A week ago, Greek police searching a Roma camp discovered a child who looked as though she didn’t belong there. DNA testing proved them – at least in biological terms – correct.
An Garda Síochána were not so lucky.
Born and live in London, brought up in Dublin, roots in East Belfast. Occasional blogging at mckinney.me and far more frequent tweets at twitter.com/mckinneytweets.
A republican acquaintance of mine once said that Bobby Sands didn’t die for cross-border teacher training. I’m very sorry that Bobby Sands had to die at all. I don’t believe his cause, the IRA’s armed struggle (or terrorist campaign, depending on your point of view) to unite Northern Ireland with the rest of the island, was worth one death, let alone the more than the three and a half thousand it led to between 1968 and 1998. Cross-border teacher training …
Yesterday’s opposition day debate in the Commons on Dealing With The Past initiated by the DUP was attended by only just enough GB MPs – about 20-odd – to make up the quorum of 40. Have a browse in Hansard to get the full flavour if you’re feeling strong enough. Sinn Fein’s absence is a pity. In parliament a real debate is better than sermonising. If they were present there would be a lot more authentic flavour and less of the sound …
One woman dominated the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly this week in London – not the Secretary of State Theresa Villiers who opened the Assembly on Monday, but Judith Gillespie OBE, Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI. She was no uninspiring plod – all proceeding northerly in strangulated officialise. She brought passion, conviction and incisiveness to the table. Her “sterling” speech, as Paul Bew put it, was also described as a tour de force in outlining the journey from the RUC into …
Like most of the atrocities of the Troubles the story of the Glenanne gang isn’t unfamiliar Suzanne Breen for one gave a detailed account of the 1976 Kingmills and Reavey brothers massacres in January 2011 based it would seem on “ imminent” HET reports. Of the Reavey murders she stated as a matter of established fact: The attack was carried out by the UVF’s infamous Glenanne gang, which operated in a murder triangle between south Armagh and mid-Ulster. Made up of …
This part of the Flora Bradley-Watson’s report in the Belfast Telegraph of the commemoration of the bombing of Frizzell’s shop leapt out at me. Charlie Butler, who lost three relatives in the attack – his niece Evelyn Baird, her partner Michael Morrison and their daughter Michelle – said that he had relied on the support of the Shankill community. “It gives me strength to see the people are still behind us.” Mr Butler said that he was offended by the …
So let’s join the dots a little on yesterday’s crash landing of the planning bill. [Focus people, focus – Ed]. This was the bill intended to fix set up the Enterprise Zones that were so critical to the Downing Street package of cash agreed just before the G8 with David Cameron. That was on 14th of June this year. By 24th and 25th June, OFMdFM had scrambled together two amendments which radically altered the bill the SDLP Minister for the …
There have been 47 plenary sessions of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and its predecessor body since 1990. They usually take place in Ireland or GB. Many Taoisigh have addressed the meeting and underlined their support for its work. But never has a British Prime Minister done the same. Being in London it would have been a golden opportunity for the British PM, David Cameron to break the mould. Or Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister with formal responsibility for the …
As I noted back in January this year, an inquest has yet to be held into the death of former senior Sinn Féin member, and informer, Denis Donaldson in 2006 – responsibility for which was claimed by the Real IRA. And, despite a previous NI Police Ombudsman‘s finding that there had been no police misconduct here, the new incumbent launched an investigation into allegations that officers may have contributed to his death. But that investigation is, reportedly, facing obstruction from the An Garda Siochana – who have refused to …
BBC: “The Miss Ulster competition is being held at the seat of Northern Ireland’s government this weekend.” “The women in Miss Ulster, they’re not just getting judged on their looks, they’re being judged on their personality, on how capable they are of being an ambassador for Ulster.” Right, then. If I’m understanding this logic, the SDLP’s Delores Kelly and ex-UUP, ex-serious guy, Basil McCrea, will be telling some young women this: “sorry, you’ve a great personality and scored high on …
