President Joe Biden will cease to be President of the USA once the November 5 election’s result have been declared and the new President is sworn in. My mother’s ghost and the remnants of old decency require me to add, “God sparing him until then.” But I confess to being more inclined to use the old phrase, “Bad scrant to him!” as a parting shot.
Have you noticed that the hedges across the rural landscape have been filled with wild rose and honeysuckle? As children, growing up on the edge of the town, the Sunday family walk to visit both grannies took round the ‘back road’ through the rural countryside and round the long way to St. Jean’s Cottages, and then to the shortcut cut over the ‘burn’, past the workhouse, and back onto the pavements of the Burn Road to William St.
Well, that’s that done and dusted for another five years! Full marks to all voters in Fermanagh/South Tyrone who voted! The constituency registered 66 per cent of its electorate voting on the day (65.97 per cent, to be exact) which was more than eight per cent above the NI average turnout.
Here we are! It is ‘Election Day’, and for one day only, the political future of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is in the hands of the people holding the polling booth pencil. Every UK citizen, aged 18 or over, is entitled to register with the electoral commission. Only those who registered are entitled to cast a vote today.
This week-end I am joining a ’gathering’ in the Seamus Heaney Centre in Bellaghy, Co. Derry.
A small boy of my acquaintance – AKA my grandson – is counting the sleeps to the end of the school year. His granny is counting the sleeps to the Westminster election. We are both a little bored and need these things to be over. It is not that our P1 hero is not happy at school. He loves it!
"Th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis" is the last line of ‘Juno and the Paycock’, Sean O’Casey’s play set in the Dublin tenements during the Irish Civil War.
Last Sunday, June 2, was the 30th anniversary of the Mull of Kintyre disaster. The Ministry of Defence held no official memorial to mark the anniversary of the incident.
So, it’s that time again. It’s time to elect a parliament for the United Kingdom. There can be few people unfamiliar with the old jokes about elections which go: “never mind the candidates, the electorate can’t be trusted either. That’s why the pencil is tied to the voting booth.”
Bernadette McAliskey looks at the 'Divine Right' of rulers throughout history and how it can still be seen today
