Mick has some thoughts on Mary McArdle standing down as a special advisor below. It may have been that Sinn Fein or Ms. McArdle felt the need for her to move on and as Mick says Ann Travers may on UTV have been determined to see it as an act of reconciliation. A slightly different analysis of the situation is presented by the News Letter. Ms Travers said she thought the reason for the timing of the resignation may have …
Tuesday night’s Spotlight on the killing of Mary Travers was indeed fascinating, not so much for the story of the ambush itself – although I had never seen the family members speak on camera before, and their continuing suffering was palpable – but for its insights into the inner workings of Sinn Féin. SF’s arrogant attitude towards journalists is well-known (how dare they ask impertinent questions!), but it was the juxtaposition of Carál Ní Chuilín’s bad-tempered interview and her relationship …
Interesting piece on BBC Spotlight on Tuesday night reviewed controversy over the Travers’ killing of April 1984. In passing at the beginning, it suggests the HET report into the killing of Mary Travers murder came to the conclusion that this operation was a deliberate attempt to kill all three family members. They also carried a statement from Mary McArdle saying “the murder of Mary Travers was a tragic mistake which I regret”. In an impromptu interview with the BBC journalist Julian …
Neuralgia: severe spasmodic pain caused by damage to or malfunctioning of a nerve and often following the course of the nerve. It is well worth listening to Mark Devenport’s interview with Martin McGuinness in yesterday’s Inside Politics on Radio Ulster… Not least for his line that “one of the big failures of the peace process has been the inability to find agreement on how we deal with the past”. Quite. Although from Mr McGuinness’ choice of wording it is clear …
Interesting take from Ian Paisley in yesterday’s News Letter: I know that there have been difficult decisions and hard choices taken here. I had to take many of them myself. But those choices will only bear fruit if those who are the deepest affected by them have our ear. In this present very public debate between a woman whose sister was murdered and those who have chosen to appoint someone responsible for what occurred on that Sunday morning, everyone is …
Reports of ‘loyalist threats’ didn’t stem the criticism, now Sinn Féin’s Mary McArdle, special adviser to the Northern Ireland Culture Minister, Carál Ní Chilín, has broken her silence over her controversial appointment. In the Andersonstown News… Mary McArdle was convicted and jailed for her involvement in the Provisional IRA murder of 23-year-old teacher, Mary Travers, who had been working at Holy Child Primary School in Andersonstown, west Belfast, and the attempted murder of Mary Travers’ father, Catholic magistrate Tom Travers, as they left mass at St Brigid’s …
There’s a great piece by veteran journalist Alan Murray in the print version of today’s Belfast Telegraph, in which he discursively exams the idea that Sinn Fein deliberately set out to hurt the Travers family by appointing the only member of the IRA gang killed their 22 year old sister Mary. Well, they aren’t saying why they appointed so we cannot know for sure. But like the British refusal to hand over material to the Irish government’s inquiry to the …
