Belfast Blogs.com

The old man's still fighting.I got back today after 36 hours of Qantas-sponsored travelling hell to hear that the oul lad's had another heart attack. It's not his first or near it. It's not even his first this month.But he's always been a hard man to put down, and he's still in the game.He might just beat this one. Again.But now I'm getting worried about how long until the next? And how many more can he beat? The heart's not like the face. When it bruises it stays bruised, and when it's damaged it stays damaged, and that goes for both physically and metaphorically.I'll know more when I see him, and that'll be later today.I don't know who's most fearful of the insecurity to come. It's probably him. But it could also be a few other candidates too. Including me.I'd feel a little more able if...

Irish fathers be warned.According to a court ruling yesterday, the one third of you who are not married to the mothers of your children have fewer rights than a lesbian in a relationship with your child's mother.In a preposterous ruling that has massive implications for 30% of Irish fathers, Mr 'Justice' John Hedigan ruled yesterday that a family of two women and a child was no less of a family than an unmarried man and woman with a child.And then he ruled against permitting the father of a child guardianship of his own flesh and blood, because of the poisonous relationship between the father and the two lesbians.Let's just tease this one out, because the implications are rather profound.In Ireland, if you are not married, and you father a child, you have no de facto rights. You are...

Voters in four constituencies in Ireland will get the chance to vote for parents' rights in the forthcoming election after the Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party became the state's newest official political party this week.Candidates include former MEP candidate Liam O'Gogain, a veteran campaigner for shared parenting and founder of campaigning organisation Parental Equality, and Alan Beirne, one of Parental Equality's leading members who came to public prominence when he featured in RTE's groundbreaking documentary series on divorce some years back.Unlike our current Taoiseach, who had wealthy pals to buy him a house and bankroll his marital separation, many divorced and separated fathers in Ireland suffer real financial hardship when their relationships break down.And unlike our...

Further evidence that courts all over the world believe Mommy knows best, even when she doesn't came with the news today that the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan, has ruled that Misbah Rana must leave her loving, affluent family and return to a bleak housing estate on the Scottish isle of Stornoway to live with her mother.When I first wrote about this case, I noted how the child had sought her sister's help in fleeing her mother's care, and fervently desired to live with her father in Pakistan. This fact was confirmed again in court, when the child burst into uncontrollable weeping when the verdict that she would be forced to return to Scotland was announced.It seems that the great social experiment of our era - the eradication of fathers from their children's lives - is continuing apace,...