Claire Mitchell
@ClaireMitchell2
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Writer, Researcher, Ma. 1798 style Dissenter. The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798 -
Belfast
Joined March 2009
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Lads. It’s here. Would you look at that happy wee face 😄
So much gratitude for my publisher
@BooksBtp
. A feisty Belfast independent with real soul.
You can get it from their website now. Up the indies!
Coming soon to other book shops too.
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Hope my friends and neighbours who enjoy the monarchy have a great day.
As for me, daughter of northern Dissenters, life-long anti-monarchist, this is my President. Hopefully I'll be able to vote in these elections one day soon.
Health to enjoy/object!
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Remembering the day the DUP recalled the *entire* collapsed Assembly back to try to block abortion. And now won’t re-nominate a First Minister to deal with a cost of living emergency.
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Language rights are reparation. To remedy an historical suppression of the language. A language which thrived amongst Protestants as well as Catholics. It is a deeply symbolic test of whether NI can ever be shared.
The wound is still open and that is bad for absolutely everyone.
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Isn't it obvious that East Belfast GAA are trying to do something a bit different in a mixed area & demographic? Is that not great? Doesn't the question become, how do we support them to keep breaking down barriers? This is what their critics say they want to see.
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The DUP mayor camogie reception story matters.
We (mixed religion group - about 8 kids) had to leave the local playing fields a few days ago. One of our kids said the word 'Gaelic' in a football kickabout. Got called Fenian, Taig & told some kids were coming down to burn them.
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It has come to my attention that loads of people are still busted after having covid, and struggling to get back to normal health 😭
As someone who has had a post-viral thing for 16 years, there are a few things I've learned that might help a bit.
A short thread.
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2022 was full of absolutely brilliant Irish podcasts.
I used to write a top ten, but it's impossible now to single things out like that, it's all so good. Here are just some of my personal favourites. Mostly history and politics and stories.
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Another day, another English law that won't work here.
NI has 4 x more emigrants than immigrants. An ageing pop. No fish-gutters, care-givers, shop workers earn £30k+ So who's gonna do it? Their tax is your pension.
Thanks to all the migrants who come here & put up with us ❤️
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Carrick in-laws telling me it’s good the hotel is busy. Love their Romanian neighbours. Their Chinese neighbour often makes food for them. MIL helps her church run a group getting to know migrant newcomers, cook, chat together. Ordinary salt of the earth Carrick people. FYI DUP.
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The Protestant state for a Protestant people was wrong, and it failed, and I embrace the concept's passing.
May we all thrive in the shelter of one another in this new chapter.
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You'd always have knots in your stomach crossing the border, soldiers everywhere, guns sometimes pointed at the car, hushed conversations, checking car boots, sometimes having to get out of the car, parents having to give their details - terrifying as a kid. And we were Prods.
Arlene Foster states “as someone who lived through the troubles we never had a hard border in Ireland”.
Extraordinary, disingenuous assertion that will come as news to many.
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Learning Irish has brought me: community across divides, words for my landscape, insight into Protestant Irish speakers in my family, songs for my kids, bridges to Ulster Scots, a sense of being at home.
It has helped bring me back to a Protestant identity, after being 'Other'.
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Unionist relative just phoned me, kicking off the convo with céad míle fáilte. Delivered the classic line "Mary Lou's our new mammy now and she says not to be scared" 😂
They worried over Arlene's letter about Martin being FM in 2016. Notable mood change. Hesitant but relaxed.
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Cover design for the new book - The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798.
Will be out in (deep breath) November 2022 with Beyond the Pale Books!
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Love and solidarity to victims of the Troubles on this day and all days.
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I think something is happening amongst many northern Protestants right now.
While we sit in this political fugue state, people are making art, having new ideas, rethinking old ones. I know this because my inbox is full of it.
It is fascinating to feel history move in real time.
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My 94yo grandad lives next door and says he is ‘very busy’. Mowing grass, restoring a chair, making Easter cards, has deliveries organised from every local shop. He’s asking if we need any help 😂
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Do dissident republicans actually want a united Ireland? Project unity has never been doing so well, with non-nationalists likely to take it over the line. In what parallel universe does killing cops help with this?
