turned 30 and his cousin Ciara baked him a cake

working with Migrant Workers

Christmas Eve 2010, and I get up at 6am to fly about 500 miles to a city called Danang in the middle of Vietnam. I was back in Hanoi by 3pm, and managed little more than a walk around a factory clinic, lunch and a swim in the sea at China Beach.

I was there to oversee a project providing sexual health services to migrant workers, and a documentary about the project was also made on that day.

I appear about 3 mins in, and am standing pretending to understand what I am being told by a number of clients visiting the clinic.

It's all in Vietnamese, but well shot and gives an idea about what I am doing here.

Enjoy if you have 13 mins to space.

on catholics, the police and everything

“Police Officers in Northern Ireland should be recruited on the basis of being the best person for the job. Nowhere else in the democratic world would have tolerated such discrimination for so long.”

If it wasn't so topical, it would be as easy to attribute the quote below to a modern Unionist as to a1960's civil rights protester. It is well known that there is no agreement on why the Patten Report which recommended increasing the number of Catholics in the PSNI was ever needed in the first place. However, if Tom Elliot's statement above does little to understand the rationale for reform, the Sinn Féin rebuke below does little to acknowledge that significant reform has been achieved.

"Here we have another patrician announcement by another absentee British Government minister"

The requirements set by the PSNI have meant that many students from integrated schools have joined the ranks. Surely this could be further encouraged as one means of creating that cohesive, shared and integrated society that we of course all crave.

of giants and hillsides

A lot will be made of the Sinn Féin performance in the general election. Nationalists are likely to herald it as stepping stone on the way to a United Ireland and Unionists may well perceive it similarly. The result is likely to create further political discord however it need not be viewed so negatively.


Political discourse in the Republic of Ireland has done little to understand Unionism over the years. While developing the necessary machinations of a fully functioning sovereign state, all-Ireland nationalism receded into rhetoric and little constructive work was done to consider how stated aspirations and actuality might meet.


Enter Sinn Fein as a now significant all-Ireland party that have the seldom applauded ability to work with the Protestant and Unionist Community in Ireland. This day to day experience cannot but generate an improved understanding of what is realistic and desirable for the Island of Ireland and an appreciation of the fallout of pushing too hard in any one direction.


How far this understanding will go remains to be seen, but it cannot but help political reconciliation if Unionists and Nationalists are able to discuss these issues with people they know rather than the barbarians at the gate.