October, 2022

Ooh ah! Up Dev leading an insurrection that killed 429 people with no mandate. Up Fianna Fáil and their part in the Arms Trial. Up Cathal Brutha leading the good ol nice IRA. Up Edward Carson forming the UVF. Up the Dublin/Monaghan bombs and the failure to hold the British Government to account. Up the […]

  Unionists have now manoeuvred themselves increasingly ridiculous position where their new enemy is the British Government who have become, for them, the next new reason for not engaging in political co-operation with the neighbours on their island. They cry foul in their jingoistic anthems of the Motherland’s vain impotence at a full square-go at […]

  ‘Up’ is a popular word these days. There can be few people who haven’t heard or heard about the Ireland women’s soccer team celebrating their victory with a few lines from the Celtic Symphony, to wit “Ooh, aah, up the ‘Ra!”  This has enraged some and amused others. Up applies also to Micheál Martin, […]

  Neither Fintan O’Toole nor the THE IRISH TIMES are answerable to any authority other than THE IRISH TIMES TRUST. The TRUST, allegedly,  is an oath-bound, secretive society established by Lord Goodman at the behest of the British Government during the Harold Wilson’s time in Downing Street. Goodman managed the financial affairs of Lord Portman […]

Dear Sir Your Diarist Ronan McGreevy (October 18) says that Lloyd George was sceptical about the partition of Ireland, whereas both Churchill and Lloyd George  were determined on it since 1912.   C,P.Scott, fifty years Editor of the Manchester Guardian, and later its owner, nine years a Liberal MP was Lloyd George’s friend and confidant, and during  […]

  “ ‘Ooh, ah, up the Ra!’ ” is sung almost like a new national anthem across Ireland…songs of the saddos won’t be easily binned” – the words of Ivan Little in the Sunday Life Newspaper. The issue is, he’s wrong, it holds nowhere near the level of patriotic charm or stature as Amhrán na […]

Yesterday, Sunday 16th October, The Sunday Times celebrated its 200th Birthday. It reproduced the front page of its first edition, which launched it as an organ of democratic and ethical concern in a world of oppressive and corrupt monarchies and empires, not least that of Britain. That world is still recognisable today but today’s Sunday […]

  Micheál Martin thinks that Sinn Féin are ‘trying to intimidate RTÉ’ by threatening to sue them. It would appear that Micheál has had his irony-bone removed. A soon-not-to-be Taoiseach, not waving but drowning? Ooh, aah, up the….Oops, I almost was outrageous there. As were the triumphant Ireland women’s soccer team. Doug Beattie, Stephen Nolan […]

The French General Cambronne, surprised and captured at Waterloo, was reputed to have answered a call to surrender with his men was first reputed to have replied in French “The Guard may die but never surrender” –  a phrase which begins with the letter “M” Forgive my  French, but sceptical commentators believe the General used the soldierly […]

  I’m a Souvenir myself, I realise, for I have just rediscovered a piece I wrote in 1990 in the Irish Democrat,published monthly in London by the Connolly Association from 1938 until into this century.   The piece was called “SUNDAY, SUNDAY” and above the title the Editor had the heading “Media Watch”followed by “Donal […]