There has been much focus on restoring devolution to Northern Ireland, and that focus has been in the context of avoiding the return of direct administration from Westminster. However, to…
Monthly Archives For August 2017
The End isn’t nigh
Back in 2008 Arthur Aughey wrote of “Endism” as a radical version of Hegel’s Philosophy of History, the appeal of which is its suggestion that ‘the good is already fulfilled just in virtue…
Has nationalism over-reached?
There have been two interesting articles in newspapers this week. Both address the current ‘Condition of Scotland’ question. For Northern Ireland unionism, which always likes to consider its situation unique and…
Distant dreaming
In considering the article by academics Christopher Kissane and David Kenny (one from London School of Economics and the other from Trinity College Dublin) in today’s Irish Times (18 August),…
Opportunity knocks
We don’t yet know how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland exactly, but the referendum result certainly revived the nationalist trope that Irish unity is ‘inevitable’. The Republic’s national parliament recently published…
Cultural effrontery
On 9 August there was an interesting and revealing article in The Irish Times by Rosemary Jenkinson, artist-in-residence at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. The title was: ‘I’m a Belfast Protestant…
Academic jargon, propaganda and agitprop…
It is often the absence of critical thought in the academic world which continues to shock. It is hard sometimes to avoid the conclusion of those like Roger Scruton that…