PICTURE: The McGuinness family announcing plans for the Chieftain's Walk from Glenowen to Grianan earlier this year. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit warmer, says McArt.
In the book 'Martin McGuinness - The Man I knew'*, which was launched in Derry on Wednesday night, there is a very interesting contribution from Dawn Purvis, a former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.
I don't have the space to quote an entire passage so here's a slightly abridged version of what she said: "I think Martin McGuinness was outstanding, unparalleled in that (political courage)...Martin's great gestures included meeting the Queen at the Lyric and going to Irish President Michael D. Higgins's first state visit to Britain and putting on all that regalia for the formal dinner. Yes there were rumblings of dissent from his own people, but that is what great leadership is about. It was shameful there was no reciprocation."
Let me move on a wee bit. Some years back Gerry Adams was lambasted in the media for saying that equality was the Trojan horse that was going to break unionism. The usual suspects in the media played this comment as if it was a 'Eureka' moment: at last the deep dark evil plan by republicans to destroy unionism had crawled from its devil spawning grounds.
Absolute baloney. If there is a political system anywhere in the world that is so dysfunctional it cannot accommodate equality then it deserves to be broken. Whether it's Gerry Adams or Fred Flintstone pointing this out is a total irrelevance.
Dawn Purvis comes from a loyalist background in East Belfast but she acknowledges the point very clearly that McGuinness had reached out big time to unionism, but that the DUP were 'always pushing for more, more, more'.
Purvis suggests there 'needs to be more than this' from unionism.
Anyone who has read the details of the recent failed 'agreement' in regard to the reforming of the Stormont Assembly will understand exactly the point she's making.
[The book is by Jude Collins and published by Mercier Press. It was launched on Wednesday in Eason's in Foyleside.]
What's in a name?
A BBC Newsline reporter interviewed a hospital consultant about a blood condition in one of the hospitals up the country the other week and his name was ....wait for it ...Dr. Johnny Cash.
Following that they went straight to a story from Armagh where a young couple's wedding was almost cancelled because of the snow but thanks to neighbours and friends who provided a tractor the big day was saved. They interviewed the groom and his name was .... roll the drums .....Dean Martin.
Believe me, I was waiting on the hat-trick , so if the priest conducting the ceremony had been called Fr. Presley I think I would have died happy there and then.
Not the 'second' city
In the editorial column of this paper last week there was condemnation of the BBC for referring to Derry as 'broke city'. Attacking the Beeb for 'telling only a small part of the city's story' the leader writer didn't exactly hold back: "If the Belfast Broadcasting Corporation wanted to put a more accurate title on their programme they should have called it, 'The City We Screwed Over'".
Writing recently in 'Slugger O'Toole' Steve Bradley, a Derry native now working as a Regeneration Consultant in England, didn't pull too many punches either. In a detailed analysis of the Derry economy vis-a-vis the rest of the north Bradley pointed out that a sustained lack of investment here had resulted in a cocktail of high unemployment, high deprivation, low qualifications, low wages, low home ownership, low entrepreneurship, and a high dependency on the public sector - all of which anchors the city at the bottom of the pile in Northern Ireland.
Let me boil this down to simple reality: I have a friend of many years who has been telling me on each and every occasion we meet that the civil servants and the unionist politicians are running rings around nationalist representatives, and that while Derry might be the 'North's second city' it sure as hell doesn't come second when it comes to investment or job creation.
I'm starting to think I believe him!
50,000 backlog
There is a 50,000-strong backlog in processing Irish passports such has been the demand for the little red booklet. The turnaround for getting one used to be around three weeks but now it's double that. Apparently, a hell of a lot of the applications are coming from outside the State, particularly from Britain where travelling to Spain or any other part of Europe on a British passport post Brexit is likely to be somewhat troublesome.
And won't it be odd seeing all those Brits at Malaga or Alicante airports queuing up at the non EU Emigration booths as we Irish stroll on through....
Chieftain's Walk
I was talking to Raymond McCartney MLA recently. He said, 'Go'ne mention in that column of yours that the Chieftain's Walk is on this Sunday. It's in memory of Martin (McGuinness) and all the money raised will go to the cancer centre at Altnagelvin Hospital."
Anyone wishing to register can put Google 'Chieftain's Walk' and the details will come up on your screen. The jaunt itself is from Glenowen to Grianan. And if the weather is good it will be a great wee bit of exercise.
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