December, 2013

I’m very keen for people to contribute pieces, short or long, prose or poetry, to this section of my blog. Go and check it out – there’s a new piece by a guest writer.

  Fintan O’Toole is a very smart and a very moral man. He must be smart: he’s written over twenty books. And he must be moral, because he’s been awarded the AT Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism as well as the Justice Award of the Incorporated Law Society. He is, in short, […]

  If you ever wanted to take the temperature of the opinion formers south of the border, you could have done worse than read Ian O’Doherty in The Irish Independent  a couple of days ago. Having dismissed Ming Campbell as a “spoofing little ham”, even though he agrees with him on the subject of legalising […]

    The expression “on mature recollection” has been a bit tainted since it was used by Brian Lenihan Sr used it about a phone call he said he hadn’t made and then remembered he had. So I hope I won’t find myself in the same sort of bother as the unfortunate Brian Sr  when […]

  Maybe it’s the nature of the media or maybe it’s the nature of those who project themselves through the media, but I am constantly amazed at the ability of people to sketch a partial picture. Or even a purblind one. Take the Nelson Mandela story. On Prime Time last week, it was clear that […]

  And so it continues.  On RTÉ’s ‘Prime Time’  last Thursday, Martina Devlin (Irish Independent)  and Charlie Flanagan (Fine Gael)  expressed horror that any parallels might be drawn between Nelson Mandela and Gerry Adams. The fact that Nelson Mandela was central to the founding of the ANC, that he was kept in prison as long […]

    When I did my interview with Enda Kenny for the book Whose Past Is It Anyway? (compulsory Christmas reading), he urged me at the end of the interview to get in touch with his minister Jimmy Deenihan, who is in charge of all matters relating to ‘the decade of centenaries’. As it happened […]

  I was just trying to point out to Miriam O’Callaghan that the one-eyed view  in the south of things northern might have been connected to the fact that southern mainstream media consistently paint a picture of the northern conflict as bloody murder by a group of psychopaths (i.e., the IRA), when news broke on […]

  Remember Weston Park? That’s where talks were held in 2001 which came to agreement on a number of matters including IRA decommissioning and the Pat Finucane case.  Yes indeed, Virginia – all important matters. The first of these, IRA decommissioning, against the expectation of many including some leading republicans, was achieved. The IRA’s arsenal […]

  Explosive. That seemed to be the favourite word of the newsbreakers as they outlined the content of the Smickwick Report  last night.  Mr Justice Peter Smithwick concluded after some seven years that there was a garda mole or moles in Dundalk Garda Station, which the two RUC men visited, and that the IRA were […]