Growing up in Ireland, the Paupers’ Field and the Polo Field were our childhood play areas. As children, the emotional overtones did not register with us nor did any real distinction occur between the two grounds. Seventy years later , I find those memories strangely relevant to
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VALUE TEACHERS – VALUE EDUCATION It is just over 17 years since the McCrone Agreement on Teachers’ pay was signed. An increase in salary of 23% was received by Scotland’ s teachers, along with agreement on the implementation of a 35 hour week. It appeared to be
Read more →Reaching out to people and touching their lives, is not instinctive human activity. It is learned and practiced behaviour. Not all of us are capable of committing to it nor, indeed, do we wish to have any appreciable level of involvement in the lives of others. Only
Read more →Our group of Irish teachers who met President Lyndon Johnson in the White House Rose Garden in July 1967, witnessed a morose, brooding giant of a man who was being rent asunder by the casualties in Vietnam and the growing protests on the campus across the country.
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Tomorrow is International Credit Union Day when millions of credit union members in over 100 countries around the World will celebrate the financial liberty and access to services that the most powerful self-help movement on the Planet has given them. The enormous growth of the movement in
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In recent times, the passing of some celebrity leads to expressions of barely controlled grief by admirers. Arguably , the work of trade unionist Rodney Bickerstaffe, who died this week, impacted on the lives of the vast majority of working people. The achievement of the Living Wage
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‘Let me smell your breath!’ , Ian Paisley demanded of Martin Bell, the BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent during the early years of ‘ The Troubles’. Bell had asked for a comment on a recent display of militarism in East Belfast by a loyalist group. The exchange was
Read more →On April 30th,2013, a blog on this site repeated a widely circulated media story, attributing racist/nazi attitudes to Mr Alex Wood, a UKIP candidate in the elections for Somerset County Council. The Daily Mirror, the primary source of the story, in 2015 issued a retraction and apology
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‘I want Scotland to be at the heart of Europe’, the young Mary Queen of Scots tells her courtiers in David Greig’s fine production of Linda Mclean ‘s play, ‘Glory on Earth’, at the Lyceum Theatre. Sharing the stage for most of the action is volatile preacher,
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‘Fxxx off back to your chapel’, Father, ‘where you belong’. Along with others, I was on the street in Derry in January 1969, trying to stop a group of youngsters from throwing stones at the RUC. A futile exercise but a social learning experience with the
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