Belfast Telegraph

Columnists

Partly Sunny with Showers 13° Belfast Hi 13°C / Lo 8°C

Eric Waugh

How we ignored warnings and raced after US into cash crisis

My eight-year-old grandson, who is being brought up in a fast-moving and expensive suburb of south London (is there any other sort?), asked his parents at the table the other day: "How long is this credit crunch going to last?"
Comment: 1

Inside Eric Waugh

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Why the chuckling’s all over, but the bickering leaves a chill

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Apace, the dialogue of the deaf proceeds on the hill. Meantime nobody goes anywhere fast. How long can it continue?
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Look behind you, Gordon, a man’s about to grab your cash

Tuesday, 23 September 2008

On a promise — Gordon Brown will make pledges to voters in his party conference speech today, but will they be kept?
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh: Why rejection of Antrim mine has hit us very hard in pocket

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

I will not be the most popular man in town if I remind you, as you feed the gas meter yet again or read your electricity bill, that — ‘We told you so!’ But we did, ‘we’ being the team which was pushing for planning permission to develop the proposed coal mine and power station in north Antrim.
Comments: 13

Eric Waugh: How brash US politics are rooted in past

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

The Democrats in Denver were loud. The Republicans in Minneapolis are just as loud, even if they face a curtailed programme because of the hurricane.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Eric Waugh: How Olympics prove we can’t all come first in the race of life

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

I must confess I did not see much of the Olympics. Blame the clock. But the bits and pieces I saw in the news I liked.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh: What Semtex attacks reveal about IRA decommissioning

Friday, 22 August 2008

The use of the Czechoslovakian explosive Semtex in attacks on the police was once common. It is less so now. In fact, it is not meant to happen. Nor does it, as a rule. After Colonel Gaddafi supplied large consignments to the IRA in 1986 and 1987, the manufacturers tightened their security.
Comment on this article

The agony of that fateful August 10 years ago, lives on for the families of the Omagh victims

Eric Waugh: Why we can never share Omagh relatives’ grief

Friday, 15 August 2008

You may think you have been there, but you have not. It has only been a proxy experience. Through the media. You cannot know, really. Unless it has happened to you. You think you know what it was like. What it would have been like if you had been doing your shopping that Saturday afternoon on the fated street of the Tyrone town.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Eric Waugh: Can you Adam and Eve it? We aren’t know-it-alls

Friday, 8 August 2008

My favourite sticker in the back window of the car in front is the one which advises: ‘Employ a teenager while they still know everything’. Most young people would not claim to have all the answers. But a few behave as if they did.
Comment on this article

What UUP and Tories need is some straight talking

Friday, 1 August 2008

The attempt to restore the old link between the Unionist Party and the Conservatives is a sound move. A week may be a long time, etc, but all the current signs are that we may stand within sight of another spell of Conservative government.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh: Why Sarkozy will get his EU treaty in the end

Friday, 25 July 2008

After Nicolas Sarkozy's brief and bustling visit to Dublin, I conclude that our brethren to the south are to live in interesting times.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Eric Waugh: Pope boxes clever in Anglican’s gay-row

Friday, 18 July 2008

The Pope, in Australia this week-end, is playing a clever hand in his cautious, long-range intervention in the Anglican row. Apart from his ecclesiastical status, he also heads a secular state which has its own international diplomatic corps. It shows.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Eric Waugh: Only your friends in the South can save EU now

Friday, 6 June 2008

Next week's vote south of the border on the EU treaty may seem a far-off matter to you. But you should watch it carefully, for in their referendum, the voters in the Republic have in their hands the only weapon left which can stop it. If they give it a 'No', it at once is called in question.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Eric Waugh: What those Belfast buses are doing to your health

Friday, 16 May 2008

If you find yourself inclined to hold your nose as you cross the street behind a diesel car today, or a bus, van or lorry, take it from me, you are acting very sensibly. 'Diesel car sales hit new high', screamed the headlines a few days ago, in response to the announcement that sales of diesel vehicles had achieved their highest monthly market share.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

The reason we'll soon pay for England's vision of us

Friday, 25 April 2008

When Dimbleby snr was approaching the end of Question Time on BBC1 on Thursday evening of last week he said that the following week it would be the London debate. The three candidates for mayor of London would take questions from the audience. But even before the titles had stopped rolling, an urgent Northern Ireland voice intervened.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Minister Ruane needs to be re-educated on social apartheid

Friday, 11 April 2008

Minister Ruane declares that the majority of parents in Northern Ireland have children at secondary schools and they want to see an end to academic selection. She claims that grammar school teachers know that change has to come and adds: "We can't allow social apartheid to continue because some people have a fear of change." Really?
Comment on this article

What is the life of an Omagh bomb victim worth?

Friday, 4 April 2008

The first question facing the Northern Ireland Office's Compensation Agency after the atrocity at Omagh 10 years ago was a delicate one. How do you put a value on the life of a child? The mistake of the agency was to fail to find the right answer, which — need I tell you? — is that you do not.
Comment on this article

Here's the reason I wouldn't bank on it

Friday, 21 March 2008

Not a good week for the banks. But have you worked out why? The Vatican was updating the seven deadly sins the other day. But for the banks - and for you and me, their customers - one of the old ones will do fine: greed.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

If we bin the bags, we won't need ban

Friday, 29 February 2008

The plastic bag is getting it in the neck again. But what would we do without it? It has become the sheet anchor of our 21st-century civilisation. The bag lady is the marker of the big American city. I remember once, late one summer evening, sensing a rustling sound as I passed the miniature hedge which fringed the front steps of a towering skyscraper in Los Angeles.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

