Poor Joan Burton. She must be wondering what sin did she commit in a previous life, that all these banana skins have been placed in her path. No sooner has she fished herself out of the soggy depths of the flood water than the party she leads finds itself in hot-water for an attack-ad it’s produced […]
January, 2016
‘1916: a toxic thread of physical violence?’ by Donal Kennedy
“Nineteen-sixteen introduced a terribly-toxic thread of physical violence, and we’ve had a century of it ever since.” Thus Ruth Dudley Edwards is quoted in THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Review of 2nd January. Ms Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin in 1944 and has lived there much of her life. Dublin has suffered little violence since […]
Not much nutrition at Dublin Castle
Well, it’s started. I glimpsed it first in a news clip, which showed politicians, performers and audience at Dublin Castle, playing and peering through the rain. Then I got a more detailed account in yesterday’s Irish Independent. This was the coalition government’s start of its commemoration events for 2016. They can’t say the Indo didn’t […]
‘Poppies, Crime and Criminality’ by Jessica McGrann
Conflict brings out the worst in people and is a terrible time for all involved. Post conflict, it is usually the victors’ point of view that is accepted, their actions forgiven and they who do the most to vilify their old opponents, often hiding the truth of their own actions during the conflict along […]
Words as weapons, flags as food
There’s a temptation for us to dismiss some controversial matters as ‘no big deal.’ For example, columnist Tom Kelly dismisses the acceptance of an MBE by former internee Pat McCarthy of the SDLP. You might be tempted to do a Mandy-Rice Davies and say “He would, wouldn’t he?”, since Tom himself has an OBE add-on to […]
‘Rewriting Ireland’s History’ by Jessica McGrann
As we are about to enter the centenary year of the Rising, the event which gave birth to the Irish Free State, the changes in attitudes since the half century anniversary based on the attitudes of the media are stark. Britain is now the flavour of the day, helping out with the economic bailout […]
MODERN TIMES
Has the world gone mad? Am I missing something ? Maybe it’s just my age. Let me explain. Daughter Number Two and Son-In -Law bought me some fine new headphones for Christmas. They’d obviously gotten fed up watching me plugged into my computer replete with a set of cute little pink earphones that I’d inherited […]
The perils of canoeing
Did you cheer? I’m afraid I did. What’s more , I resented the way RTÉ had fiddled with the editing of the event. One minute we had a shot of Joan Burton in her very own canoe going up the flooded area; then someone walked across the screen; and immediately after Joan is beginning to […]