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- Irish sporting hero James McClean and football's culture war
- Get them while they're young - Catholic Church are experts at recruitment
- Che-nge the record, it's just a statue
- An Irishman's guide to celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Ireland
- University qualifications - what do they really mean? Confidence goes a long way
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Irish sporting hero James McClean and football's culture war
As last Sunday showed as clearly as is ever going to be shown, being a football (not soccer, not ever soccer) fan can be extremely dramatic. In the final week of the Premier League, Man City won the title in the dying seconds of their game against QPR, the kind of ending that would prompt you to roll your eyes if it came from a Disney film about a plucky team of loser kids who only needed an inspirational coach/mascot goat to believe in themselves.
Che-nge the record, it's just a statue
Every so often you see a story and think “How the hell is this still a thing?” The furore around Galway’s proposed Che Guevara statue is one such story.
University qualifications - what do they really mean? Confidence goes a long way
Recently I started a new job in Belfast, namely as a question writer for a TV quiz show. As you might expect it’s a conversation-starting occupation, as proved to be the case when talking to a taxi man a few days ago. When I jokingly asked him if he’d ever take part in a quiz on telly and maybe win a bit of money, he said back without much consideration: “Ah sure I’d be no good on things like that, I don’t have any qualifications or that."
Has the time come for Celtic Independence? - Scottish win could spell seismic shift
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is currently embroiled in a power struggle with British PM over a referendum for Scottish independence, but if he wins the dominoes won’t just stop at Hadrian’s Wall.
The Ian Paisley paradox - considering the career of Dr. No
As I write this, Ian Paisley remains in the intensive care unit of the Ulster Hospital, and like everyone else in the media I’ve been reflecting on the career of an incontrovertible political giant of these islands.
But it’s incredibly difficult.
RTÉ sport's inspirational Colm Murray and his battle with motor neurone disease
The documentary on Colm Murray, RTE's sports anchor, promised to be must-see viewing, and yet extraordinary difficult.
The view from over here: the GOP’s true primary colours
Apart from having a long-term interest in US politics I also have the sleeping patterns of a musician, so that means watching coverage of the Republican Primaries isn’t such a taxing thing for me to do. From a sleep point of view that is, in pretty much every other way it’s tough going.
Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep and The Iron Lady's true legacy - VIDEO
While walking round Dublin of a crisp, pre-Christmas morning, you couldn’t help but be taken aback by some of the posters adorning the city buses. As if the sharp Arctic air wouldn’t take the breath out of you easily enough, seeing Meryl Streep made up uncannily like Margaret Thatcher for her latest film would wind a man for sure.
The film in which Streep plays "The Iron Lady" is being released this very week, which is as intriguing as Meryl Streep’s makeover is terrifying.
Prayers for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from the most Christian man I know
At Sunday Mass in Raphoe last week Fr Dinny McGettigan, in addition to praying for the recent dead, also prayed for Colonel Gadaffi. It raised a few eyebrows elsewhere in Ireland, and indeed beyond, but it didn’t surprise me at all, because I’ve known Fr Dinny for years.
The EU and Ireland - the importance of being close to Boston and Brussels
During the tremulous time following the 1992 general election, the embattled Taoiseach Albert Reynolds was handed a lifeline. With his grasp on power hanging in the balance, Reynolds went to an EU summit in Edinburgh at the end of that year and secured £8billion in European structural funds. Even his most optimistic supporters were expecting something closer to six. Emboldened, Reynolds told his press secretary, “Now watch me put a government together”.
Race for Irish Presidency - possible candidates begin to emerge
I have to hand it to you Americans: you’re very early starters.
About a year and a half to go before Obama attempts to get re-elected and already high-profile Republicans are queuing up to get on the good ship More Heat Than Light. We’re not nearly as organised here.
Which is strange, considering our race for the Presidency is a lot more open than the one you’ll be having next year. No incumbent, a range of quality candidates either in the ring or loitering with intent around the ring, but with a couple of months to go the race for the Presidency is still very much in the blocks.
