April, 2019

The Catholic Church, is, I firmly believe, the world’s greatest collection of sinners.  I usually feel at home there. But when I behold Jacob Rees Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and their ilk, behaving like Lord Snooty and his Friends, I have qualms. I’m told that the Dundee publishers of the comic which featured Snooty had two rules […]

So Theresa May has done the unthinkable – the “bloody awkward woman” has had to concede that she must  turn to the leader of the Opposition party. And yes, that’s the same leader about whom she said in the British parliament ’People used to say Jeremy Corbyn was a conviction politician. Not any more’. But […]

“Stas (Radziwill) was a man of great charm, though not perhaps, of financial probity. According to Auberon Herbert, Stas had walked off with the entire capital of the Polish Red Cross, leaving an ancient Polish general to take the blame. Stas made money with the money,  then as prison doors began to swing open, he restored […]

A letter in today’s Irish Times raises once again the matter of Sinn Féin’s abstention from Westminster.  The writer shows a lack of awareness, whether deliberately or through ignorance, of Irish history. He states that Sinn Féin has declined to attend Westminster but has accepted payment for its MPs. The uninformed reader coming to that […]

I was a 7 year old revolutionary when I learned my first few French phrases: ca va? je m’appelle; j’habite; je suis. Instantly hooked by the fantooshness, there commenced a lifelong fascination of the foreign and exotic. In P5 at Crieff Primary School I’d a wee notebook of French vocabulary and I recognised then the […]

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA You’d even wonder, all the same, Stevie,  just precisely  why the DUP en masse (both high and low) don’t just decamp pronto, as fast even as Tonto might say ‘Kemo Sabay’, and Ryanair  it  from Greater  London to the Lesser London on Liffeyside a la the Lone Rangers supporters club, aka, the […]

Over the past fifty-plus years I’ve read many books and articles by Tim Pat Coogan. I like his style, although Tim Pat sometimes prefers a smart anecdote or Smart-Alec sneer to serious analysis. His book on Dev was a few years old before I read it. By chance I opened the chapter headed “The War […]

A parable or cautionary tale. If your house is under siege from vandals, it may not be the best time to remind your spouse that s/he should clear out some of the junk that has  accumulated over the years.  And if you must mention this uncomfortable fact, you’d be better saying “The house is stuffed […]