I watched two TV programmes back-to-back last night, the first on RTE was ‘Thatcher – Ireland and the Iron Lady’, followed by a BBC documentary in the ‘Imagine’ series on photographer, Don McCullin. While the subjects were quite contrasting personalities, the programmes shared common themes – attitudes
Read more →My job for the last seven years before retirement involved me in frequent air travel, sometimes on a weekly basis. I spent a lot of enforced time hanging about in transit lounges. We are told that Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower , is permanently stuck in
Read more →“though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world “ The quotation is from “Riders to the Sea”, Synge’s lyrical depiction of a careworn mother and her hopeless struggle with the sea. Our youngest child, Fiona, gave birth
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The Scottish Education Secretary, Michael Russell, MSP, yesterday addressed the AGM of the Educational Institute of Scotland. He is a man impermeable to doubt, possessing a rhetorical style that suggests he learned compound verbs on his mother’s knee before he learned to walk. However, in the presence
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I have held an Irish passport for all of my adult life, although I have not lived there since 1971. Ireland shaped me and I hope that I remain today essentially an Irish person, albeit one probably modified by the cultural influence of other countries where I
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Language researchers at Glasgow University have discovered that people have a dual linguistic identity. They talk informally to friends and family in one way but affect a more posh voice for the telephone and in the workplace. They conclude that the phenomenon occurs because people want
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The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has received high level coverage on BBC Scotland today for its ‘Town Hall Rich List’ . It contends that Scottish councils, and particularly Glasgow, are spending too much on wages. The Campaign Manager, Robert Oxley, was given a particularly easy time on
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In 1960 the halls of residence were my accommodation during the first year I spent as a student in Belfast. We were the first cohort in a brand new building which was inviting, well furnished and provided all meals at no cost to our families. How times
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… The arrival of the giant pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, at Edinburgh Zoo in November 2011 capped a magnificent year for the SNP in Scotland. Underlining its importance, First Minister, Alex Salmond, said it symbolised Scotland’s ever growing relationship with the People’s Republic of
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