President Obama and Ireland - a love story
PHOTOS: President Obama's trip to Ireland - photo gallery
At the end of this week, we’re likely to feel a bit bereft.
After all, given the febrile flurry of the last fortnight where we’ve hosted the Queen, the President and, eh, Portuguese football fans, you’d be forgiven for wondering who was next. The Pope maybe? The ghost of Che Guevara? Shirley Bassey? Alas, no. No visitors next week. But even though Obama has left us, at least we have the man who nicked his lines in front of his face.
Irish media personality, Ryan Tubridy set for BBC
The BBC is, after all, the best in the world at the very numerous things it does, and any broadcaster who wouldn’t want to work there has a serious salt deficiency. It’s also very much a world station, so it’s not a case of joining the Beeb means he’s betraying his roots or something mad like that.
But I have to confess, it’s a perplexing move to me. Ryan, arguably the biggest presenter in Ireland, has taken on the role of National Flag Waving Morale Officer very much to heart of late, emphasising with metronomic consistency on both his radio and TV shows that the country needs good news, to accentuate the positive the country has to offer and realise what a great little country we are.
The Dalai Lama's visit to Ireland - the Irish see that what’s possible is anything we like
The fundamental problem with writing about an experience as profound as seeing and hearing the Dalai Lama speak is that the feeling it gives you is very hard to verbalise. Thankfully, the man himself has no such problem verbalising complicated concepts, and I came to realise that how he says what he says is as important as what he says. His is a wisdom that is more powerful stated than assumed, and it was wonderful to hear.
The reasons for the Dalai Lama being in Ireland and my being there to see him go back several months. The Possibilities Civic Forum was dreamed up a couple of months ago by three great Irish NGO’s: Children in Crossfire, Afri and SpunOut.ie, groups that do a host of inspiring work on social justice and well-being both at home and abroad. As a long-time member of the SpunOut family, there was no way I wasn’t attending. Their combined resolution to organise an event that could bring individuals and local groups together and energise them in their pursuit to change the way we do things in Ireland was, in every sense, a long time coming.
You could feel the 2,000 strong audience felt the same, as speaker after inspirational speaker was awarded rapturous standing ovations that came from their socks. Richard Moore, the founder of Children In Crossfire and the Dalai Lama’s hero, was a special highlight of the day. Blinded at the age of ten by a rubber bullet in his native Derry, Richard is a truly extraordinary example of forgiveness and compassion. Not only has he let blindness or bitterness consume him, but he’s dedicated his life to helping other children in conflict zones. He even sought out the soldier that shot him, and the two are now friends. It was hard not to well up listening to him speak.
Belfast City's peaceful protest murder of Northern Irish police officer - the past is another country
Read more: Second arrest in murdered police officer case in North
Belfast’s City Hall has seen its fair share of demonstrations over the years, but this Wednesday’s peace rally commemorating Constable Ronan Kerr was the first I had ever attended. And it was quite extraordinary.
Walking out of the Scottish Provident building and taking the short few steps out to the middle of Donegal Square where the rally was taking place, I was struck by how many people were walking with me, from all corners, walking silently and with purpose. When I joined the bigger group of people, I was the furthest away from the podium on my side of the street. When I looked back a few moments later there were legions behind me, and when I looked back again after a few moments more, the whole street was wedged. There was something incredibly powerful in the implicit unity of people, of all ages, of all occupations, who had never met or even broke breath to each other.
The fine line between grift and graft – Irish politicians get ‘stuff done’ - VIDEO
This line of thinking isn’t unique to North Tipperary of course. A whole host of constituencies have, in the past or present, elected people who made parochialism not just a virtue but an electoral cash cow. Sometimes merely feigning activity does the trick. The singling out by both the media and everyone outside a thirty minute radius of Thurles of Lowry as a bad example of how to do business is one prong of a wider call for much-needed reform on a national scale, but even if Lowry is censured by the Dáil and dipped in a tar pit, the type of politics he represents won’t go away. And a lot of people wouldn’t let it either.
