The Millennium Irritant.

Comment and opinion with a “right-of-centre” perspective from the Eastern Ulster.

Welcome and Introduction-05 January 2007.

Welcome to the relaunched “Millennium Irritant”.   This will mainly be a comment and opinion web-site, in some ways similar to a “blog”, but, from time to time, it will include discussions and reports on weather and climate, lifestyle, religion and many other topics.  I hope to update the site fairly frequently – if at irregular intervals. In addition, I will, from time to time, include recent and more distantly past images of such topics as weather, transport and general interest.

The Millennium Irritant has been in abeyance for a couple of years due to other commitments on my part but now I find I have more time available to give to its publication. Some may wonder why I have chosen that particular name for the site.  Well, I launched the original version of the site round about 2002 CE which was fairly close to the start of the new millennium.   The “Irritant” part of the title comes from my strongly held view that almost any opinion worth expressing will irritate as many as it pleases.  You can irritate some of the people all of the time but it takes no time at all to irritate all of the people.  

About me.

My name is Alan Love – a surname which gets me into endless embarrassing situations – and I am a retired Environmental Chemist in my early sixties.  Since it usually takes the first forty or fifty years of life to develop one’s point of view on many subjects I consider my age to be ideal for imparting my thoughts to those who will listen.  Politically I was a broadly an unreconstructed Thatcherite but resigned from the Conservative Party as it began to lose its way three years ago.  I generally have little sympathy for the Labour Party (new or old) but in recent years have had some admiration for  Tony Blair’s  position on the issues such as the Middle East and Iraq although how he squares these with his government’s attempts to decimate our armed forces is a total mystery.   I hope, through the medium of this web-site to publicise the far reaching changes occurring in the party political set up of the United Kingdom.  A strong democratic right-of-centre party has been badly missed in today’s politics. However, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which I joined in December 2006, is now filling that role

As an Ulsterman I will be expressing firm opinions about issues such as the constitutional future of Ulster.  Incidentally, I prefer the term “Ulster” to “Northern Ireland”.  The boundary between Ulster and Ireland was substantially altered 85 years ago and I get exasperated by those who continually want to refer to Ulster as including areas now under full Irish administration.  The same people have no problems with the names “Poland” and “Germany”, both of which have wandered widely around the map of Europe in the last 100 years or so.

Although I take a lively interest in religious history, I look at most issues from a basically atheist point of view.  I intend to comment on ethical, moral and philosophical issues from time to time.

As a scientist with an environmental background I have little patience with the tree-hugging variety of “environmentalism” or with fanatical “global warming” fundamentalists.  Look forward to lots of opinion on these subjects. Incidentally, it was the fact that, of all the main political parties, UKIP had the most rational and balanced environmental policy that helped me finalise my decision to join.   I also am an enthusiastic supporter of the Scientific Alliance which brings together both scientists  and non-scientists committed to rational  discussion and debate on the challenges facing the environment today.

I hope you enjoy my web-site.  I intend to build it up over the next few months.