October, 2018

  “Brexit was a colossal misjudgment…a fantasy sold by its backers…that will damage our national and personal wealth…hamper our future security …and may even, over time, break up our United Kingdom.”  So spoke former Conservative Prime Minister John Major in London recently.  Unfortunately current Prime Minister Theresa May, a BREXIT convert, is prepared to lead  the British people […]

How do you feel about your boss? Or how did you feel about him/her when you were working? I’m going to risk an assumption and say that, if you’d had the chance to replace him/her with someone better, you’d have grabbed it. Me too. Odd, then, that we don’t take the same line in politics. […]

Did you stay up to watch it? No? Probably a wise decision. I did and didn’t get into the scratcher until near midnight. I won’t say watching the presidential debate on RTÉ was a bloody waste of time but it wasn’t an intellectual and/or emotional feast either. It started off promisingly. Within seconds of the […]

  In yesterday’s BLOG – THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION, I mentioned Bob Geldof, the old Bad Boy of Blackrock, who poses as, among other things, A Ragged-Schooled Philanthropist. I also mentioned an ex-Deputy Editor of THE IRISH TIMES, Dennis Kennedy, whose perverse reading of history just won’t wash. Coincidentally, Bob Geldof echoes him. Dennis Kennedy […]

To The New York Times CC: Christopher Fogarty Oct 19 at 2:28 PM The New York Times (10/18/18) Opinion article by Megan Nolan; “I Didn’t Hate the English – Until Now” seriously misinforms readers by perpetuating the Irish “famine” falsehood. Ms. Nolan’s belief that it was a famine is understandable; that is what we were all taught […]

How do Tory MPs regard people from our tormented green corner? The thought struck me as I saw Ian Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and David Trimble being interviewed, as they prepared to head off for Brussels and tell Barnier what a load of old cobblers Theresa May’s plans for UK-EU relations are. Like many another […]

Daniel O’Connell famously prophesied that the railways would be “the making of the Irish Nation.” He was answered by a song complaining that the poor of Ireland with their pennies had financed his (failed) Repeal Movement and were being recompensed by being deprived“of what little divarsion they had, whilst the Liberator was now making children […]

          First, it was Finchley. Second, it was Somerset. –Pardonnez moi, but did you just say ‘Somerset’, Ma’m? -Oh, yes: human bondage, and all that wee harmless stuff. How’s about ye? (Psssss: curved ball question from the straight-as-a-tie tartan type in the audience: Och, alas, whate’er happened to wee Sutherland? Or, […]

How did we get here? I’m not talking about the UK decision to leave the EU: that came about because a very great number of people who thought immigrants were coming to take their jobs and who lived in a dream of making Britain Great Again voted to leave the EU. I’m talking about how […]

Well. That’ll give them something to think about, won’t it? . Nearly 700,000 people demonstrating in London, protests in other cities as well, including Belfast. The politicians will realize that Brexit is deeply unpopular, consult their constituency figures and start to consider calling the whole thing off. Oh, and the moon is made of white […]