The new Troubles Bill is a veterans’ charter designed to limit the legal instruments for truth recovery, just like its discredited predeccessor
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Sir Declan Morgan Chief Legacy Commissioner The new Troubles Bill going through the Commons lists no fewer than 140 amendments , most of them designed to appease the mountain of critics in GB across the parties who are passionately opposed …
A nation’s descent into barbarity…
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My younger years were saturated in Americana via movies and TV. It was all an illusion of course, but in my mind America was very much the land of great expanses filled with exciting people. The kind of people who …
Irish on One Street, Ulster-Scots on the Next: Belfast’s Street Sign Policy…
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A Belfast City Council committee has approved an Ulster-Scots street sign for Ravenscroft Avenue in east Belfast. If the full council ratifies the decision, the street will carry the name Corbiescroft Evvenye below the English name. It is the first …
Where do we go after Drumcree?
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Winston Churchill is misattributed as saying that the “Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing – after they have exhausted all other options”. Perhaps the same can be said of the British Government’s belated decision to …
Play The Game, Son
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Well, the evil day finally arrived in the latest episode of ‘Blue Lights’. Episode Three of Series Four centred around the trial of dissident republicans Mo McIntyre and Anto Donovan for common enterprise in the murder of Constable Gerry Cliff. …
Garvaghy Road: Winning the Street, while Setting Fire to the Argument for a New Ireland…
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The Orange Order’s right to walk the Garvaghy Road was upheld and loyalism stayed calm, but by following a dissident lead, mainstream nationalism hardened tribal lines and alienated the uncommitted voters it needs to reach 50%.
Go East, Old Man – Part I: Tīngbudǒng! Cycling Through Village China
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At 82, on a folding Brompton, Peter Emerson cycles through rural Yúnnán and Guǎngxī to see how Chinese villages make decisions. There’s báijiǔ with farmers, a granny’s 70th birthday lunch, and a stop short of Tibet. He finds that China, like almost everyone else, swears by majority rule, though it held a three-option vote back in 1197.
How Big Tech Powers Russian Hybrid Warfare…
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The other day Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that he believed that there was Russian interference during the Brexit elections. From the BBC: Burnham told The Rest is Politics podcast, that upon arriving in Downing Street, he had asked if …
The sham fight at Stormont…
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Our elected leaders had a busy day up at Stormont yesterday. What were they all working so furiously on? Was it the environmental crisis of Lough Neagh? The crisis in our health service? Improving education? How to build more houses? …
After Drumcree Whither the DUP?
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As the dispute at Drumcree winds down, Northern Ireland is left to look at the political aftermath. Commentators have been talking about what is playing out within the DUP as Carla Lockhart advocates for ‘profound consequences’, seeming to mean removing …