by RuthDE | May 1, 2025 | 2025, April, Belfast News Letter, Journalism
I know there’s no shortage of things to be worried about at the moment, so let’s welcome a few reasons to be cheerful. 1 May 2025 The main one is that the West may be in the early stage of recovery from an acute attack of self-loathing and about to abort its suicide...
by RuthDE | Jul 9, 2024 | 2024, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, July
Free speech is integral to good art Published: 3 July 2024 The Royal Society of Literature no longer seems to be interested in free speech – which should be its touchstone. Like the Society of Authors, which lost many members in consequence, it was swept up by the...
by RuthDE | May 28, 2024 | 2024, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, May
Fintan O’Toole, the Irish Times’s prize columnist for many years, wrote a staggeringly mean-spirited assessment of Sir Anthony O’Reilly shortly after his death on May 18. Published: 28 May 2024 He opined that being told as a school child that he was illegitimate...
by RuthDE | Jan 2, 2024 | 2024, Belfast News Letter, January, Journalism
There is some good news on the domestic front. Published: 2 January 2024 My last column (December 19, click here) bore encouraging reports of Sinn Féin’s political difficulties in the Republic, where their headlong policy U-turns and brazen lies are bewildering some...
by RuthDE | Nov 28, 2023 | 2023, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, November
I’ve written a few times recently about the intimidatory pro-Palestinian marches in my neighbourhood with their aggressive thinly-disguised slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel. Published: 28 November 2023 It’s deeply disturbing in England, that bastion of...
by RuthDE | Sep 12, 2023 | 2023, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, September
At the weekend I watched with fascination every episode of Stephen Nolan’s “Jailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison”. Published: 12 September 2023 I haven’t had occasion to visit many prisons, but like some other journalists who sought to learn the truth about the IRA, I...
by RuthDE | Jun 20, 2023 | 2023, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, June
I’ve been involved in two wars, as an unarmed foot soldier. Published: 20 June 2023 One — which I have been part of for several decades — is the struggle of good people on the island of Ireland against the IRA, its apologists and the appeasers who swallow their...
by RuthDE | Jun 21, 2022 | 2022, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, June, Libel
Gerry Kelly’s solicitors have served me with a libel writ. Published: 21 June 2022 For legal reasons, I can’t yet say publicly what he’s upset about except that I think it’s ridiculous and I’m standing by what I wrote because I believe it is true. I did the same when,...
by RuthDE | Jun 21, 2022 | 2022, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, June
Being President Higgins means never having to say you are sorry. Published: 21 June 2022 Nothing seems to shake this life-long Marxist’s remarkable and unjustified self-belief. He’s just dropped two enormous clangers — but he won’t admit it. He has plenty of form, of...
by RuthDE | Jan 19, 2022 | 2022, Belfast News Letter, January, Journalism
“What Kate Hoey says is not terribly important,” sneered Susan McKay in the Irish Times, after the furore over Hoey’s forthright foreword to the Unionist Voice Policy Studies report, Vetoing the Protocol: Restoring Cross-Community Consent Protections. Published: 18...
