Aitheasc an Uachtaráin Ruairí Ó Brádaigh don 85ú Ard-Fheis de Shinn Féin in Óstlann an Spa , Leamhcán , Co. Atha Cliath , 21ú agus 22ú Deireadh Fómhair , 1989 / Presidential Address of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh to the 85th Ard-Fheis of Sinn Féin in the Spa Hotel , Lucan , County Dublin , 21st and 22nd October 1989....." In the coming year we must present to the whole Irish people our framework of a federation of the four provinces of Ireland - in a post British withdrawal situation - with maximum devolution of power and decision-making to local level , with the complete separation of church and state and the building of a pluralist society and with neutrality and non-alignment in foreign affairs as the best hope for all the people of this island.This requires massive political and... Similar posts

Aitheasc an Uachtaráin Ruairí Ó Brádaigh don 85ú Ard-Fheis de Shinn Féin in Óstlann an Spa , Leamhcán , Co. Atha Cliath , 21ú agus 22ú Deireadh Fómhair , 1989 / Presidential Address of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh to the 85th Ard-Fheis of Sinn Féin in the Spa Hotel , Lucan , County Dublin , 21st and 22nd October 1989….. ” In the coming year we must present to the whole Irish people our framework of a federation of the four provinces of Ireland - in a post British withdrawal situation - with maximum devolution of power and decision-making to local level , with the complete separation of church and state and the building of a pluralist society and with neutrality and non-alignment in foreign affairs as the best hope for all the people of this island. This requires... Similar posts

What’s going on with the coalition behind Tom Elliott’s leadership bid? The Fermanagh South Tyrone MLA has poured cold water on rumours of merger with the DUP and kept his options open on the Conservative link.  Yet Ulster Unionist Chief Whip, and Elliott supporter, Fred Cobain, couldn’t resist attacking the Tories, suggesting that the UUP would be forced to make an alternative electoral pact with Peter Robinson and his party.Meanwhile rumours persist that discussions with the DUP about 'unionist unity', at senior levels, are ongoing. The contradictions don’t end there.  An intriguing little tussle is tucked away in the comments zone of an otherwise innocuous post on Mike Nesbitt’s blog. Nesbitt, the leading moderate in Elliott’s team, congratulates the Down GAA team... Similar posts

It seems that the decision of O2 to force all their customers towards online billing is causing a lot of concern for their customers. I wrote about this on Monday already, and here’s another readers e-mail. You might be aware that O2 are switching to online billing and will no longer send customers a bill by post, unless they ‘opt out’ of the service. I have no problem with online services personally (I am in my twenties and active online, and have access to high speed broadband) but I am thinking of older people here – my parents are O2 bill pay and do not have access to the Internet at home, how exactly are they supposed to keep an eye on what they are spending now? They were not even aware this was happening until I told them! I understand this... Similar posts

Still from 'Torture of Women' by Nancy Spero . . Torture of Women , Nancy Spero. Publ 2010, Siglio Press. The latest edition of Guernica Magazine includes a review of the Spring 2010 publication of Torture of Women by Nancy Spero. I am linking this review at the bottom of this small piece, along with a link to the publication notes. There is a Nancy Spero image on the site already, accompanying another piece. It is from the 1976 series of Torture of Women , based on the 125 ft piece by Spero. This Spring 2010 , Siglio Press published the work in book form in a 126 page clothbound edition which is reviewed at link by Guernica Magazine. “With an essay... Similar posts

As part of our continuing series of digging out the old stuff here’s another post. This one dates from some while back, well, 2006 to be honest. As I wrote at the time: Anyhow I like to flatter myself that I’ve heard it all, evidence that the moon landings were a hoax, evidence of alien activities on the moon and Mars, alien landings, the Nephilim as progenitors of civilisation (actually that one is great because if you have even a nodding acquaintance to the Fields of the Nephilim you can use them as the soundtrack to your browsing – ignoring the Lovecraftian nonsense on the second and third albums, like you base your lyrics on an invented mythos by a writer of early 20th century horror, natch!). But no. I was wrong, I really haven’t heard it all. Ever heard of the Expanding... Similar posts

