Am Ghobsmacht 
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 of Northern Irish towns. I parked at Asda and came on to a main street which seemed healthy enough (so, I’m still running with the theory that supermarkets should be placed in towns rather than outskirts, fyi). However, the closer …
I was in Magherafelt today (well, a week last Saturday), for the first time in quite a while. What struck me was how unlike other Northern Irish towns it is in terms of being relatively free from vacant stores and from the other usual symptoms of commercial ill-health such as lots of cash only businesses (barbers, nail salons, kebab shops) and bookies, charity shops and vape shops. It certainly has these but they are not obvious in their representation, indeed …
Prior to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed, the Sultan of the Ottoman empire, paved the way for Byzantine/Roman collapse by erecting a fortress on the European side of the Bosphorus Straights with a view to strangling the trade of Constantinople and to deter military reinforcements from any number of Italian city state trading ports dotted around the Black Sea. Pretty clever – once you interfere with the trade of a place then it upsets the great and the …
Imagine the setting – a partly forested mountain stretching down to the sea, kilt clad adults ambling about the promenade while their kilt clad children mob the ice cream trucks on an uncharacteristically sunny day. No, this is not some Scottish Highlands shin-dig, rather it was the Heart of Down piping competition in Newcastle – a wonderful setting for what seemed to be an anonymous event as there was very little in the way of advertising or signage (and an …
As stated numerous times on here, IMHO Northern Ireland’s greatest advantage (long since squandered) and to a lesser extent the republic’s was (is…?) how far behind the curve of modernity we are (were). When plans for new-fangled shiny baubles such as ‘hypermarkets’, retail parks, drive-thrus and MASSIVE pubs were being submitted by developers all we had to do was send out a few fact finders to places where such things are popular and uncontrolled e.g. the USA and Canada (and …
Downpatrick is a strange place. It is like something from ancient Greek mythology where the Gods both bless and curse a place. Blessed in that it is a handsome place; the old streets have old world charm potential about them. English street, being the Georgian street containing the Cathedral, the view and ‘the grave’ (supposedly containing St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columcille), a 17th century coaching house and some cobbled side streets, it is very much a potential movie …
(DISCLAIMER: The following piece is not nostalgia driven white washing of the downsides of Irish life decades ago. If your first instinct is to rehash awful periods from the past and suck all the crack from the room then please find somewhere else, I’m more interested in Barney Smyth the greengrocer than Father Brendan Smyth, nor am I suggesting that everything was better and that we should disavow modern healthcare and instead traipse around the Sperrin mountains in the dead …
The following is a compilation of trivia that I often drop on commentators during the various environmental discussions. It is not a ‘The Case for Nuclear’ but rather an attempt to add some badly needed balance to what has turned into an almost emotional debate I am in no way an expert, just an interested onlooker who thinks that nuclear power might not be having a fair hearing (and because the Guardian never print my letters, so I’ll vent on …
There are two types of people in this world; those who wish to see Derry city prosper and those who wish to see it fail. I’m in the former camp and as such I’m unimpressed with those in the latter camp, whether their M.O. be by means of bombs or political sabotage (just covering all the incoming whataboutery bases). For those firmly in the prosper camp then might I recommend a trip to the South Holland city of Gorinchem? (Somehow …
One of the (many) disappointing realisations that came to pass during the Time of Covid is just how many people don’t like being in their own home for too long. The place where they’ve chosen to live (or at least settled into). The place where they raise their families or invite their friends round. As such, people all over Europe were almost literally running for the hills (or forests or cottages or seaside houses) in order to get away from …
This is the first in the series of posts regarding tourism, its under-exploited potential and the wider implications of our current strategy, these posts are effectively bit-sized rants from one epic length, foamy-mouthed, ganshing session. To the best of my knowledge Handbrake Turn Tourism was coined by my late uncle, anyway, what it pertains to is the type of tourism where tourists flock to a must-see spot (usually a visitor centre), take a few selfies and then head off to …
The Planet of the Humans, produced/tagged by Michael Moore caused a bit of a stir recently with the criticism ranging from “hmmmm, a bit out of date” to “he’s effectively now a white supremacist” Here’s a Guardian critique of Moore if you think the latter summary is a glib throwaway exaggeration: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/michael-moore-far-right-climate-crisis-deniers-film-environment-falsehoods My own criticism is reserved not for the clumsiness of the attempt to highlight both corporate involvement and the reality of renewables but for the rash conclusions from …
Forgive the OTT headline but such are my tabloid depths. I don’t actually want to get rid of charity shops. However. In an article on here by MurdockP it was highlighted how many there are on the Northern Irish high street as was their current rate-free status. From the outset this is no bad thing: empty shops, not being used and someone somewhere is benefiting from their kind deeds. So what’s the downside to this? Well, let us examine the …
It’s odd to think that teetotallers and pub crawlers could have similar objectives but I wish to illustrate that they have similar goals if we consider the drinks trade more holistically rather than narrowly. First of all allow me to say that I understand fine and well the various reasons for being teetotal and I’d even say they are correct, many of us would be better off financially and physically if we abstained from the Devil’s buttermilk. However, reality must …
There has been understandably much ado on here regarding the Irish Language act (or rather the absence of one) recently. I personally have been struck by the number of unionists on here (and on other sites) that are actually in support of an act of some sort in theory. Newton Emerson briefly highlighted the shortcomings and potential fall-out from Carál ní Chuilín’s proposal a while back during a criticism of Arlene Foster’s attitude to an act. http://www.irishnews.com/opinion/columnists/2017/02/09/news/newton-emerson-arlene-has-boxed-herself-into-a-corner-on-irish-language-act-923410/ I’m in agreement …
In the interests of not derailing anymore threads as I normally do when the topic of education comes up Mick has let me post this blog (probably in the hope that it’ll finally shut me up). My own views on ‘integrated’ education (now a seemingly bland yet toxic term) have changed somewhat since I started reading posts on Slugger. One of the things that strike me most is how the discussion is always thrown to the most extreme scenarios. Someone …
