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.
I’M not sure if Pat Cullen is going to ask Ofcom to condemn BBC Ulster for handing the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat to the UUP’s Diana Armstrong five minutes after the polls closed, but, all things considered, I think she should.
WE’RE in the midst of the most boring Westminster election campaign in living memory. Or at least, a BBC Loyal Ulster feature this week invited us to believe that this is the case.
HAD Brian Friel lived to update his play Translations, I fear the story about the intersection of language and colonialism would have been a lot more complicated – and a lot less enjoyable.
SPACE Karen – that’s Elon Musk to the analogue hold-outs among you – has decided that from now on you’ll be able to like whatever you want on Twitter without anybody knowing you liked it. Just a couple of days after the new edict kicked in, the Tesla boss was claiming a huge upsurge in likes across the platform.
WHAT’S worse? An Irish Sea border or a Smoky Bacon border? Or, indeed, what’s better?
THERE’S only one story the world’s talking about at the minute and the question that it throws up for all of us interested in fair play is, Witch-hunt, or justice taking its course?
IT’S said the biggest achievement of Donald Trump has been to debase US politics to the point where the lying and madness have become so blatant and so common that nothing has the ability to shock any more.
NOT much in the way of revelations at the Covid Inquiry this week. The DUP is the Nasty Party in private as well as in public. And we’re not sure of the full extent of the private nastiness of Sinn Féin and Alliance because they had the good sense/bottomless cynicism to make sure their WhatsApp messages disappeared quicker than Ian Paisley on a final boarding call.
WHAT have the Romans ever done for us? You probably know the rest of the famous scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian sketch, so I don’t propose to go over the People’s Front of Judea, roads, aquaducts, sanitation, wine and the rest of it. (Yes, since you wondered, I just watched the scene again; partly to recall the details and partly because god knows I need a laugh at the moment.)
AS I watched the Newtownmountkennedy Irregulars on manoeuvres in recent weeks, the question occurred to me that always occurs when the Free State Far-Right (henceforth FSFR) attempt to claim the mantle of Plunkett, Pearse and Tone: Where the hell are Belfast’s Tommy Robinson wannabes?
I’VE an apology to make to the Craigyhill Bonfire and Cultural Facebook Page. Like many people with little or no knowledge of bonfire culture, I thought that when a thousand pishy, mouldy mattresses were delivered to the Larne bonfire site by container ship and Chinook they were going to be... well... burnt.
BBC Ulster performed an interesting experiment on Thursday night’s The View in an attempt to test the contention of new Taoiseach Simon Harris that young people in Cork know Berlin and Paris better than they know Belfast and Derry.
THEY’RE going to play the English national anthem, God Save the King, at Windsor Park before the eagerly-anticipated Irish Cup Final clash between Linfield and Cliftonville. (Yes, Stewarty, it is the English anthem: the Jocks and Taffs have both booted it into Row Z.)
BUDGIES weren’t quite a red line for me – or even a yellow, green or blue one.
JIM Allister’s the Nigel Farage of local broadcasting That’s not to say that he resembles the toadish English firebrand whose face is never straight and who's never happier than when he’s whingeing and gurning about Brexit – although you may have your own thoughts on that. Rather, it’s to say that, like the Reform Party founder, the TUV leader is never off the airwaves.