Saturday 25 May 2013
BY one of those strange coincidences, the same day psychiatrist Kevin Malone testified to the Oireachtas Health Committee on abortion and suicide this week, he also launched a major report on suicide among Irish males.
We worry enough about our children's development, without now having to worry that they are not being well-minded while we work.
SOMEBODY asked me recently why the Government had spent so long seeking agreement with the public service unions regarding pay and pension bill savings from 2013 to 2016. After all, at the conclusion of discussions at the Labour Relations Commission, on Haddington Road, we had been talking for the guts of five months.
IT was the bit about the child's head being pushed down at nap time that did it for me.
I WAS expecting twins in 2002. It went horribly wrong. I took a case against Ireland to the European Court of Human Rights, because I was forced to leave the country to have an early delivery of one dead and one fatally abnormal foetus. I didn't want any other Irish woman to endure that harrowing experience. And it never seems to go away. We are here again, front page news, TV panel discussions, proposed legislation, an Oireachtas hearing. A woman dead.
He started it. The big shot did it and ran away. Alan Shatter only has himself to blame for landing in the uncomfortable position of having to account for his movements pertaining to his vehicle and an encounter with the gardai on a certain night.
Can you remember where you were when you first saw the iconic snap, 'The Execution of A Viet Cong Guerilla'?
ALAN Shatter was adamant all week he didn't regret dragging up the Mick Wallace driving while on the mobile phone allegation.
IRELAND has rapidly become a multicultural and multiracial society. This upheaval gave a platform to a diversity of religions and ethics of various communities residing here.
THE HSE is now promising to publish the inspection reports of pre-school facilities on its website – but it has not provided any timescale for when this will start.
SO, did he or didn't he? The image of Pope Francis intently praying over a young man with a disability in St Peter's Square at the weekend has caused endless speculation. As the Pontiff laid both of his hands on his forehead, the young man was visibly moved in his wheelchair and his body became animated.
THEY don't make 'em like they used to, according to veteran actor James Caan, who came over all curmudgeonly at the Cannes premiere of his movie the other day. Guillaume Canet's 'Blood Ties' stars Mr Caan as the boss of a 1970s New York crime family, and evokes obvious comparisons with 'The Godfather', the film that made him a star in the first place.
SINN Fein's moral outrage at Alan Shatter's indiscretion towards Mick Wallace is a superb example of the party's tendency for selective memory. Never shy about jumping on the bandwagon, Sinn Fein could scarcely hide its glee as it queued up to give the Justice Minister the parliamentary equivalent of a punishment beating.
TODAY, let's discuss the need to feminise Irish life. If you're a man, don't panic, this won't involve colour swatches – it's concerned with building a more rounded society, which fulfils its potential.
Help! Sunday communion
I DON'T have too much time for talk of crashing through glass ceilings. But I do recognise that, with my appointment as head of global food group Glanbia, I may be seen as something of a flag-bearer for women in business.
MUSIC legend Ray Manzarek was 74 when he died of cancer this week. He had reached a good age – the first incarnation of his band The Doors ended a whole 42 years ago. But such is the nature of fame and rock mythology that it still comes as a shock to realise: this man was old.
WHAT do Franklin D Roosevelt, Barack Obama, John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi, Maria Sharapova and Natalie Portman have in common – apart from being successful, famous and stars in their fields? They are all only children.
WITH just 25 women TDs in the Dail, it's perhaps unfair to expect the debate on the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill to be more feminised than it has been to date. Fortunately, women are well represented in the medical professionals informing the committee hearings. But female TDs with liberal credentials appear reluctant to speak up. Conservative women have no such qualms.
N ATIONAL politics is all about spin, about message management, about pushing through big-ticket items that often have little to do with the lives of the country's citizens. For example, on the order of business in the Dail today was the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill. Important, yes, but it won't get your bins collected.
APPLE is the sexiest company on planet Earth. Its tax affairs are in the spotlight both because of Apple's sheer size, and also because political posturing against semiconductor companies would fall flat in the media.
FOR many sports fans, David Beckham's retirement from football is the end of an era. But to the fashion industry and a slew of lifestyle brands, he's only just begun.
I decided to tune into the Eurovision the other night and took great pleasure in informing my rather elitist younger brother, who would be appalled by such a thought.
HOW should we in Ireland react as we watch Google, Apple and other multi-nationals being clobbered over their rampant avoidance of tax?
THE Irish War of Independence was, I would say, a civil war and Michael Collins led the Irish side. Does it therefore follow that he cannot have been a terrorist? The first answer is a confident 'yes'; Collins was a civil warrior, a freedom fighter, more a George Washington than an Osama bin Laden.
I BELIEVE that, across the western world, we may be reaching some sort of limit in the complexity of rules governing business. The response to the financial crisis has been ever more complex rules that only a tiny number of professional advisers could ever hope to remember, or understand properly.
Cringe. The annual Eurovision Song Contest post-mortem is under way, and it is even more depressing this year given our dismal performance in Malmo on Saturday night. Oh the pain of coming 'Paddy last'.
ALAN Shatter has landed himself in a right mess and it's entirely of his own making. Tempting as it might be to cite Albert Reynolds's line about how, in politics, you trip up over the little hurdles, it doesn't even apply here.
Since Alan Shatter stewarded through the Dail the pardon for (and apologies to) those Irish soldiers who had joined the Allies during World War II, the question of our neutrality in 1939-45 has again been raised in the public realm.
GOT a tracker? Stay put, don't move, even if you need to relocate.
When I heard Donal Walsh had died, I couldn't help thinking of Spike Milligan's line: I told you I was sick. For those of us who didn't know Donal, who didn't live with his illness and see its progress, there was a strange sense of surprise that he had really died, that his young life was actually snuffed out in the end. Obviously everyone knew Donal was dying. His imminent death was central to the life-affirming message he brought to the nation. But somehow, when the inevitable came, it was a shock. I suppose this young man, whom none of us really knew but we all felt we knew, didn't seem like the type to die.
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