Will no one shout stop as the MetroLink bill heads past €20bn?
The scandal that is MetroLink illustrates everything that is intellectually rotten in modern Ireland. Across 30 or 40 years, hundreds of millions have been wasted on a project or, more correctly, a series of different versions of a project, to build some form of underground rail system for Dublin. Before a shovel is put in the ground, […]
Trump wants to divide, destroy and subjugate the EU into a continent of economic vassal states
To call Volodymyr Zelenskiy‘s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office a “shouting match”, as many commentators managed to whitewash it, is a lie. It was a unilateral, vicious, premeditated political ambush – a mugging aimed at the political destruction of Zelenskiy in the eyes of the world – and in the eyes of his own people. […]
So far the grotesque reality of Trump’s ambitions has exceeded all the worst predictions
Having written articles about the rise of Donald Trump over the last decade, I have learned that the grotesque reality of his politics often exceeds the imagination of most people. Consider for a moment what readers of this column would have made of an article written five years ago predicting that Trump would soon threaten […]
Rotation of senior Government ministries does not serve the Irish public
Recently a senior and experienced political activist in one of the major parties in government remarked to me that he feared that this could well turn out to be the worst partnership period for those two parties. You might think that with ideological differences no wider than a cigarette paper dividing them and a clear […]
England is mired in self-doubt and disillusionment – but Ireland can’t afford to gloat
The English Patient is a much feted film adaptation by Antony Minghella of Ondaatje’s novel of the same name. Its title, however, has a worrying contemporary resonance. All is not well with England. Its media are increasingly crowded with pessimism and self-doubt. This week the London Times published polling data suggesting that England’s younger generation, […]
Beware the phoney, flaccid consensus on events such as Storm Éowyn or Covid
It is often said that hindsight is 20:20 vision. But sometimes I wonder whether that is true. Retrospective consideration of major public issues is frequently distorted by a desire on the part of those conducting inquiries and assessments to safeguard themselves politically or to justify what they did or did not do. To take a […]