Ireland's political and cultural magazine
GEORGE MCLOUGHLIN made a Protected Disclosure in 2015 – when he was employed as a labour inspector with the Department of Jobs (DJEI) – concerning what he perceived to be a culture of deference to non-compliant employers in the management of the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) (subsequently the inspection services of the Workplace Relations […]
This article was updated on 20 December 2019 with additional information about the ongoing refusal of the Gardai to release the log of a visit by the Warden of Kincora Boys’ Home to Mountbatten’s home in the Republic of Ireland (See section 2) and further evidence of a link between Mountbatten and the abuse of […]
The more excitable elements of the British media are in something of a frenzy after the conviction by a Newcastle jury of Carl Beech, 51, a former NHS manager, for perverting the course of justice, i.e. telling the police a pack of lies. He has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Beech’s deceit relates to […]
The death has occurred of Sir Anthony Hart, the retired judge who oversaw the Hart Inquiry into child sex abuse in NI. Village has written extensively about the findings of the Hart Inquiry since it was published in 2017. In the main we were critical of Hart’s findings, especially in so far as they related […]
POLITICS MATTERS. It has the potential to iron out the unfairnesses of nature and luck. We talk a lot about it. We’ve achieved a lot with it. There is an undercurrent of politics that moves irrepressibly towards respect for all – sex, sexuality, race are no longer the barriers they were recently to equal treatment. […]
Larry Wren has become front-page news again as the Garda Commissioner responsible for driving Majella Moynihan to despair such that she attempted suicide five times, and once ended up in St John of Gods after the witch-hunt to which he and the Garda top brass subjected her in the 1980s when she became pregnant out […]
No one who had the misfortune to serve in the Garda during Larry Wren’s bible thumping Reign of Terror as Garda Commissioner, 1983 – 1987, is in the least bit surprised by the Medieval cruelty meted out to former Garda Majella Moynihan by Wren and his lackies when she was a young recruit. Majella Moynihan Wren […]
Lyra McKee’s book ‘Angels With Blue Faces’ is the result of a five-year investigation into what Robert Bradford MP was digging into before he was murdered. It is quite possible that she uncovered one of – if not – the most putrid British Intelligence dirty-tricks operations of the entire Troubles. If not for her, the […]
EXPOSING THE MOST SINISTER AND HITHERTO SUPPRESSED SCANDAL OF THE TROUBLES Lyra McKee’s book on the murder of Robert Bradford MP is to be published shortly. Copies of it can be pre-booked by visiting the website of her publishers, Excalibur. The book is called ‘Angels with Blue Faces’. Those interested would be well advised to […]
The British Establishment transformed itself into a lightning conductor to harness the visceral anger generated by the senseless killing of Lyra McKee in Derry on 18 April. It then redirected that energy as a debilitating shock into the heart of the New IRA. No less a figure than Britain’s PM Theresa May turned up for […]
Lyra McKee’s book on the assassination of Robert Bradford MP is to be released within a matter of weeks. The book will explore the deeply sinister links between the slaying of Bradford and the Kincora Boys Home scandal. Village readers will be familiar with the scandal on account of the reports we have been publishing […]
ON FEBRUARY 12, a criminal trial of twelve Catalan independence leaders, ten of them elected representatives, commenced before the Spanish Supreme Court. Though it is dressed up as a judicial process clearly it has political motivations and implications. It is clear there are systemic problems with the Spanish legal system. Village interviewed Olivier Peter, a […]
IRISH AGRICULTURAL policy over the past decade has generated unsustainable levels of dairy and beef production. The national herd is approaching 8 million in number and each cow produces 2 tonnes of harmful emissions per year. Industrial-scale farming has resulted in serious climate and national food-security issues which now must be addressed by incentivising the […]
WE NEED to think big and green about energy in our efforts to contain carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. Renewable energy should be generated where there is capacity (e.g. Ireland – wind, wave, tidal; Spain – thermal, Iceland – geothermal). The challenge faced by Europe and Ireland especially is how to increase the share […]
ON 10 January 2016, Carles Puigdemont, a journalist and the mayor since 2011 of the city of Girona, northeast of Barcelona, was sworn in as the President of Catalonia. In assuming office he made abundantly clear that his foremost priority would be arranging a poll on self-determination, characterising his approach a few months later as […]
I HAVE KNOWN Ciaran Collins for several years. Days before we first met at a political meeting in Dublin, Ciaran had attended the funeral of Michael Lutton in Lurgan, Co Armagh. Lutton was a member of the Continuity IRA (CIRA) who died on 1 November 2010 and received a military funeral. I had never heard […]
IN MID-MARCH, following civil actions, the suspects for the 1998 Omagh bombing, which perpetrated the worst loss of life of the whole Northern Ireland troubles were bankrupted, one of them on his deatbbed. Focus was on the murderers not the victims or the security forces. However, there are still questions about prior knowledge the security […]
THE TRUTH is that the world is laughing at the UK’s discomfiture over Brexit. The world will be mildly discommoded by whatever happens but it be will be amply compensated by the comedy of the UK’s stupidity made possible by ignorance of history and economics. For a long time much of the world really didn’t […]
ON FEBRUARY 26th Mick Wallace and I attended a rally addressed by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. It closed an International People’s Assembly which had taken place in Caracas that week, with over 450 community and trade union delegates from all over the world. Fresh from the Government’s defeat of Opposition attempts to break through the […]
THE SCATHING criticism by a human rights working group of the United Nations of the Government’s failure to meet its obligation to deliver affordable, public housing will not surprise those experiencing the unrelenting rise in homelessness and the cost of rental accommodation. What is new in the letter written by Surya Deva, chief rapporteur of […]
