Let's follow the Taoiseach's lead and stop speaking Irish in public?

How come at the Hillsborough Press conference to announce the new deal, Taoiseach Brian Cowen didn't just the first official language at all.

Is this the same policy evidenced on official invitations from the British-Irish Joint Secretariat which are in English only?

And if so, will someone tell us who came up with the policy and what its purpose is.

For, in effect, it meant the only person who used Irish on Friday morning was Martin McGuinness, whose knowledge of Irish is extremely limited, while a fluent Irish speaker, An Taoiseach, missed the opportunity to send out the message that a. Irish is a living language despite being the only indigenous language in these islands denied the support of a language act and b. the unionist opposition to Irish is both wrong and unsustainable. How, after all, do you stop a people speaking a language they love.

Tomorrow, perhaps, we'll ask a bright young journalist to put these questions to the Irish Government. In the meantime, should we all follow An Taoiseach's lead and refuse to speak Irish in public?

(Ar ndóigh, d'fhéadfadh sé Gaeilge a labhairt as siocair gurb í a theanga í — agus gurb í teanga s'againne í. Módh cumarsáide, bealach le scéala a chur ionns orainn, beag beann ar cibé tionchar a bheadh ag na chuid cainte nó nach mbeadh ag na chuid cainte or chúrsaí an tsaoil....agus dhéanfadh sé jab TG4 agus RnaG agus Nuacht 24 ní b'fhusa.)

A summer Saturday night in February (brought to you by Northern Rock)

I am in Newcastle, England, to which I have brought not coals but young fans of Niall Quinn and Andy Reid, both of whom have a connection to Sunderland AFC.

I will blog later about the impressively transformed Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (in former Baltic Flour Mills) with its waste-of-space Damien Hirst Pharmacy, the tilting bridge (swear, I saw it bow today), the Sage concert hall and a jarring statue to the ignominious slave trade on the quayside.

But before that let me salute drinking on a Homeric scale, surely not witnessed on this scale From The Balcony since a British Army-sponsored bierfest in Berlin some 30 years ago.

The night-time downtown scene in Newcastle is both surreal and sobering. The hordes of alcohol-fuelled revelers are scant of clothes; the ladies in revealing, poolside summer tops and mini-skirts, more mini than skirt. The gentlemen of the realm are given more to black shirt-sleeved shirts, bulging bellies and haircuts familiar from the aforementioned bier bash. This aversion to Mongolian goat herd hat (as sported by your travel correspondent), scarf and mittens among the stag and hen party faithful was a blunt North of England two fingers to the 3̄C/37F temperature (just checked that on weather.com). Why aren't these people keeling over with hypothermia?

In a scrum for the taxi as we returned from the movies (Jim Sheridan's Brothers: four stars), I could swear that me, my charges and the constabulary were the only sober Christians abroad in the vicinity of the Gate centre at the top of the town.I saw a touching scene as a drooling Michelin man of a Geordie tried desperately to focus on his bleeding knuckles, bringing fist dangerously close to his face. I doubt he cut his knuckles getting a midnight manicure. Equally endearing was the sight of two ingenues defying gravity to keep each other from falling as they stumbled across the street. Perhaps, like the tightrope walker's bar, the dripping hotdogs they carried was helping them keep their balance. Further on, two playful chaps in light jumpers were wrestling each other against a plate glass window.

Watching all this were dozens of patient police officers in day-glo yellow jackets, many wisely staying inside their minibuses parked prominently every 200 metres or so.

Welcome to another summer Saturday night in February on Tyneside.

(That's enough pious pontificating for one night, here's the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and slavery statue.)

New York-New Belfast

Statement by Speaker Christine Quinn of New York City Council on the Hillsborough Deal.

My pal Liam Maskey, who has been working on the ground in North Belfast on the new policing and justice dispensation is just back from New York with a cross-community delegation which also included representatives of the PSNI and Gardaí. He says that in meetings with Christine Quinn to discuss co-operation, they referred to New York and New Belfast. He swears that's before he heard of my plans to host the New York-New Belfast conference in Fordham University and the Waldorf in New York on 9-10 June. And that conference will be a follow-up to the most important gathering in the city on 25 and 26 March for the Belfast City of the Quarters conference.

Supportive statements from Richie Neal, Head of Friends of Ireland on Capitol Hill, and from President Obama.

Angels with dirty faces

Sinn Féin has endorsed the agreement hammered out by Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and their DUP counterparts. Good for them.

The DUP will find equally strong support in their ranks and in the unionist community if they go out with the message that the war is over and it's time to march unionism's forces onto the common ground we all share — rather than lead them to the top of the hill again. The alternative is to pretend that right was on the unionist side only, but then there were no angels on any side in our dirty war.

