Ireland's political and cultural magazine
By Niall Crowley. You would not immediately associate Phil Hogan, Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, with an interest in participatory democracy. However, last September he did set up a “Working Group on Citizen Engagement” as part of the voguish and typically bumptious ‘Putting People First – The Action Programme for Effective Local Government’. […]
By Sinead Pentony ‘Employment in construction is now just 37.5% of its June 2007 level but increased by 51,300 over the last six years in the areas of health and social work, information and communication, and education’. ‘The main policy measures aimed at increasing employment include the Action Plan for Jobs which aims to have […]
With employment rising, property prices on the mend, mortgages arrears stabilising, Exchequer returns surging and business and consumer confidence regaining pre-crisis highs, Ireland might easily be mistaken for an Asia-Pacific economic dynamo. Alas, once the official hullabaloo about the return to growth is stripped back to the bare facts, it becomes clear that Ireland is […]
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 Frank Armstrong ‘The term “gatherer-hunter” is less often used although more accurate’. ‘On a moral level, all animal use is the same. It is wrong’ ‘I believe that human beings can tolerate a small amount of animal flesh in their diet but there is no NEED for it’ What prompted you to become a […]