Wednesday 19 June 2013
Yesterday saw the start of the G8 summit in Fermanagh but the day was all about Barack and Michelle Obama. It confirmed yet again that Northern Ireland has a special place in American politics. Sure, it might be slipping down the ranks of importance since the heady days of the Clinton administration, but that is as much to do with the relative success of the peace process as it is with diminishing interest in the White House.
So, did you have a jolly Bloomsday on Sunday? Or did you just read aloud some of the more sexually explicit passages from Ulysses? Writers are keen to turn Bloomsday into a holiday at home and abroad. And writers are exactly the people to celebrate James Joyce and his masterpiece.
Under slate grey skies and drenched by rain that poured for the duration, thousands of people gathered in Botanic Gardens on Saturday for the Big IF Belfast rally. Hundreds of charities and religious groups had launched the campaign to send a simple message to the G8 leaders. Starvation is a blight on humanity and should be confined to the past.
On the face of it, the latest financial package from the Westminster government to Northern Ireland is encouraging.
Judge Barney McElholm is a colourful character and this newspaper, like many of the general public, admires his penchant for plain speaking and his ability to judiciously combine the letter of the law with common sense. And we can understand his frustration that he will be unable to deal with a case on Monday because the investigating police officer will be involved in G8 security duties. His description of the world leaders' summit as a travelling Eurovision Song Contest which should be held in the middle of a desert brought a wry smile to many.
All MLAs at Stormont, with the exception of the SDLP members, have accepted a pay rise of at least 11%. It is hard to get away from the feeling that by doing so they have seriously misjudged the public mood. The evidence of hard times are all around us, high unemployment, few jobs for even young qualified people, savage cuts to benefits, a stagnant housing market and a decimated retail sector.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations that America's secretive National Security Agency has been spying on ordinary US citizens to a far greater degree than previously thought has sent sections of the US media, body politic and public into a tizzy.
David Cameron wanted to give something to Northern Ireland ahead of the G8. A gesture to show the world how determined he is to deliver real change to the smallest country of the UK.
Protests against the G8 will not have achieved very much. We live in a part of the world in which protest simply doesn't work any more, or at least does no more than advertise a grievance. It doesn't change the plans of governments.
David Cameron likes to suggest that the UK has to "compete in the global race". And the chancellor, George Osborne, once spoke wistfully of sponsoring a "march of the makers".
For the first time, a major international summit is being hosted in Northern Ireland, when the G8 meets at Lough Erne next Monday and Tuesday. As a prominent international research university, Queen's University, Belfast is hosting a pre-summit conference today, at which experts and academics from Queen's and across the world will dissect the summit's agenda in front of an invited audience.
WE would all agree with MPs wanting a new law so constituents can recall an MP for not performing up to the job and vote them out of office. This is not possible with the House of Lords.
BRIAN Rooney (Write Back, June 14) says that "perhaps a new word is needed for a legal contract between same-sex couples".
I AM writing in response to the article by Duncan Morrow on the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (Comment, June 10).
THE Prime Minister has delivered something spectacular for Northern Ireland and demonstrated how committed he is to this part of the UK by bringing the G8 summit to Fermanagh.
THE news that an air ambulance has had to be borrowed from the Scottish Ambulance Service for the period of the G8 seems to underline that such rapid emergency care is cost-effective for the Scots, cost-effective for the G8, but not warranted for the people of Northern Ireland.
ANY change in the procedure for obtaining planning approval would have, as its most likely result, more profit for the developer. The other side, of course, is that most development adversely affects other people in a way that results in economic detriment.
I was raised in rural Ireland where we always called a spade a spade and people who were outgoing, friendly and happy were said to be 'gay'. Around the 1970s, homosexuals hijacked that word as if their 'lifestyle' were something special. I wish to thank the unionist MLAs in Stormont for voting against same-sex marriage.
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Maybe it's because the sun is out, the garden is looking lovely and my cat Gissing is purring contentedly under the summer seat but today I feel like saying, "Hurry on up, leaders of the G8, this isn't a bad wee place."
