Shane MacGowan will be laid to rest today in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. MacGowan will of course go down in history as one of the great Irish poets and his death will provoke many previously unfamiliar with his wider writing to look beyond ‘Fairytale of New York’ and into the treasure-trove of great songs that can be found on albums such as ‘If I should fall from grace with God’ and ‘Rum, Sodomy and the Lash’. A 1997 BBC documentary on ... Read more...

The plan to send refugees to Rwanda is going to be one of those points that future historians will point to as the moment the UK Conservative Party completely lost its mind. In some ways, the idea is brilliantly original. Why bother trying to make your way across the English channel if there is a chance you will end up rotting in the room in Rwanda? But the practicalities of it all mean it is likely never to happen. The ... Read more...

David Moane is retired, in his sixties, and has lived in Dublin most of my life. He’s an avid consumer of Irish and British media and writes in a purely personal capacity about how the Republic has changed in his lifetime. I remember our accession to the EEC in 1973, the long terrible saga of the Northern Ireland (NI) conflict, the turbulent 1980s, the Celtic tiger years (c1995 to 2010), the Crash years (2010-15) and since then the remarkable recovery. ... Read more...

When writing this post, I quickly checked the Slugger archives to see if I had used the headline ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ before. And true enough, I did this time last year. Last year’s post was about strikes, and not much has changed. This time, it is the turn of transport workers who plan more strikes on Friday, December 15 and continue on Saturday, December 16. Another 24-hour strike will take place on Friday, December 22, with ... Read more...

From the BBC: An east Belfast woodland was cut down by accident in part due to ineffective communication, Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIE) has said. A local councillor told BBC News NI around 170 trees and saplings in Orangefield Park were cut down in error. The instructions given to NIE said the trees should only have been trimmed. NIE has said it will restore the woodland and will introduce new procedures. On Thursday, councillors at Belfast City Council will be ... Read more...

Dear Jeffrey, Like you, I believe that the interests of the people of Northern Ireland are best served by remaining within the United Kingdom. The cultural, economic and social ties with Great Britain offer both stability and unique opportunities. While there are many factors which support this position, time and again opinion polls indicate that foremost among them is the NHS. The promise of universal healthcare free at the point of need is the strongest incentive to be a UK ... Read more...

From the BBC: Stormont’s first and deputy first ministers should be renamed joint first ministers, a Westminster committee has said. The proposal is part of a report by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee into power-sharing government. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has said it has “grave concerns” about the recommended reforms. But Sinn Féin said it was time to learn lessons from what has and has not worked since the Good Friday Agreement. The committee made the recommendations following an ... Read more...

Time was when the Home Countries Championship, then the 5 Nations, and then the 6 Nations was the be-all and end all of international rugby. It is still the bread and butter of the participating Unions, funding all their other activities. The World Cup has only been with us since the advent of professional rugby and cost the IRFU a net €9 Million this time around. Without the 6 Nations, professional Irish rugby could not survive.  Now the Captains of ... Read more...

Women in Northern Ireland are twice as likely to be murdered as a result of domestic violence than in the other UK nations. In some years, almost half of Northern Ireland murders are connected to domestic violence. In the 2022/23 year, of 17 homicides there were eight that resulted from domestic violence against women. Northern Ireland is also an outlier in international terms. While Finland has the highest rate of femicide by a partner, Northern Ireland is joint second with ... Read more...

The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like. Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.

In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break. So discuss what you like here, but no politics.

“We’re not Brazil, we’re Northern Ireland!” chant the Northern Ireland football fans, highlighting that in that context they are also distinct from Scotland, England, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. So, begs the question, who are we as a people that share our part of these islands called Northern Ireland? A good place to start is found in the words of the Ulster poet, John Hewitt in a debate in the Irish Times on the 4th of July 1974, (The ... Read more...

No one should have been surprised when it was announced today that we’d lost Shane MacGowan, aged 65. He lived a worse lifestyle than Keith Richards, and we hadn’t heard from him musically in what seemed like decades. Plus his partner Victoria posted some photos recently that showed a man in terrible health. But I was still shocked. Some people seem like they’ll always be there. Obviously, I’m from a very different background from Shane and would have a very ... Read more...

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams “Well, if the vote is for Brexit things will be more interesting.” “Facts don’t matter”. “When I offered them my contact book, none were interested. Young journalists these days are only interested in a 9-5 job job which involves taking no risks.” These are all off record quotes from local working journalists ... Read more...

Things seem to go from bad to worse for Elon Musk’s disastrous purchase of Twitter. He paid $44 billion for the site last year, and its value keeps dropping. The estimated value was $15 billion during the summer, but it has declined even further, probably to $5-10 billion. He really is the architect of his misfortune as he implements one terrible idea after another. Twitter’s primary value was its brand, so no one understood why it was renamed X. It ... Read more...

Last Thursday morning I sat down to write a blog in which I was aiming to argue that Ireland (the Republic) had been hugely successful in integrating a large number of immigrants over the past 20-25 years, and that this tolerant, multicultural – and economically dynamic – society was one which open-minded Unionists should not be afraid of, and might even (in the fullness of time) consider joining. But early that afternoon a man with a knife attacked and stabbed ... Read more...

The UK Covid19 Inquiry, promised by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the early days of the pandemic, is meeting and pouring over what happened with a view of learning lessons for next time. And yes, there will be a next time. Science and politics are on the stand and both are coming under intense scrutiny. Its terms of reference; “to examine, consider and report on preparations and the response to the pandemic in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern ... Read more...

Two things coincided this week that led to this piece. The first was Thursday’s violence in Dublin. The second is the fact I’m about two thirds through Graham Linehan’s autobiography in which he details his fall from grace and into career isolation following his emergence as a critic of transgender ideology. Two very distinct issues but they had one thing in common, the use of language as a basis for avoiding debate of the issues underpinning both. Arnold Carton touched ... Read more...

Last week I had the good fortune to see my prediction of a clean sweep for all the provinces come true but warned that tougher weekends lie ahead. This week my predictions (for the Irish Rugby Fan Forum) were altogether more pessimistic, and unfortunately came true again.  Leinster 21  Munster 16   Prediction: Leinster win, although they won’t have it all their own way.  Munster certainly put it up to a Leinster side containing 14 world cup players in their starting ... Read more...

In the 1970’s there was a catchy Joe Jackson single with the lyric “Don’t you know that it’s different for girls?”. People back then already knew that females had a different experience of sex and relationships and the song surprises us by inverting our expectations. What is the connection between this and the Dublin Riots? For approx. 30 years I worked in the same large secondary school with approximately 45 teaching staff and like all large schools we employed roughly ... Read more...