April, 2025

This Canadian federal election is more consequential than any federal election I have  seen in 37 years here. I voted yesterday in advance voting and the line-ups were longer than I’ve ever experienced here.   The Polievre led Conservative party has been in campaign mode for well over two years. We have been inundated with […]

Historically, both NEI and the South have been thought of more in terms of emigration rather than immigration, with large numbers of Irish people from both the North and the South migrating to the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries in search of better economic opportunities. The impact of an Gorta Mor, our […]

And so we come to Good Friday. Do you remember this day as a sunlit, happy one? Or a day when shops were shut and religious ceremonies were gloomy and even scary? Stephen Collins has another anti-UI article in today’s Irish Times, in which he urges Irish people to stop talking about a border poll […]

  Authoritarian government has been a reality throughout history and it is very much a reality in the world today. You only have to mention Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orban, Xi Jinping,  Kim Jong Um –to name but a few. According to Sarah Kendzior  (We’re Heading into Dark Times The Correspondent, Nov 18, 2016):  “Authoritarianism is […]

Rory McIlroy brings out something of the mother in all of us – or maybe a compound word of which ‘mother’ is the first half. We could sit here and yarn all day about Rory, but I’m a busy man, involved with much high-level work. So I’ll confine myself to a few points. Money Even […]

Rory wins it! Yahoo!! A great day yesterday – 35-year-old Irishman Rory McIlroy won the Masters’ title in golf!!! …Or wait a minute. Were you sympathetic as Rory wept with the emotion of it all? Is he a poor little rich boy? Six women including singer Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’s fiancée will do a […]

  Are the Number of Palestinian Deaths Relevant for pro-Israel Commentators? John Stuart Mill once wrote, “He who only knows his own side of the case, knows little of that”. In this spirit, I feel it’s important to engage seriously with arguments from the opposing side. One of the most prominent pro-Israel voices is Douglas […]

Hands up who remembers Leo Varadkar? Right – former leader of Fine Gael, a party once seen as the party of the West Brits. Not so now, it appears. In Philadelpha at an Irish rally, Leo urged on his listeners to help Ireland organise itself and make plans for Irish unity. Is he saying that […]

 Map showing the watercourse from the proposed site of the Dalradian gold mine in County Tyrone which flows into the River Foyle, Lough Foyle and into the Atlantic. catherinemcginty16@gmail.com Citizen rights under international environmental treaty hampered by lack of ‘precise, legally defined, mutually agreed international boundary’ between the North and the Republic of Ireland An […]

  Should the south of Ireland make nice to D Trump? Yes, Micheál Martin has already done the obsequious thing in the White House, but hadn’t we better go easy or Trump may target pharmaceuticals,  big tech companies in Ireland, and God knows what? Or maybe Ireland should do the right thing for once. That […]