This particular point underlined by how Poppy Appeal stalls in Northern Ireland will sell badges like this which are gleefully held up by people who celebrate what people like Soldier F did here.

It shouldn't need to be explained to anyone, so soon after the Soldier F verdict, why Irish people might not want to be socially obliged to donate to a charity committed to uncritically commemorating all British wars, including Iraq and Northern Ireland, and financially supporting their veterans.

The Eastern Europeans that I worked in hospitality the from 2002 - 2010 (even during the crash they were the only ones that would stick working nightclub hours) and kept the shrunken social scene viable, now own a lot of restaurants, cafes and catering services. Bloody immigrants, keeping joy alive

“Sure they’re all mad up there, as bad as each other” Yeah the education minister and other unionists went on a trip paid for by the state that has created the largest group of child amputees in the world currently - and murdered thousands of others, to rage bait opponents and to create division.

The Sionnach app for learning Irish allowing you to learn the Ulster dialect is the true decolonising of my mind

I think people like Paul Givan help betray the panto that NI politics plays in terms of how the murders committed during the Troubles must be held over everyone's heads and then the same people who do that will use their position to go "nyer nyer I'm mates with the genocide crew r u mad lol".

It's not like us to do something stupid years after everyone around us has proven how stupid a thing it is to do, all while we've spent that time laughing and pointing at the Brits and Yanks for doing what we're now doing.

Paul Givan, Northern Ireland's DUP Education Minister, who unilaterally decided to order discrimination against trans kids recently, went on a trip to Israel to visit a school there for some reason. He was joined by others from the DUP, TUV and UUP.

Sammy pictured beside his favourite rapist while simultaneously shilling for Israeli genociders.

Ah the aul “appeal to unionists by lip curling at nationalist/catholic/republicans” Also very sectarian to presume unionists want someone de platformed just because she’s a nationalist, I know loads of unionists from our village who were so supportive of her!!

The majority of people who are politically engaged enough to vote on Friday voted for Connelly. It might not be the best strategy for a dying newspaper industry to cover the election with columnists still raging against her or focusing so much on just 15% of voters who spoilt their votes.

The last person anyone wants or needs to hear from right now is Fintan O’Toole.

Put a poppy bowtie on your dog to remember the lads killed at the Somme with dignity

'We murdered people, but, sure, let's all forget that.'

Fuck right off. If the British government want to draw a line under all of this, they are perfectly welcome to come clean about what they were up to and provide justice for the victims. It’s nobody else’s problem that the truth makes them so uncomfortable.

The Irish Times chose to print this today. Apart from the "now look here paddy" tone on the day Soldier F was given a free pass for murder, he's saying NATO should violate the territory if a sovereign state.

Tell me again that it's all in the past and there's no real anti-Irish sentiment in Britain anymore as they shield this monster from justice, because sure who were his victims only a few Paddies villagemagazine.ie/soldier-f-na...

There are not enough photo ops in the world that can undo the damage of this kind of unrepentant sectarian shite

Hard to express the rage I feel about today. Very proud of so many of my family coming out in droves to March in Newry the week after Bloody Sunday, to keep protesting for what was right & decent, knowing what the state was capable of the week before. Because they knew, nobody was coming to help.

He may have been allowed to walk free by a British court, but the world now knows that David Cleary was part of the unit that murdered 14 and injured 15 in Derry on Bloody Sunday, 1972. Let history judge them with the same amount of mercy that they showed their victims - that is, none at all.

Today cheapens even further, the lives of every single person here - regardless of constitutional outlook

It’s probably the most recognisable nazi symbol after the swastika.

This "Connolly will upset the EU" stuff is also ridiculous btw. The EU can deal with Meloni, Orban, Fico etc etc on a day to day basis. The idea that a figurehead's words might somehow meaningfully damage Ireland's standing is genuinely deluded.

I honestly don’t understand what they think they have to gain from this.

Oftentimes what is done vis a vis US discourse on I/P is there is the pretense that there's two equal actors with equal responsibilities when in fact there is one state, one regime, one sovereign power which has a singular dominion over all of the territory west of the Jordan River.

My most “yank” opinion is definitely that monarchies are basically inexcusable and polities that cling to them are wrong. And that despite whatever myriad flaws exist in our systems, those of us who have deposed our monarchies did the correct thing

Okay, I'll bite. French citizens living in NI vote in French Presidential elections. It doesn't change NI's Head of State. Any change for Irish citizens in NI should not put Unionists up or down. Carping about what Irish citizens can and can't do is not a good look: www.rte.ie/news/2025/10...

Imagine there are British people who read Ruth Dudley Edwards to keep their finger on the pulse of the Irish.

Ah lads: Ruth Dudley Edwards is against Catherine Connolly. Between this and Brian Leddin, it really is curtains for her.

Edwards is a self-loathing Irish person who described herself as British and has embraced Unionism. She earns a loving badmouthing Ireland for the benefit of British conservatives. Slagging off woke is the least of her sins.

Ta Nehisi Coates went to a country that imposed a military dictatorship onto five million people on the arbitrary basis of race and came away thinking that that's bad and some people are still angry with him because of that

I just realized that Maria Steen is Fran Leibowitz's Wario.

You won’t talk about the suffering of the people of Gaza, but you will take the PR opportunity to present yourself as the saviour, while also telling everyone to ‘turn a page’ and move on as though nothing has happened? What a lovely woman…

When life imitates art

I had the real pleasure of having lunch with Miriam Margolyes today, and as we left the restaurant, an old man started playing Hava Nagila loudly on his phone and calling Miriam a “self hating Jew!” - presumably for her stance on Palestine. It was upsetting but she brushed it off, undeterred

There will be desperate calls behind the scenes, begging the Israeli government to withdraw the invitation. That may actually work, who knows. But it would constitute another refusal to see the Israeli government for what it is. It's not a bug. It's a feature. They are Tommy Robinson.

The comments under every single post about the attack at the Manchester synagogue are insane. A synagogue not an embassy, there is nothing “inevitable” about this.

People getting genuinely angry about the "Irish version of Belfast" being on an updated city council crest when it is quite literally the actual name of the place that "Belfast" is the anglicised nickname for are a millstone around our collective neck

There's a self congratulating narrative about the alleged deradicalization of Germany and Japan that requires not knowing much about the actual history of those places between say, 1945 and 1968.

Probably my most controversial opinion is that the orange order shouldn’t be tolerated, funded or encouraged. It’s *fundamentally* sectarian www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Seeing some media figures saying that the Presidential race would have been more "entertaining" with Steen involved, like that's a good thing. Rather giving the game away, isn't it?

To understand Steen's demographic, you have to realize there are people who think a working-class blue-haired barista on minimum wage is the Establishment, while upper-middle-class professional Catholics of multi-generational wealth are the oppressed disenfranchised politically homeless.

'I prefer my authoritarians Puritanical' said absolutely no one ever.

Just in case she makes it onto the ballot, it’s good to remind yourself who Maria Steen and the Iona Institute are - fundamentalist zealots who represent almost no one cos even most Catholics think they’re awful

Not lost on me that as English politics wrestles with the policy of ‘some people there are lesser & should be deported’, that soldier F is on trial for chasing peaceful protesters into a dead end &shooting them like animals - with the backing of the state - because the victims were deemed lessser