#joe brolly

[seachranaidhe]

Take a look at this post… 'UVF BOSSES UNDER FIRE IN 'SECRET DEAL' ROW'.

Take a look at this post… ‘UVF BOSSES UNDER FIRE IN ‘SECRET DEAL’ ROW’.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/07/uvf-bosses-under-fire-in-secret-deal-row.html

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[podcastpalace]

Brolly's Licence To Ill, C'est Troy Bien, Dubs Doubt, Eve Of RWC by The Second Captains Podcast .... The Second Captains World Service aches for you. Here is a taste of what you've been missing. Oisin and Mike on Brolly's Licence To Ill, Richie Sadlier on Troy Parrott's rise, Ken on Dubs all Ireland ceremony, and RWC 2019 build up.

[podcastpalace]

Do You Want To Be Famous? by The Second Captains Podcast .... Welcome to our weekly sprinkling of the Second Captains World Service.

[brianjohnspencer]

Gregory talks about the GAA for example, he talks about Kevin Lynch, I've heard these guys, Nelson McCausland and all, and they create those impression obviously with working-class Protestants, and it doesn't wash with the middle-class Protestant who don't listen to any of that stuff. And like you have great Gaelic football teams now like Ballymena where half the team is Protestant, they're U14 all-Ireland champions last year. I went up to the prize giving, half the boys from the All Saints team are playing rugby at the Ballymena Academy. The middle-classes, they don't wash any of this. But for the working-class kids, I have absolutely no doubt that there are working-class kids in and around the Diamond and who think in Dungiven that it's like North Korea, that children are lining up in squadrons and marching up and down on the Kevin Lynch pitch being trained in small arms. And this image that must be created, "these fenian bastards, you don't know what the fuck they're at. That what the message is Gregory, you know that's the message. "You fucking couldn't watch these Fenians." "Fucking Kevin Lynch's club, they're fucking terrorist sympathisers." I just get that image of North Korea when I hear him [Gregory Campbell] talk about that, and it's really not.

Joe Brolly, 'West Belfast Talks Back', August 2016 (Here: #feile16 West Belfast Talks Back - Brolly vs Campbell Slugger O'Toole https://audioboom.com/boos/4921101)

[brianjohnspencer]

Joe Brolly - It is a different world Northern Ireland now

Joe Brolly wrote, June 27 2016:

“It is a different world up here now. My kids know nothing about the Troubles. A few of them went to the scouts when they were younger, sang God Save the Queen on the Queen’s birthday and came home proudly holding aloft crayon drawings of the bejewelled heiress. The boys’ great-grandfathers would have turned in their graves.

Sectarian assaults used to be a daily occurrence in Belfast. They have all but disappeared. I am a criminal barrister and cannot recall the last time one of those came before the courts. The Shankill Butchers killed countless Catholics, cutting them to pieces with meat cleavers and knives. The only butchers up there nowadays sell a bag of sausages and minute steaks for a fiver.

Last week, DUP First Minister Arlene Foster tweeted, ‘Well done Republic of Ireland. My goodness what a result!’ When Arlene was a child, her father, a farmer and part-time RUC man, was unbelievably lucky to survive an assassination attempt by the IRA. In an interview with The Sunday Tribune in 2005, Arlene said, “They shot him in the head as he was closing in the cattle. He came crawling into the house, blood streaming down his face. We couldn’t stay in Roslea anymore. I had to move house and school — it was very traumatic.”

The same day as Arlene’s tweet, her deputy, Martin McGuinness, tweeted: ‘En route to France, two big games coming up for Martin and Michael O’Neill’s teams. Hoping both can advance in Euro 2016. Wishing them both well.’ Martin told me on Thursday night that when he had arrived at Dublin Airport to get his flight to the games, he was besieged by Northern Ireland fans who queued up for selfies. Martin sat in the stand for the Northern Ireland-Germany game, beaming. Twenty years ago he would have been tarred and feathered for such treachery. Now, nobody gives a damn.

Throughout the Euros, which should have been declared a public holiday North and South, the two sets of fans have gathered at the Fanzone in the Titanic for the games, filling it to its 10,000 capacity. There hasn’t been the slightest bit of bother. Not a “black bastard” or a “Fuck the Pope”. Not a bottle or a punch thrown. Only thrills, laughs, drink, and the Will Grigg song. You may not be aware of this, but apparently he’s on fire. In training...”

[brianjohnspencer]

In 2010, myself and my father sat with Martin McGuinness at a Derry match in Celtic Park. Before the throw-in, his phone beeped. “Look at this Joe,” he said to me, shaking his head in amusement. It was a text from someone called Peter. The message read: ‘Go on the Blues! You’ll never catch us now.’ The Peter in question was then First Minister Peter Robinson, an avid Chelsea fan. They had just won a vital Premier League game, leaving Martin’s Red Devils trailing in their wake. The title was Chelsea’s to lose. “He’ll torture me now,” said Martin, laughing. I thought of Martin’s lethal past. With his balaclava and armalite, crouched behind a wall in the Bogside. And I thought of Peter, filled with juvenile bigotry, marching through the streets of Clontibret to claim the town for God and Ulster. Yet, here they were, in 2010, running the country together and ribbing each other about their favourite soccer teams.

Joe Brolly (here)

[brianjohnspencer]

In 1993, the first ever religious breakdown of the Royal Ulster Constabulary was published. Of the 13,014 police officers, 6.9 per cent were Catholic. I remember consternation in our circles that so many Catholics were working for the enemy. In Dungiven, like other Catholic towns, the police weren’t served in the shops and no one spoke to them, save to call them black bastards or chant, ‘SS RUC’. Then, suddenly, and I am not sure when this happened, sectarianism was an embarrassment. Like racism, it became something to be ashamed of. I think perhaps the seeds were sown round about the time when Ian Paisley fell under the spell of Martin McGuinness and the two of them went around like shy but delighted lovers. In 2001, the RUC, a Protestant force for a Protestant people, was disbanded and replaced by a new force called the Police Service of Northern Ireland. When the BBC sent a camera crew to Crossmaglen for a vox pop to ask if the locals would join this new body, Paddy Short voiced the feelings of most of us when he said, “We’re not built that way around here.” That sentiment soon evaporated. As of March 14, 2016, the proportion of Catholics in the PSNI is a whopping 31.2pc and rising.

Joe Brolly (here)

[brianjohnspencer]

Culturally, we are no doubt slightly different. In a way, northern Gaels are more ferocious about our Irishness because we had to fight harder for it. My father, a veteran republican, fluent Irish speaker and traditional musician steeped in all things Gaelic quipped to me during the week, “Don’t be too hard on the southerners Joe, some of them are almost as Irish as we are.” Our experience explains why we are far more fervent about our province than the other three. When I began working in RTE I was amazed that Cork people didn’t support Kerry when they got out of Munster and Mayo folk didn’t support Galway. Up here, we rally round whoever gets through because we feel we are all in it together. When Tyrone scored their killer goal in the 2005 final against Kerry, a Derry man sitting in the stand jumped up, punched the air in delight and roared, “Come on you Tyrone b******ds!”

Joe Brolly (Here: http://www.derryjournal.com/news/columnists/brolly-s-bites-north-men-south-men-comrades-all-my-arse-1-3674549)