Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2019

Hate

OK! Here's my final TFTD for a while. Hope you don't hate it...  Can hate ever be good ? Morning is not my favourite time of day… there are days when I hate it... and the news rarely does much to improve my mood… And yesterday was a case in point, with a number of news stories sharing a similar theme. One that, sadly, there have been at least 320 hate crimes against the small Muslim community here in Belfast over the past five years… Then there was the appalling video circulating on social media of young people, some wearing Northern Ireland football shirts, singing "we hate Catholics" to the chorus of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now". The IFA were encouragingly swift to speak out against this, saying that they condemn sectarianism of any kind, threatening to ban those involved. Meanwhile it seems that a number of England players were subjectto racist abuse during the previous night’s demolition of Montenegro , with Raheem Sterling

Happy?

This morning's Thought  the Day on Good Morning Ulster... Well do you feel your sap rising, with today being the Spring equinox… the day in the northern hemisphere when there is as much light as dark… hopefully heralding marginally warmer weather in the weeks ahead?  Today is also the International Day of Happiness, established in 2011 as a United Nations Initiative devised by social entrepreneur and UN advisor Jayme Illien to inspire, mobilize, and advance the idea of happiness as a fundamental human right. And as pat of that , today as in previous years, the World Happiness Report comes out with a league table measuring the happiness of different countries via some arcane statistics. Despite the economic doldrums of the past decade and the political rancor of recent years, the UK has remained fairly steady at around 18th out of about 150 countries… With central African countries generally rating very low and Scandinavians topping the league every year… The USA has moved up a

Storms

Again, it's been a while again... and I didn't get a chance to post last week's Thought for the Day, but here is this morning's effort... you can get the audio version online later if you so desire... In Greek mythology King Aeolus ruled an island kingdom and the gods granted him control of the winds. According to the poet Homer, Odysseus and his crew arrived on Aeolus’ island after nearly being eaten by a one-eyed giant. Aeolus by contrast allowed them to rest and relax for a month, and as they prepared to leave he provided Odysseus with the gift of a west wind to carry them home. But he also gave him a large sack, warning him to keep it stowed safely away until they got to their destination. Thanks to the favourable wind they were within sight of home after a few days, but when Odysseus fell asleep exhausted by the whole ordeal, his crew, curious to see what treasures Aeolus had given their captain, untied the sack. Unwittingly they unleashed all the other win