Ultra violet lit public toilets, designed to prevent drug users clearly seeing the veins in their arms to inject into, don’t work. Last Friday I went to a blinding and dazzling public ‘comfort station’ to find it locked. I left. I was worried that someone might need help so I returned. As I knocked on…
No Deal Doesn’t Mean a Clean Break Last Saturday, Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), brought a stark message about Brexit to the crowded Factory Room in Belfast’s Metropolitan Arts Centre – the MAC. ‘No deal doesn’t mean a clean break. It’s not as if it’s going to be a short,…
But a new book suggests the threat to the 70-year-old earl was well-known and key flaws in his security handed his killers their opportunityForty years ago today, Martin McGuinness, chief of staff of the IRA since 1978, was on the verge of realising the ambition he had vowed to fulfil when he took command. He…
Where you are tender, you speak your plural. Roland Barthes Last month I went to an early afternoon debate at Duncairn Arts Centre. The panel were Danny Morrison, Conall Parr, Rosemary Jenkinson, Laurence McKeown, chaired by BBC journalist Tori Watson. The Arts of War was an outreach special as part of Feile. Jamie Bryson was…
Sometimes life smacks you in the face.Yesterday I went to public toilets in Belfast and saw what I thought was a bundle of rags in a cubicle. Until I realised I could see an elbow. And the plastic plunger of a syringe. I’m not going to go into all the details. It is enough to…
The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which gives equal rights to the life of both the mother and her unborn child, was approved by referendum on 7 September 1983 and signed into law on 7 October 1983. In that autumn of 1983, a 15-year old schoolgirl found out she was pregnant. Her name was Ann…
Motion 157 This DM notes that, more than sixteen years after the murder of the investigative journalist and Belfast Branch officer Martin O’Hagan, there have been no convictions for the crime, despite the identities of those who ordered and carried out the assassination being widely known. Noting the failure of the investigation by UK police services,…
Many years ago, Edward Said, the towering Palestinian American intellectual who founded the academic field of post-colonialist studies said in Orientalism: ‘Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy,…
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it! When I read President Trump’s tweet last week, I was shaken – just like…
Speaking at a Diem 25 Belfast meeting on Saturday afternoon, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis exclusively told SocialNews of a new Italian political movement. Thanks to Kathryn Johnston. “In Italy the political party scene is very sad. But at the level of civic, at the level of local government, there are some very interesting and…