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Something I wrote for the
@HonestUlsterman
about northern Protestants and the Irish language. A family mystery, and a personal exploration of lost heritage.
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Most of the families
#NeverGivingUp
are not from 'my community'. But oh lord, you are my community. We are one community today, as we are so often.
Please look at this tag if are able.
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Who is speaking up for kids at the minute?
How do we not have education as a priority in yesterday's roadmap?
News all day asking when do golf, garden centres, hairdressers, churches and coffee shops open.
Let me tell you some stories about the kids...
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Northern Ireland has ceased to make sense to me. Some thoughts on future politics, and on Irish unity...
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Neighbours banging baking trays with wooden spoons for the NHS tonight. It’s like Protestant bin lids.
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Finally got to see the jail in Newtownards town hall. It’s being cleared out and will open to the public soon.
Plenty of United Irishmen were held here in 1798. Such a tiny space. The sign says the window sill bears the fingerprints of countless prisoners.
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Sobering turn of phrase is this piece. “No-one is coming to save us... I am now afraid not just of renewed unrest in Northern Ireland, but that the rest of the country will barely even notice if it begins.”
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So many layers to this small story. I’m a Protestant. I don’t feel comfortable with a language of “them”. My life is full of Protestants & unionists who are not sectarian. But the point of course is that public discourse trickles down even to kids. We owe every one of them more.
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I thought my kids' generation would be freed from all this.
But it won't happen unless our generation go out of our way. And that very much looks like majority unionist councils holding receptions for camogie champions. And the equivalent. We need to be at ease with difference.
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A loyalist, a dissenter, an evangelical and an Alliancer. Obviously we only speak for ourselves, not these broader groups. But I'm happy to be on this pretty interesting looking panel.
🚨Protestant Perspectives🚨
- Lord John Alderdice
- David Adams
- Claire Mitchell
- Wallace Thompson
Ireland’s Future welcomes all perspectives particularly those from the broad Protestant community
We look forward to listening to our panellists on 15 June
More to follow
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Climbed Slieve Loughshannagh today. Only a little Mourne. But have had ME/CFS for 16 years and often stairs have been a challenge. So I’m freaking elated! 🎉
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So this is a thing that is happening. I’m writing a new book!
Working title - Do Not Fear To Speak.
It’s about the spirit of 1798 in the 21st century. Full of voices of modern Protestant dissent.
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"These are our neighbours, let them go."
This is the kind of society I want to live in. Well done Glasgow.
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Allison Morris “I’ve had bottles of shampoo that have lasted longer than that” 😂
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Stop. Platforming. Violent. Gobshites. Posing like hardmen. It’s not helping lads.
Also, the seam in his lady tights is showing.
New IRA tells
@Channel4News
, in on-camera interview, that any border infrastructure is "legitimate target for attack".
Watch at 7pm on Channel 4.
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The absence of the NI Assembly is different this time. There's an emotional detachment, as this place fails further each day.
The people of the north will really need to have each-others' backs now. It's a moment full of anti-sectarian possibility. And fraught with danger.
There’s an end of days feel to Northern Ireland right now. A sort of half-hearted anarchy pervades as swathes of what society takes for granted are breaking down. The scale and nature of the crises now unfolding will have profound political consequences.
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Foremothers 💚
Absolutely buzzing to see Mary Ann McCracken and Winnie Carney statues revealed.
And bump into nearly every hallion I know!
Gorgeous new badge from Mark Doherty too.
Beautiful Belfast. You might be a little battered, but you are so full of soul.
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A bump in the road a chairde. But, together, we must - and we *will* - build a better society for all of our kids.
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Oh my word, this is so beautiful! The latest in a series of
@BelfastTuras
animations with Protestant Irish learners.
This is a small story from me about a journey towards the Irish langauge. & how it led to magical discoveries about our tangled culture.
Maith sibh gach duine!
Claire's Story: The Shamrock ☘️ and the Thistle: Connecting Ireland with Scotland at Irish Language Class
Ulster Gaeilge: It's yours too!
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Full support for Colin Harvey.
I studied politics reading Bew, Gibbon & Patterson, prominent unionists & academics.
