I seem to be one of the few people in my circle of friends and family not to be a fan of the Channel 4 programme, Grand Designs. Sure, it’s a cut above the usual celebrations of real-estate avarice, such as Property Ladder and the noisome Location, Location, Location (or is it now Relocation, Relocation, […]

From Saturday’s Irish Times review of Susan Sontag’s final collection of essays: “Sontag incurred disproportionate approbrium for her initial reaction to the events of September 11, 2001” I suppose it would also be disproportionate to ask the sub-editor who overlooked a howler like “approbrium” (opprobrium + approbation?) to submit to a yakuza-style yubitsume ritual? These, […]

I sometimes mutter to myself when some bewigged windbag is described “as one of the finest legal minds of his generation.” Given the absence of any real benchmarks for performance at the Irish bar, such a description can be charitably interpreted as describing a barrister who loses less than 50% of his or her cases. […]

Some thing I have thought about, like , in the past fortnight:     1. The low standard of Irish politicians is merely the product of the low standards of the electorate. From last week’s Western People: “Mayo, it seems, remains loyal and steadfast in it’s [sic] support of the Flynn Dynasty, as Independent Beverly looks odds […]

In the wake of Ireland’s astonishingly unexpected win over Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup, drawls can be heard throughout the bosky suburbs of Dublin proclaiming “You know, I could delivery a pretty mean googly before the rugger took up all my time.”Meanwhile, the angst of Pakistan’s defeat has been compounded by the death of […]

Adam Curtis‘s documentary “The Trap – What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom?“, shown on BBC2 last Sunday, presented the thinking person’s conspiracy theory.  Think Don DeLillo rather than Dan Bown. So rather than arguing that Opus Dei covered up Mary Magdalene’s male drag act or sputtering that the Carlyle Group masterminded 9/11, Curtis suavely […]

Last night BBC4 screened an solid documentary on the decline of New York City during the 1970s, a steep fall from grace that culminated in the infamous blackout/riot of July 13-14, 1977.The programme offered a survey of some of the factors that brought Gotham to its knees: the collapse of a once-dynamic manufacturing base, the […]

I spent last weekend Liverpool–the absence of postings this week can be partially explained by the fact that I was there for my brother’s stag party.  The quote of the weekend was innocently uttered by a member of our party while watching Saturday’s Liverpool-Man U clash in a cavernous drinking emporium somewhere off the main […]

Over at The Sigla Blog, Sinéad Gleeson gives Sophia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette a brief but unambiguous mauling (“overblown, dull.”)Although I’m not that pushed to defend this glossy confection, I found its languorous depiction of Versailles as a sort of John Hughesesque high school mildly diverting. My indulgence might have been prompted by watching it on a […]

From today’s Indo: TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern said yesterday that “aggressive secularism” had no place in modern pluralist Ireland.Mr Ahern was inaugurating a Church-State forum which he described as representing “a new and important strand in the civic and political culture of the State”. […]”There is a form of aggressive secularism which would have the State […]