Profile for Rory Carr
Silver haired, silver tongued boulevardier who has survived long years in Tottenham despite an outspoken passion for the Gunners only by dint of his great personal charm.
Heroes from history: Robert Emmet; Tom Paine;Crazy Horse;Pancho Villa; Joe Hill; Mother Jones; Stalin;Vo Nguyen Giap
Literary favourites:Cervantes; Voltaire; JM Synge; Arthur Miller; Frank Norris;Ambrose Bierce; F Scott Fitzgerald; Philip Roth; Cormac McCarthy: Frank O'Connor; Donald Westlake;Nikos Kazantzakis; James Lee Burke; George Pelicanos; John Sandford etc. etc.
Cinema: John Ford; John Ford and John Ford
Music: Kristofferson; George Jones; Willie;Sinatra; Ella;Hot Jazz Club; Ry Cooder; Robeson.
Latest comments from Rory Carr (see all)
Rory Carr has commented 1,683 times (15 in the last month).
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Books
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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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“Good Friday. The death of Irish Republicanism” by Anthony McIntyre: a review
This was a book that I first reviewed at the same time as “Unionism Decayed” back in 2008. Like Vance’s work, it is the author’s portrayal of a defeated political movement or ideal and as a Unionist it was instructional to read an interpretation of the immediate post-Agreement period from the other side of the fence. [...] read our review » -
Risk of going beyond either/or…
This is article was first published in Fortnight magazine back in February 2003. Chris Farrington is now a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. Although the circumstances it describes has changed radically and [...] read our review »
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Comment on The withering of Irish Catholicism sees Sunday attendance plummet in the cities…
on 18 May 2012 at 5:57 pm
Those of you suffering from depression as result of disillusionment with the Catholic Church in which you had placed so much faith and trust may wish to find some form of therapy on the Horror Channel on television tonight with a film titled Nude Nuns With Big Guns 2010 (I kid you not).
The synopsis reads:
“After taking her vows as a nun, Sister Sarah is drugged and abused to the brink of death. But now she’s broken the habit, got herself a gun, and the clergy will pay.” (Don’t blame me, I don’t write this stuff.)
It is described as “A superior revenge thriller.”
I shall be riveted myself.
A “Mother Superior” revenge thriller more like.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 17 May 2012 at 8:35 pm
“First Minister Peter Robinson said he’d been in dozens of golf clubs and never heard any bitter or sectarian comments in them.”
How terribly disappointing for the man. Would never have happened in the good ol’ days.
Which, joking aside, really supplies the answer, which is patience and the passage of time. The sectarian, racist, sexist boors will eventually become passé, an emabarrassment barely tolerated and then, if at all, in deference to their advanced years and a piitying remark to the effect that they “don’t know any better”.
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Comment on “I don’t think this generation is any different than the last…”
on 15 May 2012 at 5:59 am
I think the problem is, Harry, that while the Afro remained bushy as ever in your mind’s eye, McCann aged along with the rest of us in the last quarter of a century or more since you have obviously have had sight of him.
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Comment on Hasten slowly – though no tangible signs that the Anglican supertanker is turning
on 14 May 2012 at 10:10 pm
Matthew 15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
It strikes me, Newman tah you might care to take note of this verse as it seems to me that from all the other verses which you have selected you appear to have extrapolated from their condemnation of lust, promiscuity etc a blanket condemnation of loving sexual acts between two human beings of the same sex, yet nowhere is this stated. I expect that historical usage impels you to equate “fornication” with homosexual acts but that comes, I would suggest, from your mind (or the minds of other men who have influenced you).
But why listen to me – I am the sort of guy who takes his Christian interpretation from fictional characters – Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn and Zorba the Greek (above all Zorba who after confessing to murder, arson and rape in his youth in the wars against the Turks now says, “I no longer ask if a man is Turk or Greek, I only ask, ‘Is he a good man or a bad man?’, and, I swear by all that’s holy, the older I get, I do not even ask that, all I ask is, ”Is he a man?’ ”
Live and let live.
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Comment on Hasten slowly – though no tangible signs that the Anglican supertanker is turning
on 14 May 2012 at 6:35 pm
Pity we don’t know what God thinks about all of this.
And not one religious out there who might tell us what it is that God thinks. I suppose it’s that innate sense of modesty that accompanies advanced spiritual enlightenment that prevents them from speaking out.
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Comment on “I don’t think this generation is any different than the last…”
on 14 May 2012 at 5:57 pm
“Matt Baggott… promised… that his officers would bring those behind the vigilante terror campaign to justice.”
Hope he did not also promise that he expected his success rate in this endeavour to be on a par with the PSNI’s (or indeed any Western police force’s) success in dealing with the drug problem itself.
Indeed if he were to be successful then his force which has signally failed in its attempts (or lack thereof) to cope with drug trafficking and all the social ills that spring therefrom might find themselves in the curius position of being capable only of arresting those men who at least seemed willing, and even capable, of dealing with a criminal scourge that the police themselves are incapable (some, including myself, think, unwilling) of dealing with.
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Comment on Hasten slowly – though no tangible signs that the Anglican supertanker is turning
on 14 May 2012 at 5:14 pm
“Other parts of the New Testament are replete with references to avoiding sexual misconduct and spell out in detail what has developed into the teaching of the Church. ”
There you go, I know my powers of recall were suffering from a touch of the Ruperts.
Can you perhaps direct old forgetful fogies like me to just a few of those many “references to sexual misconduct” with which the Gospels are as you say, “replete”, Newman. Especially any juicy bits on sexual misconduct mano a mano to keep us in the zeitgeist so to speak.
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Comment on Hasten slowly – though no tangible signs that the Anglican supertanker is turning
on 14 May 2012 at 3:45 pm
Christ did indeed have something to say on divorce in Matthhew (V as I recall). He urged that a man not put away his wife for any reason other than adultery. He did not say if a woman might reciprocate in kind. But we do know that she could not. A wife was obliged to endure her husband’s consorting with harlots and had no recourse in rabbinical law. Indeed, to this day, the girls outside Stamford Hill Railway Station feed a roaring custom from ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish men as they are obliged by religious custom to refrain from sexual relationships with their wives during her menstruation. Very understanding one might think. He also cautioned against lust and the ensuing blindness of the spirit thereof.
He did not however dwell on specific relationships and there is nothing in the Gospels of which I am aware which allows for a blanket condemnation of any particular sexual act where harm neither ensues nor is intended.
But perhaps my recall is again less than it might be and, if so, I am sure that Newman will be happy to correct me.
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Comment on Ian Junior claimed £10,000 in postage in his six last months in office…
on 14 May 2012 at 2:51 pm
In the House of Commons one uses (or at least used) the House embossed notepaper and envelopes and then just drops (or has one’s secretary drop) the outgoing mail into the House letter-box unstamped. Presumably a postal worker took care of the rest.
If, as a member of the general public, one might have the use of one of the Committee Rooms to hold a meeting say in support of anti-apartheid or a an international friendship group such as the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign or somesuch, then copious amounts of this stationery was to hand at the desk one occupied and there was always (I imagine) the temptation to pop one’s own personal (or lots of group circulars) into a handy HoC enevelope and post them in the House post-box on the way out.
In common with an other ellderly gentleman who attempted to use the House to his own ends, I cannot however recall if anyone actually took advantage of such a security lapse during meetings which I attended..
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Comment on Pay your rates by credit card: you pay 2% extra. Pay by debit card: LPS pay 29p.
on 14 May 2012 at 1:58 pm
…and you found the evidence to support what “the truth is”, where exactly, StreetLegal ?
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