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Books
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A poem for the day – Launching the Whaler Juan Peron
A Belfast epic, and one of my oldest poems, the opener of my first collection, Grub. The gist of the story was found in Moss & Hume’s Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861-1986, which tells how Eva Peron was due to launch a huge whaling vessel in Belfast, built [...] read our review » -
Do Words Matter?: Book Review of Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution – Debating Peace in Northern Ireland
I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and allows [...] read our review »
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“You can see Newton’s mind at work…”
To add to the open access treasure trove at the Royal Society, Cambridge University Library is putting online some of its collection of books, maps, manuscripts and journals. We have called the first phase of our work on the Cambridge Digital Library the Foundations Project, which runs from mid-2010 to mid-2013 and has been made possible [...] read our review »
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Comment on An open letter to Owen Paterson: Where now for a *UK* Conservative Party?
on 24 January 2011 at 11:31 am
just on a purely technical note, if it was sent to the SofS’s ministerial office, they would be unable to deal with that e mail as it is a party political matter and it would be passed on to the Minister’s constituency office to organise a response. That might explain the delay. The authors may wish to re send it there to ensure it is properly dealt with.
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Comment on Alex Kane on terrorist rebranding
on 21 November 2010 at 10:04 pm
Has Alex joined the TUV without telling anyone?
Whilst agreeing with the notion that renaming them serves little purpose, there is little in the comment to suggest a real understanding of why they exist and what they are about.
Dissidents are not a matter for national security per se. They are another symptom of our dysfunctional society.
Surely we would all no doubt be relatively pleased to be termed a ‘dissident’ in our railing against the machine, and many of us would hope to be ‘radical’ in our thinking and political outlook.
The real question re dissidents is about how to find a way of allowing the argument to be acceptable without the violence which accompanies it. To do that, dialogue is essential. None of us have the exclusive rights on what is right or wrong in a political sense, but if anything of our recent past is obvious it’s that exclusion is pointless and merely delays any kind of progress.
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