MRIA. Irish Times columnist, advising ed New York Review of Books, winner European Press Prize, Orwell Prize, Robert Silvers Prize. We Don't Know Ourselves
The
#DominicCumings
scandal is so explosive because it is not abstract. Hundreds of thousands of people sacrificed by not going to funerals or not seeing frightened parents. They will never forget.
The thundering idiocy of presenting Toby Young as an "expert" on a par with an actual Professor of International Public Health is one reason to fear for Britain.
Another reason to be cheerful is that Ireland is the first Anglophone country to face the full panoply of Trump/Brexit/Bannon tactics and withstand that onslaught.
#repealtheeigth
“He’s lied his way through life, he’s lied his way through politics, he’s a huckster with a degree of charm to which I am immune. As well as being mendacious he’s incompetent.” Notorious Anglophobe, um, Chris Patten on
@BorisJohnson
I was just thinking this evening of my mother, a devout Catholic who was not allowed to attend my baptism because she had not been 'churched" and was still "unclean" after giving birth. Time to end this culture of shaming women.
#repealthe8th
It is especially delightful for a Paddy to be decried by as an aristocratic elitist by an outfit funded by the US multi-billionaire oligarch Koch brothers. Might this act not be wearing a bit thin?
Fintan O’Toole has become the most sneering member of the Remainer aristocracy. His scorn for the British masses exposes the nasty elitism that underpins the pro-EU brigade, says Michael Fitzpatrick
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Just heard Iain Duncan Smith on
@Channel4News
saying Ireland is taking a hard line on the border because "there's a presidential election coming up".
The Border problem is simple: Ireland is being asked to take on trust reassurances about a hard border from people who have shown no ability either to understand the problem or stick to any clear position.
If only Boris had been Foreign Secretary and David Davis had been Brexit secretary in December 2017 when the backstop was agreed, none of this would ever have happened.
We can’t have some codicil or letter or joint declaration. We need to go back into the text of the treaty and solve the problem. That is the way to unite remainers and leavers in the Conservative party and across the country 2/2
Can we finally stop caricaturing older Irish people? There were as many votes cast today in favour of repeal by those aged 65 and older than by those aged 25 and under.
#8thref
Never before has a friendly government had to rebuke a British PM for telling open lies. Yet his is barely a story in the British media.
Brexit deal requires checks between Britain and North, Coveney says via
@IrishTimes
Amusing that Theresa May is claiming that no British prime minister will ever sign up to what the EU said today on the Irish border. She herself signed up to it on December 8th 2017. Perhaps she doesn't feel very prime ministerial?
"The deal leaving the EU is a one off exceptional treaty - it's like a independent country leaving an empire."
- Sir Bernard Jenkin on why the government should change the N.I Protocol
@bernardjenkin
|
#Newsnight
Rummaging for a dish cloth this morning, I found this. I am so ashamed. I have burned it and commissioned a new set for £1000 each. All donations gratefully accepted.
It's the completely unconscious nature of this cliched bigotry that is so fascinating. The idiot has no idea what he's doing either in general (the sheer laziness of the stereotypes) or in particular (Biden is teetotal).
This day 127 years ago – 1 January 1892 – Annie Moore, a native of Co. Cork, became the first immigrant ever to pass through Ellis Island.
Moore was 15 years old, and travelling with two brothers to meet parents who had already emigrated.
She was gifted with a $10 gold coin.
The only part of this worth taking seriously is the underlying insistence that to be anti-Brexit is to be anti-British. That's a dangerous mindset when half your voters are anti-Brexit.
100 years after Irish women got the vote and in the year the Eighth was repealed, it is wonderful that these fabulous women are the first Irish team in any sport to reach a World Cup final.
For those who knew and loved my gorgeous sister Mary, the heartbreaking thing is that she died this morning. A celebration of her life of care and compassion will be at 2 pm on Wednesday in the Mount Jerome crematorium.
A poem: 'Everything is going to be all right'
Amid the sad news and anxiety the Covid-19 crisis is causing us all, here are words from one of Ireland's most famous poets, Derek Mahon
When my son was 2, I heard him mumbling to himself as he was going to sleep, 'Mikhail Gorbachev'. It sounded like a promise that the world he would grow up in would be less fearful and more hopeful.
Oh god I just remembered all the Irish novelists and playwrights. What will they do now we don't have shame and guilt anymore? Gogo in Godot: What do we do now, now that we are happy?
The Ministry of Defence has set up a Brexit bunker underneath its main building in Whitehall. Could it just leave the Brexiteers in it for 2 years and pretend it is all happening while Article 50 is quietly revoked?
So Putin owns Trump and Trump owns the Republican Party. If there are any actual American conservatives left, they either have to take a stand now or knuckle under for good.