If you’ve come here expecting a piece about fruit preserves then may I kindly ask you to fuck off, for what we’re talking about here is a film called Irish Jam. Starring Eddie Griffin, the guy from Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo, and Anna Friel, the actress that loves to do rubbish Irish accents. Eddie Griffin plays a -- actually at this point I’m just going to paste the information in from Wikipedia. Irish Jam is a 2006 comedy film starring Eddie Griffin. The plot centered around an African American who wins an Irish public house in a raffle, and has to save the village from the clutches of an evil landlord. Despite the bulk of the film being set in Ireland it was not filmed there, nor were the actors Irish, but English. The film was poorly received in the UK. In its... Similar posts

A couple of weeks ago I wrote here about my experiences as a born-again cyclist. You may recall that, the joys of this form of transport notwithstanding, I was somewhat disturbed by my fellow bicycle users. Maybe it’s time for an update. I am now pretty much a daily cyclist. In part I do this for the exercise, and in part because, particularly when there is heavy traffic, it really is a much faster way of going places in Dublin. But I am still completely amazed at my fellow road users. Before taking to the bike again, I kept hearing from other cyclists (and reading in the media) about the aggressive driving of motorists and their consistent failure to respect cyclists. And indeed there is some of that. Only yesterday I saw a driver swerve into the bicycle lane, forcing a cyclist to... Similar posts

To Ely, on a glorious September evening, to hear Nick Carr expound on his new book, The Shallows. The event was held in Topping & Company, a charrming independent bookshop on the High Street. The attendees were squeezed into a long, narrow room. Wine and soft drinks were served. The audience was predominately female, middle-aged or older and predictably middle-class. It was a quintessentially genteel, English occasion. Mr Carr gave a lucid, accessible talk about the main themes of the book (about which I have written here) and then threw the floor open to questions. These fell into two categories: (a) thinly-veiled opportunities for questioners to parade their qualifications, professions or obsessions; and (b) genuinely troubled inquiries about where all this networking... Similar posts

Maddy, Madeline or even Madeleine Smith. All three versions of her first name appear in Hammer literature, sometimes even inconsistently in one and the same article. For the sake of continuity I will stick to the most appropriate one: Madeline.... simply because that is the way she signs her own autographs.Anyone who thinks that the cult of being a celebrity just for celebrity’s sake (read: the likes of Jordan or Paris Hilton) was something recent, needs only to look at Madeline Smith’s career. Though she’s one of the ladies who managed the Hammer/Bond (Live and Let Die)/Carry On (Matron) hattrick, only Hammer – the studio that discovered her with Taste the Blood of Dracula - really took full advantage of her status and wrote reasonably large parts for her in The Vampire Lovers,... Similar posts

Next up in the Author In The Zone series is Marit Meredith.Marit Meredith was born and brought up in Norway, but travelled to London in 1972 on what was supposed to be what we now call a 'gap year.' She met her future husband weeks into her stay and married three months later. She settled into family life (six daughters, and now eight grandchildren, too) in a lovely little Welsh village where the Bard himself is supposed to have been inspired to write Midsummer Night Dream.Hi Marit. Welcome to the series. How long have you been writing?I’ve been writing ever since I could put a sentence together on the page. My essays were always read out in school – but of course, that was all in Norwegian. I started writing articles and readers’ letters in English, in my early twenties and it... Similar posts

Frank Kermode’s funeral took place yesterday in King’s chapel. It was a small affair (there will be a memorial service later) which was elegant, moving, celebratory and only slightly elegaic. I think he would have approved. Afterwards, there was a splendid tea in the Senior Combination Room. His friends Anthony Holden, Ursula Owen, Karl Miller and John Sutherland spoke, and Tony and Ursula read a couple of poems which seemed spot on for the occasion. I felt for both of them, for they had known and loved Frank more intimately and for longer than most of us, and these things are always, in the end, an ordeal. Tony chose to read the sonnet he’d written for Frank’s 80th birthday: Where once you were a name on spines of books Read, marked and learned in duly... Similar posts

