Junker’s swansong contained a few bombshells on tax and sovereignty that should make us sit up
True to form, Jean Claude Juncker combined theatricality and vacuous rhetoric as he addressed the European Parliament for his last “State of the Union” speech, entitled “The Hour of European Sovereignty”, on Wednesday. And true to form, the parliamentarians for the most part gave his rather elephantine swansong a standing ovation. Some of them, however, […]
Might Leo be tempted to go to the country on the 26th October?
With an impending presidential election on Friday 26th October, a very real question arises as to whether Leo Varadkar might be tempted to seek an early dissolution of the 32nd Dáil. There are many reasons why some think he might be tempted to do so. Firstly, the economy is doing well. Unemployment is low; employment […]
Will the visit of Pope Francis actually change anything?
When Francis returns to the Vatican, will he leave behind a different Ireland? Will he be returning to a changing institutional church? Does his visit amount to some form of watershed in the relationship between the Irish people and their state and and the Roman Catholic church? Or will his short visit amount to a […]
Time to stop the Metrolink madness – Autumn 2018 newsletter
Conservative and reactionary forces in the Roman Catholic church wonder whether the Pope is a Catholic
Pope Francis, despite his unflappable, affable demeanour, is locked in a bitter struggle with conservative and reactionary forces in the Roman Catholic church who have since conducted a sometimes-mutinous campaign to curb him. While hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics are eagerly and enthusiastically awaiting his visit, a vociferous minority of Irish church traditionalists, egged […]
Time to stop and reconsider the Metrolink madness
Tempted as I am to devote this column to the monstrous dishonesty of Donald Trump’s claim to have mis-spoken at Helsinki or to the Tory attempt to wriggle out of their Irish border backstop commitment, I prefer to let some dust settle on both of those matters and to deal with the Dublin Metrolink project […]