The fingerprints of the Treasury and, most importantly, the Chancellor, George Osborne, are clearly detectable in the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announcement today that plans have been shelved to investigate the culture, pay and behaviour of the banking industry. It is political interference of the highest order
Read more →Archive for the blog Category
I have just watched ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ and, understandably in media tradition, time was given in the final minutes to those sporting people who had died in the last year. Today’s papers have coverage of the death of Lord Janner who had been accused of
Read more →
Winston Churchill died in 1965; he was last elected to office in 1961. On Sunday the Observer published the results of a survey by the pollsters, BritainThinks . Churchill topped the poll with an impressive 100% in the qualities that were determined necessary for leadership – ‘being decisive,
Read more →
BBC Political Editor, Laura Kernssberg , has assured us that each MP wrestled with the decision before voting on the War motion in the Commons. The Glasgow woman is absolutely right ; from the moment they are elected, the one question MPs automatically ask themselves is – ‘what are
Read more →
The movie, ‘Suffragette’, does not ostensibly intend to establish parallels with other protest movements elsewhere but as the action unfolds, the early days of the Sixties Civil Rights movement in the Six Counties and, specifically in Derry where I had an active role, were vividly recalled. The
Read more →
The Irish bog is a cultural as well as a natural landscape; it covers about 15% of the surface area and for many it has been an inescapable force throughout their lives. Joyce ends ‘The Dead ‘ with images of the bog suggesting immortality and Heaney frequently turned to
Read more →
The BBC presenter, Jackie Bird, has been the recipient of sustained online abuse from a coterie of SNP supporters since the Referendum. There is certainly a justifiable perception of bias in the BBC but this is an editorial policy and not one made by presenters. The SNP
Read more →
Jean McConville , the widowed, Belfast mother of nine children, was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972; she was secretly buried and her family waited over thirty years for an official ceremony. She is the best known of ‘The Disappeared’ and her death still causes
Read more →
The Scottish Photographic Federation used to host this gathering but for reasons, as yet not fully explained , it abandoned its commitment to audio-visual enthusiasts a couple of years back. Step forward doughty Bill Barr of Carstairs CC who almost single-handedly has managed to stage this annual event
Read more →
In the introduction to its coverage of Ladies’ Final Day at Wimbledon, the BBC asked about ten women tennis players to name their idols in the sport. It was surprising that only two people, nominated a Williams – Serena , who chose her sister, Venus, and Heather
Read more →