Ireland's political and cultural magazine
The Garda is in trouble, morale is low and there are numerous investigations into alleged incompetence and cover-ups. Village has been to the fore in detailing these delinquencies. The purpose of this article is something different: to highlight through a not untypical case the extent of the duty and the dangers of service. Overall, 88 […]
I don’t like ‘-isms’,” War of Independence veteran George Gilmore once said to me. “Heaven save me from the Marxists!”, an exasperated Karl Marx is reputed to have exclaimed. “All the ‘-isms’ are ‘-wasms’ ”, was a witticism following the collapse of East European communism in 1991. Nonetheless ‘-isms’, ideologies of one kind or another, […]
I have spoken to Fred Holroyd from time to time. Holroyd worked with the British army and MI6 in Ireland, 1973-75, and has written a book about his experience ‘War without Honour’. Incredibly, British spies are still meddling with his post. Holroyd has furnished me with a photograph of an envelope he received from me. […]
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As the Tribunal of Inquiry into protected disclosures and Certain Other Matters prepares for its opening statement from counsel in mid-June, Peter Charleton must be wondering what he’s let himself in for. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Supreme Court justice initially agreed to chair a commission of inquiry, a much more sedate […]
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 higher class of liberal… somebody who believes in personal freedom, someone who believes in a political economy and in a free market as the best way […]
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The 2015 Summer refugee ‘crisis’ was the moment when refugees entered the European consciousness as an existential dilemma. Many European media asked if this influx represented the death of the Schengen line, the free travel zone and even of the European project. The pan-European furore that followed contributed to the Brexit vote. Indeed it is […]
In the foyer collected a curious mix of tattooed half-American lefties, millionaires, NAMA refugees, journalists, politicians and the plummy denizens of Dalkey. Interestingly there did not seem to be a presence from Ireland’s hard left or even soft left, though Eamon Ryan was there. What they were there for, surprisingly, was Senator Bernie Sanders, recent […]