I've been offline for a few days... Partly holiday... partly the limitations of my computer having blown up... and partly due to illness... But I want to come out of purdah to make a brief comment in the wake of the lack of agreement in the Haass talks last night and what that means for Northern Ireland as we enter into 2014. I'm actually going to temper my reflections, first because I have long since learned that it is a bad idea to really let loose when I am as angry as I currently am, and second, I am telling myself that this was always an artificial deadline and it is not the end of this particular process... Indeed for a long time now the mood music suggested that the departure of Haass and O'Sullivan would not by any means be the end of the process, as the parties had booted the issue of flags further down the road in the form of yet another commission... But it now seems as if all three issues of flags, parades and the past "need more work." The cynic in
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...