Future of Republicanism
Micheal Martin: NI’s ‘establishment parties’ are failing the Belfast Agreement
Tweet So Micheal Martin’s speech last night, revisited with my own analysis appended. First the word cloud (kindly generated by John) of Micheal Martin’s speech has one word which stands far out above any other. And it’s Agreement. Not surprising perhaps since the speech was themed around the coming 15th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement. [...] more »
Sinn Fein’s ‘creative accountancy’ over funding the gap for a United Ireland
Tweet So, briefly, Newton Emerson gives us confirmation of what you probably already knew from listening to Gerry Adams talking to Tara Mills in last week’s big interview on Sinn Fein’s #BorderPoll. That is that the party’s figures simply do not add up. In yesterday’s Irish News he noted: It is true that DFP’s last [...] more »
Why a #BorderPoll ill-serves the cause of a united island
Tweet “I live in terror of not being misunderstood.” From The Critic as Artist, by Oscar Wilde So, what is a reasonable, even a Nationalist, objection to the calling of a Border Poll in the next parliamentary term north and south? The most obvious is that from what we know of the current public will [...] more »
Border Poll: On the one road, maybe the wrong road, on the road to god knows where?
Tweet The best bit from last night’s The View was undoubtedly Stephen Walker’s report on a future border poll. He usefully revisits the last one in 1973, which was about as bogus as they come. Just over 6000 people voted for taking Northern Ireland of the UK back then, because most nationalists boycotted it. The [...] more »
A new IRA emerges lashed together from the wreckage of the old…
Tweet The big news of the weekend? The convergence of a wide range of republican paramilitary groups into a new one called, erm, the IRA… So it hasn’t gone away you know… That’s the PR of it anyway. I suppose one might be tempted to say that it took them long enough to decide that [...] more »
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Books
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
Tweet A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate [...] read our review »
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The First Shades of God (Jamie Bryson): unremarkable theology, but an insight into the mind of the protest-organiser
Tweet Jamie Bryson has come to prominence recently as one of the leaders of the flag protests across Northern Ireland. As Chris Donnelly pointed out in his post (and was echoed later in the Belfast Telegraph), Jamie Bryson is a well known loyalist in North Down where he unsuccessfully stood at the council elections under [...] read our review »
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Of the Old North and other Vanished Kingdoms..
Tweet I’m currently trawling through Norman Davies’s fabulous new tome – “Vanished Kingdoms” – Five stars in the (London) Telegraph’s review from Ben Wilson: All the nations that have ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand,” writes Norman Davies. “The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the [...] read our review »
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