The world's oldest English language daily newspaper enters its 290th year today! My own happy stint at the (Belfast) News Letter, more than 19 years, amounts to almost 7% of its now 289 total. Here's a story I wrote on the paper's birthday last year: newsletter.co.uk/news/people…

Remembering his wonderful recent talk at Reform Club a fount of knowledge on an important forgotten period , will be sadly missed by many ulsterreformclub.com/events/…

"There is a feeling in unionism 'we have to push back'" @BenLowry2 sets the Drumcree parade dispute in a wider context of an "at times, triumphalist nationalism"

📣🚨 Northern Ireland is set to ban honest conversations about sex and gender between adults and children. Join the @SpeechUnion and @genspect in Belfast on Friday 25 September to find out more about the proposed law — and how to fight it. Speakers include Fiona McAnena from Sex Matters; Dr Stella O’Malley from Genspect; Shelley Charlesworth from Transgender Trend; barrister Dennis Kavanagh from the Gay Men’s Network; James Kennedy from the Christian Institute Northern Ireland; and clinical psychologist Jaco van Zyl from Critical Therapy Antidote. 🎟️ Get tickets below 👇

Problem for @RhonddaBryant - no one here believes there is no more money. That’s based on past experience. @NIFiscalCouncil chair has flagged up ongoing potential for a “TACO trade where the Treasury always chickens out, or is encouraged to do so”.

Totally agree, Ben… Gordon was immensely helpful to me over many interviews - over many years!!!

Gordon's weekly contribution to the paper over many years was incalculable. A fine man, who will be sorely missed

The Austria-Israel game will be taking place tonight in Austria at a sell-out stadium. Protests have been minimal. Contrast that with here.

This is grotesque behavior. Joe Biden was an American president. Xi is a communist dictator, and the head of a foreign state. Our internal divisions are not fair game in this context.

I’m struggling with the concept of someone who goes big on the moral importance of recognising the death & devastation in Gaza, & then 2 weeks later sits down with the Foreign Minister of a regime which this year murdered tens of thousands of people over the course of 72 hours.

The meeting of the two superpowers today is by far the most important news story of the day, both for Ireland and the world. What does RTE lead on? Israel. Derangement syndrome deepens further.

Gordon Lucy's Monday essays for the News Letter, about people from Ulster who helped shape the world in recent centuries, were outstanding: interesting and well written. I always enjoyed talking to him too, so I'll miss the man, not just his work. My condolences to his family

In @WSJFreeEx today, I explain why anti-Israeli hatred is more intense in Ireland than in probably any other Europe country. @Alan__Shatter @RachelMoiselle @abrahamson_ed wsj.com/opinion/free-express…

Andy Burnham has announced at the UN a new ‘National Centre for Information Defence’ to wage war against ‘untrue narratives’. He claims that “everything we hold dear” is under attack from so-called “misinformation”. This might be the most censorious thing a modern British Government has done. We already have NSOIT, the Government Communication Service, the Media Monitoring Unit, RICU, the Defending Democracy Taskforce, the Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit, the FCDO’s Information Threats and Influence Directorate, 77th Brigade, NCSC/GCHQ, the National Cyber Force and the Social Cohesion Taskforce. Is that not enough? How do we know this new body won’t be weaponised to silence dissent and chill free speech? Will it reprimand the Government itself? FSU Director of Policy and Research @DavidRoseUK's new briefing argues that the Government has itself been spreading misinformation about misinformation — exaggerating the scale of the threat it poses. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, flounced off X, citing the spread of misinformation as a threat to democracy. If government ministers genuinely care about tackling mis- and disinformation, they should stay, debate and challenge falsehoods with more information — not less. It is vital that the UK defends our democracy against hostile actors such as Russia. But safeguards are essential to prevent bodies established for that purpose from expanding their remit to domestic dissent and policing the social media posts of British citizens who criticise government policy. We should remember that more than 62,000 people have reportedly been arrested for “speech offences” in Britain over the past five years — including social media posts. Meanwhile, under its media green paper, Watch This Space, the Labour Government is already proposing measures intended to promote “trustworthy” news sources. The concern is that this could favour established outlets such as the BBC while disadvantaging more critical outlets such as GB News and independent journalism. The Government needs to explain exactly what powers this new Centre will have, who decides what constitutes an “untrue narrative”, and what safeguards will prevent it from becoming a tool for policing lawful dissent. 2026 Britain is turning more into 1984 by the day. We literally now have a Ministry of Truth.

I’m not suprised one bit as the ‘neutrality’ line is trotted out continuously. If you want to be neutral you must be able to defend that neutrality. At present Ireland is just helpless not neutral.

Ludicrous. Clause 6 of the NI conversion Bill introduces into law for the first time "gender identity" but it doesn't bother to define it. A MLA wants know the scope of clause 6 and asks how many gender identities there are so he can scrutinise the bill. He is told he can't.

Second appearance on the main nightly TV news and again it is about the only Jewish majority state in the world. I don’t like to focus on individuals, but the Taoiseach needs to cop on. Our leader needs to focus on Ireland’s national interests, not the obsessions of a small minority about one distant conflict of many in the world.

Again tonight, the Taoiseach’s only reported comment from the UN is about…a tiny country in a distant region that is irrelevant to Irish interests. Meanwhile, war rages on our OWN continent and Ireland is defenceless and leaderless in the face of this.

The row about blame for the naive court release of a murderer who absconded misses the context of this scandal. NI courts have long had a lenient bail and compassionate leave policy. I wrote this report a decade ago, after a man charged with murder fled share.google/A6CuB0ZcmONrQED…

Angela Rayner appointed five individuals with troubling links to Islamist organisations — including the Muslim Council of Britain and MEND — to a Working Group tasked with drafting the Islamophobia definition. The Free Speech Union repeatedly warned that this would have a chilling effect on free speech and be weaponised against those who criticise, debate or mock Islam, its history and its practices. We have been proved right time and again. It has now emerged that Angela Rayner’s Communities Department deleted all responses to the Working Group’s consultation — material fundamental to drafting what has become, in effect, Britain’s Islamic blasphemy law. Why delete all the evidence, contrary to Government data policy? The public deserves answers.

It was a calculated massacre of young partygoers that took time to carry out. The scale of that particular horror began to become clear on October 8, via plenty of videos