December, 2018

  December 15, 2018 Letters Editor NEW YORK TIMES 620 8th Ave New York, New York 10018   Dear Editor: This is in response to “Three Choices on Brexit, None Good” (12/14). A negotiated deal based on the agreement of the Irish Sea as the customs border for the EU was easily the most logical, […]

  On this, the shortest day of the year, perhaps we should devote a precious minute or two to feeling the pain of the DUP? Could it be that they are misunderstood by the general British public and by their fellow-Irish men and women? Stephen Collins certainly thinks so. He stands shoulder to shoulder with […]

    Why did the British Prime Minister Theresa May endorse the 2016 BREXIT referendum result —claiming BREXIT means BREXIT—without any idea of the consequences or a plan to achieve the break away from the EU. One explanation is the Prime Minister embraced the Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh mythology of colleague Boris Johnson […]

Well, it looks more and more likely every day. The Brits have begun stock-piling supplies, advising business, checking out about airline flights. People in 1939 must have had a similar feeling, when the talk first began of food rationing and they started handing out gas masks. Today the hook on which everyone has got hung […]

  “The Irish Bulletin is a detailed account, issued daily between1919 and 1921, of the means by which the British Government attempted to rule Ireland during the three years after it had comprehensively lost the General Election in Ireland………… It was  published by the elected Irish Government of 1919-21 to inform British public opinion about how the unelected […]

    Most people in Ireland, were born into the Catholic Church, and were regarded as Catholic whether they practiced (going to Church) or not. ‘Catholic’ became a handy label –especially in the North of Ireland. If, on being admitted to hospital, you were asked what religion you were, you would say ‘Catholic’. Of course you did […]

    It’s not looking good. This may be the season of gifts and forgiveness and people wishing “Happy Christmas” to strangers, but it’s still not looking good. Because this may be the last Christmas of non-chaos, as March 29 2019 approaches. Some say Theresa May is bluffing about no deal. That’s been her mantra […]

  I’ve been a bibliophile for seventy years from a family including master bookbinders, teachers, preachers with catholic (lower case) tastes. In that regard  might I mention my late Uncle Dermot, who, when Catholic curate in Bantry, used read James Bond in the Confessional when awaiting other sinners. For many years I was a Librarian in London. I […]

    Whose side are you on? Last Tuesday in Strokestown, Co Roscommon, two brothers and a sister, in their fifties and sixties, were forcibly removed from the house where they lived, presumably for not paying the mortgage or rent. When one of the crowd assembled to watch the eviction shouted that the men involved […]

                                                                                   Norman Wisdom, late of this parish, yes that NW who was to the Fun […]