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    I, Dónal Blake?

    Our new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD makes sure he gets out once a week, often to see a movie. Last year he went to see the English movie ‘I Daniel Blake’ directed by Mike Leigh. Discussing the movie at a Pobal conference he showed little sympathy for the plight of Daniel who, having suffered a […]

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    New morning for Ireland’s housing problems

    On 20 June the consumer advocacy group Right2Homes presented a National Co-Operative Bill to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. Supporting the bill was an expert panel including Edmund Honohan, Master of the High Court, homeless campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, academic Dr Rory Hearne of Maynooth University and other industry professionals. […]

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    The Health Halo: Marketing is killing us

    Several years ago I lectured in a management school in England. One of the classes I gave was on food marketing. I began the class by playing a clip from the then famous documentary, ‘Super Size Me’, where the protagonist Morgan Spurlock undertakes an extreme diet of McDonald’s-only food for a month to chart the […]

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    Henry Phelan: First Garda murdered

    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 […]

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    ‘Left’ now used for ‘liberal’ not pro-worker

    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, […]

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