frankarmstrong My life’s ambition is to write a poem For you to quiver in ecstasy, Transcending the storms that have become For us a weakly reminder That all is not as it should be For a generation to come All out of shape without Any need for eugenics, Or medical scapegoats, As my face takes on … Read more
I yearn for Six Nations matches at this time of year. Despite my worthier self, I cannot take my eyes off a psychological drama and physical spectacle offering respite from interminable winter. The violence is terrible, but it seems life-affirming that these specimens can, for the most part, withstand the battering. At its best, it … Read more
Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb A fanatic heart. W.B. Yeats, ‘Remorse for Intemperate Speech’ (1931) With proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies, Irish elections tend to be colourful affairs. Debate rarely rises above the clamour of claim and counter-claim as … Read more
The intellectual decay associated with Jordan Peterson has provided the soil wherein Steve Bannon’s seedlings have germinated.
Today it is shameful to be unemployed and regarded as an achievement to sell oneself into part-time slavery, meekly accepting as natural that one is not free for half one’s waking hours. Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life – A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future (2015). With an Irish … Read more
Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film ‘Dr Strangelove’ dramatizes the still not-altogether-remote scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It begins with a deranged U.S. Airforce General, Jack D. Ripper, overriding Executive Command and ordering a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The Russians, unbeknownst to the Americans, have developed a deterrent – the Doomsday Machine – … Read more
Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers. Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university … Read more
The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘radical socialist manifesto.’[i] An historically warm relationship with Sinn Féin, Brexit neutrality, and lifelong commitment to the redistribution of wealth receive a cool reception in reports and commentary, while grossly inflated charges of Antisemitism within the Labour Party are threaded through articles.[ii] Yet the Labour leader … Read more
For anyone to become an opinion writer for the ‘paper of record’, the Irish Times, requires considerable ability. But does a particular viewpoint give an aspiring columnist a distinct advantage? It is said that if you’re not a socialist in your twenties you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative in your forties, … Read more
In 2015 comic Frankie Boyle penned a darkly titled article ‘What if David Cameron is an evil genius?’ Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, Boyle – citing plans to erase the Human Rights Act from U.K. law – wondered whether Cameron was, ‘A shrewd and malevolent psychopath who thinks two moves deeper into the game than any … Read more