Category Archives: General

Will the United Kingdom under Liz Truss be in danger of stepping out on the road to fascism?

Posted on Friday, 29 July, 2022 by andypollak

From an Irish viewpoint, the prospect of Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is deeply worrying. This is the woman who as Foreign Secretary has outdone Boris Johnson in her aggressive rejection of the Northern Ireland protocol, … Continue reading →

Posted in British-Irish relations, General | 3 Comments

From Rebel Cork to Orange Antrim: a cyclist’s journey through the gorgeous heart of Ireland

Posted on Thursday, 14 July, 2022 by andypollak

In the first eleven days of July I cycled with my friend David Ward from Mizen Head in west Cork to Fair Head in north Antrim to raise money for Concern’s work for girls’ education in Afghanistan. The journey confirmed … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, The island environment | 4 Comments

The tragic breakdown of relations between Dublin and London and a 1998 Agreement that was not the last word

Posted on Wednesday, 29 June, 2022 by andypollak

The most tragic element of Brexit and its aftermath – for me as a Northern Irish person who is also a happy citizen of the Republic of Ireland – is the total breakdown in relations between the Irish and British … Continue reading →

Posted in British-Irish relations, General, Northern Ireland | Leave a comment

The NI Protocol is a mess but Boris’s bill to scrap it is a divisive disaster

Posted on Wednesday, 15 June, 2022 by andypollak

The Northern Ireland protocol is a problem and it is back with a vengeance. As Taoiseach Micheál Martin, a man who is extremely careful with his words, put it, the British government’s new bill to unilaterally scrap large parts of … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Ireland, Europe and the world, Northern Ireland | 1 Comment

British legislation in the North is not always deceptive, oppressive or persecuting – it can be made better

Posted on Wednesday, 1 June, 2022 by andypollak

Despite what Sinn Fein and other ‘advanced’ nationalists would have us believe, British government policy in Northern Ireland (and towards Ireland) is not always motivated by the wish to deceive and oppress and persecute. One benign effect of the peace … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland | Leave a comment

Sinn Fein’s stunning victory does not signal any kind of unlocking of the Northern deadlock

Posted on Tuesday, 10 May, 2022 by andypollak

It was a stunning and historic victory for Sinn Fein. In the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election commentators had made a lot of noise about Sinn Fein being 1,200 votes behind the DUP. This time the party of the IRA … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland | 1 Comment

Poverty in Northern Ireland is not an election issue: society just ‘shrugs’

Posted on Tuesday, 3 May, 2022 by andypollak

Last month I sat in on a webinar organised by the Glencree Peace and Reconciliation Centre in which we listened to two very impressive youth workers from the most deprived areas of nationalist West Belfast. They told a shocking story … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Irish reunification, Northern Ireland | Leave a comment

Discussing Irish unity over dinner with Trinity College politics students

Posted on Thursday, 14 April, 2022 by andypollak

I had an interesting dinner with five political science students from Trinity College Dublin last month at which we discussed Irish unity and Southern Irish attitudes to it. I had met them three weeks earlier when I was giving a … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Irish reunification, Republic of Ireland | 4 Comments

Sinn Fein will be re-writing recent Irish history when it gets into power

Posted on Thursday, 31 March, 2022 by andypollak

Earlier this month Mary Lou McDonald denied that the deletion of thousands of Sinn Fein press statements going back over 20 years represented an attempt to cover-up the party’s ‘soft’ position on Russia in the wake of its invasion of … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein | 3 Comments

Is Ireland neutral in this battle between good and evil?

Posted on Monday, 14 March, 2022 by andypollak

Sometimes (rarely) wars are seen as battles between the forces of good and evil. The war of the Allies against Nazism is the classic example in modern times. Except the Irish state chose to sit that one out, unwilling to … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Ireland, Europe and the world, Republic of Ireland | 1 Comment