Perhaps it's time to come out and admit that Mike Read might have had a point all those years ago. You'll remember how Read made himself a national laughing stock when he tried to get Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax banned from the airwaves. Oh, how the sophisticates sniggered at the hapless DJ.
Just what has Pippa Middleton done to deserve the tidal wave of vitriol that washes towards her every time she is unwittingly papped in the street.
It really is very simple. If a paedophile with a criminal record (or without one) was appointed as a Special Adviser (or Spad) to a government minister, the difficulties of that would be easily visible.
For a woman whose defence was that she was easily cowed, double murderess Hazel Stewart certainly seems to have a neck of purest brass.
The Belfast-based crime series The Fall may be grabbing all the headlines, but another TV crime drama outstrips it for me.
It's every woman's worst nightmare – to be walking home late at night when Nick Ross leaps unprovoked out of the shadows and starts shouting his mouth off about rape.
It's one of those images that has changed our sensibilities for good. The footage of the Woolwich suspect – as we have now absurdly to refer to him – wielding a meat cleaver, hands red with blood, discoursing with the owner of the mobile phone filming him, is beyond anything we have seen on British TV.
It's sexism, Jim, and much as we know it ... While JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness has generally drawn positive reviews and even warp-speed box office returns, the film has had to put up a critical force field over the gratutitous scene of Alice Eve (yes, Trevor Eve's daughter) in her space undies – which look surprisingly like contemporary ones (push up bra and teeny tiny panties).
I have a friend who was invited along recently to a police station to "help with inquiries". Turns out he'd been "identified" from police photographs of flag protest participants.
Single women of Fermanagh – now's your chance.
What is wrong with people?
Hard-to-stomach celebrity revelation of the week? It has to be that bizarre announcement by Myleene Klass, self-appointed spokeswoman for the Breast Milk Marketing Board, that she has offered her breast milk to her friends.
The word brave gets bandied around these days to the point of meaningless.
The Mid Ulster Mail, in a recent special supplement, described the Rainey Endowed School in Magherafelt as a "forerunner to integrated education". It has been that – one of the first mixed schools in Northern Ireland, although not quite "integrated" in the purist sense, since it retains its grammar status.
In coverage of the aftermath of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, various national outlets have raged against the "preachers of hate" who they claim, have "blood on their hands".
Gok Wan couldn't have done better. David Cameron was pictured this week strolling along a cobbled Balearic street and sitting in on a little open air café sipping espresso.
Analysing where a prime time TV show is going wrong is always a tricky matter. But Brian May got pretty close I thought, when he took a serious swipe at the dull, dumb and depressing (his words) and ailing (by general consensus) talent show The Voice.
So far so good. The loony lefties and anarchic demonstrators who usually inhabit G8 summits have stayed away.
If we are not careful, someone may lead us to believe that even Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen were victims. Or Saddam Hussein. Or Colonel Gaddafi. Or a host of other tyrants, dictators or oppressors of ordinary, law-abiding people around the world – never mind those who murdered and maimed in Northern Ireland.
The courageous campaign by Ann Travers to thwart the appointment of a Sinn Fein special adviser begs other questions. Why do we need so many advisers at Stormont, if any at all? How are they appointed? How much are they paid? What are their duties? And where do their responsibilities begin and end? To whom are they accountable?
The barbaric murder of a young soldier in London has served to jolt memories of all our yesterdays in Northern Ireland. Memories of mutilated, mangled victims of car bombings, booby-traps, doorstep shootings and back-alley punishments. Of the maimed and the butchered.
As another football season ends, don't worry about your future in the European Community, or the slaughter in Syria, or the forthcoming G8 summit in Fermanagh.
The First and deputy First Ministers should be commended for making a start at last. Northern Ireland cannot have a truly shared future unless Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness are demonstrating a greater togetherness in public, as has not been apparent until now.
The Royal British Legion and the Irish Football Association made the right calls. Both organisations should be congratulated for the pragmatic stance they have adopted over the flying of the Union flag in one case and the playing of the national anthem in the other.
