I admit that my posting regime over the past few weeks has been about as consistent as Bertie Ahern’s explanations about his personal finances. The reason for my most recent radio silence can be attributed to a short holiday en famille on the wind-blasted Clare coast, where I managed to spend an entire week without […]
“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; […]
In July of 1982, just a month after the discovery of his body – hanging from some scaffolding under Blackfriars bridge – a London inquest ruled that Italian Banker Roberto Calvi had committed suicide. It was a verdict that raised eyebrows in England, and provoked disbelief in Italy. Calvi, known as ‘God’s Banker’ because of […]
An announcement from the Polish Government on July 31st 2007, halting work on a stretch of by-pass, hardly sent shock-waves round Europe. Work on the road round Augustow – in Podlaskie, the country’s easternmost province – will in any case continue either side of the Natura-2000-designated area in the Rospuda Valley. The spectacularly clumsy tactics […]
The Inner Life of Conflict It is customary to think of the Cold War as having been a post–World War II phenomenon, tersely strung between Stalin and Gorbachev. Whilst that may be so within a narrowly–defined system boundary, it is psychologically naive. To appreciate the wider and deeper perspective, we must inform our discourse with […]
There was quite a brooha, here, the other week in relation to an opinion piece written by Adrian Michaels in the Financial Times entitled Naked Ambition (brought to my attention by the eagle-eyed ,Shane Barry – thanks) The article focussed on the obsessive use of the female body in Italian television and advertising, and the […]
The differing approaches to major stories taken by RTE and the next largest media organisation in the state, Independent Newspapers, are highlighted in their respective coverage of yesterday’s tragedy, in which a couple in their eighties and their 40-year-old son were found dead in their farmhouse in county Wicklow.RTE seems to expect its audience to […]
It is challenge to the powers of empathy to squeeze out a tear over the fate of Baron Black of Crossharbour. Still, from an Irish judicial perspective, you might wonder whether the prospect of several decades in the clink for ripping off institutional investors and fellow plutocrats is a bit harsh. You would be hard […]
“I like it when they beat up students,” he confessed with a smile. I didn’t go so far but I agreed that in America, France and West Germany they had it too good and it wouldn’t do them any harm to get a bit of a kick up the hole. Who could this charming humanitarian […]