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Ulster 71: How Northern Ireland's half-centenary was marked

Anniversaries can be one of the curses of a history-obsessed society. Amid uncomfortable political rumblings, evidenced already by controversy involving merely a portrait of a poet, the Secretary of State Brandon Lewis welcomed plans for a Centenary Forum and Historical Advisory Panel as part of the Government's plans to mark 100 years of Northern Ireland.

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Don Anderson Opinion Rashford 1, Johnson 0: The Twitter pause that helped Manchester United star secure win

Professional footballers enjoy some of the higher reputations among professional athletes.

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Don Anderson Opinion July 20 is D-Day for Northern Ireland's tourism industry... but you might be surprised at which sectors will recover quickest?

There is an old yarn about the resident in Northern Ireland wanting to spend his annual summer holiday in Blackpool. He calls up a bed and breakfast and asks if there is availability for the Twelfth Week in July. The landlady said there was not, because there were only four weeks in July. Boom, boom. Updating to this summer, leave out the boom. It isn't boom for the hospitality business as we come out of lockdown.

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Don Anderson Opinion Inequality needs ferociously tackled for all our sakes

Of the many words to be associated with our pandemic predicament, there is one we could do something about, but probably won't. That word is inequality. Even when not explicitly quoted, it shouts as if written in medieval illuminated gold and silver script.

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Don Anderson Opinion Until a Covid-19 vaccine is found, older people like me are effectively living in an open prison

As I listen to and read advice about how to deal with the risks during this pandemic, it is becoming clear that not everything is clear. As Boris wishes, I am staying alert - alert to the fact that advice, regulations within the four UK nations and Ireland are different. Interpretation of scientific advice differs at government level; it is also differing at a personal level.

Don Anderson Opinion Coronavirus social distance-shaming merely sacrifices otherwise blameless individuals on the altar of hypocrisy

What are rules and laws for? It may be thought that, if you have to ask such a question, you are desperately in need of rules and laws to abide by.

Don Anderson Opinion Does the Government have an 'acceptable level' of coronavirus deaths?

Is there an acceptable level of sickness and death tacitly underlying Government policy in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic? In Northern Ireland, the expression "an acceptable level" has actually been used officially within living memory.

Don Anderson Opinion Affects of coronavirus so profound that returning to a previous state of normality is probably going to be impossible... however much we might wish it

We hear it, for the best of reasons, practically every day, from family, friends and strangers. It's a sentence beginning, "When things get back to normal ..." As a species, we are naturally inclined to hope. Of course, we will eventually gain normality, but it's likely to be a changed normality.

Don Anderson Opinion Why we now need an all-Ireland taskforce to combat coronavirus

If ever there was a time we needed to learn from the past, it is surely now as Northern Ireland struggles to deal with the seemingly irresistible onslaught of a pandemic. It isn't lethal, like a medieval black plague or the 1918 flu attack, but it is extremely serious.

Don Anderson Opinion Wherever Northern Ireland's future is eventually decided, the one place it won't be is in Belfast

Brexit has thrown the reunification of Ireland into sharp relief. Polls fall among us like autumn leaves and with almost as many hues, though most agree that attitudes to the border have changed and are continuing to change.

The day Mrs Profumo returned home to Northern Ireland at the height of the scandal... and the UTV interviewer who was ordered not to ask her a single question about it

One day in 1963, a UTV broadcaster was dispatched with instructions not to mention to the interviewee near the heart of a national scandal the very event that was on everyone's lips at the time. The Profumo sex-spy-highlife affair politically damaged Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and he resigned as Prime Minister on health grounds in October 1963. The Conservative Party itself was rocked and this may have contributed to its narrow defeat in the general election the following year.

Don Anderson: Unionists worry about being the forgotten members of the Union ... but what if there was no Union to belong to?

This general election is, of course, being hailed everywhere as a watershed moment for the United Kingdom. The Conservative landslide will get Brexit done - that's the big watershed - but more than one watershed has been crossed.

Don Anderson: Sinn Fein's policy of abstentionism always appeared self-defeating, but Brexit has made it look ridiculous

Our politicians often act illogically. Perhaps it is in the nature of their calling, particularly at election time, when they are under pressure to promise what they would like to do rather than what they can realistically do.