The sacking of the first NI Secretary for years who really seemed to know and care about the place is an act of political vandalism
Northern Secretary Julian Smith sacked in British government reshuffle via
@IrishTimes
"End of an era" is a cliche but with the passing of Gay Byrne it is unavoidable. He was a huge figure in Irish life for 4 decades. He didn't just reflect change, he helped it along.
The Brexiteers are now admitting that what Brexit really looks like is much worse than being in the EU. But which of them will have the patriotism to draw the obvious conclusion?
Former Brexit Secretary
@DominicRaab
says Theresa May's proposed EU deal would be worse than staying in the EU on current terms. "We'd effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them"
#r4today
Very hard to see what's really new in all of this. It's the Withdrawal Agreement served with a side order of "this doesn't mean what it doesn't mean anyway".
For all the attempts to divide us into tribes, the exit poll shows that every part of Ireland has voted in broadly the same way, which is to trust women and make them fully equal citizens.
#repealtheeigth
I don't like to upset anybody but I am so pleased that
#RepealedThe8th
will have shattered the "Irishness" of Bannon, Kelly, Mulvaney, O'Reilly, Hannity etc
#NotYourIreland
Most of Ireland’s far right candidates are polling below 1% in their individual constituencies. This despite Ireland having one of the highest rates of inward migration in Europe.
Extraordinary that
@sinnfeinireland
is saying that it would unthinkable for Irish MPs to interfere at Westminster. Never heard of Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt?
Two of my uncles and one aunt were working-class Dubliners who left neutrality behind and joined the fight against fascism. I'm glad to remember them today.
#VEDay75
Johnson also rejects “Another turgid, torpid, toxic, appalling EU referendum, which is the last thing we need,” which means he accepts the 2016 referendum was turgid toxic and appalling.
Gallagher and Duffy and Freeman may have done badly but they deserve some credit for declining to play Casey's vile game. They lost votes but kept their honour.
90,000 jobs in Ireland, north and south, are at risk from a no-deal Brexit. I wouldn't like to be the one to explain to those families why everything that could be done to save them was not done.
via
@IrishTimesOpEd
in Heroic Failure I deal with the delusion of British "pluck". Now
@BorisJohnson
"no-one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck, nerve and ambition of this country" The book is not an instruction manual.
Conor McGregor may call for a lockdown, but I shall only take such demands seriously when I see a ranting, bare chested, blood spattered Fintan O'Toole call for the same.
If only
@CarolineLucas
were in charge... She's shown such dignity, sympathy and intelligence throughout this whole debacle and reminded us all that there is another England
We visited Dudley to learn about the ties between English identity, democracy and
#Brexit
.
What is Englishness to you?
It's time to define a progressive patriotism we can all be proud of.
@CarolineLucas
#LetsTalk
The Irish Times editorial this morning supports the idea of Sinn Féin "lending" its Westminster seats to stop a no-deal Brexit
The Irish Times view on Brexit: power in Irish hands to avert no deal via
@IrishTimesOpEd
Greg Gutfeld is on Fox News saying Trump got coronavirus because he’s brave and he was “doing it for us.” Gutfeld says Trump “didn’t hide from the virus” because he didn’t “want America to hide from the virus.”
An extract from my new book Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain is today's Long Read in The Guardian
The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole
So if people think I'm wrong to contend that a screwed-up "memory" of the Second World War is still playing out in the heads of many of the Brexiteers, just look at this...
Finally a good reason to keep Stormont closed for a while longer
Same-sex marriage coming to North if Stormont not up-and-running by October via
@IrishTimes
This from the chief economist of the Leave campaign at least tells the truth that the Brexiteers continue to evade -- they don't give a damn about Northern Ireland or the "precious union".
Have people noticed that Johnson says here that Northern Ireland keeping "free movement" is a great deal? So ending free movement for GB is a bad deal????
A short pilgrimage this morning to the very modest grave in Princeton of Sylvia Beach without whom there would be no
#Ulysses
centenary today. This is her day too.
.
@fotoole
: “All our governments are failing in some way, but I don’t think you can point to any other government in the rich democratic world that has had such a malignant presence at its heart in this crisis... It is deadly, this mixed messaging from Trump.”
Quite right -- can't have pro-Europeans at a museum that guards good English treasures like the Elgin marbles, which as we all know were made in Norwich.
Mary Beard blocked by No 10 as British Museum trustee 'for pro-Europe views'
@larryff6372
@realDonaldTrump
Here's a picture of me in uniform in 1941 b/c even at 18 year old I knew what fascism really was. Moreover, I not only can read but also write. In fact, I've penned 5 books whereas all you've done is written MAGA with your finger on the dirty window of your car.
#TrumpUKVisit
Slagging off Bono is a national pastime but he comes incredibly well out of this.
Ireland wields its ‘soft power’ as Bono joins coronavirus fight via
@IrishTimes