At QUB I wrote a book about evangelicals & did work on re-integration of loyalist prisoners after the GFA. Had full support.
Academic freedom is everything.
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Lots of articles about loyalist threats right now. I’d love to see journalists seek out ordinary loyalists, women, loyalists with a legacy of real community work, show us the real issues. Not platform the same old hardmen that oppress their own communities.
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So
@SusanMcKay15
’s brilliant book has already gone to reprint. This is the new cover 👀
What an honour. Thanks for the exciting post today
@BlackstaffNI
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One day this place may engage with reality... Today is not that day.
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Some of the conversations we've been having in my house this year about 12th...
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Absolutely packed Town Hall in Newtownards tonight. Couldn’t believe it. Genuinely people from every creed and tribe. So much love for our 1798 histories, which bring people together today in ways I could never have imagined. Thanks to all who made it such a great night.
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So I wrote this quickly and from the gut, about our summer of discontent in the north, and try to weigh up whether things are spiralling out of control.
TL;DR: No and yes, and maybe in a different way than we think.
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Gigantic proof read coming up. Please send paracetamol.
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Love everything about this clip and what it represents. For women, parents, Travellers, Irish politics.
"Already we made history, didn't we Billie!"
Eileen Flynn (
@Love1solidarity
) the first person ever from the travelling community to be appointed to the Seanad, chats on
#SummeratSeven
whilst multitasking like a PRO with her adorable baby Billie 😍
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Sitting outside the 8 yo’s football. Watching in awe as these coaches bring my boy back to his old self again. Same goes for his teachers. Thank you to everyone working with young people at the minute. You are healers. It takes a village...
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A thread about my Irish language speaking ancestors on the Shankill Road. Just 3 generations back.
A family mystery... I'd always thought that Protestant Irish speakers must have been quite middle class. But my own Irish speaking ancestors came from Belfast's Shankill Road. Here are some of them. Gibbney. Gibne. A lock of hair?
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Ah now, that’s my niece bawling her eyes out and saying she’s thick and a failure after not getting the marks she wanted today.
She if of course amazing & the local high is brilliant. But what a brutal system.
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Aontú on both Nolan and Talkback today, claiming to speak for the people. Can’t say it often enough, 71% in NI support a woman’s right to choose; 89% support decriminalisation (NILTS 2018).
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1798 trail continues. This is what’s left of Betsy Gray’s house. A young woman at the front of the Rebellion.
Apparently nobody has been to see it in years. It’s on land behind a nursing home. Some residents remembered her story. The landowner said lots of people used to visit.
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Wrote about the election for
@SluggerOToole
The politics of the past here cannot hold. Those who tried new things in this election were rewarded. Because of England's Brexit - nothing in Northern Ireland can ever be the same again.
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People in Northern Ireland are living in the austerity beneath austerity now. Cuts that are full of cruelty. No doubt that people will die.
This place has been failing quietly for a long time. It's crashing and burning now. I love this place and its people. It's breaking us.
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Mary Ann McCracken ❤️ Things she fought for at Belfast poorhouse: soap, skipping ropes, candles to read at night, girls’ education, trips, play, good jobs not crap jobs, window blinds for patients in full sun, milk - as buttermilk too acidic for kids’ stomachs. Human dignity.
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For the day that's in it - a few thoughts on alternative Protestant identities, to counter-act the DUP narrative...
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Only 7 of the original book run available from
@BooksBtp
.
After that, we’re into the reprint 🎉
Another politics is possible.
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Love this photo of Madge Davison.
Working class Protestant, civil rights organiser, communist, met her husband at Wolfe Tone’s grave. Died in 1991, age 41.
Foremothers.
#IWD
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It hits differently every time. Last time - real sadness. This time - emotionless. Apart from the little white hot area of anger, which I only dare to visit on certain days.
Bonkers not to expect people to explore all future democratic ideas from reform to constitutional change.
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My favourite Irish podcasts of 2018...
@PassportIrish
@EchoChambersPod
@RebootPod
@MothersInvent
@tconnellyRTE
@irishhistory
@thesuss_ie
@Rubberbandits
@tenx9
@darachos
@LesleyRiddoch
@Think32_
@HistoriesNi
@conorgarrett
@Ellie_McDowall
@MarkCarruthers7
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A little photo thread of the book launch. These are some of the people who helped me understand the pang of the ghost limb & who helped me find healing.