Don Anderson: Is Federalism the political idea whose time has finally come?

So, Boris Johnson has made his big move on the political chessboard, making a hard Brexit more probability than possibility. Johnson's opponents have reacted with predictable fury to the announced suspension of Parliament and the curtailment of time to thwart a no-deal departure from the EU. This all could affect Northern Ireland profoundly.

Don Anderson: What price the BBC?

I watched the Women's World Cup England v USA semi-final on BBC One the other night. Great match, exciting to the end, which, of course, was disappointing, since I was supporting England. But the team effort was splendid and the women and their management were able to return home with their heads held high.

Don Anderson: Can Notre Dame rise like a phoenix from the flames?

I watched with sinking heart Notre Dame burning and then I thought of our Bank Buildings fire. Two buildings of historic significance in the centre of two cities, left as blackened shells by fires so fierce they took a long time to douse and both destructions leaving a disrupted city heart.

Don Anderson: Ian Paisley toyed with idea of united Ireland - this is what happened next

Yet again, a prominent unionist - in this case Mike Nesbitt - is seeming to backtrack after merely discussing the idea of a united Ireland. Some unionist leaders have compromised, which, many forget, is what politics is for. Of course, subsequently their political stage began collapsing, but this state of affairs in unionism may not last for ever.

Havelock House a hard station, but such are ways of commerce

The death by a thousand cuts of UTV as a prominent physical landmark in the media landscape of Northern Ireland - and indeed the whole island - continues inexorably. It will shrink further as the station becomes absorbed by the behemoth of ITV plc, to which it belongs lock, stock and barrel. ITV can do with it what it wishes, subject to regulatory restrictions, which have nothing to say about UTV remaining anything like its old self.

BBC must roll with punches and stand by Tyson Fury

Tyson Fury is a British boxer, whose hero is Muhammad Ali. Ali's boastful rants became part of his persona. Fury was crowned heavyweight champion of the world after beating Wladimir Klitschko recently, hence the accolade of late nomination to the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Nostalgic viewers rewind to golden age of TV ads

It's back-to-school week, but few streaming through the school gates care to reflect that once upon a time ads on television were a novelty for Northern Ireland.

A brand so dear to hearts of local viewers

Let's get one thing out of the way first. UTV is not disappearing.

Face it: We're Westminster outsiders and no-one's interested in huffing and puffing of our parties

I saw a cartoon recently. Two dogs standing amid a vista of war carnage and rubble, the only living creatures left around. One is saying to the other, 'It all started over who had the most peace-loving and forgiving god.' It was about Islamic fundamentalism, but it could equally have been about Northern Ireland. It's how we are seen.

One last challenge for Monty?

Why is Ulsterman David Montgomery swimming against the trend in the newspaper industry by launching a new grouping of regional titles?

Yet another chairman is ousted in board tussle

Northern Ireland has very few companies listed on the stock market and UTV is one of them. The acrimonious removal of its chairman of more than two decades, John B McGuckian, is therefore an event of great interest.

Power to the people

Opinion: Titanic blunder?

Don Anderson asks if the big Titanic decision is not made, then was buying the Nomadic a mistake?

When tourism becomes art

A GROUP of French visitors were the first people through the doors of the Ulster Museum. As it happened, they were greeted personally by the chief executive of Northern Ireland's museums and galleries, Tim Cooke.

Bark is worse than its bite

THE plant I most regret in my garden is the conifer. I installed two hedges of the things and initially marvelled at how quickly they grew. And grew. And grew more.

Why the risk factor means crashes are inevitable

THE tragedy of schoolchildren dying in an horrendous bus accident, as happened this week in Navan, provokes an emotional reaction within most of us, which translates quickly into questions about what can be done to minimise risk or prevent repetition altogether.

Born out of a battlefield to blaze the trail ahead

This month, BBC Radio Ulster is celebrating a mere 30 years of broadcasting, but I suppose that's old, given that it's only just over a century ago that Marconi gave Rathlin a place in world history by transmitting pioneer radio signals from Ballycastle to the island.