A recent match between Switzerland and Albania included players whose home nation is not yet recognised by FIFA With less than a quarter of an hour to go in Switzerland’s recent World Cup qualifier against Albania in Lucerne, Granit Xhaka was presented with a glorious chance to put the home side 3-0 up. With the […]
Sting of economic reality fails to mute Kosovo’s independence joy
THE conference that took place recently in the Kosovan capital Pristina to mark the end of the country’s supervised independence was billed as “chapter closed in the Balkans”. But away from the panel discussions and the diplomatic soirees, the atmosphere on Pristina’s streets was more subdued than celebratory. The end of the supervision of Kosovo’s […]
The World’s Last Colonial Museum
The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels has been called ‘the last colonial museum in the world’. It’s not hard to see why: in the marble lobby a statue celebrates ‘Belgium bringing civilisation to the Congo’; the Memorial Room lists the names of the 1508 Belgians who died in Africa between 1876 and 1908 but doesn’t mention […]
RTE World Report
I made my debut on RTE’s excellent World Report on Sunday, June 3. My contribution, about the Yes Scotland launch in Edinburgh and the campaign for independence, is the third piece in. Click here to listen to my World Report piece
Occupy Edinburgh
The nascent ‘occupy’ movement currently spreading around the Western world is often traduced for lacking a clear, identifiable goal or a soundbite-sized rallying point. Indeed at one point during the Occupy Edinburgh demo in St Andrew’s Square Saturday afternoon – while a Mohawked punk in leathers was excoriating the coalition government in London – I […]
I'm off to Zambia
A couple of months back I was short-listed for the Guardian’s International Development Competition for a feature I wrote on attempts to improve farming practices in Malawi. As a consequence of this, I’m heading to Zambia on Sunday for a week to research a piece on youth unemployment for the paper. I’m going with an […]
Antony and the Johnsons, Waterfront Belfast
Review originally appeared in The Sunday Business Post: ‘The only time I’ve ever played here,” Antony Hegarty’s sonorous voice intoned from behind his grand piano, ‘‘a lady gave me a packet of magic Rolos and said they’d bring good fortune.” Touted by Lou Reed since their early days, Antony and hi s band, the Johnsons, […]