Things have changed utterly in the six counties. Don't ask me. Ask a 30-year-old who was 14 when the IRA ceasefire of 1994 ushered in this era of peace.

The revolution we went through for 30 years is not coming back. Considering it took such a high toll, that's a good thing. Now to continue to battle for the lofty goals of that revolution.

It's easy to say, 'the more things change, the more they stay they same'. Easy to say, but it's just not true.

16 years ago, West Belfast was strangled by military fortifications — in former times called quarters which is why when we say Belfast is a city of seven quarters, that's actually a lot fewer than the number of military quarters we once had.

When I was 16, there was one person working in a semi-professional role for the Ulster arm of Conradh na Gaeilge, Comhaltas Uladh. He was a middle-aged gentleman with a full-time civil service position. Today, you can't shake a stick in West Belfast without hitting (gently) someone working for the Irish language on a full-time professional basis.

And as recently as 1984, the British secretary of state was denying there was any discrimination against 'Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland', even as his government was sponsoring jobs in the shipyard at £8000 per annum. As the industries of yesteryear continue to collapse because they can't compete, it's not possible to lead a successful, modern business in the six counties and be a bigot.

That' why the TUV can't find a business leader to front their platform.

There's a long way to go and more to discuss, including Jude Collins' brilliant piece on Policing and Justice, but I'm away to see this Angel of the North.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Did the peace process in the North of Ireland really come of age today, as revolutionary turned statesman Martin McGuinness so boldly stated this morning?
If Peter Robinson had have sealed the deal with a handshake, no matter how begrudging, I would have said ‘yes’ but many unionists, unfortunately, are still in those difficult teens.
And if the message from the very top is ‘I don’t shake hand with my partner in government’, who’s to blame the lunatic at the bottom of the heap who insists on provocatively parading past the home of his Catholic neighbour every Twelfth of July.
And make mo mistake about it, the continuing refusal by a rump of unionist hardliners — some MPs at Westminster — to refuse to engage with their former adversaries in a civil manner is a canker at the heart of government.
Indeed, this is probably the only political arena in Europe where representatives of a party sharing power refuse to as much as share a cup of coffee with their governmental colleagues.

Does it get that petty? Absolutely. DUP MP Gregory Campbell prides himself on never having shared pleasantries with his fellow MP Martin McGuinness.
Gerry Adams on his blog (www.leargas.blogspot.com) recently wrote of how to this day (16 years after the IRA ceasefire), some DUP diehards refuse to get into a lift at Stormont if he is in it first.

That’s a recipe for going down rather than going up.

The Orange Order, mired in the past, stubbornly refuses to speak to the besieged Catholic communities of Portadown and Ardoyne while insisting on marching where they want, when they want.

That’s what happens when their political masters don’t give the leadership and example needed.

So let’s get that handshake between Peter and Martin, in public and soon, so that we can give the bum’s rush to those who yearn for the years when there wasn’t a Fenian about the place.
For their day surely is gone and the day of the peacemakers — teenage peacemakers included — is arriving.

For a few pennies more

And so it came to pass that we're about to get the DUP over the line...if the Brits can stump up a few bob for the penniless Presbyterian Mutual Fund savers (who admittedly got a raw deal considering the Icelandic depositers were sorted by the Brits).

I'm sure that can be sorted, after all in one month alone, October, Gordon Brown borrowed £75 billion to keep Britain afloat so what's a few million to seal the deal?

I met Ian Paisley jr this morning in the Invest NI headquarters where I was down trying to shore up the economic fortunes of the Falls and the Shankill under the auspices of the West Belfast and Greater Shankill Enterprise Council.

"What brings you in?" said he. "Trying to create jobs on the Shankill," says me. "Aye, right," says he.

Oh ye, of little faith.

But we did agree on one thing: the deal will go through at Stormont.

The good news is that he, by his own testament, had "softened up" CEO Alastair Hamilton before myself and Jim Carvill from Wilton Health Care on the Shankill went into see the action-orientated top guy at Invest. As it turned out, he didn't seem softened up to me but we did have a useful discussion which I trust will be fruitful in the days ahead as we plan the implementation phase of the Enterprise Council's work in partnership with the new Invest NI.

Léacht na Ceathrún Gaeltachta

Is maith liom go mór an mana a bhí ar an suíomh seo aroimhe, 'gur leis an todchaí an duine ar féidir leis an todhchaí a shamhlú'.

