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“What the fuck happened to you?” asked the Dublin fireman I met the other day. “Why do we never hear from you anymore?” WTF happened? This happened. Four years ago this week, John Burns, my page editor on The Sunday Times Irish edition asked me to write about the row in the BBC over the pay differentials between male and female broadcasters.  He emailed: “Fallopia O’Whynge wants to work less hours than her male counterparts, slope off to have babies […]

Anglophobia now chic in Ireland

In these few hours before the European Football Final, I confess my heart is torn. Part of me wants England to win, partly because I was born there and also because of the strong Irish component – Rice, Kane and Grealish, if that idiot Southgate even remembers to play him – in the English squad. But like you all, I truly dread the vacuous and self-satisfied outpourings from the English media and pundits if England wins, apparently unaware – as […]

The great thing about a lynch mob is that it never learns, never listens and never repents. Quite the reverse: it never ceases to revisit old ground to gore the odd hapless survivor. Now I didn’t know quite what to expect when I wrote the column below nine years ago, but I was reasonably sure that Yvonne Murphy would be in for a hard time when she finally produced her report. And so it proved. Most of you will have […]

There’s hardly been a more searing indictment of the priorities of the Irish state – and thereby, overall, of Irish society – than the “investigation” into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier twenty-five years ago. It’s no wonder that the failure to try anyone for this atrocious deed shocked France; what is even more shocking is our own failure to examine and learn from this state’s abysmal failings. Sophie’s murder came at a deeply symbolic time in Irish history, […]

The unwonted hysteria over Chinese pandemic permitting, I shall be talking at the Percy French Summer School in Castlecoote later this month. This year’s subject is Truth, and to judge from previous years, the only way you’ll have of learning about what’s being said there is by your presence. Even though last year it was the only summer-school in the entire island, the mainstream media – which usually rejoice at the easy copy that results from summer schools, since these […]