The Link Family and Community Centre

I've been privileged to be involved with The Link Family and Community Centre in my home town of Newtownards over the past ten years.

They do fantastic, groundbreaking community development work and need as much help as possible!! Their website is www.thelinkcentre.org. I went on a training residential with some of the volunteer team to Lucan, Dublin earlier this year and was asked to write a bit about it for their newsletter.

Pulling up at the Clarion Hotel in Lucan with the rest of the group on Friday night I realised it was ten years since my last visit to this ever-expanding Dublin suburb. Back in 1997 I’d been getting to know a group of friends through The Link’s Friday and Saturday night drop-ins for a few months and the prospect of a weekend away with them all was too good to turn down. As a sixteen year-old veteran of church youth club weekends I thought I knew what to expect. Instead it was the first of many experiences with The Link when you feel a bit uncomfortable with something while realising you’re benefiting from it at the same time.

I tried to keep this feeling in mind at a reception for Link volunteers and staff in the Aras An Uachtarain, the residence of Mary McAleese the Irish President on the Sunday afternoon. Like the memorable weekend spent in a draughty monastery overlooking the Govan area of Glasgow, this residential was another Link experience that would undoubtedly be for my benefit in the long run. People as diverse as Link volunteers, Loyalist representatives, and Protestant clergy have all been welcomed through the Irish President’s gates – if only we were as welcoming to people in our own (much smaller) backyards. In Belfast over 40 “peace” lines still exist across the city, racially motivated attacks are rarely out of the local news, and up at Stormont the Good Relations strategy “A Shared Future” sits gathering dust.

In the meantime, organisations such as The Link continue to take risks and deal with social issues that remain unresolved. At Lucan youth centre in 1997 we looked at our perceptions of the Roman Catholic community and we were back at Lucan Presbyterian Church ten years later still asking the same questions, this time with an added multi-cultural dimension. Ten years ago we took the bus into central Dublin and for the first time I encountered young children begging for food and money along O’Connell Street. Fast forward to June 2007 and the forlorn roadside caravans of Dublin’s travelling community dotted along the motorway on our journey to Kilmainham Gaol was a stark reminder that the increased prosperity promised by the Celtic Tiger has widened rather than narrowed the gulf between rich and poor in the South. Over same period of time The Link has developed it’s services to continue to meet the needs of the marginalized in Newtownards, and trips such as this serve the dual purpose of being a reminder of the work to be done yet also an encouragement that we are struggling in the right direction!

Ten years on my involvement with The Link has progressed from young person to volunteer, from volunteer to staff member, and back to volunteer again. Yet each residential still manages to be challenging, stimulating and fun. I look forward to comparing notes at the Clarion Hotel in 2017!

Arsenal are pure evil

I endured an unpleasant couple of hours at White Hart lane in North London Saturday as Spurs bottled it against our rivals Arsenal yet again - going down 3-1 despite having been in front.

It's hard to put into words how much I don't like that lot. But I'm starting to come around to the fact that they're not a bad team. What is so galling is that they're playing the sort of football Tottenham have traditionally been renowed for. It's frustrating that a team who built a tradition around dour route-one football now regularly dish us out a lesson on how to play the game.

Quite frankly the two teams were a class apart. I was in the second row behind the goal posts at the park lane end and so was privileged (?) to see the three Arsenal goals all too closely.

I usually go to White Hart Lane once a season and to be honest I've enjoyed less and less the last few visits. I know that I'm purely viewed by the club as a customer - but the greed in this league is unbelievable. Transfer fees may be too high but what about the wages? Club directors and investors hang around clubs like vultures ready to cash in and make money on disgustingly over-inflated ticket prices and replica shirts. Yet we as fans fuel it by giving them our money.

Arsenal's Emirates Stadium is the best example of this - a debt-laden soulless corporate cavern of an arena. Supporters are crammed into another atmosphere-less library with huge chunks of the ground allocated to corporate customers that lie empty for much of the game due to hospitality being quaffed in the swanky lounges. Don't get me wrong the Spurs board or any other board would love this as well.

Back to the football - which the premier league's power that be seem to have forgotten about - Spurs' season can only get better. Martin Jol I fear is soon to be shown the door though.