Alternative Protestants & fellow travellers. Listening. Sharing. Articulating a different politics. Fearing to speak.
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Have vivid memories of being sent to school in Cregagh during the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. Just me & my brother. The rest were boycotting class, as unionism shut the country down.
Unionism can't keep doing this. Nothing stays the same forever. We have bigger problems. Evolve
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@MedievalDuffer
Little bit teary at that. It’s the quiet kindness of people like your mam that keeps the world glued together.
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I keep trying to post something about Rafah and Gaza, and find myself inarticulate in the face of such brazen, enabled genocide.
May the voices of Palestians and their friends around the world be heard. May the old order crumble, and yield place to the new.
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The sliotar sisters!
Many deeply worrying things about Northern Ireland at the minute.
But what a relief not to have to cut through a big negative fog to get to the real stuff.
Hope it lasts. Hope it becomes meaningful and real.
Fabulous picture …
This is what peace and reconciliation looks like.
This is what togetherness looks like.
There is hope!
More of this … please 👏 👏 💚
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Gorgeous phrase at
@BelfastTuras
Irish class today - blas cainte is your accent. Literal translation, the taste of your speech.
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Interesting supplement in the
@irish_news
today, pulled together by
@IrelandsFuture
.
Was really happy to write a few words. Not particularly as a Protestant, but as someone who thinks a lot about the quality of democracy in this place, and dreams of so much more.
✅ Ireland’s Future marks the 25th anniversary with this special 8 page supplement in today’s
@irish_news
and you won’t want to miss it.
🗣️
@mrstooth
: “I will pull up a chair to creative democratic conversation, wherever I can find it.”
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Unbelievable day. My incredible friend has been granted asylum. The journey was awful. 6 long years battling legal indifference & the hostile environment. But we won! Can't wait to see what the next chapter holds for her. To those still striving for asylum, don't give up ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿
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Historic day. Delighted that Michelle O'Neill will become First Minister. The arc of our Agreement story.
I hope our politics can allow itself to soften, to rise from the gutter and peek at the stars.
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Incredible little bit of footage of Belfast in 1920. Flags, murals, kids and grown-ups preparing for riots/attacks, a military presence... As a mother, I couldn't stop looking at the kids' bare feet. Our beautiful, awful Belfast.
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An historic election. Young republican and Alliance women everywhere. It's been a long time coming & I'm happy to see the change in representation.
Heartsore for the Greens who have had a rough old day.
Hoping that somehow a new politics can emerge from the ashes of the old.
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Me, making a list of which schools are insisting on the AQE/GL this year - and crossing them off. If this is the level of flexibility you're offering during a *global pandemic*, how am I supposed to trust you with my kids' wellbeing?
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Citizens’ Manifestation. Calling for the Assembly Rooms to taken into public ownership.
Site of so much great Belfast history. From anti-slavery meetings to the 1792 Harpers’ Assembly.
The Assembly Rooms have been on the Heritage At Risk Register since 2003
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Does anyone know when the terms 'PUL' and 'CNR' started being used, or their origin story?
When I was doing work on NI in UCD late 1990s, and in QUB up to late 2000s, I don't remember hearing them.
Now they're everywhere (and I absolutely hate them!)
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Alternative Protestants on tour today.
Thanks to
@nealerichmond
for making space for us to talk to members of the Oireachtas.
Lovely to see
@conwaywalsh
@IanMarshall_
and others.
Some ghost limb radio documentaries in the making…
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@JoeBrolly1993
Northern Prod here, anti-apartheid, live by principles of BDS, heart shattered for Palestine. Most family and friends the same :(
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The tweets are so funny.
But I'm so done with all this. The donest donewoman in donetown.
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My great uncle Archie Gibney, summonsed in 1912 for not vaccinating his daughter... Dora died a few years later, age 6, of nephritis (a kidney problem). 6 of his 13 kids died in childhood, some from measles (no vaccine for this until 1968). I'm very grateful for modern science.
