Author of historical fiction, historian and political commentator
Under the Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland politics became like a football match where neither team was sure which goal they should attack and which to defend. Now that particular game is over, the teams are wondering why they did not see things more clearly. The answer is they were spellbound by a master story-teller.
Some might say Belfast is a city in waiting, looking to find its identity in a new and more confusing era. Others would say it is a lost city being discovered by cruise ships, legal firms and location scouts for dystopian films. Henry Joy must be mightily vexed, publicly executed where today shoppers scurry about . Maybe we need to listen to him and his ilk..
Somebody just asked me if I had ever met St. Patrick. I have. Here's the story: the saint appears in a dream, speaking in several tongues, and confesses the many sins he has committed against the Irish.
If you accept that the corporate media in these islands is heavily controlled; that this state (UK) routinely lies to its residents, it fought a long war to prevent a united Ireland and went to enormous lengths to achieve a political settlement within the union only 20 years ago, then you must question why the trigger words ‘united Ireland’ have been allowed back into public discourse with such force. What are they up to?
Contrary to myth, there were many Irish Nationalist Protestants/Dissenters - given their percentage of the overall Irish population. They cannot be dismissed as a tiny handful of eccentrics and misfits, but part of the norm i.e. many Protestants wanted an all-island independent nation and actively worked collaboratively with their Catholic fellow countrymen and women to achieve such an outcome from the late eighteenth century until Partition - then Protestant participation greatly reduced.
In his retirement from being Northern Ireland's First Minister and DUP Leader, Peter Robinson hopes to use his freedom to nudge unionism in a new direction. Will his rebranding as an elder statesman allow him to lead unionists into a new arrangement with the Irish Republic or will he end his days as just another lundy?
Everything in the Brexit negotiations was faked by the British Government. It was a piece of theatre. It was always a preparation for the coup de grace, the unilateral withdrawal from the EU and the establishment of a government of national unity - a one party state.
