It’s amazing what you don’t find out by reading the papers. The case of the brain-dead pregnant Irishwoman is at present a striking example. I’ve read reports which give information about the age of the baby in the woman’s womb, about the woman’s age, about what hospital she’s in, about what Health Minister Leo Varadkar […]
December, 2014
SOME PEOPLE DESPERATELY IN NEED OF A HOBBY by Harry McAvinchey
Has the world rocked on its axis ? Have people gone mad, entirely? Jimmy Osmond has been tested for alcohol, randomly on a road side in Wales.Don’t they know who “The Long -Haired Lover from Liverpool” is? Probably not .He was a wee saccharin sprog when he had his Big Hit Record back in the […]
Let women kill too – you know they’re worth it
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” an exasperated Rex Harrison used to ask in My Fair Lady. If he was around today he’d find that she was being offered more opportunities to be just that. The latest comes today, with the declaration that the opportunity for women to appear ‘in the conflict […]
HAVE A CIGAR, CUBA by Harry McAvinchey
The longer you live , the more you realise that everything is connected and anything is possible ….If you wait long enough…. Anyone growing up as a child in the 1950s was on the cusp of experiencing some of the most traumatic and dramatic social experiences of any generation. In Norneverland you would have entered […]
Viva Cuba!
It’s hard to know how Cubans could have had a better Christmas present. On second thoughts, it’s easy actually: the US could have declared an end to its small-minded, bullying economic blockade of Cuba which has been going on for well over fifty years. But it’ll come. President Obama has declared moves to normalise diplomatic […]
FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD by Harry McAvinchey
It is a pleasant enough day today. It’s quite mild for December . In fact it’s perfect sort of weather to get a few outside jobs sorted out. I couldn’t do much at the bottom of the garden throughout the Summer and Autumn because the honeybees stayed very active late into the year .Here […]
George Monbiot and what we close our eyes to
George Monbiot is one smart man. He is also very well informed on a range of matters, many of them drawing together economic and ethical threads. Yesterday in The Guardian he was on about meat. “ What can you say about a society whose food production must be hidden from public view? In which the […]
Leo warns the Seanad and the water-protest people are praying
Well if it looks like it might work with the people, why not use it with the politicians. (If, of course, you regard members of the Seanad as politicians and not undemocratic nominations by privileged groups in southern society). Apparently some Senators – and get this – who were nominated by the Taoiseach are now […]
EQUALITY AND TROJAN HORSES ? by Harry McAvinchey
A few weeks ago Gerry Adams the Sinn Fein leader, tripped over a phrase in conversation alluding to a “Trogan Horse” in relation to “sneaking in” an equality agenda to Norneverland .He knew what he meant to say but in conversational terms, his reference was a little awkward, if not wholly far-fetched.It certainly gave a […]
Lewis and Rory: how awfully important
I was talking to a man today who had an explanation for Rory McIlroy not being nominated Sportsperson of the Year – pipped to the post by Lewis Hamilton, I gather. This man said it was because Rory had declared for Ireland in some golf thingy or other. I heard Rory on the radio this […]