How did you feel about the election result? How happy did it make you feel? I think a lot of people went into the election with a slight feeling of resignation. There wasn’t much enthusiasm for the Government but not enough anger either to kick them out, and for many there was no viable, realistic…
Boys are more boisterous than girls. Are we still allowed to say that, or has it fallen into the category of forbidden thoughts and utterances? A new study is being undertaken in the French city of Strasbourg which believes that yes, boys are more boisterous, and this is a bad thing, and boys must be…
In case you hadn’t noticed, there are serious moves being made in the House of Commons to allow assisted suicide. Where Britain goes, we usually follow in due course. The bill to permit assisted suicide is not being sponsored by the new Labour Government, but by a member of the Labour party and there will…
It is as though the two referendums in March never happened, that is, the one on so-called ‘durable relationships’, and the other on removing the protection the Constitution tries to give to mothers in the home. That second one was long the target of feminist groups in Ireland, above all the lavishly State-funded National Women’s…
It’s a bit of a risk writing a column for a newspaper that comes out on a Thursday and assuming the General Election will have been called by the time you read it. But all the predictions are that Ireland will have its General Election on Friday, November 29, and Taoiseach Simon Harris will have…
The phrase “Ireland’s dark past” has well and truly entered the national consciousness. We come across it in articles, hear it on the radio, in TV documentaries, in movies and in general conversation. Our “dark past” used to refer mainly to the period from the foundation of the Irish State in 1922 until maybe the…
With a General Election coming up, various issues will come to the front of the public mind and one of them is bound to be immigration. It has been arguably the main topic of debate in the country for the last year or so and therefore it is fitting that the bishops have produced a…
Last week you may have been very impressed to see on the news footage of walking, talking, humanoid-type robots of the sort portrayed in science fiction movies down the years. The robots spoke with humans in a human-like way, carried out tasks like folding clothes, and even danced. The robots have been produced by a…
Could there be straws in the wind of a mini-religious revival underway, not so much here in Ireland (yet), but in countries like the United States? Recent data seem to show that among young American men in particular there has been a small uptick in the numbers regularly attending church services. Some opinion polls can…
How strong an affinity is there between Ireland and the Jewish people? I would say, little enough. As a country we do not have a history of warm relations with them. We have never had a strong Jewish presence in the country. In World War 2 we did not take in many Jewish refugees (mind…