Turgon

I have blogged previously about the attempt by Sinn Fein MLA Jennifer McCann to have an event to commemorate / celebrate Mairead Farrell under the disguise of International Women’s Day. Jeffrey Donaldson has proposed an event at Stormont to honour the SAS. On the DUP website he criticises the planned SF event and says of the planned DUP event: “However it is right and proper that we should celebrate and commemorate our armed forces who stood against terrorists such as …

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The subject of today’s rant / reasoned analysis (delete as applicable) is our canine friends and wives. Yesterday in spite of my protestations Elenwe and the boys sallied forth to Loughgall. There they acquired (with my hard earned cash) a dog. Now we had dogs when I was a child. I am not fundamentally opposed to such creatures. I am, however, much more fond of cats (we have two); I thought I had converted Elenwe to cats but clearly I …

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I see that one of Dr. Paisley’s best friends has been interviewed on the Eamon Dunphy show on RTE today. You can listen to the programme via this link. Mr. McGuinness came across, in an admittedly hardly challenging interview, as a friendly, affable individual. Behind the bonhomie, however, it was most interesting that we heard lots about people killed by the British army and a little about British soldiers who were killed. We heard about how Bloody Sunday “Hardened our …

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Apparently it is International Women’s Day on 8th March. I want to suggest we have some sort of meeting to honour several women. Let us have a few examples. How about a very young woman (well girl actually) Michelle Baird? I suspect few will remember her name. I will, however, provide a link to jog memories. We could also have Jean McConville or Marie Wilson or a huge number of other names. In fact there are 139 names I could …

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I blogged about La Mon below and mentioned the Consultative Group on the Past. It appears that they have received over 2000 letters opposing an amnesty. It is okay to ignore them, however, because they may have been part of a coordinated campaign. I have discussed this issue before (with little interest generated) but I will mention it again. When this body was set up it was heavily criticised, its public meetings have frequently been reported as being acrimonious. I …

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I see that there is talk about closing the maternity unit at Lagan Valley hospital partially on safety grounds. As I have said previously closing hospitals or even reducing services is practically impossible politically speaking and right on cue we have Jeffrey Donaldson denouncing this potential closure. Again it is clear that politicians are not willing to admit to the need to close any services and instead it is left to the Health Trusts to do so.The Royal College of …

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The current concerns about hospital acquired infections seem at first glance extremely frightening and indeed there have been deaths associated with Clostridium Difficile. The Department of Health has launched an investigation.Any solution to these problems will be complex and multi faceted. Firstly one must note that frequently people become infected with this bacterium due to the use of potent antibiotics which have had to be given to them due to their severe illnesses. Infected patients can then indeed transfer their …

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The commemorative service marking the 30th anniversary of the La Mon murders was held on Sunday at Castlereagh Borough Council offices. It was attended by a number of relatives and a few politicians including Iris Robinson who has previously used Parliamentary Privilege to name those allegedly involved in planning the murders. Suzanne Breen’s article here on La Mon is still harrowing to read.This event along with a number of other equally iconic events still informs the views of very many …

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The demise of Paisley junior has indeed been pretty sudden. Fair_deal’s take below agreeing with Suzanne Breen’s suggestion that this is the DUP responding decisively to the Dromore by election is interesting though Jim Allister has noted on his own web site, that although accelerated by, this is not solely due, to Dromore. Clearly Paisley junior had become a distraction as he himself noted in his resignation speech.Some have again seen the hand of Peter Robinson (none more poetically than …

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The removal of the memorial in Enniskillen Fire Station to those murdered in the 1987 Poppy Day bombing was apparently prompted by a complaint from one member of staff. It was allegedly seen as a political emblem for having photographs of the one girl and ten pensioners murdered and the following words: “The innocents who lost their lives.” The removal of the tribute itself caused extremely widespread controversy. A new tribute to those murdered has now been put up in …

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In ancient times the Oracle at Delphi was consulted before leaders took momentous decisions. It had a reputation of giving advice in riddles which could be interpreted in several different ways. The Dromore by election has similarities. Today does not represent some new dawn for Northern Ireland; I said in a previous post that I did not expect to be amongst a victorious throng at Stormont after this election. It was a council by election. To read anything too much …

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I am not an avid greenie, nor particularly knowledgeable on the subject but I am surprisingly environmentally friendly. I am unsure about global warming in that we have had the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent Little Ice Age. Also I am unclear how the proper Ice Ages fit in or the suggestions that during the time of the dinosaurs the earth was much warmer. The whole thing may be cyclical and much more complex than we imagine. I also …

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Jim Allister is getting quite a lot of flak from the DUP of late. The latest problem seems to be Mr. Allister’s irritating tendency to use Freedom of Information legislation to uncover irritating facts that the DUP would rather not release. Simon Hamilton has a press release attacking him on the DUP web site.Of course Mr Hamilton’s irritation could well be explained by the success of some of these FoI requests but as Mark Devenport’s BBC blog points out it …

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I have blogged before about the problems which “culture” can impose on the lives of women. At the risk of creating a politically correct storm this one from the Belfast Telegraph, though awful, should in my view be noted (thanks to wild turkey for pointing it out). It appears that a 13 year old Roma girl may have been forced to have sex with a 16 year old as part of an arranged marriage which was subsequently reneged upon. A …

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I am not an expert on the US election; and I have not yet heard any comment on the death penalty. However, the death penalty may be beginning to climb back up the political agenda in the USA. Currently the Supreme Court is considering the Baze vs. Rees case which will whether or not lethal injection is “Cruel and unusual punishment” and as such contrary to the Eighth Amendment.The current debate concerns whether or not lethal injection is cruel and …

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Shortly after the initial Belfast agreement we frequently heard about the need to keep moving forward lest we slip back to violence. Whenever people baulked at the idea of letting assorted criminals out of gaol we were told about the need to move forward lest we “slip back”. The leading advocates of the need to move forwards and the dangers of slipping back were usually the more liberal parties. The targets of their dread warnings, more often than not, were …

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Right: it is now less than a week until we know the outcome of the Dromore by election. I will again reiterate that this is not the largest political contest ever on earth and it may (only may) be less significant in world terms than the US Presidential primaries. However, it gives me something to blog about so here goes.The outcome is still pretty unclear. I see from the Dromore Leader that the TUV candidate Keith Harbinson has challenged the …

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Prize for apparently barmiest idea of the day must go to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams for suggesting that some Sharia law in the UK is unavoidable and seeming fairly in favour of the idea (full pdf text of speech here). It seems that the media reaction describing amputation, flogging and stoning is not what Williams meant. He seems to have been talking about things like divorce and property law. However, this still seems completely contrary to the …

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This one sounds comical and serious (it is both) but there is another message in it. A teacher from London has been charged with dangerous driving after having been stopped with 13 people in his Volvo. Clearly this was a very silly thing to do let alone dangerous. Although it grossly overstates the case, there is, however, another issue hiding in here which might be worth a brief debate. Most of us will remember being piled into cars as children. …

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Language and its use are of course vitally important in politics. Variations in how people use language are often instructive. The change in language by the DUP has of course been breath taking. I can well remember people like Ian Paisley saying “Never” and William McCrea telling us that forgiveness can and should only be granted if people repent of their past wrong doings. This is inspired by a religious position common amongst fundamentalists. In this context the recent remarks …

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