You Can't Say That

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What Dugin sees is a conflict between Western liberalism, which is intent on making liberalism global, (those who work towards this end he calls “globalists), and those countries such as Russia, China, and the countries of Islam, who don’t necessarily want to become liberal democracies. The West sees liberal democracy as the fulfilment of enlightenment values, which, to those who don’t want to…

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War Stories: Taking sides in a war the West is paying for.

War Stories: Taking sides in a war the West is paying for.

First Published March 2022 in Broadsheet.ie Jonathan Pie’s breakdown of how Putin essentially bought off Britain was really on the money. His post, “How Putin Weaponized London’s Greed” had the merit of pointing the finger back at the West in what is a kind of property investment style of appeasement of a dictator. Pie suggested that all Russian properties in Britain should be seized and used…

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The Blind Elite

Ordinary Joes By mid-week the taoiseach was insisting that FFG is not the “elite”, but were just ordinary Joes the same as everyone else.  Which might well be true in terms of fry-ups on Saturdays and a pint at the weekend, but the salaries of our top politicians, like our top civil servants, particularly in comparison to the minimum wage, combined with the cost of housing, the cost of renting…

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Cop26: The Half Life of a Politician's Promise

Cop26: The Half Life of a Politician’s Promise

Most people instinctively sense that when politicians start making promises they might as well be blowing up balloons. A politician’s promise has a half-life that can be counted in minutes and there is no reason to suppose that this will change relative to the importance of the issue at hand, in this case, climate change. It would be nice to be optimistic, but with capitalism married to…

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Student Accommodation: How The Establishment Exploits the Young

Student Accommodation: How The Establishment Exploits the Young

The student accommodation issue brings several ideas together into an interesting concurrence. When Leo Varadkar said that one person’s rent is another person’s income, you can only assume that this also includes student accommodation. However, students generally come from the wealthier families who can afford the fees, since free education is also an impossibility in the neo-liberal world.…

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Irish Diplomacy- Michael D. Higgins' Invitation

Irish Diplomacy- Michael D. Higgins’ Invitation

Just when Fine Gael had cleared the no-confidence vote in Simon Coveney, John Bruton, demonstrating how long a week can be in politics, burst from retirement to pick a fight with President Higgins. It all came down to a word, as so many things often do. The word in this case was “partition”, used in such a way as to suggest that its inclusion in the invitation sent to the president of a republic…

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Confidence in the Crony System

Confidence in the Crony System

This week’s confidence/no-confidence votes in Simon Coveney seem less about Coveney and more about confidence/no-confidence in the old ways of doing things. The taoiseach seems to be sub-consciously aware of this, since he has accused Sinn Féin of playing “Old style opposition politics”. As opposed, presumably, to the new style agreeable opposition politics mentioned on RTEs PrimeTime the week…

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Simon, Leo, Katherine, Dog-Washing and the Americanization/Corporatization of Irish Politics

Simon, Leo, Katherine, Dog-Washing and the Americanization/Corporatization of Irish Politics

And the new season kicked off with the reopening of the Zappone controversy, resurrected by what appears to be an internal Fine Gael leadership contest, with Varadkar one-upping Coveney by releasing text messages which his department had earlier refused to journalists under the Freedom of Information act. Labour TD Brendan Howlin, who was instrumental in drafting the Freedom of Information act,…

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Future's So Bright... News Roundup

Future’s So Bright… News Roundup

In a photo op the Tánaiste went tricking around with a concrete block, which he referred to as a “brick”. Later, hard hat still on, he turned his builder’s eye on twitter and decided it was actually a sewer. One whose passages he’s often seen to scuttle through, both as himself and in disguise. Speaking of building, Patrick Freyne had an excellent piece in the Irish Times about the small…

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Supporting Actors: residuals in the screen world.

Supporting Actors: residuals in the screen world.

There was an interesting exchange in the Dáil between Richard Boyd Barret and taoiseach Micheál Martin concerning the mysterious subject of actors’ residuals. (Link below.) Actors’ residuals are agreed percentage royalties due to the actor when a show is re-screened elsewhere. They are how some American actors become amazingly rich. American actors in television’s early days were getting screwed…

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The July 2021 By-Election and England's Loss.

The July 2021 By-Election and England’s Loss.

They say that by-elections don’t tell you much, but that certainly has not been the response of the various parties involved in the Dublin Bay South by-election. Fianna Fáil for instance were suitably informed by the event to begin quietly speculating about a new leader and rebranding the party as a genuine republican party, rather than the pallid acquiescent neo-liberals they’ve become in…

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Another Week In Ireland

Another Week In Ireland

This piece first published on Broadheet.ie, under the title “Freeloading”, June 8th 2021. Recently the Tánaiste had a pop at basic income. It was during a finger-wagging exercise on the need for Ireland to ratify the controversial CETA trade deal with Canada. Misrepresenting the situation, as he likes to do, he described Ireland as “laggards”, despite the fact that Ireland is among several EU…

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Online Trolls

I don’t always read the comments below my articles in Broadsheet.ie. Like a school inspector I turn up occasionally, unannounced. I’m often shocked by the insulting remarks some of the anonymous trolls post. Occasionally, I’m almost equally shocked by complimentary remarks. It can be a mood-altering experience. In general, your wiser to minimise contact with the output of online trolls, because…

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The Cuckoo Coup

Killian Woods’ explosive article in the Sunday Business Post (May 16th) revealing that the state invested in cuckoo funds that bought up hundreds of homes on behalf of investors, before ordinary people could get a look in, brings to a head the growing suspicion that the current government seems more inclined towards representing corporate interests than the interests of ordinary people.  Woods…

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RTE Investigates Homelessness: “Stuck In The Rough. ”

RTE Investigates Homelessness: “Stuck In The Rough. ”

Natalie. In a way it was fitting that the RTE Investigates programme on homelessness (RTE 1 Jan 19th) used a golfing metaphor for its title, “Stuck In The Rough”. Because, like golf, the game of homelessness is played by a higher class of person than those unfortunates placed under the microscope in the RTE documentary. There seems to be a core misapprehension in attempts to discuss…

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The Blog of Irish Journalist and Playwright, Eamonn Kelly

“You Can’t Say That” offers a jaundiced and often hilarious view of Irish political life and culture. 

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by Eamonn Kelly