Belfast Daily and their 'senior security source'

I am grateful to those who contacted me with the answer to the question, who runs the Belfast Daily website?

I have been informed that it is run by the company Donegal Daily Ltd, which also operates the Donegal Daily website.  The company is based at Tullygay, outside Letterkenny, and is run by Stephen William Maguire and Brenda O'Neill.   According to a directors website 'Stephen William Maguire is Irish and was born in 1970.'  The company was established in January 2011 and this was his first directorship.  Brenda O'Neill was born in 1967 and joined the company at the end of December 2011.

That leaves us with a second question.  Who was the 'senior security source' who provided them with the erroneous story and did they attempt to check out the information he gave them before publishing it?  Even the BBC has been reminded in recent days abotu the importance of checking cources.

I am also grateful to those who have suggested who the 'source' may have been and indeed it is quite possible that it is someone with a grievance against the PSNI.

Finally. now that their story has been refuted and is clearly untrue, what do the owners of the Donegal Daily and the Belfast Daily intend to do?  Will they publish a retraction and will they avoid in future someone who was clearly an unreliable source?

So who runs Belfast Daily?

Yesterday a news website, Belfast Daily, carried a headline report that 'The PSNI has drafted in 200 Garda oficers to bolster riot squad numbers in Northern Ireland.'  The report went on to claim that 'the deployment of Irish police specially trained in public order duties followed telephone discussions between PSNIChief Constable Matt Baggott and Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan in recent weeks.'  According to the article the information came from a 'senior security source'.

The report described the Garda officers as 'highly trained' and claimed they had been hired in because the PSNI was stretched to the limit.

 

The internet news report was then picked up and circulated widely through social media, drawing a wide range of comments.  All sorts of accusations and blame followed and fingers were pointed at various politicians as having approved the involvement of Garda officers.

 

Then later in the day the PSNI denied it and while the story is still on the Belfast Daily website it has not been reported by any of our mainstream media. 

 

Clearly it is untrue but in an already volatile situation it was utterly irresponsible for the Belfast Daily website to publish such a headline story, which is untrue.  And that raises a number of questions about the Belfast Daily.

 

They operate from an e-mail address and that is how they can be contacted but there is no office address and no name of an editor or reporter.  So who runs the Belfast Daily website?

 

Some of the reports they carry are factual and that makes their website appear credible but there can be little credibility with a website that publishes articles that are clearly untrue.  So did the Belfast Daily attempt to check out or corroborate their 'senior security source' by asking the PSNI before publishing?

 

Perhaps the person or persons behind Belfast Daily will provide some answers ... or maybe not.

Robert Burns exhibition

For those with an interest in Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, there will be a Burns and Burnsiana Exhbition in the Linen Hall Library from 7 January to 1 February. 

 

The Linen Hall Library's Burns Collection is the largest in the world outside of his homeland of Scotland.  It was collected by Andrew Gibson, a Scot who settled in Belfast, and it was purchased for the library by public subscription in 1901 for £1,000, which was then a considerable sum of money.  Additional items were then presented to the library by Burns' great-granddaughter, Mrs Eliza Everitt.  This should be well worth seeing.

 

There will also be a talk about The Ayrshire Ploughman in the library on Friday 25 January at 1.00 by John Erskine.  He will trace the first decade of Belfast's reaction to the works of Burns and how he became part of the cultural fabric of Ulster.  The talk is free and if you are free on the day I would certainly recommend it.

 

A guid new yeir

A Guid New Year Tae Ane an Aw’

This old song is sung by Scots at Hogmanay after the bells which ring in the New Year. I can recall it being sung many years ago by Andy Stewart on the BBC Hogmanay programme.

A guid New Year tae ane an' aw’,
An' mony may ye see!
An' durin’ aw’ the years tae come,
O happy may ye be!
An' may ye ne'er hae cause tae mourn,
Tae sigh or shed a tear!
Tae ane an' aw’, baith great an' sma’,
A hearty, Guid New Year!

Chorus:
A guid New Year to ane an' aw'
An' mony may ye see,
An' durin' aw' the years tae come,
O happy may ye be.

O time flies past, it winna wait,
My friend for you or me,
It works its wonders day by day,
And onward still doth flee.
O wha can tell when ilka ane,
I see sae happy here,
Will meet again and merry be
Anither guid New Year.

Chorus:

We twa ha'e baith been happy lang.
We ran about the braes.
In yon wee cot beneath the tree,
We spent oor early days.
We ran aboot the burnie's side,
The spot will aye be dear,
An' those that used to meet us there,
We'll think on mony a year.

Chorus:

Noo let us hope oor years may be
As guid as they ha'e been,
And trust we ne'er again may see,
The sorrows we ha'e seen.
And let us wish that ane an' a'
Our friends baith far an' near,
May aye enjoy in times tae come
A hearty guid New Year!

Chorus:

A hymn for Ulster

Songs of Praise concluded tonight with a medley of four hymns reflecting the four nations within the United Kingdom. 

