May, 2024

The Irish Times  lets fly with both barrels this morning – its two tame anti-Shinner columnists tell us why we’re all wrong about the cost of a united Ireland, and how Sinn Féin policy is dictated by a shadowy group in Belfast. And yet it appears that Pearse Doherty’s visit to Davy Stockbrokers has reassured […]

    Virtue- Signalling is the expression of statements calculated to reflect credit on their  author rather than on the apparent subject of their approval.   The author may boast a Moral Compass but be unable to recognise one if it pricked him in the arse.     I have before me a volume  COURAGE  Eight Portraits  […]

    This is developing into a pattern. There we are,  walking along hands in pockets, whistling, thinking of next-to-nothing, when KER-POW! – out of nowhere comes a political event that leaves us winded, even stunned. The Irish public has experienced three of these KER-POWs in recent weeks. First there was Leo Varadkar. People are […]

Rishi Sunak has a BA from Oxford and an MBA from Stanford, but don’t let that fool you. He has no understanding of what education is for or he does a damn good job of pretending not to understand.  I’m not referring to his  ‘military service’ for 18-year-olds. That’s more a sign of insanity than […]

I spent hours yesterday clearing  bindweed and brambles, ivy and other nuisances in our garden, whch had originated in what was for centuries part of an ancient convent. Our house was built in 1923 and we have lived in it since 1976 when we were the youngest couple on the road When we moved in […]

President Michael D Higgins has come in for some criticism by the South’s Chief Rabbi, who says they were’lectured’ by him about what was happening in Gaza. So what is the link between ordinary Jewish people living in Ireland or the UK or the US, and Israel? Or is there in fact no link? An […]

  Rishi Sunak has kicked off his election  – in the rain. Was that an example of the elements saying that this man is going to have, um, moisture dropped on him from a great height? And he’s visiting the occupied Six Counties of our nation today. Will the IFA and GAA manage to persuade […]

  Laurence McKeown is a well-known writer, playwright  and a former Republican prisoner, who spent 70 days on Hunger-strike in 1981.  Laurence McKeown is a thinker and what he has to say is worth listening to and thinking about. He has thought and written about the history of the conflict and related issues especially the […]

    In September 1960 the United Nations’ General Assembly President, Ireland’s Frederick Boland, broke his gavel trying to impose order following an angry tirade by the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushev who had brandished a shoe while banging his (Khruschev’s) desk.   The Soviet leader’s behaviour was considered “Infra Dig” at the time but it was that […]

Manchester City won the Premier League yesterday. Has success become something possible only for vastly wealthy clubs? Do you long for the days of cloth-caps and 3.00 pm every Saturday? The British secretary of state, Chris Heaton-Harris, is not going to stand for re-election. Will you miss him? How much? And has the anti-immigrant far-right […]