The stinking smell of excess from our politicians

Friday, 22 February 2008

The Paisley drama still has some distance to run. The First Minister is in a weakened position after the departure of his son. He has relied on his unique political pedigree to sustain the peculiar constitutional arrangement at Stormont.
Comment on this article

Eric Waugh, Belfast Telegraph

Forget names and paintings, see the big picture

Friday, 8 February 2008

Time was when I lived on my own in a variety of flatlets, one in the shadow of the Cumbrian fells; another in south Dublin; a third on the Lake Michigan shore outside Chicago; and - eventually - a fourth in Belfast. But my home, where I still parked my youthful junk, was in Strabane in Tyrone. The old house with the barn and the orchard and hayfield behind, all since demolished, I believe, to make way for a developer, was off the road leading north out of the town: the Derry Road.
Comment on this article

More eric waugh:

World in Pictures: October 2008

  • Mexican actress Salma Hayek, left, wears a traditional Bavarian Drindl dress as she chats with German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, right, during the German television show

Striking images from around the world

In Pictures: Oktoberfest

In Pictures: Oktoberfest -Sixteen-day festival in Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Sixteen-day festival in Munich, Germany

Heading Out In Northern Ireland

  • Barbara Barry, Aine Matthews & Alison Finnegan pictured at the Apartment.
  • Brian Byrne and Matthew Barry in Laverys
  • Danielle Ross, Ciara Keenan and Caron O'Neill in The Parlour

Northern Ireland Nightlife in Pictures

In Pictures: Belfast Telegraph 8k Run

BELFAST TELEGRAPH 8K RUN ORMEAU PARK

Sunday 5th October at Ormeau Park

Most popular

In Pictures: Fashion and Beauty

Fashion and Glamour

Latest styles from Belfast to Hollywood

Family Notices

War in the Caucasus

  • Russian armored vehicles enter a tunnel, moving toward the border with Russia's North Ossetia, 70 km (43 miles) north of Tskhinvali, the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia's capital, on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008. Russia pulled the bulk of its troops and tanks from Georgia on Friday after a brief but intense war but built up its forces in and around two separatist regions and left other positions deeper in the former Soviet republic.
  • Smoke rises from a fire in the Georgian village of Kekhvi, some 15 km (9 miles) north of Tskhinvali, in Georgia's breakway province of South Ossetia on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008. Many ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia and Georgia have been looted and burned down after Russian troops entered Georgia.
  • Fire fighters extinguish a fire on a train carrying oil products after it hit a mine about 10 km (6 miles) east of Georgia's strategic central city of Gori on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008. Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the blast hit near the end of the train and one third of its 30 tanker cars were on fire.

A conflict in pictures

Columnist Comments

gail_walker

Gail Walker: How we know Mandy can do the business

The return of Peter Mandelson to Gordon Brown's Cabinet — almost certainly as a Lord, no less, has been greeted with howls of derision, disbelief and contempt by the Press. The Return of Lord Sleaze, The Return of Lord Spin, and more sinisterly and magnificently, The Return of the Master of the Dark Arts, are just some of the headlines being bandied about.

steven_beacom

Steven Beacom: We must still build team around Healy

One point from six. That’s Northern Ireland’s tally in the World Cup qualifying campaign so far. Not too healthy, is it?

eric_waugh

Eric Waugh: How we ignored warnings and raced after US into cash crisis

My eight-year-old grandson, who is being brought up in a fast-moving and expensive suburb of south London (is there any other sort?), asked his parents at the table the other day: "How long is this credit crunch going to last?"

ed_curran

Ed Curran: Why it is time for the GAA to start playing on a wider field

How do you view the GAA today? Not so long ago, such a question might have filled the letters column of the Belfast Telegraph or led to jammed switchboards at the BBC or UTV, if they dared broadcast a match.

pol_o_muiri

Pol O Muiri: How Vladimir has really Put boot into US

There have been many moments in local politics when we have all been watching the news or reading the paper and found our jaws dropping while we utter: “Did he just say what I think he just said?”

robert_fisk

Robert Fisk: When it comes to Palestine, the US just doesn’t get it

Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word.

lindy_mcdowell

Lindy McDowell: Fat cats should be fearful

In America it’s being billed as the revenge of Joe Six-Pack. The Joe Six-Pack in question being the US Joe Public who rebelled this week against George Bush’s plans for a bail-out of fat-cat Wall Street bankers.

laurence_white

Laurence White: Why shameful act should have remained very much in the past

John Dallat SDLP MLA described the failure of Limavady Council on Monday night to confer the Freedom of the Borough on the Rev David Armstrong and Fr Kevin Mullan as a “night of shame”. He is wrong.

Day In a Page

Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat

Select date

Northern Ireland Troubles

In Pictures: The Northern Ireland Troubles

A Conflict in Pictures

Miss Universe

  •  Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza is crowned Miss Universe 2008 on stage during the 57th Annual Miss Universe Competition at the Crown Convention Centre on July 14, 2008 in Nha Trang, Vietnam.
  • Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza one of the top 15 semi finalists performs on stage during the final of the 57th Annual Miss Universe Competition at the Crown Convention Centre on July 14, 2008 in Nha Trang, Vietnam.
  • Miss Vietnam Lam Thuy Nguyen one of the top 15 semi finalists performs on stage during the final of the 57th Annual Miss Universe Competition at the Crown Convention Centre on July 14, 2008 in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Nha Trang, Vietnam

In Pictures: Tyrone bring Sam home

Tyrone bring Sam home

Triumphant footballers return with trophy

In Pictures: London Fashion Week

In Pictures: London Fashion Week

Fabulous photos from the catwalk