We support the Moyle District Council’s proposal to twin with Gaza City.
Patients on trollies
It was recently revealed that £23 million is spent on annual salaries for 380 Board members of the Health Service here in Northern Ireland. These administrators, who are based in Belfast’s City Centre, do not provide front-line patient services. Even though they provide only administrative or commissioning services, their department has not been affected by ‘austerity’ measures. Continue reading
by Tommy McKearney. Pluto Press Continue reading
This article first appeared on Politico.ie
Dungannon's Potemkin St.
In early June 2011, the official website of the Northern Ireland Assembly reported that the Minister for Social Development, Nelson McCausland of the DUP, had visited the region’s first ‘virtual’ street. The Executive Minister was in Dungannon’s Perry Street to inspect what the website described as a ‘Virtual Window Scheme’ that involved painting derelict properties and installing pictorial scenes into boarded-up window openings to create a ‘living’ appearance and street scene. Mr McCausland was impressed and in the course of his address said that his ‘Department intends to include similar schemes, where appropriate, in its list of options for town centre regeneration initiatives across the Province.’ Continue reading
Shortly before Elizabeth Windsor’s visit to Dublin, the death of police officer Ronan Kerr led to a moral panic across Ireland, with demonstrations in support of the status quo and with the great and the good claiming all Irish society was under threat. In the Assembly elections which followed a new republican layer, opposed to Sinn Fein, marked up an unexpected vote. Continue reading
Gerry McGeough
It has been said that Republicans who do not view joining Britain’s Stormont administration as a means to end British rule, are permitted to disagree. Those holding such views require no such permission, any more than would their commitment to a united Ireland need the terms of the Good Friday deal to become a legitimate aspiration. Continue reading
Anthony McIntyre
Easter Sunday 2011 has come and gone. We are fifty years closer to a united Ireland than we were fifty years ago. In fifty years from now we will be fifty years closer to a united Ireland than we are today. All truisms with absolutely no strategic use value whatsoever. Hardly worth the violent candle and the snuffed out lives Continue reading
The recent UK elections may have been a disaster for unionist political parties but represented a triumph for unionism as a political and ideological force. As Liam Clarke notes, “political unionism is in disarray but the Union itself is stronger than any time in the history of Northern Ireland Continue reading
Jim McAllister
Gerry Adams often spoke about what he called ‘The Re-conquest of Ireland.’ He described this as the achievement , not only of an all Ireland Republic, but the renewal of a specific Irish society which would have an identity easily recognisable as different from other English speaking countries and which would move towards being Gaelic speaking as well. This idea, allied to what seemed to be a socialist perspective on all matters which impinge on our lives and which would move Ireland away from right wing and religious subservience sounded very attractive. Continue reading
As a political movement which has come into existence within recent decades the Provisional Movements has the right to be and to pursue its political aims but I cannot accept their contention to represent the revolutionary republican tradition Continue reading
At the last count, there was at least seven different republican parades to Belfast’s Milltown cemetery between Easter Sunday and Monday. Most, if not all, taking part in these commemorations were convinced that their particular brand of republicanism is the one, true republicanism, and that all others are heretical. Continue reading
