Does the farcical installation of the tin soldier in Dublin’s Stephen’s Green and its removal to Coventry ring any bells for you? “Sending someone to Coventry” was a synonym for ostracisation. In April 1919 Ireland’s first democratic Parliament, Dail Eireann, unanimously decreed that the Royal Irish Constabulary should be ostracised. The proceedings […]
November, 2018
Why school inspectors are bad for education
Most TV interviews these days tend to be of the more-bad-news-about-Brexit type, so it was with some relief I saw the Chief Inspector of the Education and Training Inspectorate, Noelle Buick, appear on screen the other day. Ms Buick was complaining that, owing to teacher ‘industrial action’, the inspectors were being totally blocked from inspecting one […]
“SINN FEIN VICTORY IN EAST CLARE” by Donal Kennedy
“The result of the East Clare election was declared at Ennis today as follows: Mr Eamonn de Valera (Sinn Fein) 5,010. Mr P Lynch (Official Nationalist) 2,035. Sinn Fein majority,2,975. The figures were received with jubilation by Mr de Valera’s supporters. Mr Lynch’s followers were thunderstruck by the utterly unexpected size of the […]
Stephen Collins on the need not to be so beastly
Supposing a group of people decided they were going to wreck your conditions of living. They arranged so that you’d get a shrunken salary, that essentials would cost more, that you’d be forced to swap your BMW for a bicycle. How would you feel about that group? Would you be distressed if one of your neighbours, […]
NAMELESS AT LLOYDS, NAMELESS LESSER PERSONS AND THE PLIGHT OF BRITISH SWINE. by Donal Kennedy
I read a touching piece in THE TIMES a few months ago. It was written to record the kindness of the recently deceased Lord Carrington who had obliged its writer with some straw from his estate and not charged for it. Touching, but not as harrowing as the issue exciting THE TIMES […]
Talking of Mrs May
Person 1 : I see Theresa May has taken to visiting different places at a dizzying rate. What’s all that about? Person 2: She’s hoping it will help her in the House of Commons vote on her Brexit agreement with the EU. Person 1: Then why’s she trotting round the UK? Person 2: She is hoping […]
Criticism of Israel is not Antisemitism Criticism of Israel is not Antisemitism
Leo and what other people should do
An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is a busy man these days, what with facing up to the fevered UK and its many wing-nut MPs. But not so busy, he can’t find room for a sideways slap at his political opponents at home. And guess which political opponents/ “If they are not willing to take up their […]
LAPDOG BITES BULLDOG (18) by Perkin Warbeck
The ‘New Normal’ is one of the great […]
Even their friends tell the DUP to wise up
When you have the likes of Eoghan Harris, ever the friend of unionism and enemy of froth-mouthed republicanism, writing an article headed ‘Boris and his Brexiteers are false friends of unionism” and noting that “…it is a moral evil to take a country on an epic march into the unknown without a map”, you know […]