This is a column i wrote six years ago, in June 2006, and I just came across it by chance; it is about one of the best men I have ever known: I share it with you now True greatness is not measured in the plaques or institutes which bear one’s name, but in the imperishable residue one leaves on the minds and souls of relative strangers. Fourteen year ago, I went to report on the siege of Sarajevo. My […]
Written on: 11. 1. 2012 in the category: news | read the full article
The only lessons that could be learnt were through the grievous expenditure of human life.
I wrote this for the 90th anniversary of the First day on the Somme in 2006. It might help correct some the Anglcentric/Hibernocentric perceptions of the war Nightfall, ninety years ago today, and 899 Belfast men who that morning had risen from their trenches, as soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the British army, lay dead on Thiepval ridge, in the Somme valley. One hundred and ninety one of them were from the Shankill Road. Forty six officers lay dead among […]
Written on: 10. 1. 2012 in the category: Uncategorized | read the full article
Ireland is facing a future of hardship and we cannot allow false narratives to lure us back into violence
Enough. Last week we saw a new double-nadir in Irish broadcasting history. Not merely did TG4 broadcast a ludicrous piece of IRA propaganda in its profile of Rose Dugdale, in which it actually called her “saighdiuir/soldier”, but RTE Radio One promoted it in advance with a truly supine and abject 45-minute interview with the criminal lunatic herself. Better still, little you and me, through our television licence fees, subsidised both of these grisly little travesties. Without disrespect for TG4, which […]
Written on: 6. 1. 2012 in the category: Uncategorized | read the full article
It is as if Irish people arrived here with their cattle and learned nothing about the land
Something odd is happening. In the middle of the greatest economic slump since the 1950s, Irish agricultural land-prices are soaring: €10,000 an acre. This is an astounding figure, but at least it does reflect the success of the Irish food industry. Our beef and lamb are superb. I recently did a blind, multi-national butter-tasting: Irish was easily the best. We humans might find the Irish climate infuriating, but the livestock and the wildlife with which we share the land do […]
Written on: 5. 1. 2012 in the category: Uncategorized | read the full article
We will always be clinging to someone else’s coattails
It’s hard to imagine a better example of a winning argument than that of the Eurosceptics such as Anthony Coughlan and Mary Ellen Synon who for years were maintaining, through closely marshalled economic facts, the fundamental flaws of the Greater Europe vision. The eurozone is now on life-support; gangrene is rotting its extremities; toes go black and stink. Yet the debate — if such an energetic word may be used about Leinster House: the Dail drums or the doldrums? — […]
Written on: 3. 1. 2012 in the category: Uncategorized | read the full article
Executions of 1916 still form toxic staple of brainwashing that passes for education in schools
Some Dublin friends had builders in last May, for a job to be completed in July. So, of course, they spent the third week of December desperately trying to get the builders to finish by Christmas. And the really serious problem with this story is the effortless ease with which Irish readers know it is possible. Moreover, Irish builders — not being parachuted down from Mars — are probably a fair representation of the standards in much of Irish life. […]