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You are > Home > Plain Chant
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Are they living on the same planet as the rest of us?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A cascade of change in recent weeks have led me to question if there is anything left in Irish society of what used to be called ‘the settled community’?
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A banjo accompaniment to the strangest Ballina procession
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
THREE decades after the actual event, a retired reporter from the Western People recalled the events of Friday, January 14,1921, when the normal schedule of preparing for the weekly printing of the paper on the giant Goss Rotary press was interrupted to report the arrival of a detachment of the ‘Auxies’ to supplement the Crown forces of occupation who had taken over the Moy Hotel as their headquarters.
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‘Cowengate’ – the scandals of rogue banks and FF tribalism
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
IF THERE was an official system of giving awards for false or misleading information (there is an unofficial dishonours list in the spinning league but only acknowledged in smoke-filled party rooms) the last week would have seen bankers and Cabinet ministers in neck and neck pursuit of dishonourable political status.
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Politics goes to the dogs again as jobbery rules Dáil agenda
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
PROPORTIONAL representation was given a new political interpretation in the Dáil last week when national concerns on the continuing job losses from the collapse of economic stability and doubts about the country’s ability to meet the massive borrowings involved in the controversial Nama strategy for recovery were pushed aside to debate minor items of animal health and welfare given priority in the national programme for government negotiated in the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition.
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Traffic stopper puts it all down to Love Jesus bumper sticker
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
BY 2050 they expect cancer to be cured and Jesus to be back, and the same percentage of four out of 10 Americans expect to see a single worldwide currency evolve from the intricate convolutions of to-day's money markets that are struggling to escape from the aftermath of the 2008 fiscal collapses.
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When bad things can happen to good people
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
THE 11 minute and 17 second statement from the new British Prime Minister David Cameron, which was transmitted from the House of Commons to a packed Guildhall Square in Derry on a sunny Tuesday, was a vindication of the 38 years of peaceful and democratic pressure to have the innocence of the 14 people killed by British paratroopers in Derry and the wounding of many more on that Bloody Sunday of infamy finally established in the 5,000 pages of the Saville inquiry and in the forthright apology from Prime Minister David Cameron (“On behalf of our country I am deeply sorry”).
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Go, Biffo, go – with apologies to Harvey Norman…
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
THE country isn’t half as concerned about who succeeds the late Gerry Ryan in RTE as who will succeed Brian Cowen as Taoiseach after last week’s close-ups of the worst week ever in political exposure of a bullying Fianna Fáil leader and his punched docket party who should be headed for the wastebasket of Irish politics but aren’t because we haven’t the confidence or talent to kick the ward healers and place men out of the way of talent and genuine vocation.
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Nama yet another example of limitations on our ‘liberty’
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
SOONER or later the pent-up fury of the Irish electorate will be unleashed over the sustained exploitation of hard won independence by factions motivated by maintaining power rather than promoting equality of opportunity, by projecting a concept of entitlement as a prelude to one of ultimate privilege in the framing of laws and protective mechanisms designed to conceal rather than reveal.
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Burning effigy and smashed windows in Ballina bank riots
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
RAIDING Irregulars parted local banks with about £20,000 in cash on the day Ballina was seized during the murderous Civil War but they were civilised enough to leave IOUs behind them, and the amounts involved were but a pittance compared to Nama plans to rip off this and future generations.
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Remembering John to all his friends around Ballina
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
EIGHTY-SEVEN years ago or so this Civil War letter of John Gallagher, Ballina, was written when he was a Republican prisoner in the Detention Barracks set up in Claremorris and it comes from the file on John Gallagher which no longer exists.
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The day the Ballina Post Office clock stopped at 11.30…
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
WHILE the fate of Ireland is being determined by the civil war being waged between the European Commission and the Brian Cowen administration about whose money talks the loudest, interest shifts back to that other post-treaty Civil War which largely influences our politics still and which I touched upon in a recent article showing how the ideals of the fight for independence had been debased beyond recognition in our times.
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Tunnel vision on badgers and the Ballina badgered
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
THERE were no happy faces among the group of Ballina traders who were pictured outside Ballina Town Council offices last month in a deputation waiting to persuade the civic officers to abandon plans to close Pearse Street to vehicular traffic until June 9 next to facilitate the completion of the major facelift for the street on which a paving slab of reinforced concrete in the middle of the road had to be kept free of traffic for 28 days to allow it to set.
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Politicians now singing from a badly tattered hymn sheet
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
IF Tanaiste Mary Coughlan could brave the massed ranks of hostile teachers infuriated by cuts in pay, allowances and resources after the importance of education in attracting new investment had been stressed by her government, she at least demonstrated a level of personal grit and leadership markedly absent from the decision of Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern not to attend the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association whose outgoing president Michael O'Boyce had flagged a speech in which he had some hard things to say.
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Finding a cure through the windscreen or rear mirror?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
LAST week Ireland achieved a new record by shooting to the top of the European league for nations in debt and pushing aside the Greeks, to inherit all the penalties and worries about economic survival.
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Iceland’s truth commission put it up to Ireland’s wilting pride
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
WITH every accumulation of fresh evidence on the toxic consequences of the Nama debt being piled on the backs of generations of Irish taxpayers by a government that has lied and prevaricated about taking responsibility for the fiasco, it becomes more and more of an imperative to get at the truth rather than accept political tribal bluster as a substitute.
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