February, 2016

Did you see last night’s LEADERS’ DEBATE on TV3? I missed the first half-hour but what I saw was very interesting. Equally or even more interesting was the follow-up discussion fronted by Ivan Yates, late of Fine Gael and the man who, according to AIB, owes them €3.7 million. The debate itself was what you might […]

  Consider a Scenario where an accredited diplomatist, needing advice on how to handle his mission, conducts a seance and summons up the shade of a statesman who once occupied his own residence. Most film-makers wouldn’t entertain it for a moment. But writers of genius might once have handled it. Evelyn Waugh, for instance, whose […]

    Easter Sunday, 23rd April 1916, was to be the most important day of her life and the beginning of a new era. Only weeks earlier, she had converted to Catholicism for this moment. This was the occasion Grace Gifford was due to marry her long term boyfriend, Joseph Mary Plunkett, a member of […]

What can you say .It’s a quiet sort of day and the item that has risen to the frothy surface on local radio is whether or not Jim Wells, the DUP politician, has put his foot back into his mouth again , or …possibly not. He was some past form in this respect so it […]

Gerry Adams has suggested that MPs elected in the north should be given a place in the Dail,with speaking rights but not voting rights. He says around the time of the GFA Bertie Aherne was agreeing to that but then backed off, claiming he wouldn’t get support from other parties. Is it a good idea? […]

Curious and curiouser. The relatives of the victims want to re-open the Birmingham Bomb inquest on the basis that much new evidence has come to life.I was writing recently about the fact that there always seems to be a parallel story running beneath the “official” story that we are constantly being fed . One narrative […]

Last night BBC ran a Spotlight programme which featured First Minister Arlene Foster talking about the day the IRA tried to kill her father. Here are five points that I believe bear consideration in relation to that programme.   The programme almost certainly elicited sympathy for the First Minister’s trauma as an eight-year-old, when her […]

“Couple Found Dead Beneath Fallen Chestnut Tree”. “That’ll be the headline, you know”, I said to the good wife ,as we walked along by the river with the wind fairly roaring and tearing at my ears and the fallen leaves swirling about us , a whirling cyclone of shredded, golden confetti.It’s bound to happen , […]

In 1887 A J Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland introduced a Coercion Bill (for Ireland) in the British House of Commons. These were not uncommon  Bills (for Ireland) but so removed from the spirit of Magna Carta that if passed,the Acts lapsed after a year if not renewed by Parliament. But Balfour’s “Permanent Crimes Bill” […]

Gerry Adams is being targeted with heavy political fire for saying that he doesn’t like the term “gangland”, with its suggestion that there is a land where gangs run the show. I’m beginning to think he could be wrong. On Friday we had the AK-47 assault in Dublin’s Regency Hotel that killed one man, yesterday […]