by RuthDE | Aug 25, 2026 | 2025, August, Belfast News Letter, Journalism
I paid a visit to the Felons Club the other week which proved even more dispiriting than my first in 1999. Published: 20 August 2026 t least that was exciting. At the time Sinn Fein – being theoretically peace loving – had begun to attract government and business...
by RuthDE | Apr 9, 2026 | 2026, April, Belfast News Letter, Journalism
Catherine Connolly, the smiling woman who has replaced Michael D Higgins as Irish president, looked good at the Dublin General Post Office commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising. Published: 9 April 2026 Despite her left-wing sympathies, she wasn’t frightening any...
by RuthDE | Mar 5, 2026 | 2026, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, March
It was a proper gunfight at the OK Corral on Tuesday, when Micheál Martin, leader of the lawmen, strapped on his gun belt and laid into Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the outlaws. Published: 5 March 2026 She was reprising yet again her impression from another great...
by RuthDE | Oct 16, 2025 | 2025, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, September
Catherine Connolly, the presidential candidate, is in tune with the dangerously woke youth of her country Published: 15 October 2025 In the words of Eoghan Harris, the legendary Irish political commentator, Ireland is going through “a period of mass, self-harming...
by RuthDE | Sep 18, 2025 | 2025, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, September
“I went for dinner with Peter Mandelson – he’s blind to people of lower status”, was a headline in the Daily Telegraph this week. Published: 18 September 2025 In arranging to meet the journalist Suzanne Moore for dinner during a party conference when he was secretary...
by RuthDE | May 29, 2025 | 2025, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, May
Although Sinn Féin are proud apologists for murderers, torturers and other criminals of various stripes, they are vulnerable to ridicule. Vain people like Gerry Adams cannot bear to be laughed at. So as a matter of principle I welcome every opportunity to show them...
by RuthDE | Apr 8, 2025 | 2025, April, Daily Telegraph, Journalism
From public service collapse to sectarian voting, Ulster is the canary in the coal mine Published: 7 April 2025 Of the many lessons I learned from covering Northern Ireland for decades, the most depressing was that the British state almost always employed bribes and...
by RuthDE | Mar 13, 2025 | 2025, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, March
Last week ex-minister Conor Murphy, the Northern Ireland finance minister who was recently – for Sinn Féin secret reasons – exported to be a senator in the south, was aggrieved. Double standards are what he’s complaining about. Published: 13 March 2025...
by RuthDE | Dec 5, 2024 | 2024, Belfast News Letter, December, Journalism
The phrase that kept coming to my mind as I listened and read about the mercifully brief Irish election campaign was from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in 1892. Published: 5 December 2024 In “Silver Blaze”, a short story about a missing horse, he is asked...
by RuthDE | Nov 22, 2024 | 2024, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, November
Trump’s tariff regime could wreck havoc on the nation at a sensitive political moment Published: 22 November 2024 The Irish electorate face a general election on November 29 in a gloomy mood, for the choices on offer are uninspiring yet only the most ignorant or...
