Robin has been with the Andersonstown News and subsequently the Belfast Media Group for over 30 years. He began his career in journalism with the company writing cinema and TV reviews as a freelance before becoming a staff reporter and going on to be appointed editor of the Andersonstown News in 1993. He became Group Editor of the Belfast Media Group with responsibility for all titles in 2016. He's the author of The Road, a memoir about growing up in Belfast.
LET me just set down my mug of tea and get comfortable in my faux-leather swivel chair here before I click on Google, key in ‘Bik McFarlane death’ and push the Enter button.
ARMED Forces Day tomorrow at Ibrox, home of Rangers FC, will see the usual militaristic celebrations, which in the past have included British soldiers abseiling from the stand with the match ball, parade drilling on the pitch and gun salutes being fired from the centre circle. But as another round of unionist fury erupts in the local media – this time over a Bik McFarlane tribute at Celtic Park and an abusive Rangers’ fans banner response presented as ‘hitting back’ – Robin Livingstone has questions. Will SS banners paying tribute to the Nazi elite force that slaughtered captive British soldiers be displayed by Rangers fans again? Or will they be kept diplomatically folded? Will tributes to Catholic-slashers from history be displayed on banners again, or just merely sung? And, perhaps most intriguingly, if there are any such displays, will the Loyal Ulster media’s new-found indignation about Scottish football banners be extended to Ibrox...? BANNERS at Celtic Park on Tuesday evening paying tribute to the late republican Bik McFarlane, who was buried earlier that day, provoked a predictable round of fury among unionist politicians and commentators.
THE death and burial of Bik McFarlane was the signal for another round of unionist hand-wringing about death and memorialising. Bik was, we were told, the most heinous and evil IRA man since the last IRA man that died. Expressing solidarity with his family, acknowledging long years of friendship, remembering his role in the conflict – all of these things, we were further told, are a vile insult not only to victims of the IRA, but to the very concepts of peace and justice.
‘BBC News NI picks up three RTS NI awards’.
A LOT of republicans will be either uncomfortable or disgusted when I say I can fully understand why unionism is generally appalled at the verdict by a Coroner that the shooting to death of three IRA men in a church car park in Clonoe in 1992 was unjustified.
IN a roiling ocean of misinformation and nonsense, the human mind can only navigate by way of small pointers; it manages to keep itself afloat by clinging on to the nearest of the bobbing buoys. Or at least mine does.
THE English love a good mystery. From Agatha Christie to PD James, From Midsomer Murders to Death in Paradise, there’s perhaps no other nation on the planet so enthralled by the lure of a stabbing in the billiards room, a poisoning at the dinner table, or a shooting in the library.
YOUR starter for ten: Who said the following:
THE Armed Forces Covenant, which our city has just signed up to via the casting vote of Alliance Lord Mayor Micky Murray, is a short enough document, as you can see for yourself lower down. But for the TL/DR generation, it holds that members of the British armed forces should be accorded “special consideration” as and when the occasion demands.
THE story on the BBC News website on July 16 last year was headlined ‘The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome’. The bland and determinedly neutral 10-word sentence is gone now, replaced with another by the BBC after a torrent of objections, most from readers familiar with the story who rightly felt that the headline came nowhere near to reflecting the dark and horrific truth of the killing that the headlined referenced. But other objections came from people shocked to the point of disbelief that a news outlet which misses no opportunity to trumpet its trustworthiness would suck the life – and death – out of a story with a thoroughness that would make an IDF spokesperson gasp in admiration.
EITHER Keir Starmer’s the worst Prime Minister ever to have stood up in the Commons or he’s playing a game of 3D chess so fiendishly calculating that we’re going to wake up one morning and he’ll be President of the Galactic Federation.
DUP Education Minister Paul Givan has appointed his DUP colleague Mervyn Gibson Chairman of the Education Authority. Not surprisingly, questions are being asked about the part-time appointment, which pays a chunky £50k to £60k a year for three days work per week.
I’M pretty sure that if I tell you that I propose to say something nice about Jamie Bryson you’d suspect that whatever I say will come loaded with qualifiers and yes-buts. And you’d be right. But Interflora doesn’t snip the thorns off its roses before sending out deliveries and when you put the bouquet in that crystal vase on the coffee table, the flowers are still what’s important. So here goes.
I DON’T like the union jack much.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson has scored a remarkable victory with the removal of pro-Palestine graffiti from an RVH wall fronting the Falls Road. Fair enough, more pro-Palestine graffiti immediately went up, along with a ‘F**k the DUP’ message for good luck.