Counter-intuitive it may be, but Lowry has made a lot of hay over the whole notion of the “Dublin witch-hunt”, and the sense of anti-establishment that endows. Local politicians of every stripe often take to showing themselves off as renegades taking on the jumped big city boys who just don’t get the spirit of the people of insert-county-here, and it inevitably goes down well because people feel the need to elect the local man who’ll have very few degrees of separation between them. Thus, the reasoning goes that if all the other towns in the area have such a councillor, so should you.
Irelands Census 2011 and Catholicism - the demise of organized religion in Ireland
Read more: The Irish are fast losing their religion say experts
On Sunday, 10th April the people of Ireland will fill in their census forms under wildly different circumstances than when they last did so in 2006. But aside from the inevitable stark figures surrounding employment and the people who’ve had to leave the country to get it, there is another question that will also speak volumes: the question on religion.
Election after maths - a default victory for Fine Gael's Enda Kenny?
Estella is at Exeter University now, and in her absence I tried to keep her updated on the seismic events of Election Day we couldn’t have imagined years ago. It’s just a shame she, like a lot of my friends who’ve had to leave Ireland for one reason or another, wasn’t able to vote on this one. It certainly wasn’t for lack of interest.
But if voting was out of the question, revelling in the cataclysmic embarrassment of Minister after Minister would have to do for Estella and everyone else. Mary Coughlan’s vote more than halved in Donegal South West and was eliminated on the fourth count. Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews barely scraped 15% between them in Dun Laoghaire while serial poll-topper Willie O’Dea’s vote share dropped by nearly two thirds, an occurrence more embarrassing than having his insane eyebrows shaved off.
A look back at the national distraction that was the Irish General Election campaign
The campaign has been an exasperating one, and at this point distraction is the only thing that makes it any way endurable. But while it’s been an incredibly disappointing few weeks for illuminating discussion with any social element or planning into the future, it hasn’t been at all bad when it comes to amusing sideshows.
Fine Gael have furnished us with the majority of the comic relief (whether or not that’s an omen is anyone’s guess), the first incident being Enda putting a bet on himself to win the election. With a guide dog behind the counter. Enda’s personal popularity ratings started to steadily rise following his meeting with Clive The Awesome Labradoodle. Coincidence, I think not.
But if his meeting with Clive gave him a bump in the polls, Enda’s jumping about in platform game format gave everyone else a stitch in their stomach from laughing so hard. “Go Ireland”, named after the action seeing the game would want you to do, involves Enda hopping around icing opposition TDs in his quest to do whatever the hell it is he wants to do. It’s awful, though not as bad as their previous amendment on whack-a-mole involving government ministers. If Fine Gael’s approach to running the country is even slightly similar to their approach to technology, then we are well and truly done for.
State of independents: gearing up for the Irish General Election
The general election due to take place in Ireland is likely to be one of the most extraordinary we’ve ever had. Not only is the economic situation more consumed by more dire straits than Mark Knopfler’s studio technician, but confidence in pretty much every major Irish institution is hanging comically round the ankles.
So while people may be united in loathing, their voting preferences are all over the shop. Fine Gael are riding high as a party and Enda Kenny, previously only marginally more popular than shin splints, is now getting kudos for not screwing up more than anything else. Labour are slipping behind, with even Eamon Gilmore’s personal popularity falling. Fianna Fáil are hoping their numbers go up thanks to Micheal Martin, the theory being it’s very hard to be angry at somebody who agrees with you and doesn’t argue back, but it’s not working. Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance are picking up support in the polls but that tends to fall off when people actually reach the ballot box.
Add to that the multiple (some might say numbing) TV debates this year, and with offhand comments all but impossible to bury now in our internet-omnipresent age, there will also be an unprecedented opportunity to see parties and party members screw up. And while the state of the parties will no doubt leave us wholly exasperated, that leaves the way open for a group unusually prevalent people in Irish politics anyway to really make their mark this time: Independents.
