Ireland Calling
by John SpainRSS 
Recent Posts
- Abortion reform Irish style - Women still have no rights over their own bodies, continue to travel to the UK for procedure
- We’re total abortion hypocrites - proposals for new legislation were laughable
- Catch 22 for Irish abortion law - navigating Ireland’s rigid, Catholic influence legal framework and Savita Halappanavar’s case
- The late Baroness Margaret Thatcher had her good points
- Letters from the tax man - the mounting cost of Ireland's property tax and running the country
Archives
It's not a question that keeps me awake at night -- and I'll explain why in a minute -- but how much should a wife get when she divorces her husband? Half of everything? Or only half of what she helped him earn?
The question is prompted by the blanket coverage given in Ireland over the past few days to the separation of Ronan Keating, the lead singer of the original Irish boyband Boyzone, and his wife Yvonne Connolly, a former model.
There was a protest outside the Dail (Parliament) last week against the cuts in government spending.
There's nothing unusual in that because protest marches to the Dail are a time honored part of Irish democracy. When people here are upset with the government of the day about something they march on the Dail, make angry speeches and then go off to the pub for a pint or go home to watch their protest on the nightly news.
One of the most disturbing cases ever to be heard by an Irish court came to a conclusion last week when a Dublin teenager called David Curran was given a life sentence for the brutal murder of two Polish men.
The two Poles, Pawel Kalite, 30, and Marius Szwajkos, 29, were both stabbed in the head with a screwdriver by Curran two years ago when he was 17. Despite the fact that Curran (pictured above, right) was just a kid, he was so hyped up on drink and drugs at the time that he was able to kill both men in a few seconds.
In the old days when times were tough, Ireland was sometimes referred to as the place where people kept pigs in the kitchen. Any reference to our pigs in the kitchen tendency was a serious insult, of course.
But these days, it's worse. Never mind pigs in the kitchen. Now we ourselves are being called pigs!
