June, 2020

 “ You can’t” John Hume’s father told him “eat a flag”. He might have added “Or a statue”, and in both cases he’d have been entirely right. Except that flags and statues aren’t made to be eaten, they’re made to represent invisible values and allegiances. They are symbolic of our deeply-held beliefs.  So from that […]

MAY 2020    TITLE OR KEY WORDS                 1    INTERNATIONALISTS – AND OTHERS                3    THE WAGES OF SPIN                4    TALKING OF BULLOCKS & DOING F-ALL                […]

Subject: BLOGS-U-LIKE/LOVE/HATE by DONAL KENNEDY .LIST 2. FEBRUARY 2020 FEB 2020      TITLES    OR  KEY  WORDS 1                 TRUST & TRUSTS 2                 DATES, DISTANCE, POSTS, TELEGRAPHS AND STEAM 4                THE LITTLE […]

I wrote this poem in the same way I write most of my poems and songs. In my experience ideas just turn up like an unexpected visitor.They knock your door. They connect with you and if you have the sense you let them in. It could be a few words or a few lines. The […]

South of the border, squeaky-bum time approaches. The expectation is that the negotiating parties of Fine Gael, Fiánna Fail and the Greens may well come to an agreement on a programme for government by the end of this week. Then it’s over to the members of the party to endorse or not endorse. The Greens […]

THE LIST BELOW IS OF BLOGS OF MINE PUBLISHED IN APRIL 2020. I PREPARED IT TO JOG MY OWN MEMORY AND GIVE READERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO REVISIT IT THEM. MY OPINIONS ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN AS GOSPEL.BUT I DO MY BEST TO GET EVERBODY’S BRAIN WORKING -INCLUDING MY OWN. Donal Kennedy APRIL 2020   […]

Charles Stewart Parnell first caused a stir in the House of Commons when he said that the shooting of Sergeant Brett of the Manchester Police during the rescue of Fenian prisoners was NOT murder. (The rescuers, in smashing the prison van, shot the lock while the Sergeant was looking through the keyhole.)  Three Fenians,  William Allen, […]

He always booked a window seat, even though he knew no passenger in an A or F seat ever survived life. He flicked through the airline magazine and on the first page was surprised by the dark, cowled, remote, faintly smiling Scottish Widows Provident woman, who had haunted his early youth. She had not aged […]

When I was a high school English teacher in Canada, one of the texts I enjoyed teaching was To Kill A Mockingbird  by Harper Lee. As you probably know, the setting is Alabama and the plot revolves around the false accusation of a black man for raping a white woman.  My students used to express […]

       Radio and television are superficial media. I say that as someone who’s been involved in both: when an issue had been discussed on TV or radio over, say fifteen or twenty minutes, I invariably left the studio feeling that we hadn’t even begun to get beyond the surface of the matter. I say that, […]