Ireland's political and cultural magazine
The idea for a television licence decoupled from ownership of a television, proposed by Fine Gael as long ago as the 2011 election campaign as a “content tax” or “public broadcasting charge to apply to all households and applicable businesses, regardless of the device they use to access content” has undergone several iterations since, but […]
Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’ knows a good story when it sees one and came across a doozy in the Irish Times on 20 March. Kitty Holland had interviewed Mary Higgins, CEO of Caranua (meaning ‘good friend’), the state organisation set up to provide continuing support for victims of institutional abuse. Higgins said that some abused people […]
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In the 1970s, climate scientists knew there was a link between CO2 and global warming, the cooling effects of sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere and even of Earth’s cyclic change of orbit around the sun, believed to be the precursor to the planet’s ice ages. Between the 1940s and 1970s was a period of global cooling […]
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The Garda appears to be stumbling from crisis to crisis. As Village was going to print Fianna Fáil was considering a vote of no confidence in its management and the Government had agreed a ‘root and branch’ review. It is now difficult to keep account of all of the controversies that the force has been embroiled […]
In certain circles it is still a compliment to say someone is civilised. Or for that matter a lady or a gentleman. Mostly, however the expressions are now notable for class undertones as if to be a gentleman was to be Bertie Wooster, to be a lady a badge of subservience. The word has been […]
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In the great pantheon of aggrieved minorities in the US, no other has been open to such unrestrained media hostility and acts of violence against its people and property, as the nation’s Arab-American community. Muslims have been repeatedly singled-out by successive presidential administrations for attacks against civil liberties, covert surveillance by the sprawling intelligence apparatuses […]
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The suppurating carcass of the proposed Anglo Irish Bank headquarters on North Wall Quay in Dublin became a symbol for Ireland’s economic collapse. Its original architects Traynor O’Toole Ltd – in what is best seen as a fitting gesture – eventually went bust. In plain view of all on Dublin’s regimented riverside, the country ogled […]
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Paul Muldoon is killing poetry