Should we moralise – or take a moral view – on the public behaviour of persons thrust into the public limelight? A recent global event has produced a wide range of varying responses to such an occurrence. At a concert in Massachusetts, where the musical group Coldplay was performing, a couple were caught on camera…
So, young people aged 16 and over, in Northern Ireland, will forthwith be entitled to vote, as Keir Starmer’s government lowers the voting age all over the United Kingdom. It’s quite probable that a similar change will be introduced in the Republic, where the voting age currently stands at 18. There’s been much discussion as…
So, do we lament, or celebrate, the fact that a thousand more Irish pubs, all across the country, are predicted to close over the next decade? Or that, already, more than 100 pubs close each year in Ireland – 150 have shut down in the first quarter of this year alone? For those in the…
If there is one person who should be involved, at the highest possible level in Middle East peace talks, it is surely the Leitrim-born mediator Oliver McTernan. Oliver is often heard on RTÉ and on the BBC commenting on the agonising Gaza-Israeli conflict. His balanced, measured, and knowledgeable words are much respected in the broadcast…
The crowds poured out of the trains arriving in Dublin last Saturday, evidently making for the ‘Gay Pride’ march in the capital. The rainbow colours were everywhere, and costumes ranged from the exotic to the unremarkable, and in age from tots to grannies. The atmosphere reminded me that there is a kind of joyfulness in…
Usually, when a child is born, people rejoice. Victor-Hugo even wrote a famous poem about it – “Quand l’enfant paraît” – describing the admiring circle of family and friends appearing around a new life. But in the case of an infant boy in Georgia, US, named ‘Chance’, his recent birth has been hailed by one…
For a quarter of a century now, the ‘grooming gangs scandal’ has rumbled on in Britain – as report after report emerged about young white girls being sexually abused by older males, these being mostly from Pakistan. From Rochdale, Oldham, Bradford, Telford, Huddersfield, Rotherham, Birmingham, Oxford came accounts of thousands of youngsters, some aged 12,…
I was unable to view RTÉ’s recent programme Housewife of the Year, because I am not presently in Ireland, and the RTÉ player doesn’t allow access to viewers outside the State. So, I won’t comment on the quality or content of Ciaran Cassidy’s documentary, which examines RTÉ’s Housewife of the Year TV contest, running from…
I am as apprehensive of Artificial Intelligence as the next person, and the notion of robots governing so much of our lives is worrying. How many jobs will be lost when AI does everything from accountancy to keyhole surgery? Will authors and writers lose control of their own texts once AI can compose words as…
One of Pope Francis’s critiques of modern society was that too many people prefer to have animal pets rather than children. In 2014, he described this trend as “selfish”, and returned to the theme in 2022, when he called it “a denial of fatherhood and motherhood” that “takes away our humanity”. Well, the pattern has…