With everyone seemingly going ga-ga over the rise in house prices, it’s like Ireland has made a miraculous recovery. Hold off on buying that champers-fuelled jetpack just for a moment though, as Stephen Bourke looks into the housing crisis that is still very much in existence. The great big Bank of Ireland ad on Manor Street says something like, “I thought I’d be renting for the rest of my … Read More
Ireland’s Right-wing Media.
Recent weeks have provided evidence for something many of us knew but couldn’t prove. Ireland’s media has a right-wing agenda. First we had UCD’s Julien Mercille, fresh from exposing the Irish media’s role in cheerleading the property bubble, publishing a study showing how the media had been “relentless cheerleaders for austerity”. His study looked at all editorials and opinion articles on the topic of austerity published since 2008 in the … Read More
Mission Impossible: Scientologists reduce drug-crime by 85% in Ireland!
Scientologist loon claims they are behind an “an 85% drop in drug-related crime”. David Miscavige is the main-iac and global leader of these Abbey Street-residing flutes who claim to have captured a foothold here, selling books to at least one percent of the population and reducing crime without any evidence. But sure you can prove anything with ‘facts’. During the video, a clips alleges to show a broadcast from Irish … Read More
[piseóg] Death & Magic
Piseogs are the disappearing, peculiarly Irish, superstitions that attend every aspect of human behaviour. Jonny Dillon examines our bizarre fascination with death and magic. There is an old saying, ‘Níl luibh na leighas in aghaidh an bhais’ – ‘There is no herb or cure for death’. Despite its inevitability, there are a multitude of traditional customs and practices surrounding this most critical moment of human experience. These range from … Read More
Deliberate Dereliction
If the market is based on supply and demand then why do we have a housing crisis, extortionate rents and so many empty homes we’ve lost count? Paul Reynolds and Lorna Muddiman examine the crisis and the solutions. Cars speed past in twos and threes as we turn our backs on the Naas road and stroll up the narrow laneway. Colin McCabe is worried about what’s happening to this little … Read More
Saving In The Name Of Scrub.
“Turn Off The Red Light “, says the hand-wringing brigade, the same groups that brought us the Magdalene Laundries. While the campaign claims to mean well, Katie Garrett argues it excludes the most important voices from the discussion, the sex workers themselves. The need to “clean” Ireland of sex workers and the sex industry isn’t new. In the early 1920s the Legion of Mary, led by Frank Duff, decided to … Read More
Irishman shot by Israeli military
Irish cameraman shot and injured by Israeli military The following is a press release from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign see original here Earlier today, Friday 29th Mar 2013, Irishman Tommy Donnellen was shot in the arm by the Israeli military while filming a protest in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank. Mr. Donnellan, who is from the Roscommon border, near Ballinasloe … Read More
Italians in Ireland – how they voted
The Italian community in Ireland – which probably appears larger than it really is due the excessive hand gestures and loud exclamations at everything from an offside on tv to the wrong kind of sauce on pasta – get to vote in their home elections. So how lunatic are the ones that got away? Reassuringly the Irish- based Italians gave a majority in both houses to the loose conglomeration of … Read More
Still getting the boat
A story from this week’s Connacht Tribune will come as a fresh reminder to readers in the west of the sorry state of our democracy. More than a decade into this new millenium and we are still exporting our women, on the hoof, to England. An Irish answer to an Irish problem. Between 2008 and 2011, 726 women with addresses in Galway travelled to England or Wales for termination. The … Read More
The wran, the wran, the king of the birds
Some of us here at rabble HQ are old enough or culchie enough to know the words…some of youse probably never even met a Wrenboy Depending on local tradition some variant of the following occurs on St.Stephen’s Day. Children or adults ‘hunt’ a wren (or wran, in the west). The wren is known as a winter bird and is associated with celtic mythology & druidic tradition. Following the hunt the … Read More