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Ruth Dudley Edwards: Scandal shows how prone we are to hypocrisy and hysteria

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I had a struggle to feel proud to be Irish this St Patrick's Day. Normally I would have smiled tolerantly at the ubiquitous shamrock-bespattered leprechaun hats and orange beards infesting central London. But I was afflicted by an attack of existential gloom, brought on by listening to Morning Ireland in full cry over Cardinal Sean Brady.

Gene Kerrigan: Journalism is being sent to the spin bin

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

In A Midsummer Night's Dream (a play I've never seen or read), Shakespeare wrote about the "poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling", glancing from heaven to earth and back. "And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

Shane Ross: The chancer who ran amok

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

SAINT Patrick is not a lucky patron saint for Sean FitzPatrick.

Medb Ruane: The art of selling us short: can Gabriel really make a difference?

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Who is Gabriel Byrne? As of this Paddy's week, the actor is Ireland's first cultural ambassador to the USA. You don't have to talk nice to him or call him 'Excellency,' unless you want to. Anyways, the job's honourary so he won't be paid.

Vincent Hogan: Golden moment

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

As the sky turned a drab metal colour and the rain came rolling in, someone asked Paul Gilligan about the changing ground.

Robert Fisk: What happened to those children of the grey lady?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Dr Shams Hassan Faruqi sits amid his rocks and geological records, shakes his bearded head and stares at me. "I strongly doubt if the children are alive," he says. "Probably, they have expired."

Martina Devlin: How financial virtuoso Seanie became the face of bank crisis

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

If the Irish banking collapse wears a face, most people would identify it as Sean FitzPatrick's. No one man can be held single-handedly responsible for the crisis of the past 18 months that has attacked the fabric of Irish society -- raising unemployment, levelling egos, ending careers ignominiously and resuscitating the spectre of emigration.

Kevin Myers: Ireland was a strange and demented place in 1975

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

A cast of virginal clerics wielded enormous power, with little resistance from the political classes

Brendan Keenan: Deflation can be as great a danger as our surging budget deficit

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

YOU can't beat a fresh eye. The prominent British economics journalist I met last week was fascinated, not by the budget deficit we obsess about, but the deflation, which gets much less attention.

David McWilliams: Artists and entrepreneurs are the key to our recovery

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

On St Patrick's Day two years ago, while nudging my way up a crammed Fifth Avenue, the idea of the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum came to me. I'd thought about it before and I had seen how other countries cultivated relationships with their global tribes -- particularly the Jewish tribe and Israel -- but it was only after seeing the unique outpouring of Irish America on March 17 that I knew we should do this. We should tap into the power of the tribe and see where it takes us.

Colm O'Rourke: Red Hand prospects hinging on Harte's crisis of faith

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

With three games to go in the league before clubs get to see their players again, the picture is becoming somewhat clearer. The momentum associated with new managers is evident with Armagh and Down, who will be formidable forces in Ulster this year.

Brendan Keenan: Time to ruffle rival feathers

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

WHEN the first Japanese cars arrived in Britain, the motoring journalists were invited to go down to Southampton docks and pick a car to test at random.

John Drennan: Off with the heads of political no-hopers

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

IT is an astonishing measure of how we are being misgoverned that Brian Cowen could this week justifiably replace 10 of his ministers and half the ministers sitting around the cabinet table.

David Robbins: From rashers to kohlrabi, it's good to talk... about food

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

In my mother's house, there was one weekly event awaited with more eagerness than all others. And I don't mean Sunday Mass, or the 3.30 at Haydock, though these were much anticipated, too.

Vincent Hogan: Cometh the hour, cometh the iron man

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

As a last drum-roll to the battle looming in this corner of Gloucestershire, yesterday was beat- perfect.

Kevin Myers: Toyota didn't suddenly start connecting the foot brake pedal to the engine accelerator

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

EVERY schoolboy could, once upon a time, solemnly reassure you that Catherine the Great of Russia died in the connubial embrace of her Great Dane, with whom or which -- I am unsure of the grammar of such relationships -- she was sexually besotted.

Martina Devlin: Separated parents must put children's rights first

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

It was all I could do not to tap her on the shoulder and remonstrate with her. The woman queuing ahead of me was describing to a companion how she brought her ex-husband to heel.

Kevin Myers: Ireland was a strange and demented place in 1975

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

A cast of virginal clerics wielded enormous power, with little resistance from the political classes

Kevin Myers: For the love of God, and his blessed disciple St Patrick, displace me from this wretched isle

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Mbwana minister! All hail from the Emerald Isle, on this, its patron saint's feast day! It is my 10th year here! Any chance of granting me the posting that I sought after my very first week?

Peter Bills: England's ugly style years out of fashion

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Britain in 1939, New Zealand sent simple, humble, wonderful men -- farmers, labourers, whoever -- to help save Britain in its hour of need. Now Britain's largest rugby nation could do with the favour being repeated.