Category Archives: Current Affairs

Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton was once literally a ‘Bobby’, patrolling the Lower Falls area of West Belfast and getting to know, no doubt, all the main names of the ‘underground’ world in that district.
In all likelihood then, the well-groomed PSNI golden boy knew full well, that none of those arrested in his old stomping ground on September 30th, (one of whom was charged with possession of a large amount of Cocaine) had any connection to the Irish National Liberation Army. Read more »

That is the question that jumps out from this Irish News report (a similar story ran in The News Letter) to the effect that someone suspected of having thrown a large firework at the homes of then SF President Gerry Adams, and his consiglieri, ‘Big’ Bobby Storey last July, was the victim of a punishment shooting last Sunday.

The reports say that the victim had been questioned by the PSNI about the firework attack, which damaged the windscreen of a car parked in the drive of Adams’ Norfolk Drive home, off the Glen Road. Read more »

The submission of five former secretaries of state of both parties to the UK government’s  consultation on their draft Legacy Bill gives significant backing to the idea of an amnesty or statute of limitations.  It amplifies the call some of them and retired security chiefs made in the House of Lords last month.

If the decision was to rest with the British establishment alone, an amnesty by whatever name would have featured as a formal option for dealing with the past already, mainly to protect former soldiers and only reluctantly including the unruly Irish tribes in its ambit. Read more »

Two single mothers forced out of their homes in north Belfast, one whom fled with her six-month old daughter from an arson attack, have spoken for the first time about their ordeal.

“Heartless, horrible people, I don’t understand why they did it. I refuse to carry bitterness for it because it’s only harming me further. I would never like to see anybody in this position again.” Read more »

This is an interesting article which should focus the attention of those of you order food from these organisations. It beggars belief that this can happen.

Bon Appetit!

They are known as “dark kitchens”: cramped boxes, usually plonked in city centres, in which cooks prepare meals that are ordered and sent out via food-delivery apps. Britain is reckoned to have at least 70, most of which are owned and run by the delivery giant Deliveroo under the brand name Deliveroo Editions. The food that comes out of them is sold in the name of established restaurants, and innocent customers might assume it somehow still comes from their high-street premises. But no: this is a new reality of “virtual branding”, in which all that sits behind this or that logo are the bare essentials – a couple of ovens, a handful of chefs and couriers frantically delivering what they cook. Read more »

So how long will our politicians do nothing? Well, there’s never really any such thing as “nothing”. In film, a pause in the action is often an opportunity for the audience to evaluate what’s gone before and make some thought space for what might come next. Read more »

Crisis. Leadership issues. Spending issues. Confidence issues. Talk of last chance and of rearranging the furniture.

I was watching the teatime football on television on Saturday – that first-half debacle as Newcastle United took the lead, added to it and pushed Mourinho and Manchester United ever closer to some decision on those issues outlined above; watching the football and thinking of our politics within which those same issues apply. Read more »

Garda could have protected farmer killed by the IRA

BYLINE: John Mooney

An internal garda review into the murder of  Tom Oliver, a farmer from the Cooley Peninsula in Louth who was abducted, tortured and shot by the Provisional IRA in July 1991, has uncovered failings in the original police investigation.

Oliver’s death, one of the most horrific murders of the Troubles, was examined by the force’s cold case unit, a branch of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Read more »

This was a painting I done sometime around 2013/2014 in Maghaberry.

The inspiration for this was an image I seen in an art book highlighting some of the graffiti artists displaying their ‘work’ in and around  London.

It took me quite a while to finish this as I was adapting and changing another person’s work and it isn’t easy to get images to appear to be inter-connected.

BR

Tommy faces his most imposing enemy ever in the first look at Peaky Blinders‘ fifth series: the British government!

The newly-installed MP strangely goes horseback in a photo from the new episodes, but we can assure fans there’s absolutely no Outlander-style time warp happening. Instead, the story picks up in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash. Read more »