid reference within the boundaries of England has no more relevance than if it where in Sealand, the North Pole or on the moon.
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Comment on McGuinness wants to support Northern Irish football team?
on 4 February 2012 at 12:08 pm
DT123
It’s very true that the analogy is faulty. The Northern Ireland football team is much less sectarian in principle than the GAA is. In principle the Northern Ireland football team is no more sectarian than the Northern Ireland Archery Society or the Northern Ireland Amateur Astronomy Society, whereas the GAA promotes a particular ethnic minority identity in principle and in practice has promoted the ethos of a particular minority religion.
Martin McGuinness attending an Orange Order march would be more analogous to Peter Robinson attending GAA. It wouldn’t be a perfect analogy either but it would be a closer analogy to the one being made. One might say that Protestants are allowed to play GAA but Catholics are not allowed to join the Orange Order, but I might counter that by saying that a Catholic can still choose to join the Orange Order and even become a Grand Chaplain like William McDermott, just as a Protestant can, through making certain choices, eventually aspire to be the Pope, whereas there is absolutely no way that I can choose to make my ancestors Gaelic as opposed to Lowland Scots / English. I may be able to choose to be Irish but I cannot choose to be Gaelic.
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Comment on Yes Taoiseach, but if we’re going to have a Referendum why not have a meaningful one?
on 31 January 2012 at 3:40 am
I couldn’t give a monkey’s what they do because they are a foreign country, just like Sarkozy and his antics, both of which have probably a roughly equal influence on my future life.
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Comment on Questions for Ulster Protestants
on 28 January 2012 at 12:52 pm
There are essentially two nations residing on this island, which regrettably history has made geographically interlaced.
The only possibly morally justifiable way to incorporate that within a single state would have to involve a joint veto such as Turkish Cypriots would have received under the Annan Plan, or the arrangements in Belgium or Bosnia Herzegovina. In a united Ireland all legislation of the “national” parliament would require the consent of unionists separately. Nothing short of that could possibly be more morally justified than an alternative arrangement that involves some form of partition. Anything short of that would also be pointless, unnatural or couldn’t possibly last anyway.
If, as the Greek Cypriots found the Annan Plan unacceptable, Irish nationalists would find that unacceptable, then so be it, a partitioned arrangement it would have to be. Irish nationalists certainly do not deserve any more than that considering the thirty years of killings and injuries that ultimately stemmed from the root cause of an irredentist Irish nationalist philosophy that was incapable of treating unionists as equals with the same rights of self rule and self determination as Irish nationalists.
Of course I know the violence was multi-sided, before anyway points that out, but contra Mary McAleese’s comments on Protestant children it was the fact that Catholic children were taught an immoral philosophy that they collectively owned all of Ireland and had a right to rule all the people on it that was the real ultimate cause, both necessary and sufficient, for bringing the troubles about. If we’d had no UVF then we’d still have had the troubles. If we’d had no IRA the troubles would never have existed.
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