A personal message from News Letter editor Ben Lowry

	I N S I D E R

Jul 1, 2023

Ben Lowry

Editor

The weather was forecast to get bad a week ago after an almost perfect early June.Yet while there has been rain it has also been pleasant.

Today is the anniversary of the Somme. I first went to the site of that tragic battle on its centenary in 1916. I am reading a book about 1914 and it helps to reassure me that global problems today are minor compared to that year.

Here is a story about the many Somme commemoration parades this weekend

It was another anniversary yesterday, one that I remember well because the killings happened in Belfast city centre the day after I left school

There has been a lot of interest in this story about an academic who said she was "delighted" to have heard the explosion that killed Lord Mountbatten

The student fees political/legal drama in America has reminded me why I support the (much milder) system of student fees in the UK. I was one of the first generation to take out a loan here

The police might be rethinking their policy of allowing uniformed officers to march in gay pride Here is our editorial on why the desire for such participation is understandable but it should be denied even so.

On our opinion pages, the writer and former soldier Ken Wharton wrote about the rewriting of history

We also ran two essays on the Windsor Framework, Owen Polley on how NI has been left behind and the DUP's Lord Dodds on a possible solution

Here is Kyle White on the sad death of the biker Damon Rees

Ben Lowry

Editor

Ben Lowry: Remembering two killings in the centre of Belfast on the last day of June 1990