November, 2024

    Garret Fitzgerald had many virtues.   But he never had a pedantic devotion nor a bigot’s obsession with the truth.   Among other things Garret was a professional statistician who taught his subject to pupils in Rathmines Tech.   But he rejected the validity of Sinn Fein’s landslide election victory in 1918 in […]

Isn’t striking the way the establishment chooses to act when an election is up ahead? In 2014, Gerry Adams was arrested and held with  a brouhaha of publicity shortly before  an election in the North. Then released without charge. Now there’s a vital election soon to happen in the  South, the search for the body […]

During the Election campaign in the 26 counties the Fine Gael leader, Simon Harris, when asked about a Border poll, snapped that the time ‘was not right’ to talk about a border poll. The leader of Fianna Fail –the so-called ‘republican’ party, Michael Martin has repeated the same sentiment.  Another man who has voiced this […]

      I was born lucky in December 1941 in Dublin, an oasis of peace and tranquility in a world gone mad.   The Nazis had reached the suburban bus stops to the west of Moscow. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor exactly three weeks earlier  and within a couple of months were to […]

 I note – without surprise – that The Irish Times today is telling its readers that  last night’s leaders’ debate didn’t change the ‘focus’ or ‘sway the momentum’ towards Micheál Martin, Mary Lou McDonald or Simon Harris. No change, says the newspaper of record. Funny they should say that (although predictable). I watched the entire […]

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  During this general election campaign in the south of Ireland, the electorate has been presented with a real choice – between the plan for change presented by Sinn Féin, or more of the same from the two conservative parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.  Both of these parties dominated southern Irish politics for over […]

‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies/ But in battalions.’ Those words of Shakespeare must be ricocheting around inside Simon Harris’s head. First there was Michael O’Leary at a FG launch saying in so many words that teachers couldn’t run a bath; then there was that John McGahon video, where the Fine Gael candidate […]

        As anyone who is familiar with my writings over the years will know, I have not been a great fan of the policies of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy – especially in matters political. I am sure they are all good guys and do good work in their dioceses. I know some […]

Did Simon Harris have his Gordon Brown moment when he interacted with that woman in Cork?  The FG slump in the polls suggests that he may well have. Belfast High Court will hear claims  the state assisted and facilitated loyalist paramilitaries in procuring and importing weapons. These were used to kill among others Brian Frizzel […]