Elections 2015: any hope for an elusive quality?

The Virgin airlines 747 pilot who this week had to make an emergency landing said he was just doing his job and had expressed a preference not to be named. When reporting this fact, one radio presenter commented in a tone of admiration that he was also “obviously a...

The Idolatry of Politics

As the posters go up for the elections in our streets, and unwanted bits of paper are thrust through our doors, I ask the hardly new question: Why does nothing seem to change? There are doubtlessly passionate commitments from all parties to various concepts: Unionism,...

Without a vision …

The BBC’s Fergal Keane recently filed a report from South Africa where he recalls how few people, in the closing days of Apartheid, had much hope for the country, most expecting it to be torn apart by a bloody race war. No one imagined that within a decade, South...

What did Mrs Thatcher ever do for us?

‘She saved the country’. This was just some of the hyperbole evoked by David Cameron following the passing of Margaret Thatcher last month. Well I’m sorry, Mr Cameron, I must have missed that! Mrs Thatcher is largely remembered in Northern Ireland for her misjudged...