October, 2021

This blog first appeared as a TV review in the Andersonstown News The South’s housing situation is a very touchy subject these days, with well over 8,000 people homeless. But never say RTÉ flinched away from a challenge. In the series CHEAP IRISH HOUSES (RTÉ ONE) Maggie Molloy travels throughout the South to locate houses that are cheap (and therefore in bad need of repair) for […]

Some of you will have read my Blog “BRIEF ENCOUNTERS” which recalled an encounter with Brendan Behan and the advice he gave me on choice of newspapers which surprised me.  The Blog was accompanied by a photograph of Behan guaranteed to surprise many of his detractors, pietistic or secular zealots, and by some of his […]

OK – putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, especially if that someone else is not quite your best mate, can be hard. Different folks, different feet. But sometimes the hard thing can be the good thing. So let’s put ourselves in a unionist politician’s shoes and look at the dreaded Protocol. Tying up the laces […]

When the appointment of a Catholic Viceroy of Ireland was first mooted during the Anglo/Irish War of 1919/1921  Cardinal Logue’s response was reported around the world – “I WOULD AS SOON HAVE A CATHOLIC HANGMAN” Within about a year the Irish hierarchy accepted as legitimate the Provisional Government appointed by the British-appointed Catholic Viceroy. The […]

Some questions: Do you believe that if someone is suspected of involvement in murder, the case should be investigated and charges brought?  YES/NODo you believe the answer to 1. above should depend on the age of the person suspected? YES/NODo you believe that the people who approached British Army veteran Dennis Hutchings and shook his […]

FINTAN O’TOOLE bleats about a prosecution, years before his birth, of the company which staged  THE ROSE TATTOO in Dublin. There were many publications banned under the Obscene Publications Act (I’m not sure if that was the name of the Act in effect in Ireland, there was one of that name in operation in England, […]

First published by Al Mayadeen English Lebanon How is the US deliberately attempting to provoke civil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon? Iraq When America, Britain, and the coalition of the greedy decided to crush Iraq under a barrage of bombs, cruise missiles, and multiple munitions, in its campaign of Shock and Awe to destroy […]

Facebook, we’re told, is planning to create  10,000 new jobs in Europe over the next five years – and no doubt the south of Ireland will get its share. But they’re also working on a Metaverse – a virtual world which will increasingly be the way in which people interact with each other. Is that […]

                           Sean Ó Riada was a great man for reading, his son tells us on NATIONWIDE (RTÉ ONE). He would go “to the jacks” and sit there for an hour, just him and a book. He did his composing at night when the children were in bed.  He never used the piano or a musical […]

THE MURDER  BY BOMB OF A DUBLIN BUS CONDUCTOR AND A DRIVER IN DUBLIN’S SACKVILLE PLACE DUBLIN IN DECEMBER !972 never seem to have impacted on Fintan O’Toole, whose father was a Dublin bus conductor. The  bomb persuaded Fine Gael to drop opposition to Jack Lynch’s strengthening the Offences Against the State Act an hour or two later…At […]