Journalist, author, broadcaster
This piece on why Irish emigrants deserve to vote first appeared in the Guardian’s Comment is Free on 22/01/2011. The debate then moved to the Irish Times, where I also wrote a piece, and I appeared on Today FM’s The Last Word talking about the need for Irish emigrants to be allowed to vote on […]
What a difference a day makes. On Tuesday evening, Brian Cowen celebrated after defeating a motion of no confidence in his leadership tabled by foreign minister and party colleague Micheál Martin. “The party is united behind Brian Cowen as leader,” declared Fianna Fail chief whip John Curran. But barely 24 hours later, the Irish premier’s […]
This feature on Irish migration to the UK was the lead story in the Sunday Business Post‘s Agenda magazine on 16 January. Standing at the edge of the McNamara Suite in the London Irish Centre, it’s difficult to believe you’re in cosmopolitan Camden town, and not a function room somewhere in Tipperary or Waterford. Well-thumbed […]
Since the terrible shooting of Gabrielle Giffiords at the weekend, much attention has – rightly – been focused on the rhetoric of the Tea Party in the US, and particularly Sarah Palin. We have now seen the cross-hairs in the target, listened to Palin’s inane talk of ‘blood libel’ and – rather smugly – told […]
At the weekend I travelled down to the London for the UK’s first Netroots conference. There are already been plenty of reports on the day’s proceedings elsewhere on the web, from the Guardian and Total Politics to Red Pepper and Counterfire….so surely another one won’t hurt. On the whole it was a useful day – […]
Review of Julie Hill’s new book the Secret Life of Stuff appeared in the Sunday Business Post on January 9 Economic growth is always a good thing, right? Not according to the New Economics Foundation. In January 2010, this left-leaning British think-tank warned, in the aptly-titled Growth Isn’t Possible report, that the prevailing orthodoxy of […]
Among the many inscriptions on the Canongate wall at Holyrood, it is a terse Scottish proverb that sums up the reality of political life in the Scottish Parliament better than any bon mots from Hugh MacDiarmid or Norman MacCaig: ‘To promise is ae thing, to keep it is anither.’ Despite the enthusiasm that greeted its […]
Last week a BBC Radio 3 scheme looking for “a new generation of public intellectuals” closed. Initiated in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the scheme aimed to unearth a new wave of public thinkers with an expressed “interest in broader cultural debate”. The competition was open to all – as long […]
Last Monday morning, as Green Party leader John Gormley sounded the coalition’s death knell at a press conference in Dublin, my mind immediately turned to one thing: the general election that will, sooner or later, take place back in Ireland. ‘Will be interesting to see how many ex-pats go home to vote. I definitely will,’ […]
AS ANY counsellor knows, acknowledging the existence of a problem is the first step to solving it. Unfortunately when it came to Ireland’s banking crisis, the ruling Fianna Fail-led coalition chose to remain firmly in denial until the contagion had spread out of control. As recently as Wednesday, finance minister Brian Lenihan told the nation […]