Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Result: C B+ on transparency; D on accountability. Not quite the democratic revolution we’d been promised. Political reform was high on the agenda of all political parties in 2011. In the heat of the worst economic crisis in the history of the state it was apparent to all that failings in our political structures were […]
Electi On Right, Villager thinks there’ll be a hung Dáil. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will struggle to work out whether they should coalesce, risking their exposure as ideological charlatans and the long-term growth of Sinn Féin. Another election within a year. The prognosis is tentative since around here there is no worse crime than […]
In 2011 we wrote in this space, “You would think from our recent history of some of the most notoriously bad governance on the planet, that we would have learnt that our political classes need to be replaced. In fact, this election time we see no new ideas”. Sadly democracy in Ireland needs an overhaul every bit […]
Enda Kenny has defied those detractors who have claimed for many years that he is not up to the job of leading the country. Or has he? His supporters claim that he has brought the country, and the economy, from the brink of complete meltdown to steady recovery and is now set to be the […]
University rankings are released every winter. It gives the media a few free stories. One or two universities go up the rankings, and one or two go down. University presidents rush out to the media to congratulate themselves and their staff on the hard work and innovation that led to the rise, how they are […]
The mammoth COP21 circus will folds its tent after Paris, on December 11th. Already, it’s been a record-breaker, with thousands of journalists and the largest ever gathering of heads of states descending on Paris for the two week jamboree. Conspicuously absent from the event were the tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of activists and demonstrators […]
The slaughter of 129 innocents in Paris by the so-called Islamic State (IS) instils, by its casualness, fear into most of Europe. It is a new venture and one which is likely to be repeated perhaps until it affects all of our daily lives adversely. But IS operates on many fronts. Another comprehensivist IS policy […]