It’s not hard to imagine the jaws dropping onto desktops when the letter arrived from Culture Minister Nelson McCausland asking museum heads to pay a bit more attention to matters of vital concern to him like the Ulster Scots heritage, the Orange Order and the origin of the universe. On reflection, museum managers might have [...]
Archive for the ‘Culture and Society’ Category
Did Nelson evolve or was he intelligently designed?
Posted in Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland, Religion on May 27, 2010 | 3 Comments »
A Walk Around Belfast
Posted in Belfast, Culture and Society on April 30, 2010 | 2 Comments »
If you are missing Belfast you might like to take a walk around it with me on my new slideshow, History Behind Bars, currently showing at The Street.
Double Identity
Posted in Belfast, Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland on April 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Tim Brannigan’s new book, Where Are You Really From? recounts the life of a black boy born in Belfast who became a Republican activist. Is having two identities a freedom or a burden? That’s a question I explored with him and others in similar double identity situations.
Nantes Protest
Posted in Culture and Society, Religion on March 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I saw this protest outside the church of St Nicolas in Nantes last week, March 13. The Catholics on the church steps were conducting a service around an icon, the protesters were objecting to Catholic teaching on abortion and women’s rights, and the police were in the middle. You can hear both the protest chanting [...]
Analyse That!
Posted in Culture and Society on February 27, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Here’s a gem you might have missed as a comment on the Contact page: Hi Malachi, as a journalist from a nationalist background it gives me hope that somebody like yourself can be well known. I think to myself, if a dense little twat like Malachi who acts like a monkey to the unionist gallery [...]
Irish Graffiti
Posted in Belfast, Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland on February 22, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Here is some graffiti I spotted in the last couple of days. Actually, the first one has been on a wall on the main Omagh Road out of Strabane for months. The bit I have deleted shows a car registration number, presumably an invitation to attack that car. You’d think the police would have moved [...]
Reading at The Wild Geese
Posted in Culture and Society on February 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I read a couple of pieces from Under His Roof, my book about my father, at The Wild Geese Literary Festival in Strangford on Feb 6. It seemed to go down well. You can hear a recording here:
Don’t Wilt, Iris
Posted in Culture and Society, Religion on January 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »
A humanistic view of marital infidelity would ask if both partners should take responsibility for one of them wandering. Lucky Peter Robinson; he gets his wife to take all the blame and then forgives her on national television. Here’s a piece I publish in this morning’s Belfast Telegraph: Part of the indignity for Iris Robinson [...]
Talk about Podcasting
Posted in Culture and Society on November 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
This is a conversation I had with Paddy Hoey, editor of Gobshite’s Miscellany, about blogging and podcasting and the future of new media and old. Mind you, Paddy did most of the talking. We recorded it over an ordinary BT landline with a SSS RTL-650 from Solid State Sound.
Digging
Posted in Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland on November 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There can be few more grim and ghoulish jobs than sifting a wet and mucky bog for a body. Those who consigned Gerry Evans and others into the dark grime in remote country areas intended that those bodies would never be found. And the most benign interpretation of their failure now to give precise location [...]
