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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 […]

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? — […]

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. […]

This coming year marks the 120th anniversary of the establishment by Irish Marists of St Anthony’s school in Lahore, in what was then the Punjab Province of the British Raj in India. It’s usually forgotten nowadays — thanks to a republicanised history curriculum — that the Irish were often enthusiastic participants in the empire, as missionaries in particular, but also as soldiers and civil servants. And, of course, all education is thought-imperialism of a kind: thus French missionaries originally founded […]

There isn’t a single person in Ireland — and I am, most passionately in the general throng — who doesn’t want Fionnuala Britton to win a medal in the London Olympics. Yet, surely, we must all be aware of the con that is going on; there are so many events in the Olympics, that virtually every country gets a medal. And so while Lithuania exults over its silver in ferret-wrestling, and Ugandastan rejoices at its gold in toenail-filing, no one […]

It was clever of Vaclav Havel to die almost on the first anniversary of the self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi. The latter’s death was hailed throughout the western liberal media as the dawn of a new age; so let us now celebrate a full year of self-deceit and delusion. That idiotic term “the Arab Spring” in itself defines the historical ignorance that underwrites this myth. After all, the Prague Spring was deeply non-violent: it was crushed by tanks, but even the […]

The best thing about Christopher Hitchens was that he changed his mind whenever the evidence justified it. He started out on the classical English left, rather like his hero, George Orwell, and when he realised that it was an intellectually threadbare gallimaufry of ego-driven career politicians, cynical or witless trades union leaders, and middle-class emoters, he moved to the position of Permanent Sceptic. This is the only respectable position for any journalist of honour, which was easier to maintain in […]

THE official confirmation by the Historical Enquiries Team of collusion in the Miami Showband massacre of 1975 should surprise no one. It was widely known that UDR members of the UVF were involved and there was no serious attempt at the time to cleanse the UDR of loyalist terrorists. This was an utter scandal. But it doesn’t stop there. Most of the UVF men responsible for the Miami massacre had probably been involved in the Dublin bombings the year before. […]

It was a shame that Europe waited until I was away before it fell apart, for I feel sure that my counsel might have been of some use to the German Chancellor, Helmut Merkel, or the French President, Signore Punchinello. For a start, I should certainly advise Herr Merkel to do something about his tailor, for the rascal is giving his suits the strangest cut. Jackets should not normally reveal the bottom (especially one as ample as his) unless one […]

Before I took a week’s leave, I wrote a column on suicide, which I finished: “And since we can, quite rightly, no longer use the crude force of a pagan taboo as a control over people’s lives, then we must extol the positive. . .” The headline-writer duly summarised these words as follows: “Suicide is self-murder and must remain taboo.” Well, we’ve all had bad days at the office, but at least most of us are then held accountable for […]