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66% of Protestants in 2020 would prefer a mixed religion school. It's wild that not one unionist voted in favour of the Integrated Education Bill. It seems a pretty tame ask in 2022 that supply for IE should meet demand.
Data -
No unionist (DUP, UUP, TUV, independent) MLA voted for Kellie Armstrong’s Integrated Education Bill. Independent MLA Claire Sugden abstained.
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The Tribeca project is utterly self-defeating. You want tourists, investment, a thriving local economy? Heritage, community, uniqueness, usable public space are what you need. Not shiny offices and more generic nothing shops.
And they are still insisting on calling it 'Tribeca' 🙄. Surely with the abundance of fascinating indigenous place-names we have we can do better than a mere carbon-copy of the NYC district. 'Tribeca Belfast: Council backs £500m plan for Cathedral Quarter'
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Remembering Orr.
Mark Doherty plays a Rabbie Burns lament by Orr’s grave.
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Wow. That is a LOT of men.
The 16 UUP candidates. By my reckoning 2 possible winners. And I’m not telling you : )
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Today I was filming with RTÉ, talking about the gorgeous nuances in my Shankill loyalist family. The mixed marriages. Their Irish language. Their hard work in the mills. And tonight the Shankill is burning. This is Belfast. Dark and light, light and dark. Heart-breaker of a city.
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Was to be my wee boy’s birthday party today. And instead we’re applying for Universal Credit. Did not see that coming! But the sun is shining and we’ve a garden to stay put in, so we’re lucky. To better days...
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Have left mine out. St Brigid was ahead of her time, so am hoping she might stop by for a Protestant with covid.
Tonight is St Brigid's eve so don't forget to leave a cloth or scarf outside to be blessed by the saint as she passes. Known as a 'Bratog Bride' in Irish folklore, this special garment can then be used as a cure for headaches or sore throats
#folklore
#Ireland
#StBrigidsDay
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I hope all you covid warriors can find a path through.
If you take recovery seriously now, it's likely you'll get well & not get stuck in a post-viral spiral.
If you already have long covid, I'm so sorry. Hold onto hope. My life changed but it's still so full of good things x
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Some thoughts
@SluggerOToole
.
"Our kids cannot grow up with the same shit as we did, we agreed a thousand times over. Because this is the perspective that unlocks everything. That softens point and counter-point. That makes our hard politics yield."
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The time has finally come.
@mrstooth
is no more. Some wise soul has left Twitter, and a new
@ClaireMitchell2
has spawned.
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These images are amazing to pore over. The young ones. The diversity. The energy. The soul. The absolute fed upness. Dearg le fearg.
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OMG this photo is everything.
@oharamal
winning a Green seat, with his loved ones and a rainbow flag, with a painting of Sammy Wilson as mayor in the background, frozen in time...
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This was well worth the suspense. Bloody brilliant.
We're thrilled to welcome Bernadette McAliskey to The Impartial Reporter as our latest columnist. Insightful discussions on social inequalities, rural exclusion, education, transport, immigration, and her inclusive vision for this island. Photo: Press Eye.
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The people's professor. Brilliant.
*Thank you* for every tweet & supportive msg re: the slurs on my academic integrity
I'm not important, but information, evidence & facts are.
In honour of that, here's a🧵correcting false claims in
@bbcquestiontime
on
#Protocol
[16:22-38:50]
#bbcqt
1/22
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Have just been to the doctor about a gastro thing. Waiting list for a consultation is 251 weeks. That’s 5 years.
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KAT and people’s faces on election posters are the ones that churn my stomach the most. Horrific sectarianism.
It’s extremely disappointing to see my election posters alongside this sectarian message on an eleventh night bonfire. Leaders in the unionist community need to call these actions out and put a stop to this once and for all.
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Longer bit on
@SluggerOToole
today - I voted for peace, and all I got was this lousy culture war.
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I wrote about Brexit. About baked bean farts and disaster capitalism. About ordinary people, and its impact on our lives.
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Excited to see my long read in the
@HonestUlsterman
today.
I tried to imagine the lives of the women in my family during partition.
Maria, Elizabeth, Dora, Eliza Jane, Catherine, Lucy, Agnes, Bella, Cissie - this is my small tribute to you.
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