Today could not have turned out any bigger a mess for the incumbent DUP Leader and would-be First Minister. If sources are to be believed the Fermanagh MLA was ready to sign off on a deal which would have seen 3 Bills introduced : An Irish Language Bill An Ulster Scots Bill A Joint Respect Bill What has happened since the weekend to put the Stormont train off the rails? A DUP Group meeting on Monday morning, 3 days of …
Twenty years on the from the IRA and loyalist ceasefires, three journalists came together to reflect on the lead up to the summer of 1994 and the following 18 months. Brian Rowan, Eamonn Mallie and Charlie Bird (RTE’s contact with the IRA) recounted their memories of the emerging and fragile peace in an event organised as part of Féile an Phobail. “Sometimes when you’re living through history you don’t see it.” (Charlie Bird) It was a great opportunity for notes …
After last week’s warm-up, the second programme featuring Eamonn Mallie’s extended interviews with Ian Paisley (recorded between October 2012 and March 2013) began with an introduction to Ian Paisley’s strong relationship with his wife Eileen. It went on to cover: The Leeds Castle talks. Tony Blair’s admission that he was converting to Catholicism. You can hear Eileen laughing off-screen as he jokes about “getting a cane” if any of the Paisley children had come with a Catholic boyfriend/girlfriend. Clips of …
In the internet age, rebuttals come in fast. Tonight’s statement from the DUP manages to arrive just in time to make it into some of tomorrow morning’s newspapers and news bulletins and even before those media outlets’ journalists have been able to report their analysis and opinion on what they gleaned from Friday afternoon’s embargoed preview of the second part of Eamonn Mallie’s documentary. Statement from Democratic Unionist Party Spokesman “Lord Bannside is entitled to his own opinions – however, …
Alain de Botton spent seven days living in a Heathrow hotel and working from a desk in the newly opened Terminal 5 in order to write a short book A Week at the Airport . He cast his voyeuristic glances in all directions, commentating on the sense of passion and the moment of separation of lovers, sitting on the closed runway in the middle of the night, as well as discovering that the terminal’s largest bookshop didn’t stock any of …
Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/
Back in April 2007 Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate: Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams make me want to spew. Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/
Commenting on O’Neill’s ‘bridge building’ policy in 1965 Ian Paisley said ‘Traitors are like bridges, they both go to the other side’ — David McCann (@dmcbfs) So last night Eamonn Mallie gave us a last opportunity to roughly assay the life of one Ian Richard Kyle Paisley before the obit writers get a hold of it. It may be a reflection of the ‘big man”s advancing age that his interviewer’s voice predominated over his. A summer’s day it wasn’t. Paisley …
Last week’s papers and news bulletins spoiled many of the story lines in last night’s first part of Eamonn Mallie’s conversations with Ian Paisley on BBC One NI. (Available to watch on-demand.) Forty hours of interviews were conducted between October 2012 and March 2013, so we’re only scraping the surface of their discussions and there are many gaps in the timeline that some viewers might have wanted to explore. Expect a book to mop up the rest! There was little …
Allison Morris made a number of contributions to this morning’s Irish News. As well as the front page article about the alleged security breach when a police officer’s personal mobile fell into the hands of dissident republicans (and its contents were subsequently passed to the Irish News), she also writes a curious opinion piece on page 19. Trapped behind a paywall, it only seems fair that her column gets a wider reading. Rambling online twits prejudice trials at will Kicking …
