The poet Peter Makem suggests that the institutions established under the Belfast Agreement need to be able to grow organically rather than be pushed into boxes of others’ convenience: “In other words, Northern Ireland must work to become the centre …

Interesting thoughts from Martin Mansergh on what it might take to effect a democratically determined unification of Ireland: This is largely written in reply to an article by Frank Millar a few weeks ago suggesting that such an outcome depended …

It has taken most of the week for some clear background to come out on this story. Henry McDonald talks to residents, police and paramilitries to get the bottom of this gruesome case. He finds it was not simply a …

Sir George Quigley’s proposal to split the Parades Commission into two bodies to deal separately with adjudication and mediation is meeting with some opposition, primarily from nationalists who feel that the current body is working perfectly well. As Alex Attwood …

Brian Walker reports Tony Blair’s current hardening stance on paramilitaries, and his continuing focus on Sinn Fein: “Let me make it clear that the activites of the loyalist paramilitaries are not just totally and completely contrary to law but contrary …

TENSIONS were rising in loyalist areas of Northern Ireland today after a close associate of Johnny Adair warned that the UDA was moving towards a new feud. More. Update: Rumours of a renewed feud. Adair remains defiant.

Here’s the BBC report.

Interesting educational resource on a little recollected event of the 19th Century; the Fenian invasion of Canada. Thanks to Smoke Signals.

Paul Dunne at the Shamrockshire Eagle blog has a review of two articles on the Stormont spy story.

Paul Murphy was reported in fairly direct terms in today’s FT: “The time is up in many ways. The transition period is over where you can get a situation where the democratic political parties work in a system and at …