These are tough times and the recession has even begun to bite at my own newspaper with a plan announced yesterday for up to 60 redundancies. But amid the gloom there are still some glorious moments that make life worth living. The Munster rugby team’s barnstorming display against the New Zealand All Blacks in Limerick this week was one. The election of a black man as President of the world’s most powerful country is another. (more…)
Mamma mia, here we go again, another Lisbon referendum, if the heavy hints being dropped by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin are anything to go by. He said on RTE last night a decision on the issue would be made in advance of the next EU summit in Brussels on 11 and 12 December. (more…)
Politics can be a fickle business. After his innovative and decisive action in apparently preventing a partial collapse of the banking system, Brian Cowen’s popularity soared. If an opinion poll had been held at that point in time, his ratings would in all likelihood have been astronomical. (more…)
The Abbey got its timing right with its new production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht. It’s a parable based on the rise of Hitler at a time of economic depression and the last line is a warning that something similar could happen again. (more…)
Before they are washed away by the receding tide of political history, a few points need to be made about the Progressive Democrats. Joe Higgins described them as an “utterly malign influence” on Vincent Browne’s late-night TV3 programme but that’s too dismissive - they were not all bad, or all good. (more…)
Watch this and cringe! Hard news reporter from the Birmingham Mail goes to the States to work for the Obama campaign in Miami. . Interviewed by a reporter from Dutch TV (journalists always end up getting stitched by other journalists) he reveals a little too much information. (more…)
“From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
The furore over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross and their sicko phone calls to venerable actor Andrew Sachs had a very positive side-effect in that it swept the recession aside for a few days as the main news item in the British media. Irish outlets seemed reluctant to take up the story: London is no longer the centre of our cultural universe and I guess that’s a good thing. (more…)
It’s 12.27pm. The debate on the Labour Party motion calling for a reverse in the cut-backs on educaton is coming to an end. The vote will be called in about three or four minutes, before I finish writing this entry.
Citroen's new Tourer steals the limelight for estate cars