The growing number of people who are against mask-wearing and social distancing and other precautions are growing, both abroad and at home. In Berlin, some 38,000 people demonstrated, and several hundred tried to storm the Reichstag. At home Gemma O’Doherty has led demonstrations against the government’s health campaign. It’s back to school time and we’re faced with the possibility that young people will bring the virus from school into their homes, and that we’ll face an alarming rise in numbers of people infected. Is that something we simply have to accept, or is there any alternative? Pat and I pick through the bones of both topics. Come in and pull up a chair…
August, 2020
Golf-gate: did Leo and Micheál know about it in advance?
Eighty-one is a lot of people. So is 82 and 80, but 81 is the number we are told attended the fateful dinner at Clifden in Connemara, and led to the resignation as Minister for Agriculture of Dara Calleary and the resignation of Senator Jerry Buttimer as deputy chairperson of the Seanad. Most headlined, however, […]
On not returning to St Columb’s
This time of year is one that makes me shiver. It’s not due to a chill in the air, but to a memory. Because back when I was a teenager, the end of August meant the end of the summer holidays, and that meant going back to boarding school. My mother and father would drive […]
ONE IRELAND PETITION: VIDEO NOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA by Fr Sean McManus
The perfect response to England’s partition of Ireland, enacted December 23, 1920 CAPITOL HILL— Saturday, August 29, 2020—The popular and fast-growing Irish Internet Petition is now a video on social media. The One Ireland petition — “Ireland, too, has the right to be One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”— has already been signed by over 15,000 people all across […]
The implications of Golfgate
This blog first appeared as a column in the Andersonstown News What’s now referred to as Golfgate must feel like a dagger in the heart of Micheál Martin. Granted, Micheál’s heart these days has standing room only for daggers, what with Barry Cowen’s drink-driving thing and senior figures in his party saying publicly he doesn’t know his asarum from his elbow. And the cherry on […]
IRELAND AND INDIA: DE VALERA’S NEW YORK SPEECH 1920, VISIT TO INDIA 1948 AND NEHRU’S IRISH VISIT IN 1950 by Donal Kennedy
On Fri, 28 Aug 2020, 16:54 , Manus O’Riordan wrote: Dev on the War of Independence and Solidarity with India, 1920 In 1948 Éamon de Valera visited India, meeting with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Nehru returned the compliment with a visit to Ireland in 1956. In the special July/August 2010 issue of ‘History Ireland’, on […]
Former Irish ambassador Ray Bassett talks about his new book and the EU
Ray Bassett was a successful scientist for ten years before joining the Department of Foreign Affairs. He was Irish ambassador to a number of countries, including Jamaica and Canada. Since retirement from the Department he has distinguished himself as a solitary Irish voice which thinks that the south of Ireland has made a massive mistake in not being more supportive of the UK, now that it has decided to leave the EU. He also believes that the Republic of Ireland would be much better off if it left the EU and traded on similar terms to Norway. I don’t agree with everything he says, but his book, just released ‘Ireland and the EU Post-Brexit’ should be read by anyone engaging in serious debate about the EU and/or Brexit. He is also a lively and witty interviewee. Watch and enjoy…
PAT + JUDE TALK ABOUT PHIL HOGAN, DONALD TRUMP AND MARTINA ANDERSON
So you know the quality of the people you’re viewing, Pat McArt dragged himself from his sick bed, where he was suffering from man flu, all so he could give you, the hungry public, his thinking on three topics: Was Phil Hogan unfairly made to walk the plank? After all, if he was an effective […]
A moving story from GMU
As a rule I don’t listen to Good Morning Ulster on the British Broadcasting Corporation, partly because its title flies in the face of geographical fact but more because I find it unremittingly dull. But I pressed the wrong button this morning and they were busy giving Martina Anderson a kicking. You probably thought unionism […]
Is Belarus about to fall? by Fra Hughes
Belarus has been occupied and governed by many of the European empires to include the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, Napoleon, the Russian Empire and Germany. It finally became part of the Soviet Union in 1946. Its infrastructure was devastated in the Second World War and through the various military occupations over the centuries, its people have […]