Irish, EU & international politics & economics
A poem by Sven Kretzschmar. The sit-in protesters of North Circular Roadtook their seats just when the word came aroundof the government spying on you and fellow artistsfor inadequate subordination to this green-great country.Brothers and sisters of basic dignity unclad in the lack of rebellious red, some in everyday clothes,others […]
A poem by Kevin Higgins. Not the Deliveroo riders named Tariq and Omar who Gemma O’Doherty is terrified will try to marry her.Nor the taxi drivers from Togo John Waters fears will make him go around the place wearing a veil.Not the Hutch Kinehan wet squad The Sunday World keeps telling you are […]
Pádraig Ó Meiscill discovers his own personal lesser spotted Belfast at the start of the lockdown. When the silence came, caused by a cough, only a few were expecting it. Many had predicted an uproar over borders. A cacophony of bile about the difference, or lack thereof, between Derry and Letterkenny, […]
By Carlo Sands.When mining giant Rio Tinto blew up two sacred Indigenous sites dating back 46,000 years in the Pilbara in Australia’s north-west earlier this year, it was with the consent of the state Labor government. It shows that while the Western Australian (WA) Labor Party sometimes pays formal respects […]
A poem by Kevin Higgins. Don’t get photographed presenting yourtwo thousand names to the Mayor,looking as if you’re graduatingwith a qualification you’ll never use.Don’t ask the Church of Ireland or National Council for the Advancement of Concerned Peopleto intervene. Do it yourself.But not explosives, no.There’s always a mostly innocentretired car park […]
By Séamas Mac Annaidh. This is a book review of Labouring Beside Lough Erne, a Study of the Fermanagh Labour Movement 1826-1932, by Jim Quinn. This is the first part of a projected three-part history of the labour movement in County Fermanagh from the early 19th century to the 1930s. […]
A poem by Kevin Higgins. Easy for the Opposition to hang around overheated TV studios, spouting impossible promises which at this stage soundlike a recorded message from Santa Claus.But out there, in what I like to callthe world, a constituent of mineand his wheelchair recently spentthe coldest night of the yearin a discontinued […]
By Helena Sheehan. Of the many dimensions of the present pandemic that is swamping our lives and suspending our normal reality, one of the most central has been the role of science. Every report on our all-virus-all-the-time news references science. The new media stars are epidemiologists, virologists, mathematicians, physicians and […]
By Dave Lordan. On the same Easter Week of the 1916 rising, a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition was held in Dublin. Chaplin, well-known to be a socialist as well as the world’s leading entertainer at the time, had a mass following among the Dublin working classes. Truth be told, among […]
By Lois Brooks-Jones. I remember being sat on the armchair, nails diggings at the leather out of stress as a comfort. I was 14 years old and was preparing to tell my family that I am bisexual. I had known for years, trying to suppress myself due to a phobia […]