frankarmstrong The significance of Joe Duffy (Liveline, June 26, 2023) insisting that Ryan Tubridy (from 12.30) “really is a unique talent” should not be overlooked. It isn’t simply that Joe and Ryan (along with a host of RTÉ’s household names) share Noel Kelly as an agent. It also reveals Joe’s interest in maintaining a near-feudal pay … Read more
Last November, in one of his final outings as Taoiseach, Micheál Martin delivered the annual Romanes Lecture at Oxford University. It’s unusual to find a senior Irish politician laying out a political philosophy, and for this he deserves credit, even if I take issue with his claim to occupying a ‘liberal’ middle ground. It reveals … Read more
Covid is a nightmare from which we are still trying to awake. But whether the unprecedented response represents a singularity, or the beginning of an era of authoritarian capitalism, is unclear. Many of us remain incapable of distinguishing a reliable version of reality from lonely projections. Thankfully, telling insights arrive in a new publication: The … Read more
We are sodden with fake news, hyped-up and incomplete information, and false assertions delivered non-stop by our daily newspapers, our televisions, our online news agencies, our social media, and our President. Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir, New York (2018) I doubt there are many career guidance counsellors now advising school leavers to become journalists. … Read more
A new book COVID-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK (Bloomsbury, 2023) co-authored by Fred Cooper, Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose explores how the British government under Boris Johnson used shame as an instrument of coercive control during the pandemic. ‘Shame’, the authors contend, ‘is commonly understood to be a personal … Read more
Irish Times health correspondent Paul Cullens reported on February 13, 2023 that a disturbing 1,300 patients had ‘died over the winter as a result of delays in hospital admission from emergency departments, according to an analysis of Health Service Executive data.’ This followed a longer article by Cullen the previous Saturday exploring what is driving … Read more
In 1841 the population of county Leitrim stood at 155,297. By 1901, however, it had fallen to 69,343, dropping further to 41,209 by 1951, before reaching a nadir of just 25,057 in 1996. The 2022 census records a population of 35,087 – a significant increase, but still a staggering 77% reduction on the 1841 figure. … Read more
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime (2018) by the recently deceased French philosopher Bruno Latour points to a conspiracy theory perpetrated by elites since the 1970s to conceal the true nature of climate change. Latour argues the intervening period, associated with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, ‘was initially marked by what is … Read more
According to the recently deceased Kevin Higgins: ‘Poets may be divided into three types: those of us who must be and are, or have been, suppressed, at least until after we are dead; those whose subject matter is so commonplace/banal that it doesn’t matter either way; and then those who become pure decorations of the … Read more
Despite all the controversies in the run-up, and as with the last World Cup in Russia, most people are now looking beyond the politics, and enjoying the feast of football. For many of those attending sporting fixtures, this is akin to performing a religious duty in a secular age. The rest of us generally slouch … Read more