The BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our Time, presented by Melvyn Bragg, is a perfect show for a bluffer like me, as it covers some weighty topic, such as the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes or China’s Warring States period, in a cut-to-the-chase 30-minute format. Bragg is an able moderator, asking questions that a reasonably […]
On Morning Ireland today there was a short piece previewing tonight’s Prime Time Investigates programme on lending practices in Ireland. It seems that one of the reasons why financial institutions are so eager to shower us with cash is that the punishment for bad debtors can end up like something out of a Dickens’s novel. […]
From page 41 from the 700+-page charge sheet against Charles J. Haughey that is the Moriarty report:”The reference to a debt of honour outstanding free of interest in the sum of �110,000.00 to be paid within a reasonable time throws an interesting light on the true meaning of both the letter and the terms of […]
More from the censors’ archives: “At the start of December the editors [of the local newspaper] enthusiastically took to rehabilitating Santa Claus. At least one front page article devoted to this oh so important question was planned… The editors’ plan to completely rehabilitate Santa Claus was foiled by the censor. Two articles and three plates […]
As fears over the impact of climate change mount (the Arctic to be ice free by 2040?), we are being barraged with messages to change our ways. Various concerned parties (many of them, oddly, large oil companies) tell us: enough with the frivolous short-hop flights, how about a hybrid?, and turn the damned lights off […]
Online poll question over at RTE.ie:”Are you concerned about the level of gun crime in Ireland?”Would a “no” seem a bit complacent?
Professor Maria Janion, a distinguished Polish scholar, is eighty this Christmas and, Poland being a country which — though it publishes interviews in Playboy with Boris Szyc (pronounced “shits”) where he gets to say rude words a lot — still takes scholarship seriously, this week’s Polityka has a tribute to her. Of the tribute-payers, only […]
The recent political sex-scandal here has brought the primitives crawling out of the woodwork. We have been reminded of such pearls of wisdom from the Polish political classes as “how can you rape a prostitute?” (In fairness to Poland’s backwoodsmen, no one has quite equalled Putin’s congratulating of the Israeli president.) But such primitivism is […]
A spectre is haunting the Web–the spectre of the comeback. The off-hand comment and the casual dismissal will be noted, and, if erroneous or slipshod, you will sooner or later be brought to book. For example, several weeks ago, I made a fairly niggling criticism of Claire Messud’s novel, The Emperor’s Children, on the basis […]
The Grauniad and the Torygraph both feature stories about the Rt Rev Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, who apparently became rather tired and emotional after attending a Christmas drinks function at the Irish Embassy in London. According to eye witnesses, the bishop was afterwards found in the back seat of someone else’s Mercedes, chucking […]
