Independent.ie - Kevin Myers RSS Feed

Kevin Myers: What was achieved by Adams and McGuinness stands out as a perfect model of courage

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

On Tuesday last, Stormont united to receive Yvonne McEwen's list of some 9,000 Irish dead serving with British forces during the Second World War.

Kevin Myers: Dubble-vision will drive this ship of state on to the rocks of history

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

The Hubble telescope has been one of the most brilliant technological successes of the entire space programme, giving astronomers more information about the universe and the origins thereof than ever before.

Kevin Myers: 'How many women does it take to change an equal status law?'

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

NO outcome to the Portmarnock Golf Club saga could be satisfactory. Had the Supreme Court ruled against the club's men-only membership policy, it would have been a victory for the doctrinaire egalito-feminists whose appetites for more political victory would have been whetted.

Kevin Myers: Irish lives lost in WWII probably exceed the death toll for all domestic political violence in 20th century

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, when we may choose to remember the Irish dead of the two world wars, or not. Whereas once Ireland shied in horror at any commemoration of these wars, they are now accepted as part of the Irish history of the 20th century.

Kevin Myers: Stupid laws make sex a crime -- if you're male

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

'If some pretty girl on the pensionable side of 16 offered me a bit of pelvic refreshment, why her knickers would be hanging off a tree in Mongolia before she could change her mind'

Madness of public sector sick days is infecting nation

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

'Absence due to illness is a normal incidence of working life.' No it isn't. In the private sector it's rare to the point of being almost non-existent

The State now regards homicidal indolence as white-collar crime with no form of punishment

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Two years ago, 68-year-old Patrick McBride attended the wedding of his youngest daughter GraceAnne in Gortahork, in Donegal.

Having the right to offer a different opinion on a matter of concern is a pillar of freedom

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

'I GATHER a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome (sic) and inhumane," tweeted Stephen Fry to the 850,000 sad souls who follow his misspelt twitterings.

Bruce Springsteen taught me to distrust stereotypes

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

I have always looked on Bruce Springsteen as the embodiment of lower-middle class, Jewish-American culture. He built up his career in a very Jewish way, shrewdly and carefully.

We should force-feed Greens their bikes until they choke

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

On September 10, 1945, an American farmer named Lloyd Olsen chopped off the head of a Wyandotte chicken. The bird did not die. Indeed, it remained so much alive that Lloyd gave it a name, Mike, and began to feed food and water into its open gullet, using an eyedropper. Headless Mike lived for another 18 months, and only perished after choking on a corn-kernel in a motel in Arizona.

Kevin Myers: Stalinists thought they had got away with the Big Lie

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Historians will wonder at it but the simple truth is that the Labour Party was, in effect, taken over by the relics of the Workers Party

Kevin Myers: 'Fear of Islamophobia stopped Hasan's superiors from disciplining him for his jihadist outpourings'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I imagine a lot of American Muslims over the weekend will have felt like the Irish once did in London after an IRA bombing there: let this massacre not be by one of ours, dear God.

Kevin Myers: 'New stadium is an irreversible and huge tragedy for Irish sport'

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

ITYS -- I told you so -- is the acronym for the four most unforgivable words in the English language.

Kevin Myers: No rhyme or reason behind poems penned for gay stars

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

ALL right. That's it. No more poems about gays: okay? We had Joseph O'Connor's poem about Stephen Gately, which even managed to compare him to a dead Dublin Fusilier in Flanders, and we've now had Colm Toibin's paean to Donal Og Cusack.

Kevin Myers: Africa has to learn lessons -- the hard way if necessary

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Writing on these pages two days ago, Concern's CEO Tom Arnold wrote: "I am being constantly asked by people 'Why food shortages in Ethiopia again? Why are we always being asked for money to keep people alive there? What is the Government doing?'"

Kevin Myers: Armistice Day poppycock threatens our free speech

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

They started wearing the poppy on the BBC last week, midway through October, nearly a month before Armistice Day. They also ambushed the British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin.

In Sudan's collapsing moral order . . . the only way for westerners to survive is to go armed

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

SO the government jet finally got a deserving passenger, Sharon Commins, after her three months' captivity at the hands of some incomprehensible band of terrorists in Sudan. Good.

Analysis of a recent police operation failed to find one woman who was forced into prostitution

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

IT has been an accepted "truth" over recent years that ruthless men have been trafficking helpless female sex-slaves into Ireland for prostitution. Why, even I believed it; and it's been a while since I was last invited into the feminist shower to share the soap.

Green Party plans stem from Enid Blyton fantasies

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

I cannot be expected to read all the verdiage produced by the Greens, so I am grateful to a reader for the following from the Great Green Plan to Save the World, and which says all we need to know about this bossy bunch of scary lunatics.

De Valera had an exceedingly difficult game to play, without the benefit of hindsight

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0100

THERE is a delightful quote in the recently published 'Behind the Green Curtain' (Gill and Macmillan), T Ryle Dwyer's excellent and probably definitive account of Irish neutrality during the Second World War.