Eat Drink and be Merry For Tomorrow…. In the past week I was reminded of how friendship and tragedy, distance and proximity can echo across the world to resound unexpectedly in one’s daily life. In the same forty eight hours I was most generously entertained by Nisheeth Ta with members of my family in the…
Author: Tim Pat
Scottish Independence Go For it
Whoever thought that the worst nightmare of Belfast Loyalists would be in danger of coming true this year? But ‘tis true they, and those that think like them are dependent on a TAIG, the loyalist term for a Catholic, to preserve the Union. The Taig, Mr David Cameron of Eton and Westminster has emerged Toff…
Will the Celtic Ritz Hotel lower its Rates?
I have been absent from the blogosphere for a little while now and am only reemerging now, just when people were beginning to think it was safe to come out because with my usual imperishable optimism I felt I detected an encouraging chink of light from our parliamentarians over the past couple of weeks. A…
Water could start the Fire.
There is an uncanny resemblance between the present Irish Government and the first Cumann na nGael administration of the 1920s. Both took draconian decisions and had the fortitude to see them through even in the case of Cumann na nGael, to the extent of taking the horrific step of executing former comrades. The present Fine…
Back to the Future
The light is fading on New Year’s Day as this is written, but it is not intended as a song at twilight but as a promise on the dawning of a New Year- I’ll keep the Blog up to date in 2014! After what we’ve been through it would be permissible to open the New…
Next, Bring on the Bankers
Would it be too much to hope that the Public Accounts Committee, having managed to bring the disgraceful story of the ‘Top up payments’ to Fat cats in the Central Remedial Clinic to public airing that the government now finally grasp the nettle of achieving the same result from the Bankers? It was entirely appropriate…
The Resumption!
As I have had to do too often in the past I must begin a blog with an apology for not starting one a long time ago. I seem to have been embroiled in time consuming controversy to a greater degree than with any of my books here to fore, even the study of The…
How would Michael Collins have treated the Bankers?
Recently as the anniversary of Michael Collins’s death approached, a man from my neighbourhood tied the end of a rope to a tree, fed the other end through his car window, tied it around his neck and drove off- decapitating himself. The action was shocking but the outcome has become a common place in modern…
Fr. Alec Reid, Peacemaker Extraordinary
Father Alec Reid, an appreciation by Tim Pat Coogan By the acid test; “Did his life enhance or detract from human happiness?” Father Alec Reid’s sojourn on this earth must be judged a spectacular success. He was the initiator of the peace process and the most tireless worker for it. But when this shy diffident…
Kathleen Ní Houlihan needs a perp’s walk.
Kathleen Ní Houlihan needs a perp’s walk. If the Government didn’t share my views on the need to make people accountable for what was done to our people and our economy under Fianna Fáil, I’d say the opinion poll results which came out since I wrote my l blog below went far to changing their minds.…