Friday 24 May 2013
There's a reverential ring to remembrance. But it should set alarm bells ringing, too. We are into a 'decade of commemorations'. An industry has been assembled to draw up a programme and to ensure that the events on the list unite, rather than divide us.
When two boys revealed to Sean Brady in 1975 that they'd suffered serious sexual assault by the predatory pervert Brendan Smyth, they were told on no account to breathe a word about it.
I was on my way to Carndonagh to speak at a meeting on non-payment of household charges when news came of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka in Bangladesh, crushing at least 400 garment workers to death – almost all of them women.
Home Secretary Theresa May might be having a hard time trying to deport Muslim clergyman Abu Qatada from the UK. In contrast, so far, keeping Patience Adedayo out has been child's play.
Scarcely had the smoke cleared from Monday's atrocity in Boston but President Obama was back playing the game of drones.
In December 2005, I had the honour of being a guest at the civil partnership ceremony of Shannon Sickles and Grainne Close at Belfast City Hall. It was a joyous occasion – not least because it was the first-ever such ceremony in the UK.
Gallivanting in London last week, I managed to blag my way into the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum on the day before the official opening. Fewer than 50 people there. All the time and space I needed to wander at will.
Has there ever been a speech in the Assembly more patronising to women than Jonathan Bell's contribution to the debate on the Marie Stopes clinic?
Defending the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tony Blair this week cited Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against his own people as an example of the fundamental evil which the invasion was designed to extirpate.
People who believe that all roads lead to prosperity will have been dismayed that Mr Justice Stephens is considering a halt to the £330m A5 dual carriageway, because of the failure of the Department of Regional Development to carry out an adequate survey of the likely impact on the River Foyle and River Finn Special Areas of Conservation.
Keith O'Brien is in disgrace and has been kept away from the conclave which will choose a new pope.
The Attorney General, John Larkin, may be ruing the day he went on a solo run in Europe. Campaigners for gay rights, on the other hand, must be taking sardonic pleasure in the outcome of his adventure.
Bradley Manning will spend his 1,000th day in prison on Saturday.
The Republic isn't as pro-life as pro-lifers pretend, and neither is the north.
Will this week's legalisation of gay marriage in Britain prompt some in the DUP to reconsider their commitment to the UK and thus put a question mark against those startling figures from the Spotlight poll?
That chortling sound you hear in the background as nationalist parties joust with Justice Minister David Ford over plans for an 'FBI-style' body to combat organised crime is MI5 officers in their Loughside HQ celebrating the fact that they are still getting away with it.
Some people try to drag religion into everything. Morality, Christmas, even Londonderry's year as UK City of Culture - nothing's sacred.
Derry being unique, no one will be surprised we once had our own way of allocating houses.
One of the reasons for the loyalist protests over flags is that Protestant workers are more likely than Catholics to feel looked down on by their own.
These are good times for Thomists. Thomism, it's scarcely necessary to tell readers of this newspaper, is the system of theology and philosophy which was developed by the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and which has been hugely influential in Western thinking, particularly in the area of natural law.
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