Agus is dócha go bhfuiltear ar an phort chéanna ag Léacht na Ceathrún Gaeltachta a bhéas i gColáiste Feirste Dé hAoine ar 7.30in.

Beidh an tAiltire Alona Martinez-Perec ag caint i gcomhar lenár gcomrádaí Ciaran Mac Goill (a raibh ócáid den scoth aige aréir le 500 lá dá chleachtas nua a chéiliúradh, Ard (ciaran mackel) Architects.

Is as Bilbo Alona agus tá tuiscint iontach aici ar na forbairtí a d'athraigh an chathair sin le leas an phobail a dhéanamh.

Agus tá an iomad togra sa tsiúl ag Ciarán, ina measc an Lúbra nó Aisling an Phobail ar Bhóthar na bhFál agus scéim nua le seanmhuileann a fhorbairt mar thithíocht ar Bhóthar Cromghlinne.

Is féidir an cuireadh a íoslódáil anseo....mo léan nach mbeidh sé ar mo chumas a bheith ann mar tá rún agam Aingeal an Tuaiscirt a fheiceáil an tseachtain seo (agus ní Peter Robinson atá i gceist agam fiú má táthar ag tabhairt le fios go mbeidh sé mar shlánaitheoir againn an tseachtain seo!)

Ballagh's greatest hits

The Big Book of Ballagh is how the Irish Times describes the new monograph from Robert Ballagh — surveying the past 40 years of his prodigious artistic output — and brought together in a (very expensive) collector's edition.

However, you won't need €2,500 to see the monograph as it will be on show during this year's Féile an Phobail in West Belfast in August (fingers crossed).

The monograph includes an updated biography of Ballagh by Irish Times movie critic Ciarán Carty and memorably ends with his visit last year to East Belfast in the company of artist Brian O'Doherty/Patrick Ireland and his wife Barbara.

You can download a brochure for the new monograph — which includes 20 giclée prints of Ballagh's most famous works here.

The only major portrait by Ballagh missing from that score is is latest work on Pat Finucane, but to see that first have to travel to Capitol Hill on 18 March where Chair of the Friends of Ireland group Richie Neal will host a reception to unveil the work. Robert Ballagh, who'll be in New York for the revival of Riverdance at Radio City, and Geraldine Finucane, are expected to attend.

A decade of achievement in Philadelphia

The Irish American Business Chamber and Network in Philadelphia is one of the most professional and polished groups I've met in my sojourn through Irish America.

Led by the inimitable Bill McLaughlin, it has delivered real results on the ground for Irish companies and entrepreneurs targeting the Philadelphia area and it has led quite a few fruitful missions to Ireland.

Bill, whose roots are in Mayo, hosts the most impressive luncheon in the Irish American calendar at the end of February when the Irish Ambassador makes an appearance to present the Ambassador's Award. I attended last year and was bowled over by the attendance — over 400 of the city's business leaders — and honorees.

I won't make this year's gala but in case I missed my friends in Philadelphia, the IABCN sent me their new magazine profiling their events over the past decade. It's well worth a read — I even get my picture in there — and can be downloaded on the group's home page.

All Life is here

Mike Breen sends this link to a Life magazine edition in 1971 which includes a major feature on the IRA.

Equally interesting is the fact that the magazine is packed to the gills with ads.

Changed times indeed.

Knives coming out?

I emerged from two and a half days in bed with the cold — that's the price of a funeral on the slopes of the Black Mountain — to find the DUP getting cold feet over the on-again-off-again deal.

Will more clarification do it for Peter Robinson's merry men or does he really men that the hardliners want a blank cheque to march down the Garvaghy Road?

I suspect the latter and the fact that he's emerged from an all-day meeting of the DUP faithful without the endorsement of his camp bodes ill.

Still, we travel in hope.

Though, I do suspect there was something awry about the body language at the press conference. Are the knives coming out for Peter. Will old scores be settled now that he is already wounded once by the Irisgate revelations and will some internal enemies seize the opportunity to finish him off, metaphorically?

At any rate, as I fed the fever, my old friend Kevin McKiernan in Santa Barbara was out and about snapping the aftermath of a storm on the Pacific coast.

Finally, I had hoped to attend the public meeting in the Cultúrlann tonight about the closure of Egunkaria and am sorry to miss out. However, I'm told an interview with the representative of the Basque newspaper accused will be carried in our papers this week. I see some speculation tonight that the scandalous case will be dismissed as soon as this evening. This would certainly have been a suitable issue for Taoiseach Brian Cowen to raise with Prime Minister Zapatero in Madrid, (picture of trial courtesy of EITB.) as I've just written to respectfully tell him.