This won’t get Boris or Nigel to accept a re-run (why not, when you think about the double-barreled referenda in the south of Ireland) but it might at least provoke indigestion in Michael’s little tummy…So why not sign? https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215
June, 2016
Should Theresa be told?
One of the most significant political conversations I’ve ever had was with a man then a leading figure in the SDLP. I happened to mention something about the need for politicians to do the right and moral thing. With a smile he informed me “Politics is about power – that’s what changes things”. He […]
DEMOCRACY AND ITS ENEMIES by Donal Kennedy
The storming and destruction of Paris Bastille in 1789 created a rift between those who approved and those who disapproved. In Ireland those who approved, such as Theobald Wolfe Tone called themselves Democrats. They believed Democracy was a universal good and that it should be applied in Ireland- a country with a long history.Some English […]
Ireland and that Villiers touch
The Villiers family have previous experience of interfering in Irish affairs – the present British Secretary of State had an ancestor, George Villiers, Earl of Clarendon. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the late 1840s, and he did his bit for Queen and Empire. At a time when Ireland was in the hellish […]
THE LUSITANIA FACTS AND SPECULATIONS by Donal Kennedy
The sinking of the Lusitania off the Old Head Of Kinsale in 1915 was seized on by the British Government to recruit men from other nations in her war on Germany.The liner was no mere commercial enterprise in an era when British governments, slaves to liberal. laissez faire economic doctrines, let businesses sink or swim by […]
Dog catches EU truck: now what?
It feels like January 1933. That’s when Hitler was appointed German Chancellor and the road to his becoming a dictator was officially opened. I know that we can pluck a number of positives from last night’s referendumt rubble, but right now I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach by a horse. Stop and […]
CHIVALRY by Donal Kennedy
There’s a passage in “Refections On The Revolution in France” by Edmund Burke, which you’ll be glad to see, I haven’t got to hand. But it declared that the age of dhivalry was Dead, because Queen Marie Antoinette had been arrested at Versailles and not a gentleman in Europe had drawn his sword from his […]
“YOU’VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT TO HATE AND FEAR.” by Donal Kennedy
So sang US Lieutenant Cable in “South Pacific” when he was falling for a an island girl. He wasn’t wrong, for hate and fear of our neighbours are not in our DNA. Which is why you should beware of monumental liars and their fiendish little friends.. Standing at 203 feet high in London’s Pudding Lane is […]
LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH – BRITISH PROPAGANDISTS AND THEIR COLLABORATORS by Donal Kennedy
I keep returning to the pages of “Goodbye to All That” by Robert Graves which continue to interest, amuse and appal me. I hope that I don’t bore you. He volunteered for the British Army in August 1914 after leaving school. Later he wrote – “I was outraged to read of the German’s cynical […]
HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?
Somebody called it a transcendent night. Robbie Brady said it felt like “an out-of-body experience”. How true, how true. As surely as the shot which killed Archduke Ferdinand reverberated around the world, the goal that Brady scored last night sent Irish fans all over the world into a blender-mix of screaming, hugging, glorious euphoria. . […]