I once heard someone say that English is the easiest language to learn but the hardest to master. I'm very dubious about the first part of that truism but I fully concur with the second. Even somone who dedicates years of their life to learning English will find themselves constantly befuddled by the fact that grammatically, English doesn't have rules, it has tendencies. There are always annoying exceptions waiting to trip up the non-native speaker. But there is also the problem of vocab...

I have a friend from Yorkshire who's never been to Scotland, even though it's only 100 miles up the road from where he grew up. He's a keen traveller, he's been to South America and lives in East Asia, yet never once has he gone to the Highlands, or Glasgow, or Edinburgh. When he told me this, my jaw dropped. It just seemed so strange at the time to meet an Englishman, especially a northerener, who had never once been north of the border. I can't think of anyone I know in Ireland who hasn't b...

On their long journey from armed struggle to slight constitutionalism, Sinn Fein (SF) have repeatedly been challenged by journalists and other political parties to condemn continuing IRA violence, including punishment beatings and attacks on political opponents. In nearly every case, when presented with fresh evidence of IRA violence, the party's spokespeople refuse to use the word "condemn". Instead they try to deflect attention away from republican activities by placing them in a wider ...

"Shocked" is very much the word of the moment. Last week's exposure of US torture in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has caused shock all around the world that such treatment should be meted out by the Americans. Bush is shocked, Blair is shocked, the US army is shocked, the Arab world is shocked. Well, they shouldn't be. There are many emotions which one could reasonably feel when viewing the pictures of US soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners. Disgust would be one. Anger woul...

I find I have an ingrained deference to authority. It's a terible thing for a leftie to admit but, generally, I do what I'm told. If a man in a uniform tells me to do something, I do it. I may seethe at the injustice of the order but years of experience have taught me that following that order is the path of least resistance. So if someone with a cap and a badge says: "Get off the grass!", I will get off the grass. Not everyone is like me, some people are naturally rebellious. Instead of meek...

If there's one word I'd like to see removed from political discourse, it's "evil". I'm sick of hearing the e-word all the time, tired of reading it evrywhere. These days, it is most commonly used in reference to enemies of America - Saddam is evil, Bin Laden is evil etc etc My problem is not that the use of the word is innacurate. The aforementioned gentlemen have done more than enough to merit the description "evil". No argument there. But I do have an issue with the way that some on the ...

I was born in 1979. For some of you reading this, that makes me old enough to be, well, your big brother. In fact for two of you reading this I am your big brother. But most of you probably think that twenty-four is young, maybe even obscenely young. "Twenty-four! I wish I was twenty-four again, then I'd never have..." you may be thinking. Don't worry, I think the same way about people who are twenty. It struck me recently just how much our age influences our attitudes. Or I should say, ...

I've just moved to South Korea. As with every other time that I've left Ireland, I'm struck by how frequently people ask me my religion when they find out where I'm from. "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" is often one of the first things which a new acquaintance says to me. No matter how often I'm asked this question, the enquiry always jars. In Northern Ireland (NI) such a direct question is considered rude, not to mention dangerous. No-one in NI ever asks someone they've just met "wh...

There can be no other part of the European Union (EU) which has benefited as much from the organisation as Northern Ireland (NI). Over the past thirty years, the Union has poured billions of pounds into community and infrastructure projects in the North, creating thousands of jobs. Through the "Peace 1" and "Peace 2" investment programmes, it has supported the process of conflict resolution from the outset. The EU has kept NI as an "Objective 1" area even though the North is technically t...

I've never blogged about blogging before but the behaviour of certain Joeusers over the past few weeks leaves me feeling like I have no choice but to respond. Such has been the venom directed at me by certain other people that I want to write a blog about debting etiquette on this website. I'm not going to name names, but those about whom I'm about to write know who they are and they know what I think of them. I don't want to get into a slanging match, though that may be a forlorn hope, I...

Well it had to happen eventually! The American president and the truth are not exactly good friends, in fact sometimes they're not even on speaking terms. So it was a pleasant surprise to hear Dubya at his press conference with Ariel Sharon yesterday saying the following on Israeli settlements in the occupied territories: "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status neg...

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are so closely linked in the consciousness that it’s easy to forget that these two parts of Palestine are very different. They are not adjacent to each other geographically. They are different religiously, topographically and socially. Their fates are linked through an accident of history which left them as the only parts of Mandate Palestine which weren’t conquered by Zionists during the 1948 war. Since 1967 the two places have had a common experience of ...

I use the first person plural very promiscuously in my blogs. In fact, I write the word “we” so often that it’s really starting to grate. Sometimes I use it to speak about humanity in general: “we all know…” and sometimes to talk more specifically about my own civilisation “we in the West…” I’m annoyed with myself for using the word so often because I know that it’s wrong. “We” isn’t as innocuous as it seems. When used in this way, the first person plural is actually a very subtle form of...

The war in Iraq is yet to acquire a title which is accepted by all. For the neo-cons in the Pentagon it is “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. For those with an historical bent, the conflict is “The Second Gulf War”. It may yet come to be known as “The Iraqi Civil War”. The word “Iraq” is often used without the word “war” as if the country and the conflict were synonymous. Whatever history decides to call it, for me the latest conflict in the Middle East will always be “Bush’s War”. The war was a ...

Since Bush did his “Top Gun” impression last May and declared an end to “major combat operations”, there have been very few British deaths in Iraq. For Americans, the famous “Mission Accomplished” banner has proven bitterly over-optimistic. Most days at least one US soldier is killed in Iraq, often it is more than one. The British Army though, with far fewer troops concentrated in much quieter areas, can go months without losing a man to hostile fire. This may be about to change should Sh...