STEPHEN RAINEY suggests shrugging-off problems and getting on with living

70 per cent of the North’s economy is state subsidised – it’s time to stop playing with the toy economy, says STEPHEN RAINEY

The North is about to pay a very high price for its isolation from both the British and Irish polities

Mock outrage over Ivor Callely’s expense claims is a distraction from real politics, says JASON WALSH

Greece will suffer due to the EU intervention, it’s French and German banks that are getting bailed-out, says JASON WALSH

In the wake of the British general election OWEN POLLEY challenges the unionist parties to come to terms with what unionism actually stands for

With public spending ‘out of control’ the government wants to avoid being seen as ’the next Greece’ by imposing round after round of tax hikes, public sector pay restraint and swingeing cuts to public service provision—but has it worked, asks JASON WALSH

PATRICK WEST says Irish football fans shouldn’t be cheering on England come the World Cup—and it has nothing to do with Anglo-Irish relations

Get Irish off life support and into real life, says JASON WALSH

CONNAL PARR looks at the spectre of dissident republicanism

‘Sinn Fein the Workers’ party’, Ireland’s ‘official’ republicans twisted in the wind, says JAMES HEARTFIELD reviewing the Lost Revolution

Irish public anger at bank bailouts boils over but there is still an absence of political meaning, says JASON WALSH

Dr STEPHEN RAINEY was not impressed by the lastest Northern Irish leaders’ debate

Tomorrow sees Britain and the North go to the polls but whoever wins there will be winter of austerity, says JASON WALSH

Ireland’s bourgeoisie already had its (failed) revolution and today’s grumbling mistakes the ‘middle class’ for a meaningful political category, says JASON WALSH

Calls to start a left alliance amount to political necrophilia, says JASON WALSH

Calls for Libya to stump-up to the relatives of people killed by the IRA are senseless, CONNAL PARR

As Belgium falls apart (while staying together) GERRY FEEHILY says nous sommes tous des Flamands maintenant

Are attacks on the ‘One True Church’ assaults on truth itself, asks JASON WALSH

David Cameron’s slash-and-burn policies could see the Unionist/Tory marriage collapse before it’s consummated, says STEPHEN RAINEY but there’s another problem lurking in the long grass

The era of the ‘paywall’ is upon us but publishers need to provide something worth paying for, says ADAM MAGUIRE

A Tory government could, ironically, be good for the Irish language, says OWEN POLLEY

The Penny’s moral panic is a sideshow – the real story is the infantalisation of adult women, says DAN JEWESBURY

COLETTE BROWNE is not impressed with the ‘fighting Irish’

DOMHNALL Ó COBHTHAIGH explains how Anglo, AIB and Bank of Ireland forced him to leave Sinn Féin and how Anglo in particular typifies the follies of Irish economics

Suggestions on what to do with the parasitic new Anglo Irish (Bank) class from forth contributors GERARD CASEY, STEPHEN KINSELLA and JASON WALSH

The shotgun marriage between the Tories and Ulster Unionists won’t see the dawning of a bright blue future, JASON WALSH

Quinn’s diversification and attempt at vertical integration was its ultimate insurance against tough times – it’s a pity the authorities in the border counties didn’t think similarly, says JASON WALSH

Complaints about news being distorted by commercial interests are frequent but the tendentious vainglory of news editors is less well understood. By involving themselves in news, journalists do a disservice to the public, says STEPHEN RAINEY

Even anarchists accept authority so long as it can be freely challenged. Irish politics is careering toward nihilism, not freedom, says JASON WALSH

‘What do we want? Not much. When do we want it? Er…’

Nationalisation is not public ownership, says JASON WALSH

A disastrous ‘bad bank’ and worse policy, the National Assets Management Agency has one thing going for it: at least people are talking

The spectres of Brendan Hughes and Jean McConville are stalking Gerry Adams, but there is more to this story than meets the eye and the IRA isn’t the only party that comes out of it covered in dirt, says JASON WALSH

Links between a orangeman and the BNP aren’t scandalous or surprising – nor are they illegal, says JASON WALSH

The decision to open pubs on Good Friday is the right one but it’s being done for the wrong reasons, says JASON WALSH

Sylvia Hermon is standing as a ‘liberal’ but she’s one of the most authoritarian MPs in Westminster and looking at a DUP pact, says OWEN POLLEY

As an avalanche of fresh allegations of cover-ups of child abuse emerge one senior Irish clergyman says he was not party to oaths of secrecy, despite media reports to the contrary – but there is strong evidence of a culture of silence as more cases emerge, forth editor JASON WALSH reports

Conservative opposition to universal healthcare, in Ireland as in the United States, misses the real problem: the redefinition of medicine as ‘wellness promotion’

Taking anything the pope says seriously means agreeing that canon law is meaningful, says JASON WALSH

Meaningless apologies help no-one in the case of the Irish clerical abuse scandal, says JASON WALSH

From Google, through the banks, to the arts, everyone is arguing for their own private communist society to protect them from the ravages of the market, says JASON WALSH

Republican writer LIAM O’RUAIRC says the jig is up for Sinn Féin but argues that republicanism is, like modernity itself, unfinished business

Transcript of forth editor JASON WALSH‘s contribution to the Global Uncertainties debate ‘What makes a terrorist?’ held at Queens School in Bushey, Hertforshire on March 17, 2010 as part of a UK Research Councils/Debating Matters event.