In the long-running argument that sustains the conflict and character development for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the titular Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow volley claims to which one of them is ‘the Mary,’in the relationship; in other words, who is the cooler person.  They refer to the onscreen friendship between Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) and Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), one that spanned two sit-coms across a decade, along with a reunion show in 2000.  Problem is, Romy and Michele are not exactly Mensa candidates, so their skewed estimation gets it backward.  The true ‘Mary’ in the friendship was Rhoda, a woman who never whinged, mewled or blubbered; had a firm sense of self; a command of the acid comeback; mastery of the... Similar posts

With almost two years having passed since the Irish banks reached crisis point, it’s worth reflecting on how effective the government’s policies have been.  Here’s a piece I wrote for this month’s Business and Finance on this subject. I gave the government A for effort and D- for execution. Written prior to yesterday’s Anglo figure, the D- might have been generous.... Similar posts

I wrote a just over a week ago about Intel’s massive price cut of their i7 950 processors. It was due to drop from around $600 to under $300. A pretty unbelievable cash-saving that I think many people needed to see before they believed it. I already pointed out that U.K. retailer Overclockers.co.uk were/are taking pre-orders for the much talked about i7 950. But what about everyone else? Well, some good news for anyone in North America, Amazon.com has now officially slashed their pricing of the high-end chip. The Core i7 950 is now retailing for $308, down from $629 dollars a few days ago. For anyone that was holding off on their new gaming rig, this is a bolt of glorious lightening out of the blue. Now you can fit an i7 950 into your dream rig for half the price. It’s so... Similar posts

Basildon ParkIt is well known that many of the grandest English Georgian country homes were built with the poisonous fruits of slavery as “King Sugar” created a class of rich plutocrats in England. However there is probably an equal number built by those who in the days of the British east India Company made their fortunes in equally dubious circumstances in India arriving home with riches beyond imagining. Indeed one part of Berkshire along the leafy Thames Valley between Reading and Abingdon became known as Nawabshire, from the number of newly enriched returnees who settled there. Basildon Park was built for Sir Francis Sykes. Born in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1732, the son of a yeoman farmer, he left his native country to make his fortune in India. He joined the British East... Similar posts

So it has very recently come to my attention that someone in After Hours on boards wrote up something which grabbed the attention of the Redbrick crowd and others, and from which I managed to find it. I’m not going to post the link here, because the entire thing is purely fabricated, maybe for comedic effect, but the point still stands is that what is written is libellous towards me. I’m aware that I’ve never been the best people person during my life, it is something that I’ve had to work on since a young age, and only a few short years ago did I properly find out the cause and have it officially diagnosed. So there have been a few hiccups along the way with me trying to co-exist with the rest of society. But to read shit like that written up, particularly when... Similar posts

University of Ulster Professor of Politics,  Arthur Aughey,  made a thoughtful contribution to the  McCluskey Summer School on the future of Liberal/Progressive Unionism which is reproduced below.  Roy Garland and Dr John Kyle also spoke and I will post their speeches here if I can get copies of them. One of my old tutors, the political philosopher Bob Berki, used to argue that every political movement worth its salt needed both insight and vision. What is the insight of liberal/progressive Unionism? It is that the Union has no security unless Catholics too can feel secure in Northern Ireland and unless there is goodwill between North and South. What is the visionof liberal/progressive Unionism? It is that the United Kingdom remains the best arrangement for at once reconciling and... Similar posts

Things change quickly here. It’s seven years since I’ve been to East Africa, but even in 2003, things were moving quickly. My first visit was as a greenhorn 21-year-old, working for a tiny Tanzanian NGO. Those two months were among the most isolated of my life. Internet access was sparing and expensive, but fast where it existed. I wrote emails home in rough form on a .txt file, and took a floppy disc to the local internet cafe to copy and paste it home.  Mobile phones were non-existent. Land lines were appallingly bad, and exorbitantly priced for international calls. This was pre-Skype, if you can imagine that. Shocking stuff. Just two years later, in 2003, I came back for a sailing event sponsored by Safaricom, Vodafone’s Kenyan guise. I arrived in Arusha this time,... Similar posts