The Rusty Wire Service

The decision on whether or not Lewisham A & E and maternity units will be kept open will be made by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt on 1 February. Next weekend (26 January), the people of Lewisham will march again in protest at threats to essential services in their community. It shouldn't come as a surprise to many readers of this website that vehement opposition to the  closure of local A & E and maternity units would be the preferred editorial line. So, with that expectation satisfied, let me start by listing a couple of the reasons I'm not against this particular closure. I'm not against the closure of Lewisham A & E and maternity units because when I've had occasion to avail of their services, the staff at that hospital have looked after me with nothing but compassion, professionalism and integrity. Unfailingly, my dealings with Lewisham hospital staff, from receptionists to consultants, have been exemplary.  It would therefore be...

This article was written for Sabotage Times The first issue on any IRA agenda, according to the playwright Brendan Behan, will always be 'the split'. Behan was in a better position than most to comment on the shortcomings of that organisation; he'd served three years in a Borstal for his part in a botched IRA bomb plot to sabotage Liverpool docks in 1939. The 'split' remains a defining feature in the ongoing evolution of the Irish Republican movement. In fact, even the briefest of inspections throws up a whole raft of IRAs and other paramilitary pretenders that makes the pre-ceasefire days of 1994 look positively straightforward. From the Irish Republican Liberation Army to the Óglaigh na hÉireanns (both 'real and 'continuity'), the 21st century has seen a bewildering proliferation of splinter groups claiming the mantle of 'legitimate armed struggle' against the 'forces of British Imperialism', to adopt the parlance...

Pic yoinked from: Declan Gallen Identity: powerful word that. Put 'cultural' in front of it or 'crisis' after it and you open up a whole dashboard of hot-button issues. It's ineffable, elastic and slippery as a tickled trout the minute you start trying to define it. It's also one of those things about which people are irrationally filled with pride.  They'll waste no time in telling you how they are: Proud to be English, Proud to be Irish, Proud to be a Prod, (Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee....) as if this was some kind of marvellous achievement; a feat of derring do which they had performed through sweat and toil and with swashbucklingly scant regard for their own health or safety.  The truth about identity is always more prosaic than the ballads belie; you're English/Irish/Prod/Okie because that's probably what your Daddy was and his Daddy before him.    I'm guilty of it all the time myself; from Barack Obama to the i...