The Protestant Revolution

I managed to catch the second episode of this four part series tonight - and although it was on BBC 4 I was still able to understand it OK!

It was refreshing to hear the development of family life that Protestantism served as a catalyst for - the programme interestingly traced how it's emphasis on individual conscience served both liberal and conservative ends of the Protestant spectrum. I was glad that all these bases were covered for a change.

I'm no theologian but after watching it I felt glad to be part of this tradition. There has been too much cheap TV recently focussing on the wackier, extreme, unreasonable elements of the denomination so this was a welcome change.

NI music - where are all the girls?

Bit of a random one this..

I was lucky to be invited to the launch of the Oh Yeah project - a recording facility in the cathedral quarter of Belfast aimed at supporting young up and coming musicians to get their foot on the ladder of the music business.

Talented local musicians and Snow Patrol were there to give support and it looks like a great idea. Local journalist Stuart Bailie arranged a display of his own Northern Irish music memorabilia as well which was very impressive.

One thing struck me - where are all the female artists? Not one to be found among the memorabilia - nor in any of the acts performing at the launch.

The only female artist from here that I can think of with any recognition is Juliet Turner.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe Northern Ireland lost against Iceland tonight!

The consensus in the Longfellow was that we would go on and win after Healy's equalising penalty. Sadly it was not to be, and I had to watch the second half of those English prima donnas strutting past Russia with a particularly long face.

What made things even more galling was that we completely bossed the game in terms of possession and chances. Performances in the past have been a matter of shutting up shop and playing for a point - we really went for it here and I'm encouraged by that. The team played with passion and a lot of skill!!

I fear Worthington will get a lot of undeserved stick for this. Our away record under Sanchez was pretty poor too!! And Sanchez was tactically naive in the home defeat against Iceland. A poor start and poor finish were our undoing tonight. How much of that can you attribute to the manager. I will concede that taking off Davis was a strange decision though.

We'll pretty much drift off the agenda of the national press now too but stuff 'em - we're better as underdogs. I wouldn't be surprised if we still came pretty close to qualification come November.

Now what about the Scots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great result against France.

The big man breaks it off

It was announced on Friday night that Dr Paisley will step down as moderator of the Free Presbyterian church at the end of the year. Ever since he led the DUP into government with Sinn Fein trouble has been brewing in the fundamentalist heartlands.

And in those early days leading up to May 07 Paisley tried to paint himself as some sort of martyr, bullied into government with Republicans by the British government, and sacrificing himself for the good of the people of Ulster. But this clearly hasn't washed with his church and the writing was soon on the wall.

I for one am glad that the Free Presbyterian church no longer has a moral foothold in the running of our country and in that respect this secularisation of the DUP is no bad thing. Some of the comments from their leadership which surface in the press from time to time are a few beard trimmings short of the brand of fundamentalism peddled by the likes of the Taliban.

But on the other hand I can understand the frustration of the Free Ps at Paisley's abandonment of their stance of no government with terrorists. There was no evidence of Paisley gradually softening his views over a sustained period of time like Trimble and the Ulster Unionists, or even the journey undergone by loyalism's more eloquent spokesmen. This seemed like too much of a smash and grab lunge for power as soon as the opportunity arose.

Commentators have spoken of a changing of the political wind, as if something magical, mystical even, has taken place - as if there was no other way that Paisley could have led his party in this direction.

In my opinion it's simply the return to NI of "normal" politics which we as a country have longed for. Sadly along with the bread and butter issues comes the politics of opportunism, personal gain, and lust for power.

No wonder this half of the chuckle brothers has had such a smile on his face. He's grabbed the opportunity of a lifetime.

Joel Osteen (aka. Pastor F Gump)

Have you seen the state of this guy? Unbelievable.

I wasted 30 minutes of my life watching his church broadcast on God TV and it took my breath away.

Random quotes from the Bible, endless anecdotes of how God has moved traffic for him to get to important meetings, how friends have mysteriously got jobs they weren't qualified to do, neighbours were able to get higher than expected offers on their houses, people getting moved to the front of the checkout queue supermarkets - all because they had "God's favour resting on them." Ridiculous!!

Never have I seen such a sermon that cross-referenced Jesus with economic prosperity as much as I have in this programme.

Oh, not to forget the delivery - think Forrest Gump only with even more inane platitudes.