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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 » -
Turas, by Colin Neill – a story of strangers in a strange land
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 the [...] read our review »
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Round up of Tuesday’s Political Studies Association conference
If you want to get a flavour of the proceedings at the Political Studies Association conference on its opening day, then the Storify collation below will bring you some of the images, tweets and sounds of the day. Particular highlights included: the Opening Plenary with David Blunkett, Peter Riddell and Matthew Flinders; and the late [...] read our review »
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Comment on Belfast Black Taxi Tour – political insight or Troubles tourism?
on 22 May 2012 at 12:02 pm
Well it seems the FTA have decided to get in on the act themselves as it wont be too long before they have their own bus on the road cutting out the individual taxi drivers. Im looking forward to seeing the advertising on that bus. Little James the murals were there long before these black taxi tours started.
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Comment on Willie Flags Up An Interesting Question
on 21 May 2012 at 11:21 am
Its not as if Willie hasn’t made exactly the same mistake before and you could forgive a fool but this man is dangerous, his hatred is blinding him and putting others at risk, in this case children he should be sectioned under the mental health act.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 20 May 2012 at 1:12 pm
Harry you seem to suggest anyone who voted for those parties, the SDLP , Alliance Party and the Official Unionist party were non violent and did not support violence, are you forgetting the Orange Order was integral to the OUP, they also formed the UVF and the policies they promoted led to the widespread violence in the first place. Are you suggesting the OO played no part in the past conflict, whose grand masters and members etc were also leading members of the OUP.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 20 May 2012 at 11:22 am
tacapall 18 May 2012 at 9:13 am
“Mick I have no doubt the well off suffered and did experience casualties and fatalities but not on the scale or barbarity that was inflicted on the lower classes”
Harry where do you get from the lines above that I suggested only a few middle class people were killed in the Troubles? I cant seem to remember they or their children being set up by RUC special branch to serve lengthy jail sentences for crimes they did not commit but I can remember businessmen and politicians attending the funeral of Lenny Murphy the Shankill butcher, the sufferings of his victims didn’t seem to matter when it came to counting votes. The dogs in the street apparently knew who was carrying those barbaric acts out but it was allowed to continue until it became embarrassing for the RUC, you know just like the activities of the Mount Vernon UVF or Scappaticci. The underclass as you call them might have carried out the murders but the upper and middle classes pulled their strings, give them a free hand and turned a blind eye. I don’t know if Derek or Marjorie were there whoever they are, but there was thousands at his funeral and they were not all lower class or underclass as you would label them. Just who are the underclass who you believe were responsible for 95% of the horror ?
“it was the genuine working classes and the middle classes who just about pulled the place back from the brink of all out sectarian civil war.”
How and when did this happen ? I believe it was the armchair generals and those that rolled the snowballs for others to throw along with those who supplied the weapons and intelligence for the victims that brought it to an end. Maybe because they are politicians, members of the government, security forces you class them as middle class but believe it or not they were the same people you call underclass before they became protected species and moved up your social ladder.
Maybe you should just say it was the uneducated who caused 100% of the horrors those with deep ingrained sectarianism and hatred installed into their minds from parents or peers who were upper class, middle class, lower class and of course underclass whoever they are but no matter what way you look at it the lower class and those you would call underclass suffered the brunt of the horror, it was they who lived at the front line.
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Comment on The Hain contempt case: a warning to England from Northern Ireland
on 19 May 2012 at 8:35 pm
Does it matter what your opinion is on this site, if the mods, whoever they are, don’t like your opinion they will either censor your post by making it invisible to others or make sure its not seen until the gist of the debate is going in the direction they want it to. The truth of the matter in this case is John Larkin QC brought the case against a past member of the British establishment, the end result was never going to be allowed to be anything other than a draw with both sides claiming victory.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 18 May 2012 at 12:54 pm
I know of a young family who’s children watched as their father was murdered while they stood beside him, they watched as hooded men shot their father in the chest, watched him fall and screamed in horror as the gunmen callously pushed them out of their way so they could pump further bullets into his head. These kids are grown up now in their early 20s and would be classed as being anti social, not conforming to the norm, no-one ever cared to think they obviously and understandably have deep emotional mental problems, people like Sinn Fein, the PSNI or those like Seymour above who would deny they were entitled to special help from the state in the form of DLA because well they weren’t physically injured and their father was nobody important.
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Comment on The withering of Irish Catholicism sees Sunday attendance plummet in the cities…
on 18 May 2012 at 12:13 pm
If they didn’t constantly pass those begging bowls round sometimes twice during mass where people are embarrassed at not being able to drop a few coins in or constantly being lectured to from the pulpit about how Jesus died for our sins and unless we mend our sinful ways we will be judged and damned in the afterlife. I was working in Dublin a few years back and I met a few young priests from the local parish where I live in West Belfast at a nightclub in Temple Bar, they certainly didn’t get on like men of the cloth and their behaviour led me to believe they took their vows of celibacy tongue in cheek, not that it surprised me just the hypocrisy of it. I know of a local Irish primary school where half the class of pupils who were at the age to make their holy communion were not even put through the process by their parents, its just too expensive to be religious nowdays.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 18 May 2012 at 10:07 am
I dont believe people outside working class areas were responsible for what happened in the past Mick but I do believe they turned a blind eye to some of the causes of the conflict and in some cases actually contributed to it.
Im wise enough now to sit back before making a judgement on incidents like Hawthorn St the motives are usually more sinister than we think. Like the incidents below, its like dipping our toes in the water before they throw us in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18108724
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 18 May 2012 at 9:35 am
Well I would not deny Mick that there were individuals from working class areas who financially benefited from the conflict but few and far between and I don’t believe everyone outside West Belfast or other working class areas were upper class, they were just more sheltered from the madness they had some semblance of a normal life.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 18 May 2012 at 9:13 am
Mick I have no doubt the well off suffered and did experience casualties and fatalities but not on the scale or barbarity that was inflicted on the lower classes, like being abducted and tortured for hours getting body parts cut off before having their throats cut or families knowing that those upper classes who they depended on to protect them actually were the ones who supplied the guns for others to murder their loved ones. Those same upper classes are the same people who deny they played any part in the past conflict other than doing what they did for the greater good.
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