An earlier version of this article was recently published in the Irish World newspaper, we commend the courage of the editor Bernard Purcell for doing so, but a week is a long time in politics and we felt it required updating and a short addendum on the possibility of a legal challenge. Indirectly, the failure … 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
In a recent article Frank Armstrong traces the historic decline in the population of Leitrim, triggered by the Famine of the mid-19th century. He notes that Leitrim County Council’s recent attempts to encourage people to buy and rehabilitate derelict cottages has been disappointing. This analysis is based on cogent statistical analysis. ESRI analysts have reached … Read more
I would imagine I am no different to many people in that I suffer from a degree of anxiety. Prior to 2019, this usually manifested in a mild degree of agoraphobia. I could manage a packed train or a bus whenever necessary, but concerts, bustling streets, or shopping malls were always places to be avoided. … Read more
Have you ever experienced that emptiness, that deep silence, that infinite ignorance following trauma? Well, I have. And let me tell you, it doesn’t always happen right away. Sometimes, you have to actually look past the first few weeks or months to feel it. You’ll eventually see it at some point, with support or not. … 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
Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has come to Upton Sinclair. The New York Evening World, 1906. Perhaps others, better acquainted with the genre, may argue to the contrary, but Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel … Read more
I immediately twitch with an almost intolerable discomfort when I hear the words freedom and equality. Alas, they have become quite meaningless. Let’s take freedom for starters. Where does such a notion come from? Freedom implies choice and yet we are offered so few, in this world or ours. For example, did you have a … Read more
The music was the code. It was the transliteration of the style. It was not giving a bollocks in a thoroughly musical manner. It was fuck this and fuck that and frankly fuck you. A rockety life came with the territory. You didn’t have to be Irish. Their England had been influenced by that Ireland … Read more
The London-based Irish Poet, Art-Activist, Musician and Psychogeographer, Niall McDeviit died at his home in North Kensington, London on Thursday September 29th 2022 aged fifty-five, after a short battle with cancer. Born in Limerick in February 1967, McDevitt moved to Dublin as a child. There he was educated at the Jesuit-run Belvedere College secondary school, … Read more