Covid-19 testing centre in Warora, Maharashtra. Photo: Ganesh Dhamodkar/Wikimedia Commons India has been added to the UK ‘red list’. With the country setting a global record for case numbers reported in a single day and reports of oxygen shortages and hospitals...
In March 2020, Annemarie Plas learned that her native Netherlanders were publicly applauding carers for their dedication in the fight against Covid-19. She posted about it on social media, encouraging people in the UK to do the same. The idea spread quickly and soon...
On 20 April, the verdict that so many had hoped and wished for was delivered: Derek Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd. Some commentators have declared this as a ‘milestone’, a step to ‘justice’, even a ‘victory’. It’s understandable, especially for so...
The mosaic of Theodoric’s palace with the walled city of Ravenna behind at the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Photo: Kieran Dodds Ravenna, to anyone raised on western school history, is at first baffling. What are these gigantic, red-brick tram-sheds or...
The Dearg le Fearg march in Belfast, 2017. Credit: Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin As we approach the centenary of Northern Ireland, one thing we can be sure of is that official ‘celebrations’ will be absent any mention of the century-long state-sponsored suppression of the...
Beyond Representation at the International Literary Festival in Dublin, 2020. Photo credit: Eoin O’Neill In recent years, black people and the wider community of people of colour in Ireland have been gaining success in all aspects of Irish society. Yet there still...
Source: ‘quapan’ (flickr; Creative Commons) Despite tired refrains of ‘We’re all in this together’, the coronavirus pandemic has offered a stark reminder of the deep-seated inequalities that underpin our societies. In Britain, people of colour are still...
Mural of David Ervine, former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, in Belfast. Credit: Keith Ruffles The political imagination of progressive unionism remains under-utilised in Northern Ireland. As we lapse into yet another ethno-sectarian struggle over how to...
Protestors march in support of Irish unification, London 1979. Credit: Gillfoto Not that long ago, the future of Northern Ireland – the bastard state that no one wanted – appeared secure. No respectable commentator expected a united Ireland this side of their, or our,...
Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan in The Foreigner My personal trauma is that I have had to watch a lot of shit films about the Troubles. An abundance of cliché, loner IRA men wrestling with their consciences, one-dimensional psychopathic, battle-worn colleens with...
Photo: Amardeep Singh Dhillon On 16 March 2021, Boris Johnson announced that the UK would be breaking its commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that the UK signed among with 191 other countries in 1968. It came as part of a defence and...
Photo: Marco Verch, cc.by.2.0 Boris Johnson’s masterful handling of the coronavirus pandemic has continued, with him personally developing not one but two separate vaccines. Unfortunately, since the BBC have already depicted chancellor Rishi Sunak as a ripped...