“I’m fucking raging.” It was breakfast time on Friday - the morning after the Executive meeting the night before and still no Stormont minister had been…
Author: Brian Rowan
Brian Rowan
Brian Rowan is a journalist/author. A former BBC correspondent in Belfast, four times he has been a category winner in the Northern Ireland Press and Broadcast Awards. He is the author of several books on the peace process. His latest book (published by Merrion Press) POLITICAL PURGATORY – the battle to save Stormont and the play for a New Ireland is now available at www.merrionpress.ie
It was a day of gold standard political gymnastics; the DUP doing somersaults and stretching the elastic in the dictionary as it tried to explain a…
The Executive is in obvious trouble - the question: how close is it to the political edge? Here we are again, asking that question, less than…
This was the week when the Stormont Executive lost the dressing room - or at the very least some of the key players within it, including…
Walk back down the path through all of those processes that have been about addressing the legacy of the conflict years, and what do you find?…
AN ESCAPE FROM THIS VIRUS WILL DEMAND PLANNING AND PATIENCE In Holywood the local parish priest Fr Stephen McBrearty told me they were queuing to…
A VIRUS PLAYING INSIDE OUR POLITICS, OUR PATIENCE AND OUR HEADS Some weeks ago, at the start of April, I wrote on this website that perhaps…
I hear the question: what’s changed? Other questions about dates for this and that; when someone might be able to travel to their holiday home,…
There is nothing precise about social distancing; nothing easy about having Covid-secure standards in the work place - yet Prime Minister Boris Johnson breezed through that Sunday television address as…
Within hours, we watched the UK Government’s retreat from Thursday’s headlines in Britain; another mess, another mixed message - and something that has the appearance of a briefing…
On Thursday, the Radio Ulster Talkback programme debated the question of whether in this period of social distancing and restrictions churches should be allowed to open in…
Take a needle and some thread and start to work them through those little six-word stories on twitter that are a summary and a snapshot of…
POLITICAL BREAKTHROUGH JANUARY 9th 2020: Just after eight on that cold winter evening, the decision was taken inside Stormont House. The then NI Secretary of State…
On our empty streets, they are more easily seen; sometimes in clusters and in different colours. You don’t have to look for them; they look at…
We can see many things inside a picture frame. The image above is but one example. On Thursday, I tweeted the caption - stand to attention;…