The Sh!t hit the fan, literally, at the end of this week’s British Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London today. A group of Welsh and Irish parliamentarians urged the Assembly to condemn the offensive use of the term “Operation Irish” as the code for a South Wales police operation to persuade schoolchildren to clear up dog mess. The police have apologised and say that “operational names are randomly assigned to policing operations for administrative purposes.” This rather misses the point which is …
The European Parliament has today voted by 351 MEPs in favour of referring the resolution by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality back to committee, with 319 voted against. Fianna Fáil MEPs oppose EU parliament’s attempt to make abortion a human right: http://t.co/jEakLwqUF1 — Paul Anthony Ward (@PaulAnthonyWard) October 22, 2013 The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Union (which includes Irish Labour, UK Labour and the SDLP) passed a draft report last month declaring that abortion …
Douglas Murray is a libertarian right winger who goes in head-on where others hesitate. He wrote a forensically detailed and heart breaking account of Bloody Sunday which was equally unsparing of the Army and persistently questioning of the IRA, as was noted by Gladys when his book appeared just after the highly emotional reception that greeted the Saville report. In his Spectator blog Murray has continued to put awkward questions to the Army and Martin McGuinness alike. Although I am all for the argument that we should …
A slight variation on Alex Maskey’s excoriation of Nelson McCausland for failing to spend a cool £26 million in his housing budget last year. [Tail gunner out of control captain! – Ed] Did no one tell Alex his own party in OFMdFM failed to spend a single penny of £80 million on actual social need in the two years since the last election. Nearly 1/2 million is already gone on consultants, and they are handing back £15 million unspent. Deadlocked over …
Over a hundred people filed into the Lyric’s Naughton Studio clutching their digital binary voting handsets: we used our fingers to press the Yes or No buttons. Seated on three sides of the small theatre facing a large screen with a blinking cursor, the audience quickly got used to answering questions as the timer counted down to zero. For a while Roger Bernat’s Pending Vote felt like the true beginnings of the much lauded seldom found new politics in Northern …
Maurice Burns’ cover merits study–it’s well chosen and ties into this mystery within, as elaborated by an informant. The title, a play off of the ‘murder of crows’, echoes in the name of Barry Crowe, a Belfast journalist (or is it ‘sleazy tabloid hack’?) pursuing the backstory behind the sudden demise, apparently by auto-asphyxiation, of Northern Ireland’s leading poet. The compromising circumstances unfold neatly in this e-book novella. Bailie, whose Lagan Press novels The Lost Chord and Ecopunks delved into …
So the PSNI are going to open an investigation into Bloody Sunday. So, in theory at least, no one is safe from possible future prosecution. Richard Dannett, former Chief of the General Staff in the British Army notes: Soldiers gave evidence [to Saville] in good faith not fearing later prosecution. Is that good faith now to be abused? And 2010 the Nationalist community in Londonderry seemed to accept the Saville findings thus apparently closing that sorry chapter of Northern Ireland history. …
I was saddened to learn on Sunday evening that Norm Geras, one of my favourite writers, died last week. Norm was, for this reader, a “Sunday evening blogger”. Where many writers, journalists, and reports can be easily read while on a conference call or during a hurried droid-assisted walk through a train station, Normblog, as it was called, commanded one’s full attention and a dedicated sitting. Norm Geras was a particularly rare kind of Marxist; like Karl Marx himself, he …
UUP members seemed on a high at Saturday’s conference. They were relaxed and not on edge. They’d put the party’s internal troubles (“shrinking to grow”) behind them. Not a single mention of Basil, John, NI21, David McNarry or even Lord Maginnis. No major slip-ups. No longer any talk about Mike Nesbitt taking over as Minister for Regional Development. Though under the calm water, there was evidence of some thrashing over council candidate selection and some older councillors changing their minds …
We now have a new contender to add to the collection of misjudged, irrational and counter-productive legislative initiatives; the 2013 Planning Bill. This began as a relatively well-intentioned attempt to tweak the current planning system in advance of handing over most planning powers to the new local authorities in 2015. However this has evolved into a farce through a number of ill-conceived interventions made jointly by Sinn Féin and the DUP. First, they would not let it through the Executive …
