Bertie Ahern’s socialist conversion occurred around the same time he took up reading Robert Putnam.[1] Putnam was famous for writing Bowling Alone an appraisal of the erosion of personal connections in modern society. So inspired was Ahern that he set up the Taskforce on Active Citizenship. Since they reported in 2007, little appears to have […]

The convenient green honeymoon.
With everyone from David Cameron to Enda Kenny wearing their green hearts on their sleeves it’s easy to think that climate change is beyond politics. In this post Inconvenient Truth world, we’re all signed up members of the must-do-something-about-climate-change brigade. We just have to switch to energy efficient light bulbs, buy […]

Long endowed with a potent resonance for French people, the year 1968 has, at this point, 40 years on, morphed into a brand. In spite of the tumultuous occurrences elsewhere in the world that year, it has become synonymous with France, and more particularly Paris. Only for the Czechs and Slovaks does it have anything […]

… is the catchphrase of politicians in the wake of each new crime headline. The ‘something’ which must be done generally involves creating ‘new’ crimes in legislation, imposing mandatory or minimum sentences for existing crimes, or some combination of the two. Unfortunately, the Left in Ireland all too often falls in with the […]

In launching his successful bid for the leadership of the Labour Party, Deputy Eamon Gilmore laid out his primary objective in unmistakable terms:‘Labour should break free of, and reject, the “half party” limit which others impose on us - and which, sometimes, we inflict on ourselves.’
Just to make sure that everyone knows he was serious […]

To most Irish political and media commentators, the Republic is a capitalist economy without a capitalist class structure. They argue that its citizens are mostly middle class, with a working class rump that exists on the margins. The past fifteen years, in their eyes, has seen an expansion of that middle class, as well […]