One family's history over two centuries in Scotland and Ireland through tumultuous times from ploughs to poppies and to a shattering of old beliefs.
From ploughs to poppies
Tag: ireland
Educated ignorance
I remember October 5th 1968 well. I was 14. I wrote an essay on the events in Derry in school. I wish I had kept it. No, on second thought maybe I don't. In my boy's mind events in Derry in October 1968 are always connected to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in America three … Continue reading Educated ignorance
Who and what are the DUP?
If you accept that we increasingly live in a topsy-turvy world where many things are inverted - injustice is rewarded, might is right, good is bad and incompetence is competence - then you will also understand that we mistake words for actions. Politicians and spin merchants of all creeds use these twisted illusions of … Continue reading Who and what are the DUP?
The Matrix and the Story-tellers
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.
Belfast 2018 – the eye of the storm or permanently becalmed
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..
The Night Caller
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.
Received wisdom
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?
Rebel Prods – forgotten men and women
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.
Battle of the Boyne and the sham fight
False flag events - events that are staged to appear different from what they really are - are nothing new. I believe the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in July 1690 was a false flag - a sham fight. Like any false flag event, in order to examine it objectively you must forget everything … Continue reading Battle of the Boyne and the sham fight
Northern Ireland: The Emperor has no clothes
Northern Ireland - a region of the United Kingdom which it has until now largely been run as a colony - is publicly exposed as highly dysfunctional. Not only is its political class, or at least one half of it, seen to be highly incompetent, negligent and corrupt, abusing the system of devolved government; but more significantly, the local civil service has shown itself to be equally unsound. What do the British Government do?
Referenda: a democratic illusion
The constitutional status of any country or region has rarely been decided by the people. It's nearly always been achieved by default as old orders collapse and, even then, decided by a political elite behind closed doors who present the people with a fait accompli.
Peter Robinson and Disaster Unionism
Peter Robinson comes out of retirement to re-write history and his part in it. Are moves afoot for a comeback?
Feudal state – the price of the union.
Northern Ireland is denied basic human rights granted to the rest of the UK and Ireland. Part of the price of the Union with Britain
TV land works its spell
I watched this BBC NI interview with John O'Dowd of Sinn Fein & Edwin Poots of the DUP in the wake of the McElduff affair. While the tone was a little different from many such interviews in the past and John O'Dowd's comments about McElduff and Kingsmill are to be commended, much of the talk … Continue reading TV land works its spell
End the Union – Crossing the Rubicon (or Coming Out)
Inherited beliefs. I think it is fair to say that most of our views are the result of the conditioning of the class, culture and family we are born into. Few people rebel against this. They may modify the views of their family and peers or stage a token teenage rebellion, but only a select … Continue reading End the Union – Crossing the Rubicon (or Coming Out)
Atlantean Irish
A glance at this map should persuade most people of Ireland’s pivotal maritime position from ancient times. There were close contacts between the Irish and the entire Atlantic and Mediterranean seaboard from ancient times that are little reported in modern history text books. This is just one of hidden aspects of Irish history that in the … Continue reading Atlantean Irish
What did the Romans ever do for the Irish?
Was the Christian Church with its headquarters in Rome merely a front for the old Roman Empire and its global ambitions?
It was the Egyptians!
It was the Egyptians, not the Romans and not even St. Patrick! In my historical novel about early Christian Ireland: The Hare’s Vision, the story moves from Egypt to Ireland in the sixth century for a good reason. People have asked me: ‘Why Egypt?’ ‘Should it not be Rome?’ Click here. No. The connection with … Continue reading It was the Egyptians!
Beaghmore Stone circles
Extract from the Hare's Vision of the ceremony performed by Colum Cille at Beaghmore in 575AD. “It is a thin place between this world and the others. It has been used by the peoples of this land to channel the energy needed for crops to grow, healthy children to be born and enemies to be … Continue reading Beaghmore Stone circles
When the flyers came home
It was a standing joke between them. Sam took a Bushmills and Sean a Jameson. They’d done it for over forty years, but they united around the Guinness. That seemed to cut across all creeds. “Parade gets smaller every year,” said Sam as they settled into the snug in the small bar in central Belfast … Continue reading When the flyers came home
