Right, or happy?: Jenny Tipping’s Thought for the week

‘If we put aside the convenience of being right, what could we be connected to?’

by Jenny Tipping 14th August 2026

As a teenager in the early 1990s, I visited my granny in Belfast. The agreement that ended armed conflict there was yet to be written. My granny served us soda bread, and my mum innocently asked if it was from Ed’s Bread, which we had passed earlier in the day. ‘Oh no!’ said Granny, indignant. ‘Ed is from the Falls Road!’ My dad’s family is Protestant. The Falls Road is a Catholic area. She would rather get on a bus and travel across town than buy her bread from a Catholic. This statement, or rather the sectarianism of which it was clear evidence, has guided my life choices for many years.