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Books
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Graphic portrayals: Northern Ireland, graphic novels and the peace process
Dr Gordon Gillespie, a researcher at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, gave a presentation on “Graphic Portrayals: Northern Ireland, Graphic Novels and the Peace Process”, at the Linen Hall Library. Gordon started with a clarification that he was going to talk about graphic novels/comic books, not cartoons, and material that was [...] read our review »
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Books: Listening to Van Morrison…
Great little review of Listening to Van Morrison by Griel Marcus… It’s a short book, not a biography or a career survey, but an attempt to follow those moments in Morrison’s music, as he’s made it from his first records with Them, from Belfast in 1965 to the present day, when something happens that breaks [...] read our review »
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Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation. A book about how things are changing.
Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland is a new academic tome by lecturer and researcher Lee Smithey. In the book the Pennsylvania academic outlines his findings based on 67 interviews over eighteen months with grassroots activists in unionist and loyalist communities and organisations. This is largely a book about men, even though they [...] read our review »
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Comment on Unionist cause in Scotland should fight from a position of strength
on 20 January 2012 at 6:32 pm
Scotland is not a colony, it’s a member of the UK, just like England. And England has exactly the same right to leave as Scotland. So let’s forget about what the Scots want, and think instead about what the English want.
If the Scots are entitled to a referendum on leaving the UK, so are the English. It is absurd to suggest that the English vote on whether the Scots should leave.
It would be astute for many reasons for the UK Government to carry out a referendum now among the English on leaving the UK, and allow the Scots to run their referendum on exactly the same question whenever they like.
The English referendum could also ask if they agree to unity with Wales, if the Welsh agree to it, and a simultaneous referendum in Wales could ask if they want unity with England, if the English want it.
At present the debate is all about what the Scots may or may not want. It’s high time that the English were consulted about what they want England to do, not what they want Scotland to do. The political chattering classes in Westminster seem to have missed this essential point, as has Alec Salmond, but the rest of us have not.
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