Smoking ban breached?

Looks like Fibber McGees (post modern pubbery gone mad) in Galway City is leading the first rebellion.

Irish politics are cut off...

Interesting observation from Eric Waugh:

"The disabling sickness of Irish politics is that it inhabits a sea largely dead. The political climate on the island is benign enough by international standards. But it is denied the purifying influence of the tides and is shut off by the burden of history from the freshening winds of change which blow outside".

He argues that the Orange Order's tardiness in meeting the demands for change may lie in its very Irish trait of distrusting compromise.

Breaking out of official languages

There's been an ongoing discussion in Irish language circles about whether Irish should become an official EU language. In Africa though the question of what's official and what's geniunely local has a long way to go. President Joaquim Chissano broke out of the four official languages of the African Union and chose his native Swahili to deliver his farewell speech as Chair.

Belfast: addicted to strife?

Roy Garland returns to a boyhound memory of ranging from Cavehill to the barbed wire at Divis Mountain, and wonders whether we have got too accustomed to what he calls the polution that comes from our historic conflict.

DUP: slowly opening dialogue?

Danny Morrison uses a rhetorical switch in the introduction to this piece to point out the degree to which, in recent months at least the IRA has kept to its ceasefires. He then goes on to outline how he believes the DUP is slowly dropping its cordon sanataire between its representatives and those of the Republican movement.

Temporary blogging...

Whilst the main site is updating (with over 80,000 comments it's taking longer than MT expected, I'll be providing a few stories for you here you keep you busy.