Youth Council debates in Ireland - candidates that stand to change the face of Irish politics
Far be it from TV3 or RTE to hold sway over all the debating fun over the next few weeks, as this week the Donegal Youth Council are hosting debates, which I’ll be moderating, on the 15th and 16th of February. On the 15th the candidates in the North East constituency will plead their case in Letterkenny, while the following night the candidates in the South West in Donegal Town will take their turn. It promises to be an interesting and illuminating couple of nights.
For starters this is a debate where the topics of discussion will be provided by the young people in attendance, and will be free to comment and ask questions of any candidate at any point. As young people feel more acutely than ever, unemployment, education and future prospects are serious issues in this election, and these debates will give a golden opportunity for them to directly question their prospective new TD’s on the issues that matter to them most, and ascertain who most corresponds to their own worldview. And even though a great deal of that audience will be under 18, the choices those candidates make after they’re elected will have a big effect on how the next five years and beyond of their lives go. And they know it.
Discussing election topics they wanted brought up on the night with the youth councilors last week was truly inspiring. The range and depth of the discussion, with young people ranging from 13 to 17 years of age, was seriously impressive. We talked for two hours but we could’ve easily talked for another two. Whatever and about the rest of the country, this was an apathy-free zone, and it was beyond refreshing.
Ireland's crisis catalogue - Ireland's bad times through the ages
As it stands, Brian Cowen literally stands on the brink of being illegal. His government, blighted by retirements and withdrawls, is down to the bare minimum the constitution requires: seven members, all of whom now have implausibly large workloads. Pat Carey for example, the one of the seven who looks most like Yul Brynner, is currently Minister for Transport, Gaeltacht and Community Affairs, Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Eamon O’Cuiv also has three ministries, but such is his work ethic that he also applied for another one: leader of Fianna Fáil. Yes, because while Brian Cowen is still Taoiseach, he’s no longer leader of the party that following the Greens’ pull out is the only component of government. There is hopefully a dimension somewhere where all this makes sense.
As Irish political crises go, it’s the most baffling and volatile we’ve had in a long while. This one has inevitably been compared to all manner of past disasters, but as is often the case with Muppets, one of these things is not like the other.
Arguments for the abolition of Ireland's upper house of parliament
“WE’RE SICK OF THIS GOVERNMENT AND WON’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” “YEAH!”
“WE WANT DRASTIC CHANGE IN THE WAY THIS COUNTRY OPERATES!” “YEAH!”
Bertie Ahern - a leader who fled a sinking ship
Even though his personal finances wouldn’t have been out of place in 1920’s Chicago, and even though he and his government ran the country in a fashion so lackadaisical it was almost Zen-like, on the two central acid tests of the election (the North and the economy) Bertie was deemed to have passed with a push and prevented the opposition from winning what should have been a slam dunk of an election. It also helped that a sizeable portion of the population seemed to think he was a puppy, as criticism of Bertie back then was often met with a loud chorus of “Ah would ye leave him alone, sure he’s only lovely!” Boy, was that a mistake.
Now, two years after the former captain of Ireland’s political Hindenburg fritzed out the controls and leapt off with the only parachute on board, Bertie Ahern announced on New Year’s Eve that he was officially giving up the old flying Zeppelins business. That Ahern won’t run in next year’s general election, thus bringing an end to his 34 year reign of inanity, is no doubt satisfying, but in so announcing he made some statements that brought my gorge rising levels back to 2007 standards.
A review of 2010 through Irish eyes
Of course, it’s been anything but quiet this year, although those in power really could have done with shutting up more. I’m looking at you, government. This was the year where the wheels finally came off the stainless steel, gull-winged jalopy we used to call an economy, where instead hovering into the future we were dumped unceremoniously back to the fifties, with tracks of fire everywhere. At least we have a grey-haired man with glasses and a distinct speaking voice to help us through: Oli Rehn.