Before the bulldozers moved in, I was given access one wintry November afternoon to the site of the old Maze prison. I had been many times before in the days when it was crammed full of republican and loyalist inmates. The creaking of the pedestrian turnstile at the entrance is imprinted on my memory, as is the bleak reception area where visitors waited.
The brutality of the Boston bombs brought back distressing memories for people in Northern Ireland. So many of us can relate to the loss of life and terrible suffering from our personal experience of living through the Troubles.
We need to talk about Tulisa Contostavlos. I know next to nothing about her. Never seen her on television, nor listened to any of her records, but I feel the need to write about her.
After the shock of the Woolwich killing last week gradually began to subside to be replaced by many questions, something else also struck me. It said quite a lot about the times we live in, but I'm not 100% what exactly.
This week I want to talk about The Fall. Not the Mancunian post-punk legends, whose latest album, Re-Mit, is every bit as good as the rest of their 35-year blistering output.
Many years ago, a young trainee journalist was sent to the house of a well-known vicar in his patch, who had been the subject of a substantial burglary.
Why am I in a field with 20 pensioners, all of us going brr, brr, brr, brr brrrrrrrrrr in unison? What a vision is this cagouled collective of hip replacements and walking sticks moving in unison through the church meadow making bizarre sounds.
If you want the tickets, you'll have to be quick, I was told; others are waiting if you don't snap them up. And so it came to pass that I have bought the most expensive tickets I have ever paid for to watch a football match.
I only watch one programme on TV these days, apart that is from the footie. I'm hooked on University Challenge. Have been for years.
Look at the date. It's April 17. Where did the year go already? What happened to, let's say, February 25? What was I doing. I can't remember. I've just looked it up on the calendar to find it was a Monday. A bit grim then, probably.
I was 16 when Margaret Thatcher came to power. We didn't know what had hit us.
There is a line from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron that I try to keep to the forefront of my mind: "Leap and the net will appear."
What are we doing spending money on sending arms to Syria, as suggested by US President Barack Obama? Where do we draw the line on conflicts in which we involve ourselves?
There's always the straw that breaks the proverbial's back. For me this week it was a headline in the Guardian, "I made pork taste like fish..."
Never been much of a gambler. Too wimpy to take a big risk. Just doesn't appeal. Putting it all on red 48 ... makes a good scene in a film but in real life? Nah.
Have you ever actually clicked on that ad that says, "Cut down on a bit of belly fat each day by using this one weird old tip"? No, of course you haven't, you have a life.
Where do you draw the line? Yes, you. Do you think it's ok to sit around in your nightclothes if you're having breakfast but draw the line at answering the door to the electric meter man in yer jammies?
When I was about 11 I overheard my father saying to some visiting relations: "She's very articulate for her age, isn't she?" He was talking about me. I had just made some comment as I passed around the sandwiches, like a good girl, and they had all laughed. As I left the room, I overheard that line and it lodged in my brain.
Imagine you've been happily living with the love of your life for years, when one day you wake up to discover that the most beautiful women in the world are about to move in next door.
I'm still amazed that we have segregated education here.
The local debate over freedom of speech versus even more restrictive defamation laws has really started to take off. And it’s a very healthy thing to watch.
Newspaper libraries are intriguing places. All human life is in there, normally in print and photograph, but of course, for the past decade or so, in digital format.
The number of comments posted underneath stories and articles on our website is a great indication of how popular this method of engagement with, and by, readers has become.
A grubby stitch-up which hopefully is falling apart under the weight of its own contradictions. That's my tuppence worth on the new Royal Charter on Press Conduct, anyway.
The news business is, by necessity, often full of tragic events. But even by the grim standards of our trade, the story of James Fenton, a 22-year-old from Bangor, is a particularly distressing one.
Well, I've been banging on about it for a while now, but I'm delighted to say that it's finally become a burning political issue.
One big difference between the First and Deputy First Minister is that Martin McGuinness doesn't believe that corporation tax will be devolved here, while Peter Robinson hasn't given up so far.
The Orange Order's 'comprehensive template' on marching past St Patrick's Catholic Church in Belfast's Donegall Street leaves a lot of blank spaces which badly need to be filled in before the marching starts later this month.
There will be several Peter and Martin moments — guest appearances by the First and Deputy First Minister — around the G8 summit.
We have been here before. During the H Block protests and the subsequent hunger strike the republican movement made strenuous efforts to establish a right to special status for prisoners convicted of politically motivated acts of violence.
Gavin Robinson is the DUP's Teflon man – and he is headed for the top. He is personable, he is able and he is the one that the party is grooming to win back the East Belfast seat from Naomi Long of Alliance at the next Westminster election.
It is good to hear the police acknowledging their duty to accommodate peaceful protest during the G8 summit in Enniskillen later this month.
Are we ready to think again about petitions of concern in the Assembly?
It's been a long wait, but next Thursday, June 6, is the launch date for Basil McCrea and John McCallister's new party. They are hoping to make a big splash at The Mac in Belfast, with more than 100 prospective new members from all over the province on display and several of them making speeches.
AN influential group of around 14 Labour MPs have now joined the Tories in wanting a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU.
Do you know what the aftermath of rape looks like? Do you know what this most humiliating of crimes, this terrible violation, can do to a young life?
We are an emotional people. Cool, measured reason is not our strong point; like little children, we are volatile and easily distracted. We don't feel comfortable in the realm of the mind, preferring, instead, the familiar, hot and heavy knockabout of simplistic, sectarian politics.
We have been prepared to swallow a hell of a lot for the sake of peace. But every so often, something comes along that sticks in the craw so badly that it cannot be forced down.
At what point do we stop offering love, tolerance and respect to delinquent kids and, instead, make them take responsibility for their own actions?
I'd say we were dumbing down, if the phrase itself didn't seem so dumb. But there's no doubt that we are. Study after study shows that modern society is getting ever more stupid with each passing year.
Perverse. Outrageous. Shameful. Embarrassing. These are just some of the words used by free speech campaigners to describe Stormont's so-far unexplained decision to opt out of the new Defamation Bill, which passed into UK law last month.
Commemoration is not the same as veneration. Telling a story – if it is an honest, rounded and impartial narrative – is not the same as building a shrine.
Is there any more futile gesture than dancing on someone's grave?
Exactly 14 days after the Good Friday Agreement, my daughter was born. This year, this month, she turns 15. And so does that longed-for settlement.
I made a 63-year-old man wince this week and I'm not proud of it. I was chatting to novelist Martin Amis about how much I hated name-droppers when I casually asked him if he'd heard about the newly announced Contributing Editor to that prestigious organ of highbrow investigative and cultural journalism Vanity Fair.
The 24-year-old singer/TV star is shaping up to be a salutary tale for our age. Last year, she had a No1 single and a plum judging job on the X Factor. Cover star of endless showbiz/gossip mags, she was voted Sexiest Woman in the World by FHM.
I usually welcome Helen Mirren's audacious forays into impropriety. What's not to like about a fierce, free-thinking, inspiringly talented woman getting fired up? When she stomped demonically from the stage on to the street last month to tell passing marching bands to bugger off, I found myself cheering her on, despite her having no right whatsoever to direct London traffic.
How many glaring, goading examples of hard justice must we endure in British courts before the law is formally declared an ass and the great legal minds of 2013 can get their heads together and start again?
I love clothes but I hate the fascistic, lemmingy fashion world. With the exception of the individualistic Kate Moss, the industry's poster girls are tall, skinny young celebrities who slavishly follow the season's trends and rarely surprise.
This week the actors' Liam Gallagher, Rhys Ifans, got bored and sweary during a newspaper interview, finally curtailing it prematurely by telling the journalist to f*** off.
Tiny tremors rippled across middle America this month when Martha Stewart revealed she'd joined internet dating site Match.com. Talk show host, business woman and professional homemaker Stewart has never been a household name in the UK – the name might conjure up little more than a vague notion of a stateswomanly Anthea Turner. But for millions in the US she's like a surrogate mother; the queen of an international empire whose bread and butter is domestic goddessery on a scale that would leave Nigella blushing at the first cup cake.
