Kerraway » Politics

Ulster will fight — and fight

Michael Kerr — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:40:14 +0000

A week ago, asked by an editor to provide some background details about myself, I said that I had grown up in Northern Ireland and still loved it, because its geography had always been prettier than its politics. I had been thinking lately that even the politics weren’t as ugly as they used to be — and then the marching season arrived. This morning on the Today programme on Radio 4, a weary John Humphrys, trying to explain the latest night of rioting, was reduced to saying to one of the BBC’s reporters, “Is it because Protestants and Catholics still don’t like each other…?”

I’m reminded of what the comedian James Young, having satirised the bigots on both sides, used to say at the end of his show:

“Will ye for God’s sake stop fightin!”

Sam Cooke on the campaign trail

Michael Kerr — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:03:42 +0000

Music to lift the tone of an election campaign? Laura Barton, in her Hail, Hail, Rock’n'Roll column in The Guardian yesterday, suggested Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ and Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding (with music by Clive Langer and lyrics by Elvis Costello). I’d add Sam Cooke’s contribution to the Civil Rights struggle, which itself was inspired by Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind: A Change Is Gonna Come.

Burma: should tourists go?

Michael Kerr — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:21:47 +0000

When I visit a country for the first time and like it, I expect to be able to encourage other people to visit it. Burma presents a trickier problem. There are those who argue that the country’s military government is so repressive that we should not go there at all. Others, heard perhaps less often, say that, as that government is becoming more inward-looking, the Burmese need visitors and contact with the outside world more than ever. Read my piece on Telegraph Travel and make up your own mind.

The PM, Travolta and Micawber

Michael Kerr — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:22:40 +0000

The neatest phrasemaking of the week came last night on Channel 4 news from Daniel Finkelstein of The Times, commenting on the difficulties facing Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister, he said, is now reduced to the Travolta-Micawber Formula: staying alive in the hope that something will turn up. And Finkelstein had the generosity to acknowledge that the coinage wasn’t his but a friend’s.