 

W Y Fullerton

They started with the Welsh hymn Guide me O Thou great Jehovah which was written in Welsh by William Williams and published in 1745.  It was then translated into English by Peter Williams in 1771.  The tune Cwm Rhondda was composed by John Hughes in 1907.

 

The medley continued with the hymn Spirit of God, unseen as the wind, which is sung to the Scottish tune 'The Skye Boat Song'.  The words were written by Margaret Old.

 

The third hymn was I cannot tell why He whom angels worship, which is sung to the tune known as the Londonderry Air.  The words were written by the Belfast-born pastor, preacher, author and hymn-writer William Y Fullerton. 

 

The medley finished with Jerusalem, with words written about 1808 by William Blake.  The tune we use today was composed in 1916 by Sir Hugh Parry.  The poem was inspired by the tradition that during his youth and before he began His public ministry, Jesus visited England with Joseph of Arimathea and came to Glastonbury.

 

William Young Fullerton was born in Belfast on 8 March 1857.  He was brought up in a Presbyterian church and converted as a young man.  However he was influenced by the Baptist preacher Charles H Spurgeon, who became his friend and mentor, and he joined the Baptists.  He compiled several hymnbooks and wrote several hymns including his best-known, 'I cannot tell'.  Fullerton died on 17 August 1932.

 

I cannot tell why He, whom angels worship,
Should set His love upon the sons of men,
Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wand’rers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.
But this I know, that He was born of Mary,
When Bethl’hem’s manger was His only home,
And that He lived at Nazareth and labored,
And so the Savior, Savior of the world, is come.

I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the Cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the broken-hearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is here.

I cannot tell how He will win the nations,
How He will claim His earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of east and west, of sinner and of sage.
But this I know, all flesh shall see His glory,
And He shall reap the harvest He has sown,
And some glad day His sun shall shine in splendor
When He the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is known.

I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship,
When, at His bidding, every storm is stilled,
Or who can say how great the jubilation
When all the hearts of men with love are filled.
But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
And myriad, myriad human voices sing,
And earth to heaven, and heaven to earth, will answer:
At last the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is King.

 

 

A Night to Remember

One of the highlights of the past year was the opening of the new Titanic centre in Belfast.  It has proved extremely popular with tourists and local people as well and has been an important addition to our tourism product.

Belfast was the home of the Titanic and a century ago it was a truly titanic city, an industrial powerhouse, with the biggest shipyard in the world, the largest linen factory

A Night to Remember is the title of a book and a film about the Titanic.  The book was written in 1955 by Walter Lord and the film followed in 1958, starring Kenneth More.

The producer of the film was William MacQuitty (1905-2004), who was born in Belfast, the son of the managing-director of the Belfast Telegraph.  On 31 May 1911 he was just six years old when he went down with his father to the Harland & Wolff shipyard and watched the launch of the Titanic.  Many years later, in his autobiography, he recalled the launch of the great ship and wrote, 'I felt a great lump in my throat and an enormous pride in being an Ulsterman.'

MacQuitty had a remarkable life and in 1959 he helped to found Ulster Television, becoming its first managing director.   In 1991 he published his autobiography under the title A Life to Remember.

The sinking of the Titanic was indeed A Night to Remember but there was another night that was much more deserving of the title A Night to Remember. 

 

Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem there was a wonderful night when the Saviour of the world was born.  Angels announced His birth to a group of shepherds, who were out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their sheep, and they came to the stable to see the new-born child.

 

Christ by highest heaven adored;

Christ the everlasting Lord;

Late in time, behold Him come,

Offspring of a virgin's womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail the incarnate Deity

Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel.

The Lord Jesus Christ left the glory of heaven and was born on earth so that we might be born again.  He came into this world so that He might die at Calvary as our sinless Saviour, taking our sins upon Himself.

That night when the Son of God was born on earth was truly a night to remember! 

A 17th century Presbyterian session

Templepatrick Old Presbyterian Church - congregation founded in 1627, present building 1784

The other day I was in Antrim for an appointment and as I was early I went into Antrim Library to pass the time. 

 

Browsing through the local history section I came across a copy of the booklet for the Templepatrick Masonic Bazaar, which was held from 24 to 26 June 1897.  It contained something of the history of Templepatrick and my attention was taken by this extract from the minutes of the session of Templepatrick meeting-house from the middle of the 17th century:

The qlk day John Cowan, being summoned, compeered and confessed his breach of Sabbath in beating his wife on ye Lord's Day, and yerefor ye Session ordains him ye next Lord's Day to stand leigh (forgans ye pulpit, and being called by ye minister to confesse in ye face of ye congregation his offence.

The extract is interesting on two fronts, first in the use of some Scots words such as compeer (put in an appearance), leigh (low) and forgans (over against).

The second is the way in which a Presbyterian session viewed 'beating his wife'.  John Cowan's offence was not that he beat her but that he beat her on the Sabbath and thereby breached the Sabbath!