Author ArchivesStephen

Anyone who lives in Britain is probably well acquainted with the “Chugger” phenomenon. Since I’m not sure if our transatlantic friends have “chuggers” or not I’d best spell out what they are. “Chugger” is short for “charity mugger”: people who work for charity fundraising companies and hang out in the ...

With Easter upon us we enter one of the most religious periods on the year and, as with Christmas, we are treated to endless debates about the historicity and meaning of the events being celebrated. I’ve given our religious brethren a bit of tough time over the past few weekends ...

There hasn’t been much by way of weird news this week so I thought I’d go Monty Python on you all: “And now for something completely different” I ordinarily hate spam mail and all that other crap that gets forwarded around the planet mostly from people I don’t know terribly ...

Belfast has a brand new shopping centre called Victoria Square and my wife and I went to see it last Sunday. What an amazing piece of architecture, absolutely state of the art and modern. In light of this new development local commentators have been babbling on about how Belfast is ...

If I ever saw an advertisement in which libertarians were portrayed as ugly numb-skulls with small penises (including the women) would I be offended? No, not even a little bit. I respect the rights of all people to express themselves and speak their mind, and I’m not going to get ...

Recently I’m pleased to see that a number of stories I have written about have panned out the way I argued that they should. I found out yesterday that another story went down the only rational path available. I wrote about gambler Graham Calvert taking a bookmaker to court for ...

When he wrote the Ten Commandments on a few chunks of rock held by a young Charlton Heston, God’s omniscience let him down and he neglected to mention a bunch of stuff that was sinful. Thankfully we have the Roman Catholic Church to help us out. As if 10 Commandments ...

The Belfast Telegraph printed another letter of mine today. It was a response to an Irish Language enthusiast pontificating about “Irish language rights.” http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/article3509436.ece In her letter (Write Back, March 5) Janet Muller talks about language rights and, in particular, Irish language rights, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she ...

Writing to newspapers is a little hobby of mine, and I’ve enjoyed a good hearing from one local paper in particular, the Belfast Telegraph. My most recent offering was published today: a reply to journalist Alf McCreary about public funding for the Ulster Orchestra. I can’t find his original article ...

We all have our own “nightmare” scenarios: places we never want to be or things we hope never happen to us. A few of them might be: 1. Being caught masturbating by your mum 2. Dying and then finding out that Muslims were right after all and you’re now going ...

It’s been a good week for freedom of speech. I wrote an article a few weeks ago about the restaurant Goodfellas taking the Irish News to court for defamation because of a bad review they printed. You can read my article on the matter here: http://72.1.240.112/2008/01/25/bad-laws-bad-restaurants-and-bad-coke/ Today the Court of ...

God bless the House of Lords. As much as I struggle with the fact that they aren’t elected, I can’t deny that they make some very good judgments. The most recent came earlier this week when they refused to hear a case brought by the activist group Christian Voice attempting ...

History was one of my better subjects at school, but now it seems my history teacher might have got it all wrong about how we won the Second World War. For a long time we thought it was a combination of an excellent navy and more importantly an excellent Royal ...

Stephen King once said that sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation. I’ve only ever really appreciated the truth of those words since I had my son 17 months ago. I wouldn’t be without him and he can be really great fun, but some of ...

There is so much that is wrong about rights; more specifically the way people speak and think about them. The topic is becoming pretty hot here in Northern Ireland at present with a Bill of Rights creeping ever closer. At its most basic a Bill of Rights will be a ...

From October to February, Stephen’s ‘Virtue’ series provided thinking people with ample thought for their weekends each Friday. Now that he’s moved onto a series on ‘Vices’, here’s a handy collection of the ‘Virtue’ series for your bookmarks. 10/27/2007 – The Virtue of Rational Self-Interest (read) 10/29/2007 – The Virtue ...

The blushing bride was radiant in her 5 metre long sari, decked in flowers. The groom made his way to the temple amidst music, dancing and fireworks. Crowds flocked from all around to see these young love birds finally cement their relationship in marriage, and lavished gifts on each of ...

I get a little nervous around vegetarians. They’re like people with Tourettes syndrome: you never quite know what nonsense they’re going to blurt at any given moment, and you can only hope it doesn’t happen in earshot of other people who might think you’re with them. I’ve had the pleasure ...

It sounds like a joke: A man walks into a betting shop, loses 2 million, and sues the bookmaker for allowing him to do so and breaching its “duty of care” towards him. But it’s happening. Graham Calvert is a greyhound trainer who became “addicted” to gambling and lost over ...

Bonjour. Je m’appelle Stephen. J’habite à Belfast. J’aime jouer au ping-pong. With the exception of the, umm, questionable phrases, “votre mère a de grands boobs,” “J’ai eu le sexe avec votre soeur,” and “votre mère suce des pénis” the above pretty much exhausts my grasp of French (a fact proven ...