Slow Down, Speed Kills!

Ignoring the warning sign that speed kills, further down the motorway the carnage of a high speed crash was a shocking reminder to those caught up in the tragedy and to passing motorists. One Minute Bedtime Stories might appeal at first glance but when thought about...

The Ancestors

There is a chilling novel entitled Disgrace, written by J.M. Coetzee (Coetzee JM, Disgrace, Penguin Books, 1999), which is set in post-apartheid South Africa. The book centres on David Lurie, a white one time professor of literature whose life has, for a variety of...

Criminal Justice in Crisis?

I write this on the centenary of the House of Commons speech by Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, in which he famously said “ …The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the...

A Christian Response to Homelessness

“Homelessness” simply put is to have no home and from this perspective is an economic term.  Behind the term in Northern Ireland are some 18,000 people presenting themselves to the Northern Housing Executive as homeless. Only half of them are resettled.  While this...

‘It’s the economy, so it is.’

For many years Bill Clinton’s dictum ‘it’s the economy stupid’ was superseded in local politics by ‘it’s the constitution stupid’. The constitutional question in large part determined which party a voter chose. Thankfully that issue seems to have been settled,...