November, 2024

    I’ve been re-reading THE AGE OF THE WARRIOR by Robert Fisk, one of two outstandingly brave and honest journalists who died a couple of years ago and were given contemptible obituaries in THE TIMES. Robert was English and  John Pilger was Australian. Pilger revealed how Sir Andrew  Gilchrist, when British Ambassador to Indonesia […]

  Millions of ordinary people understand that Genocide and Ethnic cleansing is taking place in the Middle East. However a multitude of Israeli apologists are permitted daily to present their views on television, radio and the papers without any challenge. They are permitted to say that nothing can justify October 7th but that October 7th […]

  I saw about two minutes of Terence Ratttigan’s “The Winslow Boy” based on a celebrated case where a naval cadet was expelled for the theft of a five shilling postal order and finally had his name cleared, costing the Admiralty a fortune.   I had seen the film donkey’s decades ago and bridled at […]

The election in the south is just simmering after a week of campaigning: so is it simply a question of waiting for FF and FG to coalesce again? The polls would suggest so. But…  In the US, D Trump is proving he’s a man of his word by appointing Matt Gaetz, Robert Kennedy Jr and […]

  I’ve been housebound recently with ailments common in my age-group and yesterday  saw parts of two films which got me thinking.   Totally by accident I turned on the box to see Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate Danaher distracting Father Lonergan as he was about to land a salmon. It must be among the […]

I know I shouldn’t have been, but when I saw that Mary Lou McDonald was set to appear on the Free State podcast with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning (links at the bottom of this post), I was first mildly shocked, and then intrigued – in a media ecosystem where Sinn Féin are only to be pilloried, […]

In the early 1930s there was a branch of the British Union of Fascists in Dublin. At least once it marched with the Royal British Legion on Armistice Day and the Irish Independent carried a photograph showing their collaboration.   I’d like to know if  Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in Britain marched with the British Legion. […]

Happily I’m not on the receiving end – well, not directly – of the Dublin government. That allowed me to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh on Monday night. Katie Hannon had the housing spokesperson for each party on her panel and it was a sight to see. People Before Profit talked some […]

  It’s 60 years this week since I came to work in London, 7 weeks before my 23rd  birthday.   English workmates two years  older than I had done National Service in the UK forces, and a great many of my older English colleagues had served in the Second World War, and later violent campaigns. […]

Which group of people is the most shameless in the world? Until recently I would have said the Netanyahu government in Israel.  Or maybe the sorry excuse for a human who’s heading into the White House. But now I’m beginning to think it’s those people who could, in their own small way, speak out  (and […]