Forget St Patrick’s Day, it’s St Tina’s Day in Ireland, says JASON WALSH

The ‘promise’ of jobs at Dublin airport is an empty one

Enlightenment Reason provided the chance of emancipation then, and it still does today. The problem is we’re still doing it wrong, says STEPHEN RAINEY

With the Lisbon treaty out of the headlines and in the statute books Europe is less coherent than ever, says JASON WALSH

Why is modern Ireland home to some of the most conservative politics in Europe, asks JASON WALSH

STEPHEN MCGLENNON wonders how ‘liberal’ became a term of abuse and argues there’s still life in the old dog yet

The Catholic Church’s fund for compensation is empty, says COLETTE BROWNE

Google is not the newsmonster – nor is it omniscient, says JASON WALSH

Why is the Green Party following in the truculent footsteps of the pre-agreement DUP?

Never mind grade inflation, expecting education to solve the country’s economic problems is a joke, says JASON WALSH

Social vampire and art critic Waldemar Januszak can now fondly remember the conflict in Ireland – but only because it’s over, says JAMES HEARTFIELD

Nationialism was the politics of empowerment in the nineteenth century – but it’s now 2010, says ANDREW GALLAGHER

OWEN POLLEY says we’re gearing-up to blame the SDLP and UUP for failure but they are the very people who can fix the assembly by challenging its authoritarian, centralising nature

As Ian Paisley prepares to step down from his role as MP forth traces his transformation from sectarian demagogue to living saint

They may offend liberal opinion but tabloid newspapers are the first line of defence for a free press, says JASON WALSH

Precious pieties never solved anything, says JASON WALSH

It’s the same as the old one, says STEPHEN MCGLENNON

A report from the Magazines Ireland annual debate

Responses to the recent London conference on Irish unity suggest a united Ireland is a mere managerial process. Nothing could be further from the truth

ANNA MORVERN says the alleged Mossad assassination should not be allowed to force biometric identity documents on us

Complaining about ‘civil war politics’ isn’t enough – it’s time to reinvigorate our moribund political system, says JASON WALSH

Three responses to the Belfast Salon debate held as part of Exchange Mechanism at the Belfast Exposed gallery

forth reader MICHAEL GILLESPIE gives his view on the proposed bill of rights for the North

Defence minister Willie O’Dea is an alleged perjurer and fights dirty – but the forces circling him aren’t democratic, this is the backstabbing of court politics

As the Greek economy continues to tank many are wondering if joining the Euro was the right idea. JASON WALSH says it doesn’t matter which currency you have, what matters is how much of it you have in your pocket

A report from last night’s Belfast Salon debate: A house divided

Forget the fading messianic effect, Obama’s energising of politics still matters and we could still do with some of that enthusiasm here at home

George Lee’s resignation from politics is more than just a ‘hissy fit’, it’s poisonous to politics

An interview published today lays the blame for the IRA split of 1969 at the feet of one man: Seamus Costello. If true, what does this mean for our understanding of recent Irish history, asks JASON WALSH

In the second of a series of articles before the Belfast Salon debate, JASON WALSH argues the only way forward for the North is to think about Ireland nationally

In the first of a series of articles before the Belfast Salon debate OWEN POLLEY argues for a modern Britishness against ‘Ulster’ identity

No, not the Ulster Unionists, it was the public

IRA veteran, former Sinn Féin president, Official IRA leader and leading Irish communist dead

The endless and farcical devolution talks at Stormont should remind us of the need to replace the exhausted institutions, both north and south, writes forth editor JASON WALSH in Spiked

Anything Sinn Féin and the DUP can agree on isn’t worth the paper it’s written on

The anti-clerical ‘Count Me Out’ inflates the importance of Ireland’s rotting Catholic Church, says JASON WALSH

Why is Ireland’s Socialist Party arguing – quietly – for union with Britain, asks SÉAMUS Ó SIONNAGH

The new lowered speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour is not about traffic management or road safety, it’s an assault on mobility – and the statistics prove it, says JASON WALSH

Three forth contributors give their thoughts on the future of Ireland’s Green Party after the next election

Young, educated Protestants are leaving the North – but the problem is economic, not cultural, says JASON WALSH

The crime story that ‘gripped Ireland’ tells us a lot about ourselves, but not quite what the press is claiming

The DUP and Sinn Féin failed Friday to agree on bringing policing and justice under local control. If a stalemate continues, it could result in the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly, reports forth editor JASON WALSH in the CS Monitor

The Republic of Ireland has a lower population than major cities – the only reason anyone cares about Ireland is because of the conflict

Today’s proliferation of rights is having the effect of making us less free

JASON WALSH wouldn’t vote for a unionist party if his life depended on it but says the Orangemen have one thing right – the Parades Commission is undemocratic

The state’s Irish policies have failed. Any genuine revival of the language will come from elsewhere, says JASON WALSH

Socially and economically liberal political group to launch before election hopes to avoid making the PDs’ errors all over again

OWEN POLLEY argues against the North’s proposed undemocratic Bill of Rights

forth editor JASON WALSH reporting on the ‘Irish-speaking elite’ in the CS Monitor

The shine has come off the Conservatives’ alliance with unionists as sectarian politics reasserts itself in Northern Ireland, says forth editor JASON WALSH, writing in the Guardian

Political discourse? It’s an oxymoron, says STEPHEN RAINEY

Martin Cullen is being torn to pieces (not literally) in the press for using a metaphor. Both his critics and Cullen should grow up, says JASON WALSH

Just because we don’t like them doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand dissident republicans – and what they tell us about Sinn Féin

Moral dilemma: what will replace the church as our compass? forth editor JASON WALSH and LENNY ANTONELLI in conversation with scientists and philosophers in the Irish Times

The goal of proportional representation isn’t to enhance democracy, it’s to frustrate it, says JASON WALSH

PAULINE HADAWAY asks if the cost of the Northern Assembly is distracting from creating a real and vibrant democracy?