Talk

Up town at lunchtime for a worthy lecture from an esteemed institution. Not that I’d ever heard of it. For, this was the first ever, yes ever ever, lecture held by the Royal Celtic Society which was open to members of the public. Us. The unwashed.
And very interesting it was too - though Prof Dunbar was very softly spoken, and spoke very quickly, reading in exactitude from his pages and pages of typewritten notes. But, amazingly, I think we both kept focussed throughout. Despite not knowing a word of Gaelic between us.
Later, at the old Dreadnought over a teatime pint, I read a bit more about one of the Prof’s sidelines which he’d raised as he's an expert on entrenching language rights in legislation. This has become one of the sticking points in the current impasse in Northern Ireland. As the Guardian put it - The darker truth here is that Sinn Féin has chosen to weaponise the language question for political ends, less to protect a minority than to antagonise unionists. Unionists have duly been antagonised. The Gaelic language is the main tongue of a mere 0.2% of the Northern Ireland population. … But Sinn Féin does not do things accidentally. Its proposals have become a weapon of tribalism in communities where identity politics always looms large and divisively.
For balance, the Guardian then sticks it to May for doing deals with the DUP and abandoning the role of impartial guarantor of the peace deal. At that point, a second pint was called for. And on to the sports pages….