Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Ireland should brace for market worship dressed up as equality of opportunity and favouring those who get up early by David Langwallner and Ben Harper Leo Varadkar consistently asserts that he does not believe in equality of outcome but in equality of opportunity. He sees himself as “right” or “either centre right or a […]
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Fantasy Indictment: Peter Sutherland for moral offences against the economy, the environment and human rights by David Langwallner and Michael Smith Christopher Hitchens, no stranger to contrarian positions, once wrote a remarkable polemic called ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ impugning Kissinger for being as guilty as any common war criminal of crimes against humanity. […]
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Local authorities built only 394 homes in 2017 by Mel Reynolds MINISTER FOR FINANCE Paschal Donohoe set out the stall for Social Housing in Budget 2018: “I am allocating a total of €1.83bn for housing in 2018. Some 3,800 new social homes will be built next year by local authorities and approved housing bodies…1”. […]
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Exile from hypocrisy, lack of standards, formalism, begrudgery and betrayal by David Langwallner The legendary Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna was famous for flamboyant risk taking. His great rival Alain Prost would complain about his dangerous overtaking and bumper-to-bumper manoeuvrings. Senna was, without doubt, the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time both in […]
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”Nothing to see here” approach means Ireland’s Fire Safety Task Force was wrongly comprised, only looked at buildings over 6 storeys and assessed only half of the 226 buildings identified as at risk By Orla Hegarty and Lorcan Sirr IT WAS PURE LUCK that the March 2015 fire in Millfield Manor in Kildare didn’t […]
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Obfuscating high-rise with high density serves only deregulatory market-driven ideology by Gavin Daly Rule #101 of the neoliberal playbook – when faced with a housing supply crisis, attack the planning system! It has been thus at leasgt since Michael Heseltine, Thatcher’s bouffant environment secretary in the 1980s, launched his famous broadside against the “jobs locked […]
Eoghan Murphy’s crude and desperate guidelines on Building Heights risk the aesthetic of our towns and cities By Michael Smith Density is desirable We should all be able to agree the desirability of densification of the Dublin City area – in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. The advantages of density include being […]
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Recent publishings in the Irish Times from Laura Kennedy: Freelance writer, doctor in philosophy, columnist @IrishTimes and beauty columnist @IrishTimesMag I wonder, not for the first time, how it is that many of the changes in my life have been punctuated by sitting on some park bench or other, listening to the faint trilling […]
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We need to face up to what mature countries call housing need by Rory Hearne There is general acceptance that the housing crisis has reached unacceptable levels. However, the government’s current policies are inadequate to address the crisis because, firstly, they underestimate the scale of the crisis. Secondly, they deny the overall housing policy […]
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But it’s only his own old articles by Emma Gilleece David McWilliams has been a household name since 1999 when he invented the term Celtic Tiger. Except he didn’t. Later that year he conceded it was an ex-pat City of London-based analyst called Kevin Gardiner who used the term in a Morgan Stanley report published […]
Fine Gael learns the wrong lessons from the Charleton Tribunal report by Frank Connolly The almost hysterical reaction of her former colleagues to the finding by Justice Peter Charleton that Frances Fitzgerald had done nothing to warrant her resignation from the cabinet in November 2017 is little short of mind-boggling. Instead of focusing on […]
HAS SPOOK-TURNED-THRILLER WRITER DAME STELLA RIMMINGTON FORGOTTEN WHAT IS IN MI5’s TOP SECRET FILES? Dame Stella Rimmington has just published another of her bestselling Liz Carlyle spy yarns The Moscow Sleepers in time for the Christmas market. In it, the redoubtable Liz is set against some very nasty men from Russia. This has all been […]
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EU Digital Copyright Directive aims to reward content providers but overreaches on ordinary web users By Laurence O’Bryan Our world is experiencing a cathartic period of change, thanks to the internet and social media. The President of the United States uses Twitter to rally popular support among his base, including people who believe, as he […]
A Life Derailed, Part 1 of the Story of Alan Kerr; By Joseph de Burca. INTRODUCTION Alan Kerr was sexually abused by three men at Williamson House, a Belfast Corporation Welfare Department care home in Belfast. He was only six years of age when it started. One of his abusers was Eric Witchell, the Office-in-Charge of […]
The rage of London at the moment is a self-consciously anonymous blog called “The secret barrister” which is an exposé of the profession of a criminal barrister and indeed of the criminal justice system written by a junior counsel specialising in criminal law. This blog aims to provide a fly-on-the-wall view of the criminal […]
SIR ANTHONY BLUNT, BRITAIN AND MI5’S ARCH TRAITOR, WORMED HIS WAY BACK INTO THE GOOD BOOKS OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE BY PROVIDING THEM WITH DETAILS OF A PAEDOPHILE NETWORK IN IRELAND OF WHICH HE WAS A MEMBER AND WHICH THEY LATER EXPLOITED FOR BLACKMAIL AND DESTABILISATION PURPOSES. THERESA MAY YET CLINGS TO POWER WITH THE AID […]
The revelation that the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has failed to disclose “relevant material” to the Commission of Investigation into its controversial sale of its 11.5 billion (£1.24 million) Project Eagle loan portfolio in the North in 2014 will not come as any surprise. Many NAMA watchers have been wondering how the Commission, headed by […]
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Mr Eddie Sheehy and Village The Press Council of Ireland has decided to uphold an appeal by Mr Eddie Sheehy that two statements complained about in an article published by Village in March 2018 were inaccurate and therefore a breach of Principle 1 of the Code of Practice of the Press Council of […]
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by David Langwallner I-am-a-lawyer. I’ve said it. You may feel that positions me on the level of an amoeba or vermin but I believe I am ethical, professionally competent, creative and that I and many of my colleagues often do good things fighting on behalf of the voiceless and the victimised. But I must […]
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Born “Alex” in Manhattan in 1964; son of largely absentee father, Stanley Johnson who later became a Tory MEP and leading champion of EU environmentalism