Eammon McCann is struggling to see any rational coherence in any of the local religious responses to the huge human tragedy of the tsunami in SE Asia. David Vance also has an interesting take this at ATW. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
The announcement that (Saint) Bob Geldolf is to receive an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at this years Brit Awards has provoked the kind of spluttering disbelief, from music critics, that we’ve become accustomed to whenever Gerry Adams denies ever being a member of the Provisional IRA (see Feeney’s article). The Guardian’s rock and pop critic Alexis Petridis has a suggestion – “Give him an award by all means, but let’s not pretend his songs have anything to do …
IN today’s Business Telegraph, Geoff Neville looks at the positive role the internet and bloggers played in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami. One blog reporting on the after-effects is Chiens Sans Frontiers. Meanwhile, the BBC pontificates on the role of the blog. Belfast Gonzosluggerotoole.com
NORTHERN Bank’s famous plastic fivers are appearing on ebay, as, according to the wit selling this one, they are “suddenly in short supply”. Quite.Some of the blurb reads: Polymer notes are becoming increasingly popular. Their enhanced security features makes counterfeiting more difficult. The Northern Bank note includes security features such as the feel of the polymer, which is distinctively smooth on non printed areas, its transparent windows, both clear and coloured on the corner of the note embossed with four …
Politics.ie has tracked down an interesting project. It’s a language pressure group which is campaigning for the simplification of the grammar and spelling rules in all the Gaelic langauges. Hat tip Davros! Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
John Coulter lays into the Ulster Scots movement arguing that in over identifying with a Scottish rather than an Irish cultural idiom, they are reinforcing the otherness of Ulster protestants. Far better, he argues, “to see the formation of a Protestant Gaelic League, with classes in Irish for Protestants set up in the network of Orange Halls across the North”. The spirit of Ballinahinch reborn? Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of …
The Times yesterday carried a story on attempts by Séan Lemass to solve the thorny problem of Nelson’s Column by replacing the controversial statue with a statue of Saint Patrick. Several years later the statue was destroyed by a bomb. In today’s Observer Henry McDonald reports that the controversial Dublin statue of Sean Russell , nazi ally, has been badly damaged by an unnamed group in memory of the victims of the holocaust. Ambrose Uprichard
Seamus Heaney salutes Patrick Kavanagh, and a new Collected Poems, in today’s Guardian Books. Edited and introduced by Antoinette Quinn, Kavanagh’s biographer and best advocate, [the new Collected] should help not only the English critics but the whole English-speaking crowd to read Kavanagh with new regard and maybe even to start believing in him. In Heaney’s view, it’s a vindication of Kavanagh’s indomitable faith in himself and in the art that made him so much more than himself Pete Baker
Thanks to Arnold Wesker on this morning’s Home Truths for the quote of the day. It’s from Louis MacNeice’s seminal piece, Autumn Journal. It seems to just about cover where we are at this same moment – though the new year he’s talking of is the ominous one of 1939.It’s the last eight lines of the poem: If you have honour to spare, employ it on the living; The dead are as dead as Nineteen-Thirty-Eight. Sleep to the noise of …
How did we all get on with the Crimbo Pressies ? I got the socks and sweets and a 25 years of Viz book.(Rude link) The late presents are arriving – yesterday a copy of what looks to be a fascinating book, Oracles of God by Patrick Murray, reviewed here by Fern Lane in AP/RN.Today two excellent cds by Irish artists new to me, O by Damien Rice and the especially wonderful Season of the Hurricane by Juliet Turner, reviewed …
The Stage Online announces that Bertie Aherne has spoken out in support of plans to erect a statue to the late, great Luke Kelly, of the Dubliners, in Dublin’s north inner city area. Ahern lends support to Luke Kelly memorial. Sadly plans to erect a bronze memorial plaque, in the shape of a replica Fender Stratocaster, to Rory Gallagher has been opposed by the Irish National Library.Elsewhere in the Stage is reported that the government of the ROI is considering …
One film worth setting your video for if you have to go back to work on Wednesday is Carol Reed’s screen adaption of FL Green’s gripping thriller Odd Man Out set in 1940’s Belfast. It’s remembered in Belfast mostly by the still from the film displayed in the Crown Bar with James Mason pictured centre screen in a studio mock up of that famous Belfast landmark. But if the film is half as good as the book it will be …
Spiked-online carries a wonderful article by Brendan O’Neill on the resurrection of the pogues, “the best band of the 1980s. Fact“. Worth reading for the wonderful comparison between Donny Osmond and Shane MacGowan- “Donny and MacGowan are surely the Yin and Yang of popular music.“ Ambrose Uprichard
For those of you of a less monarchist bent (I know that also includes some Unionists, there’s always Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas, this year delivered by that flawed representative of the American prolateriat – Marge Simpson. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
WILL this attempt to attract Americans of Scots-Irish descent to Northern Ireland lead to a greater understanding in the US of the different perspectives here? Belfast Gonzosluggerotoole.com
The latest edition of “The Ulster-Scot” is out – so I thought I would bring a small update to Slugger. The Ulster-Scots Agency is now funding organisations in 10 counties (Northern Ireland plus Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal and Leitrim ).Some interesting tid-bits: The inaugral meeting of the first all-party Ulster-Scots parliamentary group at Westminster will take place on Jan 16th. John Anderson`s stage show “On Eagle`s Wing” will be broadcast by BBC Northern Ireland in January and in the States in …
One of Ireland’s finest writers, Colm Tóibín, has a short story published today in the Guardian. A song. Ambrose Uprichard
As an attempt to relieve the overload, and tempers, on the NI representatives to sit in Dail? thread , I thought it might be interesting to post a letter in today’s Irish News, page 9, from Nelson McCausland, MLA. The GAA should be honest about its political agenda Is there anybody in Northern Ireland who thinks that the GAA are not open and honest about their politics ? Should Nelson have recognised the difference between the Northern GAA and the …
Does Being Protestant Make You Fat? in the – yep, you guessed it – Catholic Herald! Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
THE rather wonderful Doktor Moog has a couple of useful analysis pieces that readers may find visually helpful for gaining an understanding of recent political events. Belfast Gonzosluggerotoole.com
