Fifteen years ago Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and other statesmen mediated the un-mediatable and created the Northern Ireland that we know today. Some see the bargain as a grand failure. The creation of a parochial sectarian state suspended in a form of purgatory with a bloody history and no future.

While it would be wrong to suggest that the Irish are big fans of Thatcher, the majority want to see her off with respect. And a great many Irish have done so. Including the current Taoiseach Enda Kenny and current President Michael D Higgins.

Ever since the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998, parties on both side of the divide have, albeit slowly, attempted to move things forward. And forward things have moved, as I explained at the start. However, a critical demographic have been left behind: the working class and the radicals within.

Sinn Fein now want a border poll. Instead of focusing on growing the economy, creating jobs, establishing economic stability and rebuilding Ireland's credibility abroad - which everyone wants - they're now focusing on re-opening the old debate and picking an old wound - which very few want.

Should people in Northern Ireland start to see themselves less as strictly British or Irish and more pragmatically as Northern Irish?

The flag riots are just plain bad for Northern Ireland. Bad for business, bad for foreign investment, bad for community relations, bad for the image of Northern Ireland abroad and bad for the collective future of its people. But I genuinely feel bad for the loyalist rioters.

So little has been achieved and so much of the old has continued since 1998 - a year when Northern Ireland was supposed to have entered a new dawn - that we cant even share our greatest living son.

Martin McGuinness has resigned as Mid-Ulster MP. He said this was in line with Sinn Fein's commitment to end double jobbing and planned to concentr...

The ugly scenes of rioting that have returned to Belfast's streets 14 years after the signing of the peace agreement are a sorry sight. But they tell a story of poor political leadership and of a demographic section of society left behind.

This weekend Northern Ireland's unionists are celebrating the life of Sir Edward Carson and the centenary of the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant.

Look back only 15 to 20 years and you would see a British Isles stalked by social unrest and political uncertainty. Northern Ireland was at the heart of the disquiet.

Northern Ireland is in making the headlines again. So you know what that means: bad news.

In a cabinet reshuffle billed as the answer to Britain's economic ills, Prime Minister David Cameron went with the economic status quo: holding tight to the fiscally prudent and the ever-derided George Osborne.

Stormont legacy builders, 3 months into a 4 month summer recess, are risking the demographic health of Northern Ireland through patent policy inaction.

For the young person in Northern Ireland current prospects are dire and as I look to the future, speaking directly as a young and disgruntled jobless person, I am filled with foreboding.

One of the most painful chapters in the Queen's life - the IRA murder of her cousin Lord Mountbatten - was acknowledged in her private talks with Mart...

First the Queen visits the Republic of Ireland, speaks Irish and then she surprises us once again and goes a step farther by going to Northern Ireland and shaking hands with Martin McGuinness.

Two decades on, it's hard to imagine the BBC and others operating a blanket media ban similar to the one twenty years ago. Many would argue that the Thatcher ban backfired, and actually made viewers pay more, not less, attention to McGuinness and others. Perhaps that's why it's never been tried again since.