It is hard for Sinn Fein leaders to say plainly that those who can help catch the dissident should take their evidence to the police. They have, however, come as close to stating that baldly as they have ever done. In the past their reactions to the dissidents have amounted to a call that they [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics, Northern Ireland’ Category
If McGuinness stands with the police, then that means: all the way!
Posted in Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland, tagged IRA, Ireland, Police, PSNI on April 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Bet
Posted in Belfast, Culture and Society, Media, Politics, Northern Ireland, tagged Bet, Collins, Eoghan, Harris, Jude on February 26, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Two of my occasional colleagues on media projects and panels will have a little business to settle today. When Eoghan Harris visited the West Belfast festival he took a wager from Jude Collins. Eoghan had said that Sinn Fein would lose all its seats to Fianna Fail in the next Dail General Election, the one [...]
Not a Tout but a ‘Liability’
Posted in Belfast, Politics, Northern Ireland on October 3, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Half truths or worse from the IRA This week the commission for the location of victims remains has closed down its search in County Monaghan for the body of Gerry Evans. The search for the remains of the disappeared has been fruitful in some cases, hopeless in others; depending on the quality of information passed [...]
Catching Up With The Past
Posted in Politics, Northern Ireland on September 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The past in Northern Ireland is a clatter of unfinished stories, and the neater and more vague the official versions of events, the more suspicious and cynical we become. Rightly or wrongly. An early assessment of past violence was the Widgery Tribunal into the Bloody Sunday killings of January 1972. That taught us how examining [...]
Cameron’s Apology
Posted in Politics, Northern Ireland on June 16, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I was standing in Guildhall Square in Derry yesterday with 12,000 people listening to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s apology for the killings of 14 innocent people on the Bloody Sunday parade of January 30 1972. Judging by the rapturous applause from the crowd, most were as surprised as I was by the frankness of [...]
Did Nelson evolve or was he intelligently designed?
Posted in Culture and Society, Politics, Northern Ireland, Religion on May 27, 2010 | 3 Comments »
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 [...]
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.
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 [...]
Crisis Fatigue
Posted in Politics, Northern Ireland on February 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A sampling of voices on a Belfast city street suggests that people have very little interest in the political regime that serves them – crisis fatigue, perhaps.
A Shame and a Disgrace
Posted in Belfast, Politics, Northern Ireland on January 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »
This piece was carried on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph on January 28, the day after Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen gave up mediating between Sinn Fein and the DUP on how and when to devolve policing and justice powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. (See also.) The British prime minister, Gordon Brown [...]
Welcome
This is the blog of my journalism and recordings, with some extracts from my books too. I tend to sound off on Northern Ireland Politics and Culture. Some of the work here will be recent journalism, articles that have appeared in the Belfast Telegraph or elsewhere, but there is a lot of material going back a couple of years now, so please hang around and browse. Malachi
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