November, 2015

Could they be more incredulously asinine , foolishly dimwitted or insultingly schoolboyish? Like Pavlov’s dog unionist ministers simply had to ruin an Armistice Day’ s ceremony by singing “God Save the Queen” at the end of an otherwise apolitical and cross-community, cross-political remembrance of the World Wars’ fallen- dead .To say that they put their […]

Have you noticed a change in Micheál Martin recently? I haven’t. To me he’s still the same smooth-faced Corkman who talks too fast through an oddish little mouth. He’s also, of course, part of the Fianna Fail government that the electorate resoundingly whacked at the last election. Despite this, Fianna Fail are now clocking up healthy […]

Nineteen General Elections have been held in the United KIngdom since 1940. One man has held a Parliamentary seat there since 6 June that year. A full 75 years, a period longer than the combined tyrannies of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Unlike Hitler, he never stood for election or ran for office, but he served in  Governments […]

Two items in the media this morning caught my attention. The first was an article by Diarmuid Ferriter in the Irish Times, where he notes the various polls showing that not just unionists but Catholics/nationalists in the north wouldn’t be interested in a united Ireland, especially if it was going to cost them money. The […]

In 1943, when de Valera’s Ireland languished in the doldrums, most of Europe was booming.  Involved in that boom were 25 year old Squadron Leader Peter Elliot of Britain’s Bomber Command, and 23 year old Lt August Geiger of Germany’s Luftwaffe. While flying his Halifax bomber over Holland on March 2 1943 Squadron Leader Elliot […]

I’ve been busy. If it can go wrong or get complicated , it will…. As I reported last week I had already hit the ground running with an elderly heating -boiler than ended its earthly tenure during the worst drab week of the year.You don’t miss your water until that well runs dry and within […]

PRESS RELEASE: Sister of murder victim Robert McCartney, who was murdered by the IRA in 2005, denounces what she perceives as the appalling abuse of the Oireachtas and has made the following Press Statement: “I have stayed silent up to now about my disgust regarding the nomination of Mairia Cahill to the Seanad because of […]

I remember Seb (now Lord) Coe. His great rival was Steve Ovett, and although Coe beat Ovett to win the 1500 metres at the 1980 Olympics, that was only after Ovett had defied the bookies and beaten Coe for the gold medal in the 800 metres. At the medals presentation for the 800 metres, Ovett […]

I ask the question because, in the unconvincing guise of a book review in the London Edition of THE SUNDAY TIMES (1 Nov) Mr Sandbrook depicts Eamon de Valera as a twisted political dwarf. Mr Sandbrook is 41 years old. Before his 39th birthday Eamon de Valera had been elected President of Sinn Fein and […]

As word comes through of the presence in the north of the south’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan and An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, I’m reminded of another Charlie – Charlie Haughey – in 1987. That’s the year Ireland’s Stephen Roche won the Tour de France, and he was hardly off his bicycle and into […]