Ireland's political and cultural magazine
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Having failed to crush, flatten, or close our borders against it, as Winter begins to put its uncouth fingernails all over us there is talk of negotiations. King Virus comes to the table wearing a crown of spikes that fans out to fill the whole room and can’t be removed except on the day of […]
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Ireland will again exercise its place on the Security Council to promote consensus rather than vision and values. By John-Vivian Cooke Ireland took a seat on the UN Security Council for the term 2021/22 on 1 January. This is the fulfilment of a key strategic goal of Irish foreign policy. However, having secured that seat […]
London extradition hearing was the last stand of either Wikileaks founder or Western Intelligence Imperialism, and awaits January decision By Caroline Hurley Queensland-born Julian Assange (49) founded Wikileaks in 2006. Four years later it published several huge and devastating leaks provided by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including: the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq […]
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Cloughjordan Ecovillage Two Decades On. By Caroline Hurley. Cloughjordan So Far In September 1999, at the Central Hotel Dublin, Gavin Harte and Gregg Allen launched Sustainable Projects Ireland Ltd. (SPI) trading as The Village, whose aim was to create Ireland’s first eco-village, with a stress on sustainability, community, and promoting mainstreaming environmentally-friendly ideas. Rising property […]
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Twitter rejects lockdown relatability ‘We all hate you’ By Sam White Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Placido Domingo, Idris Elba, Harvey Weinstein, Donna Air, 1960s songstress Marianne Faithful, Kodaline guitarist Mark Prendergast, Prince Charles, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, Prince Albert of Monaco, John Taylor from Duran Duran, Ireland’s Ryan Tubridy and Mary Lou McDonald, and ‘Bond […]
A note from the editor: This article is about the late Paudge Brennan, the Fianna Fáil Minister who resigned a little over 50 years ago after the eruption of the Arms Crisis. It is written by his son, Sean. Not surprisingly, it is partisan. It does, nevertheless, yield an insight into a perspective on Irish […]
By David Burke. A memo has just been released from Britain’s National Archives. It concerns discussions at the apex of the British government about salacious rumours relating to John Hume’s private life. It was sent to Sir Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary to John Major’s government, and also to Major’s private secretary, Sir Alex Allan. Allan […]
By David Burke. George Blake has just died aged 98 at his dacha outside Moscow where Putin’s overseas intelligence service, the SVR, was protecting him from Covid-19. Blake was held in high esteem by the Russians. Putin has said that the “memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts”. Putin awarded […]
By Andrew Lownie. A few weeks ago the Irish Times ran an article on the death of Mountbatten linked to the new series of The Crown in which the murder features in the opening episode. As the author of the most recent biography ‘The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves’, I was interviewed for the piece on […]
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Transgender people are not getting appropriate psychological or medical treatment and, in breach of WHO guidelines, are being treated as if they have mental health problems By Rachel Rathbone. I always knew I was female, from an early age. Never more so than when I went to primary school, an all-boys school with me, a […]
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Michael Smith reviews ‘The Men who eat Ringforts’ by Sinéad Mercier and Michael Holly, featuring Eddie Lenihan The title of the delightful ‘The Men Who Eat Ringforts’ gratifyingly, replicates the headline for a typically incisive article by Tony Lowes published in this magazine in 2010. It complained that there was no legal protection for ringforts. […]
Style with some substance By Mehar Luthra I used to pride myself on being the most politically unaware human on the planet. I revelled in my political illiteracy. Politics was a snooze-fest. Until, that is, the advent of Obama and Trump. Obama came along, made politics cool and accessible and inclusive and he actually talked sense. […]
Tory PM Edward Heath concealed the identity of a paramilitary organisation which perpetrated a massacre in Belfast in 1971. He did so to acquire the votes he needed to win a majority in the House of Commons to enable the UK to join the EEC, the forerunner of the EU. What he did has remained […]
John le Carré spent most of his career exploring the British psyche through the lens of its secret service. You’d think he might have mentioned Ireland once or twice.
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Trump and Biden are culturally Irish By Stephen Corbett Donald Trump could repatriate Apple and Google, rip up the Good Friday Agreement, and next March 17th spend the day on the greens at Mar Al Lago. Expect anything from the United States nowadays. That’s why I’m sounding the alarm from Scranton, Pennsylvania, birthplace of Democratic […]
Judicial review sought to overturn planning board decision By Frank Connolly. The residents of a housing estate in Ashbourne, County Meath, are fighting to retain the only open space available to their children after a decision by An Bord Pleanála (ABP) to grant permission for three apartment blocks on the land. The Millbourne Residents Association […]
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Damien O’Reilly pushes an agenda against “some” unspecified “thug” environmentalists, in the Farmers’ Journal. By John Gibbons The announcement in October that RTÉ’s radio programme ‘Countrywide’ had entered into a 12-month sponsorship deal with the Irish Farmers Journal (IFJ) represents an unusual, arguably unprecedented departure. The IFJ is bound at the hip with Ireland’s most powerful agricultural […]
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If only the Independent Alliance had performed as well as the rip-roaring book Part 1 Review Michael Smith reviews ‘In bed with the Blueshirts’ (Atlantic Books, €12.99) and speaks to its suspiciously unselfrighteous author Shane Ross can write, analyse and judge. We saw it when he wrote for the Sindo and in his juicy books about the […]
A valuable contribution to preserving the memory of the Conflict and to the continued out-workings of the fragile peace (in) process in this Northern Ireland, this Narrow Ground. In addition to the most recent edition of De Smith’s ‘Principles of Judicial Review’, the other two most used book on my desk are Coroners’ ‘Law and […]
Lands purchased for €500,000 in 2016 are put up for sale for €4.2 million in 2020 after planning obtained on behalf of sons of Councillor who discussed their rezoning By Frank Connolly A Meath County Councillor is under investigation as his two children stand to reap over €4.2 million from the sale of lands re-zoned […]
