Ireland's political and cultural magazine
By Kathleen Lynch. The impact of rising economic inequality on inequality in education is profound, especially over time. Education is essentially a competition for advantage in an unequal society. Those who have most resources and wealth, outside of education, can and will use it to gain advantage for their children within schools and colleges. Under-resourced […]
Little Emperors Few, except environmentalists, will miss China’s one-child policy Ken Phelan ‘In September 2013, Liu was taken to the Peopleʼs Hospital of Fangzi District, where she was administered a drug to abort her unborn foetus. She was six months pregnant’ ‘The Little Emperors are Chinaʼs future, single-minded and resolute, and may not be quite […]
Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation Michael Pollan Penguin, New York, 2013 ‘before our ancestors learned to cook they would have had to devote fully half their waking hours to the act of chewing. Cooking gave our species an extra four hours a day’ ‘Pollan seemed to be saying: “just go to a farmers’ market […]
RTÉ and other media celebrate the current doomed agricultural model as sacrosanct. By Frank Armstrong No journalist can claim impartiality. We arrive from different vantages, preferences and predilections. To deny this displays a lack of awareness of the specificities of time and place, and encourages fixed ideas in our understanding of the world. It is […]
By Maggie Armstrong. One of the wallflowers in Woody Allen’s ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ notes the danger that we “fall in love with the artist, not the man”. With the artist Guggi, the opposite seems to be the problem. Nearly everyone, most lastingly Bono, falls for him, the man that is. Europe fell for him […]
Cosy cartel if not secret society, Aosdána is an independent group which serves itself from without the bursary system administered by the Arts Council. Since its founding in the 1980s the primary function of Aosdána has been to ensure its membership continues siphoning off the cnuas – a pass-affording Gaelic term, they all are – […]
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Hunched into the summit of a steep drumlin close to Glaslough village is Donagh old graveyard. Like many old ecclesiastical sites called Donagh, which means church, it is believed to be of Patrician foundation. Less than 15 miles from Armagh, where St Patrick was based between 440 and 490 AD, this lofty site in the […]