Politics »

  • The Mess We’re In and meaningless speculation about a reshuffle

    February 26, 2010 @ 2:50 pm | by Harry McGee

    One of my favourite books of all time is Joe Lee’s 1912 to 1985, A Social and Political history of Ireland.

    In the amazing Perspectives chapter at the end of the book, Lee rails and vents against the dearth of ideas, courage and innovation in Ireland during most of the first six miserable decades of the State. Denmark started off the last century on equal footing to Ireland but innovated, adapted and adjusted while Ireland stagnated and stalled into a decades-long sclerosis.

    (more…)

  • 2010 – Predictions for a political year

    January 4, 2010 @ 1:11 pm | by Harry McGee

    The narrative of Joe Lee’s amazing social history of Ireland brought us from 1912 to 1985. The last chapter, Perspectives, lambasted the policy, moral and economic failures that had beset us. Lee compared Ireland unfavourably to Denmark, a country with a similar population, that had prospered during the decades that Ireland had stagnated.

    (more…)

  • Rope a dope?

    June 17, 2009 @ 12:59 pm | by Harry McGee

    I am looking at Brian Cowen on the TV screen in the office, drudging through Taoiseach’s Questions. The Dáil this week has been like a burst balloon  or a wind without sails or an end-of-season clash between two mid-table teams.

    There has been a sense of tiredness – maybe it’s anti-climax – after the elections season and the emotion of the debate on the Ryan report. Nobody has whipped themselves into a froth of fury this week. There have been some more wringing of hands by parties (mainly the Greens) about the future and all the dreadful things that may be in store.

    (more…)

  • Let Freedom Ring

    November 10, 2008 @ 12:43 pm | by Deaglán de Bréadún

    “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!”

    mlkihaveadreamgogo.jpg

    (more…)


Search Politics