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Books
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
Tweet This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising [...] read our review » -
Turas, by Colin Neill – a story of strangers in a strange land
Tweet Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed [...] read our review »
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The ANC, the IRA and the rise of influence of the left within Sinn Fein…
Tweet World by Storm has a nice piece up on the IRA’s role in helping MK, the armed wing of the ANC, in the 1980s. In particular he sees a strange alchemy at work there: …if one can think of a clearly legitimate contemporary struggle it was that against apartheid and it is to the [...] read our review »
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Comment on The struggle for abortion and other reform north and south is far from over
on 4 May 2013 at 2:34 pm
This sorry episode only reinforces my unionism. Asking Ulster to join Eire is like asking Florida to join Guatamala
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Comment on The struggle for abortion and other reform north and south is far from over
on 4 May 2013 at 2:33 pm
Poor old Eire. It thinks its free yet it happy to be a dupe of the Church of Rome and lets its priests and bishops and popes dictate the terms of people’s lives
Where was Salvita’s right to life?
Its time Eire woke up from its Vatican slumber and truly free itself
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Comment on Micheál Martin: Legacy of 1916 is to build rather than to divide the Irish nation…
on 21 April 2013 at 3:18 pm
“The inhumanity of many of their actions”
What, just “many” and not all? Does this slip of the mask, sorry tongue imply that some of their actions were not inhuman according to Mr M Martin?
As for condemning the Provos for lack of support – this is an unsound basis for deciding what is right and wrong. I don’t recall the people who tok over the Dublin GPO (I hope they looted the stamps to make it worth their while) having a lot of support. Also would bombing and shooting innocent people be ok if the Provos did have majority support? If so, then one would have to query the rights and wrongs of Hitler then but I know we won’t
Terrorism is wrong, period. If a majority of the people support terrorism then it merely means that the state would be a terrorist state. Democracy is not just the slavish 50%+1 principle many people dumbly believe it is.
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Comment on Is the proof of Margaret Thatcher’s Northern Ireland policy the prosperity of modern Sinn Fein?
on 10 April 2013 at 9:20 pm
If child murderers in England went on hunger strike and died would the people of England suddenly start to support parties that supported infanticide?
I never bought this theory that Thatchers hard line fanned the flames of Sinn Feins support. The pathetic fact is that many nationalists were itching to vote SF and they jumped on the bandwagon
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 11:08 pm
I am mercurial and always see the other point of view at various times.
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 10:05 pm
Where’s the link to older comments?
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 8:16 pm
thanks Mr Joe
I don’t feel the same about the Tricolour in Eire. I have allegiance to the UK and my flag is the Union but within NI that flag too is sullied by bigotry and murder.
I guess it’s the context where one sees it. I can only speak off my childhood in Tyrone and life in Belfast
many folk have a decent sense of respect for either flag but within NI both are blood stained rags
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 3:10 pm
As an Irish unionist who wants the whole island to return to the UK, the tricolour is the flag of narrow secessionists and the bloodthirst of Pearce.
a flag of poverty, condolences to Germany on Hitlers death, sitting on the fence during WW2, Haughey the Irish Berlosconi, gombeen politics
Ireland deserved better
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Comment on What does the Irish flag mean to you?
on 2 April 2013 at 2:36 pm
the original meaning is lost forever. It’s a bloody idiom, soiled with the blood of IRA victims. I can’t look at this flag without images of balaclavas, gun volleys, mono culturalism. The tricolour of an insular state that prefers the soft
Soggy bed of the past than the future because we know the past is there but the future isn’t so well defined. It’s the flag of a country that sees no problem with roman oppression of its souls yet took issue with British rule.
I grew up as a RC and went to a CBS. I know what this flags means to those who love it and the people who loved it made me sick to my stomach for they just supported the murder of Protestants. Any uniform the dead wore when they hit the ground was a bye the bye.
Even if a UI came about, that flag would need to be changed. You can fix a mirror when its broke but you can still see the crack.
The cross of St Patrick is a worthy replacement
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Comment on What will become of the May 2015 UK Parliament if Scotland votes “Yes” on independence?
on 24 March 2013 at 6:05 pm
what if every county in the country wanted “independence” ? Shouldthey get it just because they want it? We would end up in a Passport to Pimlico world of sheer nonsense
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