Category: Articles
The Political Cudgel
In a recent political podcast, Radicalisation and the Amplification of Extremism Online, the Irish Times make clear that they have no intention of allowing “Gemma O’Doherty or any of her supporters” on their current affairs podcasts. One would presume that...
Ir-ish: Michael Brendan Dougherty and Erosions of Éire
Nationalism usually does not spring from the meatheaded conviction that one’s nation is best in every way, but from something like a panicked realization that nobody in authority or around you is taking the nation seriously, that everyone is engaged...
Victory or Greed: Rejecting ‘Respectable’ Conservatism
The Irish people have possessed an indomitable will to endure. We have survived genocide and forced famine, rebellion and repression, invasion and suppression, plantation and a host of other evils employed by imperialists to destroy nations like our own. And...
Elections, Europe, and Irish Freedom: A Talk With Hermann Kelly
The European Union is not the immutable behemoth it once was. The political bloc, although once appearing to be seemingly invincible, is starting to show its cracks. Largely as a result of the 2015 migrant crisis, as well as the...
Central Bank Wages War on Dublin’s Cityscape
A relative oasis of tranquillity, Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance commemorates Ireland’s patriotic dead and provides some uplift in a benighted north inner city. Even if one has to step over half a dozen heroin addicts on the way there, through...
The Last Brexit from Brussels
It looks as if Britain is heading for a no-deal Brexit on the 31 October. This can only be avoided if the British Parliament either approves a withdrawal treaty or revokes the Article 50 notification; or else there is a...
The Neo-Progressive Empire
The Irish Independent recently ran a stark headline: “Not Enough Migrants to Keep Pay Down - Central Bank”. This claim came from the Central Bank’s July report in which they forecasted the effects of imminent full employment in Ireland. In...
Student Charges and USI’s Student Levy
With September looming, the annual news cycle has invariably turned to the perennial problem of student accommodation, or, more correctly, the lack of it. What is increasingly clear is that, with their eye-watering rents, the newly built purpose built student...
TCDSU Gears Up for Another Year of Activism
As the coming year approaches and the next set of Trinity Student Union officers dream up their big, world-changing ideas, which bare absolutely no relation to the University or its students, it seems like a good time to look back...
Introducing the Irish NGO Complex
The following is a multipart series examining the role of Ireland’s NGO (non-governmental organisation) sector in influencing journalism and policy formation, as well means to combat it. So far in the eyes of this author, criticism of the NGO lobby...