Despite what relationship experts Relate tell us, even a shared objective and mutually agreed priorities don't always ensure a smooth partnership. 'You never answer your phone, you don't respond to emails, you never just drop in and hang anymore' is an only slightly paraphrased version of the missive sent to an increasingly commitment-phobic Moktar Belmoktar from his vexed bosses – the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaida's North African subdivision.
Radio 1's new breakfast show host Nick Grimshaw got press-whipped this week after figures revealed he'd shed one million listeners from predecessor Chris Moyles' audience. The station defended its recent much-criticised personnel changes, stating it was actively chasing a younger, more narrow demographic after the BBC Trust, horrified by revelations about the huge number of flabby over-55s hanging around ruining its hipster kudos, demanded it focus on under 30s.
That the eggs were organic and from Marksies added a touch of class to the proceedings, and encapsulated the gulf between the thrower, one Natalie Holt, and the Cowell, a controversial individual whose peculiarly shaped head sums up all that's wrong with western civilisation.
How sad to read of louts invading Helen's Bay in Co Down as decent citizens lay dormantly absorbing vitamin D.
I regret to announce I will not be having my heid frozen after death. Living in northern lands, it's been frozen enough during life.
One of the many good things about being a man, even an alleged man, is that we don't have to wear high heels. A female friend in her 50s is struggling to give them up.
No one likes to see an empty shop. It says simply: "Decline." Could be decline in the local area. Could be decline in the wider market.
I don't envy George Clooney. Not now that he has a moustache (but no beard). The controversial move has led to claims that his good looks have gone and that he looks old.
Aaaawww. Audrey Tautou. Couldn't you just take her in your arms and hug her forever?
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. But uneasier still is the bottom that sits on a throne.
The Doctor Who actress Jenna-Louise Coleman has "never been on a date" with anyone. Like many things public figures say, this is simultaneously true and untrue. It doesn't mean, as it implies, that the 27-year-old has never gone out with anyone.
I first heard about the TV drama The Fall more than a year ago, when it was being filmed in Belfast. I had a tip-off that Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan were in town, working on a major crime thriller. To say my curiosity was piqued would be an understatement.
April 2013 has been a month of anniversaries for me, none of which I've particularly felt like celebrating.
Game of Thrones is back at last and all's right with the world of Westeros.
I was back in my old stomping ground Manchester recently.
The Catholic Church has been in crisis for so long, marred by so much controversy, I can hardly remember a time when I felt proud to be part of its congregation.
My son bought me a precious casket of ocular unguent for Mother's Day.
The well-bred fillies were out in force yesterday at day two of Cheltenham Races.
With both Mother's Day and International Womens' Day happening at once, this really is a weekend to celebrate all things female and rejoice in the matriarchs who made us who we are.
Since my first-born son, Luke the Elder, flew the nest last September to go to university in London, I've been more aware than ever that my job as a full-time mum is drawing to a close.
We’re supposed to admire people who think “outside the box”, so you have to be impressed with Americans who still rage against gun control.
To start with, why do the news channels ask Tony Blair for his advice on conflict in the Middle East? It’s like asking Gary Glitter for advice on what to do about Jimmy Savile.
The genius of Jimmy Savile is that each day the revelations manage to get worse. By tomorrow, it will turn out he was a commander in the Provisional IRA, and on Saturday that in 1997 he used to drive a Fiat Uno haphazardly round the underpasses of Paris.
It was no surprise that this week's religious service to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen's Coronation was held in Westminster Abbey.
The Presbyterian General Assembly, which begins this evening, will have a special focus on Londonderry. The Assembly, with its 1,000 delegates from all over Ireland, will meet in Derry to mark its ongoing programme as the UK City of Culture 2013.
Members of the Ulster Orchestra were hitting the right note this week by lending support to the 'Enough Food For Everyone Campaign (IF)', at a press conference in the Palm House in Botanic Gardens.
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