It’s now 175 years since Charles Dickens published his phenomenally successful A Christmas Carol, in 1843 – so successful that it has almost come to define modern Christmas. It has spawned endless editions and many and diverse movie versions, and its allusions have gone into the language: we all know what a ‘Scrooge’ is, and…
President Michael D. Higgins spoke last weekend about the “scourge” of violence against women – there is a global campaign this week and next to halt this horrible offence. Who would disagree with him, or the purpose of the campaign? Gender-based violence – sometimes called domestic abuse, since it often takes place in the home…
Since I have little experience of academia, I cannot say whether Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor is acting judiciously in proposing to appoint female-only chairs to universities in Ireland. Some say that a 50-50 gender distribution needs an imaginative push with affirmative action, since women aren’t, apparently, being appointed in sufficient numbers to professorships. Others say…
What kind of a doctor is eager to perform abortions? Perhaps that’s a question for Health Minister Simon Harris. To be fair to the medical profession, I don’t think that most doctors do like to carry out abortions. Some may do so if they feel it’s called for, clinically, but most – in my experience…
Some years ago, when I was due to appear on a BBC television panel at this time of the year, the make-up girl, after powdering my face, went to pin a poppy on my lapel. The November poppy is, as most people know, a symbol of remembrance for the wartime dead of two world wars.…
“Keep the Poet” was a mantra used by some of Michael D. Higgins’ followers in the course of the presidential election. And the country has indeed kept the bard, although not without challenges (which is as it should be). And now that he is elected the steward of the nation for the next seven years,…
Everyone, it seemed, deplored Peter Casey’s rather unkind remarks about Travelling people being essentially a community which camps on other people’s land and has no genuine claim to a separate ‘ethnic identity’. Whether Travellers are a separate ethnic group is a matter of dispute. But it is certain that they are a disadvantaged group, and…
If present trends continue, the name “Mary” could soon become almost extinct. We’re told that Ethel, Sheila, Garrett and Herbert are already “extinct” Christian names because they are no longer recorded in the top 100 names given to babies. Just over 100 ago, according to Ancestry.ie, more than 11,000 girls in Ireland were baptised or…
Yes, we are all very concerned about climate change, as the UN (and Mary Robinson) directs us. But what is each of us going to do about it? One practical suggestion is that we should stop buying cheap clothes – and then throwing them away, since cheap attire, by definition, isn’t designed to endure. A…
I sense that there is rather more interest in electing (or re-electing) the President of Ireland on October 26 than there is in voting to repeal the single line in the Constitution which deals with blasphemy. This article (40.6.1.i) states that: “The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall…