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 […]
Author Jude Collins
LAPDOG BITES BULLDOG (19) by Perkin Warbeck
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 […]
Subject: LOOKING FOR AUTHENTICITY. Importance: HIGH
Fake news, phoney philosophers, quack doctors of letters, hack historians, are not new phenomena. But it seems to me that never has the human race faced a greater tsunami of shite, poppycock and tommyrot than it does today. Nowhere are these phenomena greater than in today’s Ireland. In some specific issues there are apparently co-ordinated acts of […]
Trevor, Trevor, Trevor: wipe the Gold Coast sleep from your eyes
It’s often difficult getting the brain to start turning its wheels on a Monday morning. Sluggishness rules. But occasionally, the brain can receive the equivalent of what happens the heart, when the physician shouts “Stand clear!” and applies two electric clamps to the patient’s chest. A jolt runs through the system that blows away […]
The pound in your pocket is heading south
What was that old saying about feeling sorry for yourself because you’d no shoes, until you met a man with no feet? I’ve been keenly aware of how the fall in sterling bumped up the price of my air ticket (euros) and the price of my stay in the US (dollars) last summer. Now, courtesy […]
OLD SOLDIERS’ COMPLAINTS by Donal Kennedy
In 1983 when soldiers serving Ireland, first rubbed shoulders with the Royal British Legion to commemorate the Anglo-German Armistice of 1918, complaints appeared in the letters page of the Irish Times from distinguished veterans including General M J Costello who had fought in the ‘Tan War, the Civil War (on the “Treaty” side) established Military […]
DOGS IN THE STREET AND OTHER HISTORICAL SOURCES by Donal Kennedy
If anyone told me that the dogs in the street knew that Gerry Adams was in the IRA I’d concede he’d an advantage on me. I’ve led a sheltered life and never had intercourse with canine quadrupeds, Urban gorillas nor All-Ireland primates of any persuasion. Nor have I ever seen an authenticated record of a […]
Tin soldiers and bone brains
A couple of weeks ago I was down to Dublin. As I made my way up Grafton Street and approached the arched entry to St Stephen’s Green, I was confronted by the sight of about fifty people standing gawking at a giant metal statue. As you probably know by now, this statue has been erected […]
A CAMPAIGN FOR REAL HISTORY by Donal Kennedy
Does the farcical installation of the tin soldier in Dublin’s Stephen’s Green and its removal to Coventry ring any bells for you? “Sending someone to Coventry” was a synonym for ostracisation. In April 1919 Ireland’s first democratic Parliament, Dail Eireann, unanimously decreed that the Royal Irish Constabulary should be ostracised. The proceedings […]
Why school inspectors are bad for education
Most TV interviews these days tend to be of the more-bad-news-about-Brexit type, so it was with some relief I saw the Chief Inspector of the Education and Training Inspectorate, Noelle Buick, appear on screen the other day. Ms Buick was complaining that, owing to teacher ‘industrial action’, the inspectors were being totally blocked from inspecting one […]