Storytime with Houdi – The Lothario From Leitrim…
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‘It’s a great album’ says Shaun, ‘a huge departure for Adamson. He’s better away from that troublemaker Jobson’. That was a reference to The Crossing, the debut album from Scottish band Big Country plus the acrimonious split from his previous …
Removing the bang from Bangor…
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Warning: Contains middle aged male rants about derelict buildings, please walkaway now if you fear boredom I was in Bangor recently (ish) with the younglings. I had heard about the state of the town on previous rants about the state …
Shattered Hegemons
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In a few weeks the United States will be celebrating its 250th birthday. By any standards, its existence has been nothing short of remarkable. What was a quarter of a millennium ago a backwards, agrarian state conducting a novel experiment …
Andy Burnham wins Makerfield byelection. Will he replace Keir Starmer?
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From the Guardian: Andy Burnham has set up a potential showdown with Keir Starmer after convincingly winning the Makerfield byelection, paving the way for his return to Westminster and a likely tilt at the Labour leadership. The outgoing mayor of …
Excellence and equity, deferred: reviewing the draft Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028…
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The DE has made equity the promise of its new knowledge-rich curriculum, and the case for clearer, sequenced content is real. But several of the elements that would actually deliver that equity, religious education, Irish-medium and special-needs provision, and the …
Preparation is not persuasion: why the nationalist drum on unity keeps missing the beat…
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Fine Gael has chosen Garret FitzGerald’s centenary to launch a blueprint for Irish unity. But preparation is not persuasion — and the unaligned middle who will actually decide remain unmoved by border-poll rhetoric.
One Bill, Three Stories, Zero Changes
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It’s not often we can accuse our legislators of being efficient but on Monday night they actually managed it when the rejection of an amendment designed to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 failed with the …
Why we need to understand what’s driving instability in and beyond Northern Ireland
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The labour market is changing shape — from a pyramid with a broad base of entry-level jobs to a diamond with a glut of experienced middle-tier workers and a radically contracted bottom. Harvard economists warned us what happens when a successor generation can’t find work. Belfast showed us what it looks like in practice. And it isn’t just a problem for the young.
Why Shared Island, not ‘Brits out’, is the way forward for Ireland…
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I have just come out from two and a half weeks in hospital, which means I haven’t closely followed the anti-immigration riots in Belfast, except to feel – as someone from a Northern Protestant background – horrified and ashamed once …
Riots in Northern Ireland: this is also about racism
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My dad died two days before Christmas in 2023. On the day of his funeral rain poured from the heavens. We waded through thick mud to get to his grave. “Christ,” my brother remarked, “it’s like the f**king Somme.” In …