The Israel-Iran phoney war took a dramatic turn last week when Transport minister Shaul Mofaz said that if Iran’s nuclear weapons programme continues, Israel will attack. Mofaz is one of three deputy Prime Ministers with pretensions to the current incumbent Ehud Olmert’s position. Though Israel attacked Saddam’s Iraq in 1981 in similar circumstances, the […]

You Are Going Nowhere, Sonny Jim. Stitch That!
Did you read in the crappy English newspapers about how the atheist communist leader of Manchester United, Sir Alex-Fergulson, has been making the disparaging remarks about Real Madrid, accusing it of moral bankruptcy because of its success during the glorious Franco period, a time when, he seems to […]

Following developer Bernard McNamara’s decision to pull out of several regeneration projects proposed under a Public-Private Partnership arrangement with Dublin City Council, there has been some speculation regarding the future of another McNamara project. The Leargas consortium headed by McNamara - which also includes international prison operators GSL and Barclays Private Equity - has […]

You can almost smell the sense of anticipation!
The big news in Spain this week was that a butcher in Pontevedra name Marcelino is winning a million and a half euro in the Primitiva lottery, thereby doubling the gross regional income of Galicia in one stroke. As you can see in the video I have […]

What a good news week for Fianna Fail was last week. It wasn’t just the latest Irish Times poll even if it’s only a honeymoon result. There was also that report– the ESRI’s Medium -Term Review: a little rough patch and then clear skies and calm waters for . . . well until 2025 minimum. […]

Some films benefit from a second viewing; for my own part, among those that I didn’t ‘get’ first time round are classics such as Repulsion, Vertigo and Heaven’s Gate, films that I now view as undeniably great. But when I got wind, a couple of years back, of Michael Haneke’s intention to remake his horror […]

Artur Boruc Knows the Score: Is 3-2.
Did any of you see last week the Hard Firm match between Glasgow Celtics and Glasgow Rangers? Wasn’t it rubbish? The football was shite and there was no atmosphere. However, there was an especial significance to the match which only those in the know will have appreciated, which […]

That ol’ red herring - Labour’s links with trade unions - is raising its head again. Kevin Rafter suggests the Party’s 21st Century Commission (an internal review body) should:
‘ . . . look at Labour’s relationship with the trade union movement.’
Mr. Rafter likens this relationship to that which the State used to have with religious […]

The latest travesty from the Zapatero circus which we laughingly call the government is the news that the pregnant minister for defence, who is a woman (but not a lady), has imposed strict censorship on staff which prevent them from surfing the Internet while they are at work in order to look for the football […]

Shane Coleman doesn’t believe. CORI recently published its exhaustive Socio-Economic Review 2008 - a 240 page report detailing all aspects of poverty in Ireland. Contained therein was the startling fact that there are over 720,000 poor people living amongst us. Not only that, there are now more poor people today than there were at […]