Journalist, author, broadcaster
I spent ten days or so in Cairo at the start of this month. Here’s the first of a few articles I wrote while I was there, a news piece on the elections for the Scotsman. EGYPT’S ultra-conservative Islamist party plans to push for a stricter religious code after claiming strong gains in the first […]
From Irish Times comment pages, November 16. OPINION: SCOTLAND’S “SECRET shame” is anything but a clandestine affair these days. Between Uefa’s clampdown on repugnant chanting at Rangers and Celtic’s European nights and First Minister Alex Salmond’s pledge to “eradicate” bigotry, sectarianism in Scotland has never received so much attention. Speaking at the Scottish National Party’s conference […]
My article on joblessness among young Zambians, which was commissioned for the Guardian development journalism competition 2011. Dickson Kakoma has been sober for 10 months – ever since the night he almost lost his family, and his life. “I went drinking with a friend. He was driving us home when we started arguing. I grabbed […]
What Michael D’s victory in last week’s presidential election could – could – mean for Irish emigrants. From this week’s Irish Post. Last week, Michael D Higgins won by a landslide a vote for Ireland’s next president. Capturing 40 per cent of ballots cast, the Labour man comfortably topped the poll, with his nearest rival […]
The nascent ‘occupy’ movement currently spreading around the Western world is often traduced for lacking a clear, identifiable goal or a soundbite-sized rallying point. Indeed at one point during the Occupy Edinburgh demo in St Andrew’s Square Saturday afternoon – while a Mohawked punk in leathers was excoriating the coalition government in London – I […]
A couple of months back I was short-listed for the Guardian’s International Development Competition for a feature I wrote on attempts to improve farming practices in Malawi. As a consequence of this, I’m heading to Zambia on Sunday for a week to research a piece on youth unemployment for the paper. I’m going with an […]
This review of D.M. Leeson’s fascinating The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, September 2. The Black and Tans ‘have gone down in history as the British equivalent of the Turkish bashi-bazouks or the German Freikorps.’ A 10,000-strong police force scrambled from […]
This comment piece on the closing of the MOX plant at Sellafield appeared on Guardian.co.uk in August. Sellafield Mox nuclear fuel plant to close. It’s a headline that generations of Irish environmental activists, and government ministers in Leinster House, never thought they would see. After just 10 years of operation – and at the cost […]
From the Scotsman, July 26. In 1950, Ireland’s then minister for health, Dr Noel Browne, announced his intention to radically reform the former Free State’s ailing health service. For the first time, maternity care for all mothers and healthcare for all children up to the age of 16 would be delivered free of charge. Dr […]
This feature on Irish comics and the recession appeared in Fest magazine ahead of this year’s Fringe. “Why have estate agents stopped looking out the window in the morning?” begins a gag that has been doing the rounds in Dublin for the last 18 months or so. “Otherwise they’d have nothing to do in the […]