Belfast Gonzo I thought the local cold war was over, but former spy ‘Kevin Fulton’ has been banging out a few more bits and pieces of late. First there’s Provomovie, featuring the taped confession (possibly to Scap) of John Dignam, killed as the IRA suspected him of informing. The voice recording was stuck online a few years ago, so I suspect the southern restaurant and the derelict cottage later are what our attention is being drawn to in the new visuals. Mr …
NEARLY no-one noticed, but an “arcane, archaic, unenforceable and outdated law” in Northern Ireland could have been heading down the path to abolition last Wednesday in the House of Lords. Instead, any change to the law on blasphemous libel here is starting out on a new route to Stormont, where it will end up in the hands of the first Minister for Policing and Justice. And so it came to pass that God ensured He retained certain laws to protect …
THE front page of the Sunday World yesterday has to be one of its grimmest yet – the body of a man dangling by his neck from a bridge in Bangor. There have been efforts quite recently to try and change the reporting of suicide, and indeed the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice recommends that “When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used.” It does have a little asterisk beside it, listing …
THE Equality Commission has found that the SDLP was deliberately excluded by Lisburn Council from an important committee managing the transition to a super-council, with the party claiming that the unionist majority were guilty of “gerrymandering”. And it certainly looks like there was a deliberate attempt to keep the SDLP out of the discussions, with Councillor Peter O’Hagan stating that Lisburn Council’s “own equality scheme required the council to be inclusive and use an informal approach to ensure that the …
I’VE just stumbled upon this online radio documentary Beyond the Wire about punk in Belfast from 1975-83, which seems to have appeared within the last week. Radio Ulster’s Stuart Bailie and my occasional drinking partner Terri Hooley are interviewed, as well as band members from the time. You can hear the programme here (give it a minute). Rudi and Ruefrex were before my time, but some of you older punks may feel a nostalgic twinge as you listen to stories …
AMATEUR coroner and Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir is riding high in the Twitter trends again, with her follow-up article to last week’s hysterical rant about the death of Stephen Gately. Moir apologises to the singer’s family for causing any distress, but defends her arguments. I don’t find her attempted back-track convincing; last week’s article was written in a certain way to create a definite impression and elicit a predictable reaction. To then whinge about that reaction, blame “misinterpretation” by …
NOW that Question Time is over and you’ve had a bit of time to reflect on BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance, do you think the Beeb was justified in letting him on? Has anyone changed their mind? Certainly many protesters haven’t. And how did the panellists perform? Did Griffin seem like ‘any other politician’, and were his views in any way legitimised? Personally, I thought Griffin looked a bit nervous and maybe even over-awed, and I was left with the …
YOU might have thought that when we fork out £57,000 for the Paisleys’ Ballymena Advice Centre that it would be enough – seeing as it’s three times what any other MLA claims (ker-ching!), is well above what is regarded as the market rental value (ker-ching!), is paid to a company run by a DUP councillor (ker-ching!) and means you and I are effectively funding the creation a DUP asset (ker-CHING!). But no, apparently not. It turns out that the party’s …
JAN Moir’s Daily Mail column implying that Stephen Gately died from a drug-fuelled, troubled, gay lifestyle is causing much debate on Twitter. Whilst we have been told a little more about what happened on the night in question, Moir appears to be questioning the coroner’s verdict in her innuendo… maybe in order to disguise her own homophobia? Belfast Gonzosluggerotoole.com
JUDGING from the number of comments (zero) no-one seems to have noticed that our esteemed DUP Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister has now been blogging for more than two weeks. The site is called Nelson’s View, so perhaps they’re turning a blind eye to it (groan!) Mr McCausland admits to having been a Cliftonville supporter and seems to have resolved the thorny question of whether Ulster Scots is a language or a dialect. (It’s not a particularly convincing argument, but …
WITH the remit of the weapons decommissioning body set to run out early next year, there are, it seems, moves afoot within two republican groups towards disarmament. The INLA is expected to make a statement within hours, while the Official IRA is reported to have held talks with General de Chastelain. The news comes as Hillary Clinton states that: “To me terrorism is terrorism. Those who would try to disrupt the peace of people going about their daily lives are …
SINCE it’s a Sunday, and I’ve just stumbled across it – probably a sign – here’s Penn & Teller‘s highly controversial, incredibly vitriolic, possibly dishonest (in a Michael Moore-type of way) attack on the Pope and Vatican. Not since you last stood in front of an Independent Orange Order platform on the Twelfth will you have heard the like – although just because they’re down on the Pope, I doubt P&T would have anything good to say about fundimentalist Prods …
OVER at ConservativeHome, Tory spokesman on Northern Ireland Owen Paterson confirms that UCUNF is standing Tory women and Catholics [his emphasis] in no-hope Ulster Unionist seats, somewhat reinforcing the view that both are second-class citizens in the UUP. To announce it on the eve of Sir Reg’s so-called historic speech to the Tory conference merely reinforces the divisions in the UCUNF camp; the UUP South Belfast Association don’t want the SDLP’s Alastair McDonnell to retain his seat, but UCUNF is …
WITHOUT any surprise or fanfare, the talks on devolving policing and justice have ended without agreement. It kinda leaves you wondering why Brown got so involved at this stage, though I suppose he must have had reasons. It’s been known for some time that a sound financial package (which everyone wants) and ‘community confidence’ (which is whatever you want it to be) were two of the DUP’s conditions for accepting the devolution of P&J. Now there are a few others …
CONGRATULATIONS go to An Garda Siochana, for the Irish police service has won the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for Literature at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. The award was won “for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country – Prawo Jazdy – whose name in Polish means ‘Driving Licence’.” The aim of the offbeat awards – handed out by real Nobel Laureates – is to honour achievements that “first make …
THE unionist campaigners seeking the British Government’s help to get compensation from Libya for IRA victims may be surprised to know that once upon a time their own government offered the Libyan’s £14 million (about half a billion in today’s money) to stop supplying the IRA. And that also in the 1970s, the Libyans wanted compensation from the British for “death and injury caused by thousands of landmines left by the Eighth Army while fighting in North Africa during the …
IN case you missed this quirky, quixotic tour of Scotland by Englishman Jonathan Meades in Off Kilter, the wonders of the internet and digital TV mean it is still available to see. This is a passionately dispassionate, unsentimentally engaged journey, where neither Calvinism, caber nor kilt is celebrated, but other things – the abstract beauty of heavy machinery, ‘football pools’ town and the social cohesion brought about by old industry. It is hard to watch this beautifully shot, engagingly narrated …
THIS might be the first Northern Irish MSM Facebook campaign; I can’t think of any others. Anyway, the Tele has launched Sort Out the Transfer Maze on the social networking site. Nothing to do with the prison, BTW, instead containing the Belfast newspaper’s articles and videos on the post-primary selection debate. Belfast Gonzosluggerotoole.com
A FEW hours after I blogged about the absence of progress by our leading parties on an agreed community relations strategy, the DUP published the working draft of the seemingly aborted OFMDFM policy. I’ll have a proper read of it later, and in the meantime, maybe commenters can compare and contrast it with Sinn Fein’s unilaterally-published strategy. For his part, Conall argues that Sinn Fein – who “say you must have equality before you can have good relations” – need …
IT seems everyone is on the anti-sectarianism bandwagon at the moment… they just can’t agree where it should be going. Last week, Eamonn McCann urged readers not just to respect diversity, but celebrate sameness. In his challenge to the prevailing wisdom that a balancing act between ‘the two communities’ is how to deal with division – an approach that purposefully excludes those who don’t fit neatly into one of the two tribal boxes – he suggested that the common interests …
