December, 2018

Breaking news, as we sidle towards 2019, feeling apprehensive: Fianna Fail and the SDLP are “poised to announce a phased process leading to their integration”! Bet that caught you on the hop, if you’ve been living in an underground cave for the last ten years. And note the delicate phrasing: “poised” – haven’t done it […]

                                        ‘Christmas’, as Whitey Bolger was wont to divulge in one of his many soundbiteys, while stuffing envelopes full of cash for crooked feds and local police, ‘is for cops and kids’. Whatever about kids, and […]

One thing I liked about Charlie Haughey: he was cool. When you saw him appear on TV, you knew he wasn’t going to be wrong-footed, or crushed, or a figure of fun. In contrast Garrett Fitzgerald, at the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, looked like an over-grown schoolboy anxious to please headmistress Thatcher. Charlie Haughey, […]

Pics 1-3 are by Perkin Warbeck   Pic 1        Pic 2   Pic 3                                                Perkin Warbeck:                         The Basset A […]

“Too long suffering can make a stone of the heart”. That’s what W B Yeats believed. But too long dominating others can make an ass of the dominant one. Or in the case of the DUP, asses. Take Arlene Foster. She is, I would judge, a clever woman. You don’t jump ship from one party […]

  Usually at this time of year, news is thin on the ground. Stories of how Santa fulfilled the wishes of a poor child, stories of pets that were loved or neglected over Christmas, recipes for what to do with what’s left of the turkey. This year is different. This is us all, not so […]

    When Ireland was prostrate from the Great Hunger and millions in Britain were  suffering misery imposed by those who had caused It, Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times, excoriating the doctrines of Malthus and the Benthamite  Utilitarian ideologues who, under the guise of philanthropy, imposed unpleasantness and misery on the  unpropertied and unenfranchised masses. Hard Times indeed, […]

Alex Kane is one of those rare creatures, a unionist journalist who is at ease with nationalists and republicans. He is a man it is difficult to quarrel with or even differ from, since he often begins his panel contributions with “Yes, I agree with what X has just said, s/he is absolutely right” , […]

I first saw the light of day in the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin on Sunday,  December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in the Year of Our Divine Lord 1941. Bliss was it that time and that place to be alive. Outside things were grim. The Germans, who had attacked the Soviet Union […]

So what did you ask Santa for? Maybe a reunited Ireland, in which case you’ll be feeling disappointed – certainly if your note ended “And I want today, Santy!” It’s a day later and we still don’t have a reunited country. But if you framed your request in a more patient form – “Dear Santy, can you give […]