THE news cycle is relentless. 24/7. Non-stop and generally miserable. It’s like a machine gun.
Last week, the news was all about the catastrophic failures surrounding Casement Park and the Labour Government deciding against funding the rebuild required for the Euro 2028 finals.
You’ve got to admire the resourcefulness of Stormont Communities Minister Gordon Lyons ushering the conversation away from Casement as soon as was humanly possible and shifting it towards Windsor Park, proposing that Uefa could perhaps allow the 18,500-capacity south Belfast stadium to still host a Euro 2028 game or two – even though the DUP man knew it didn’t meet stadium criteria.
All the same, if there are votes in it…
The news cycle keeps mercilessly turning. Onwards it goes.
Education Minister Paul Givan – who was once cool towards Loifa, an Irish language bursary scheme – met the Loyalist Communities Council, an umbrella group linked to Loyalist paramilitaries, who wanted to discuss educational underachievement in working-class Protestant areas.
Oh, and they also told the Minister they don’t want a proposed Irish Language school about the place in east Belfast.
Meanwhile, there’s another bomb hoax attack on East Belfast GAA club.
“How the BBC has responded to peace, I think, is a question it needs to ask itself,” the esteemed Denis Bradley commented on the BBC on September 13.
“While there has been some very good stuff [broadcast material] coming out of the peace process, there is some very bad stuff.
“I had a bit of a public dispute with the Nolan Show on the grounds that the style of it was much too confrontational in a post-conflict society like our own.
“It fed off the continuing disputes amongst us that are clear but are in need of deep and consistent analysis.”
Earlier in the year, GAA President Jarlath Burns provided a GAA history lesson to Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme.
Still, the interrogation of the GAA continues unabated.
SDLP MLA and former Armagh footballer Justin McNulty appeared on the Nolan Show on the eve of Armagh’s tilt at All-Ireland glory at Croke Park – but the feel-good segment descended into a politicised discussion, prompted by the host.
Fire-and-brimstone politics of a bitter past are still with us too - and they get plenty of airtime.
In the fading light, I have this recurring thought as I watch my eight-year-old son soloing the ball and struggling to get length on his hand passes on the bottom pitch of Naomh Éanna that there must be something morally dubious about this sporting practice.
And as I lean against the perimeter fence lamenting my son’s hand passes while lauding his kicking, I think of Gerry Devlin, Gerard Lawlor and Sean Fox, the helpless screams of Kathleen and Colin Lundy and young Gavin Brett.
Maybe my son should stop soloing the ball altogether and stop wearing his black and amber jersey around the place.
On Monday night, RTE screened ‘Murder of a GAA Chairman’ again – the story of one family’s insatiable pursuit of justice.
Rest in peace Sean Brown of Bellaghy.
Some commentators insist that the GAA and the Irish language are twin dangers to the ‘other side’ – that they must be faced down at every turn, that the ‘other side’ (far from being a monolith) must rise up against this ‘cultural subjugation’.
Alex Kane, a confident unionist, doesn’t accept the jagged premise of the debate.
Meanwhile, elements of the mainstream media continue to accommodate and nourish this jaundiced point of view, well, in the interests of ‘balance’, right?
‘They said it – not us.’
Power-sharing limps onwards.
When Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, felt that re-imagining Casement Park and hosting the Euros in Belfast weren’t worth the hassle or investment served as another crude reminder to the people of Northern Ireland that we’re nothing but a drain on the Treasury.
More pain is on the way, says Labour. Whoop, whoop.
They’re a mere extension of the Tories as the British Government’s de-investment policies in the north are ramped up. Tighten those belts, again.
Meanwhile, the Shared Ireland Fund is paying for more student nursing places, and making up for successive DUP Health Ministers cutting them. The Shared Ireland Fund is also committed to making the A5 safer and will help fund other infrastructural projects to the tune of €800m.
You would think political unionism would be bending over backwards to make power-sharing work as all it is doing is driving the less ideological in northern society towards the inevitable conversation of constitutional change.
Unionism’s self-harming continues on a grand scale and because of the prevailing ghetto mentality, not enough people want to think big for Belfast.
We get entangled in the embittered news cycle – it’s hard not to.
On it goes, into the embittered wilderness, us-and-them, and we’ll remark to each other in years to come, ‘Imagine turning down the Euros. Did we really do that?’
Of course it was Starmer who ultimately said no - but sufficient dissent had been drummed up in unionism and the media to make it an easier call for the British Prime Minister to make.
And yet, 100 miles down the road there’s the vast expanse of Abbotstown, Dublin. On its endless green acreage is one massive, celebrated, state-of-the-art hub of sporting excellence – soccer, cricket, swimming, rugby, GAA.
“I think the future of big stadiums in Ireland – the cost of them – is in this paradigm of almost having municipal stadiums,” said GAA President Jarlath Burns last October.
“I would love to see lots of sports being played in Casement. That just makes us better.”
Instead, we all stare into the abyss. No vision. No hope.
The news cycle moves relentlessly.