By Cormac Campbell, 29 April 2016
Graphic by Chris Scott
PARAMILITARY groups continue to have thousands of members, with organisations involved in hundreds of acts of violence and intimidation each year in Northern Ireland, according to new figures compiled by Detail Data. Read more
Posted in Current Affairs
Posted in Current Affairs
Some observations from South Belfast.
The snow – it’s almost May!!! – is falling quite heavily outside and I’ve just heard a rumour that the Syrian refugees who are arriving today to start a new life, refused to get off the bus taking them to their new homes. Apparently the combination of snow and seeing the frightful pictures of Jim Allister adorning the lamp-posts was just too much. It must have been quite a shock and the war ravaged land they left behind doesn’t seem so bad now. Read more
Posted in Current Affairs
By Dr John Coulter
Author and Journalist
26/4/2016
It’s time for the ‘Twinkles’ to shine on 5 May! Who, you ask?
The Stormont Assembly poll that day will be the first major opportunity for teenage voters who were born after the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to have their say in the electoral process. Read more
Posted in Current Affairs
The race for the six seats in South Belfast has been, and promises to be, one of the most exciting constituencies across the whole of Northern Ireland.
It is a brutal battle within Unionism- there is no point pretending otherwise- and ironically it could be Nationalist transfers that ultimately decide the fate of the final Unionist seat.
The very basis of the DUP election campaign has been ‘vote for us to stop Martin McGuinness becoming first minister’. I don’t buy this because, as I have previously written, Martin McGuinness- legally and practically- already is the first minister. Read more
Posted in Current Affairs
Negotiation now is crucialWill the real republicans please stand up? That may sound flippant in the aftermath of the recent commemorations to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. But given the splits which have occurred in republicanism since that failed rebellion, the question needs to be seriously addressed as to which group really can claim to be the genuine political successor of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army. Read more
Posted in Current Affairs