That the EU and the IMF have landed the mothership over the puny earthling repository we call Dáil Eireann is a bit embarrassing considering a few years ago we thought we owned the universe (yes, I’ve moved on from time travel and I’m on to space metaphors now). On the plus side, it’s nice to have someone competent in charge. Brian Cowen and the Keystone Cops he calls a government have done their level best to look as publically and emphatically stupid as possible, and in that at least they’ve done an incredible job. Among the nominees for best performance in a crowded field are Brian Lenihan doing his best Ralph Bellamy in Trading Places, Ivor Callely doing a particularly obnoxious Leo Di Caprio from Catch Me If You Can, Mattie McGrath’s unhinged Crocodile Dundee and Paul Gogarty, who in simply being himself seems to play more roles than Eddie Murphy in Norbit. But, the award this year goes to Oliver Reed himself, Brian Cowen, who made a holy show of himself on Morning Ireland after a Rat Pack night with the press pack.
If Teddy Roosevelt was alive today he'd punch everyone in the face
As time went on my political consciousness expanded, initially through the Irish Democrat prism. But I soon moved beyond the Kennedys and found myself having more of an affinity with the likes his 1960 Primary opponents Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson, as well as FDR and Harry Truman before them. Yet while my voting profile would be largely that of your classic New England leftie liberal communist gun-hating egghead, one of my favourite ever Presidents was, in fact, a Republican.
There’s little you can’t admire about Teddy Roosevelt. A sickly and weak child, he worked hard at strengthening himself and became a fearsome boxer. He overcame enormous personal tragedy (his wife and mother died on the same day) to forge a successful military and political career. He was so successful as Governor of New York, in fact, that the party bosses he had so successfully taken on had him shunted to the political Marie Celeste they call the Vice Presidency. William McKinley’s assassination promoted him, and he became the youngest person to become President, and quite the President he turned out to be.
Let them eat cheese - Irish government giving out free cheese to the needy
On the whole, Ireland’s history has been so nutty we shouldn’t really ever travel without an EpiPen, whether it be losing battles due to our hired help showing up at the wrong place like at Kinsale in 1603, or the Earls fleeing Ireland accidentally forgetting to bring their wives in 1607. You’d think modernity would have ironed out some of our more idiosyncratic creases, but not so. Our government just won’t let that happen.
Last week Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith announced that the government would be giving out free cheese to the needy just before Christmas. Yup, free cheese. Inevitably, the announcement was met with incredulous, mocking derision. In a year where another government bright idea was taxing ATM withdrawals to curb tiger kidnappings, the notion that 53 tonnes of cheese would raise national morale was the high water mark of the “if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry” feeling currently pervading the country.
Donegal is at the center of Ireland’s political universe
It’s an absolute rarity, but Donegal is currently the center of the Irish political universe. Following a successful case to the High Court by Sinn Féin, Donegal South West faces a bye-election on the 25th November, nearly a year and a half since the seat became vacant. Up the road in Donegal North East, histrionic spoofer Dr Jim McDaid said bye bye to the Dáil after 21 years of doublespeak and scandal, bringing the government a case of glandular fever away from collapse.
The people of Donegal North won’t have to worry about replacing him just yet, but in Lifford across to Glenties and down to Bundoran the posters are already up. And while we’ll have a distinct lack of fiscally conservative CEO’s throwing their money around like a lightweight wrestling opponent or scarcely believable TV slots involving sheep, it should be an intriguing race all the same, for several reasons.
Ireland becoming the 51st state – some kind of Joaquin Phoenix-style prank
Michael Soden, former Bank of Ireland Chief and current Central Bank adviser, has been showing the kind of ingenious thinking that made Ireland’s financial enterprises the envy of the world by advocating, wait for it, Ireland leaving the EU and possibly becoming the 51st state of the U.S. Wow, someone give that man a medal. Preferably not The Charlemagne Prize though.
Part of me hopes this is some kind of Joaquin Phoenix-type pisstake, or some desperate histrionic attempt to flog the book he’s just penned. But then I realise that not only are bankers much more predisposed to the realm of mind-boggling fantasy than satirical humour, shy of claiming the secret to eternal youth is printed just below the publishing info nobody would dream of buying the thing anyway. So, unlike NAMA, I’m choosing to take the value of the comments at face value.
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