December, 2018

Eamon Mallie is not a man I always agree with – I have a pathological aversion to people who mangle or discard their native accents. But Mallie has an article in today’s Irish Times and he makes several very timely and sound points. The article is titled (the Irish Times doesn’t believe in compressed headlines) […]

Ed Koch, when he was mayor of New York, used to call to onlookers: “How’m I doing?” As far as I know, the Chief Constable of the PSNI is not giving to calling the same question, but as head of our new-ish police force…oops, police service, he might do well to have a hard look […]

Pic 1 is by Perkin Warbeck   Pic 1                                             PIGEON  AMONG  THE  CATS                                          […]

  There are days when you see or hear something and you are completely happy with it, no ifs or buts. I had that sensation a day or two back when I read that Barry McElduff was one of the Sinn Féin candidates selected to run in the elections next year for Fermanagh and Omagh […]

Do you think a man who bakes and decorates cakes to order should be required by law to carry the inscriptions “KICK THE POPE,”  “ CROPPIES LIE DOWN” or “Tiocfaidh at La” if they conflict with his principles?  If you anwer “Yes”fashionable commentators will catalogue you as a Liberal. I’d catalogue you as a tyrant. […]

The Feast of St Fergal was last week – November 27 – so perhaps it’s no harm to examine the honour reflected on his memory by Fergal Keane, the most garlanded celebrity bearing his name in these secular times, when hagiography has bee jettisoned and verifiable facts reign supreme. I have in my hands a […]

  Well, here it is – the post-political Gerry Adams.  A book full of real and succulent recipes, n spiced so heavily  with very-Gerry interjections, it’s hard to concentrate on what you’re putting in the pot. Even the title is spiced up. As the final page tells the reader, a range of alternative names for the book […]

  How should nationalists and republicans act, what sort of thing should they say and not say, as the Brexit balls-up heads towards its end point? Clearly they should express their thoughts and/or ideas about the economic implications of acting one way or another. Like everyone else (DUP excluded), they are anxious that an internal punch-up […]

      Dr Liam Farrell, ‘ARE YOU THE F**KING DOCTOR?’ Dalzell Press. Price £15 Chances are, you’ll never have read a book like this. That’s because most of our communication with doctors is tense: is he going to say that the X-ray showed something nasty, or that what you thought was a simple freckle […]

                                                                                                                                         The world has been the oyster of the Dublin Media for two reasons during the past week or two. Which is in itself hardly world-shattering, considering that the Mamma Mia of the Metropolis is none other than a molluscular street hawker whose legendary […]