Virtual Methodist

The first thing I heard as I woke up this morning was that the playwright Sam Thompson was being honoured by naming the new bridge from Victoria Park over to Airport Road after him. This bridge allows access by foot and bike to the Harbour Estate and Titanic Quarter, the erstwhile Shipyard where his most famous play "Over the Bridge" was set...  There is a certain appropriateness to this, but also some irony given that many of the issues that Sam Thompson raised in that play apply directly to the malaise affecting the loyalist community that lies in the shadow of the gantries of the remaining 2 shipyard cranes. To that end I offer this slightly revised reblog of one I produced in the wake of Martin Lynch's revival/revision of the play 3 years ago, looking at why I believe it is a crucially important play : The Physical Context - The Shipyard In a moment of unguarded honesty a few years ago, when Harland and Wolff was teetering on the brink of total closure...

It is fast approaching the centenary of the Titanic's departure from Belfast and its all too sudden sinking, and it is all over the TV, with ITV's dreadful costume drama (dubbed "Drownton Abbey" by one friend, and "Upstairs Drownstairs" by another) and the BBC doing a documentary about it with Len Goodman from Strictly Come Dancing... Is he going to do a quickstep on Queens Island?  And everywhere you look in Belfast at the moment some Titanic-themed event is taking place, with yesterday's dedication of the "Titanica" statue , outside the Titanic Signature Building, which is due to be opened on Saturday coming (and which I am looking forward to visiting as soon as possible thereafter), and today's ludicrous renaming of "Bridge End Halt" as "Titanic Quarter" even though it's a good mile walk from the heart of that particular developers' dream... Although it remains the only direct link between the Titani...

I’ve got a dictionary with an inscription on the inside cover… It says: “Congratulations David on passing the last ever 11 plus” It was given to me by one of my brothers, I won’t tell you how long ago… But it wasn’t yesterday… What did happen yesterday was that children all over Northern Ireland got their results from, what Catriona Ruane says will be the last ever 11 plus… Except it won’t be… Because of political gamesmanship in which the lives of children are pawns, next year there will be a whole swathe of different 11 pluses being offered by different schools as entrance exams… And a completely chaotic system of transfer from primary to secondary schools. Unless a deal can be done quickly. I did well out of the 11 plus… Because I passed it I was able to get an education that was second to none, opening all sorts of options to me, that were not open to the majority of my primary school pals. The sad thing is that the options that were open to them, which were mainly the Shipyard and...