Most of the commentariat, indeed, most people consider Sinn Féin to be a left wing party. Is it?
There is so much about the party that forces one not to consider it left wing. It’s more likely a nationalist party. Is it a national socialist party? Is it a populist party?
An interesting story. In spite of all our sophistication, rules, maturity, process, so much comes down to what we think of the other person or group. And we keep trying to fool ourselves that we are above such behaviour. At the end of the day we are primal. It was the US politician Tip O’Neill, who said all politics is local; might not all our fine ideas and holy words be personal; just a thought.
Barry O’Halloran writes:
Aer Lingus pilots voted no confidence in the airline’s chief executive Lynne Embleton and chief operations officer Adrian Dunne
yesterday in a row they say has safety implications.
Their union, the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (Ialpa), sought talks with Ms Embleton yesterday ahead of an extraordinary general meeting to discuss “interference from senior non-flying management” in the operation of aircraft while in flight. At the meeting, Ialpa members unanimously backed a motion stating that Aer Lingus pilots in their capacity as “frontline guardians of aviation safety for all and in their promotion of safety first at all times” had no confidence in Ms Embleton or Mr Dunne.
Pilots said afterwards that huge numbers attended the meeting in north Co Dublin. The dispute between the airline and its pilots blew up after Aer Lingus last week suspended a captain at its Manchester base, where cabin crew have been striking for higher pay.
The company maintains the incident is the subject of both an investigation and fact-finding exercise.
The captain flew an Aer Lingus aircraft from Barbados to Manchester early last week. There were no passengers on board except cabin crew who were not on flying duty, known as a “positioning crew”.
The captain told the crew to sit in economy class after take off. Its manager complained directly to Aer Lingus in Dublin.
Mr Dunne contacted the aircraft mid-flight to say that the positioning crew could sit in business class.
The captain did not comply with this. He made a safety report after landing following which management told him late last week he was suspended. Ialpa maintains that Mr Dunne had no authority to instruct the captain on where the positioning crew should sit as this had implications for the aircraft’s balance and therefore its safety.
Under aviation safety rules, the flight commander is the sole person responsible for the safety of the aircraft and everyone on board. Rules also state that positioning crews should remain in the seat assigned to them and should not move between classes.
Aer Lingus said the motions passed by Ialpa members had “no effect” while branding them “inappropriate”.
“There are two separate ongoing processes underway, a safety investigation following receipt of a safety report and a fact-finding process following concerns raised by an employee,” a statement from the airline said. “Both of these processes are being run in accordance with the procedures applicable to them and it is important that the confidentiality and integrity of the processes are not subject to any outside interference.”
The positioning crew did not take part in the cabin crew strike at the Aer Lingus Manchester base from October 30th to November 2nd as they were not members of Unite, the trade union involved.
Ialpa figures dismissed any suggestion that their members brought industrial relations issues on board the flight. Airline sources say positioning crews “normally” sit in business class.
This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane
On Saturday, November 1, All Saints Day in the Christian tradition, I had an hour to spare in the Capel Street area of Dublin 1.
Strolling down the street, it was clear to see the world and its mother was on display. Every second person seemed to speak a different language; all types, sizes and styles, were on display, the young, not too many old, some decrepit, one or two people begging. Capel Street’s pedestrian way allows for all sorts of human extravagance.
I was tired and hungry so I popped into a betting shop. Today’s betting shops are great places to take a break as they are kitted out with comfortable armchairs.
The betting shop on Capel Street is large, much bigger than it looks from the outside; I must have counted 40 screens; there were at least 30 customers placing bets, all men, not a woman in sight. It looked as if I were the only freeloader present.
On exiting the shop after a 10-minute rest I saw a man studying the form sheet while at the same time eating chicken with his hands.
I headed to the Lidl store on Moore Street and was it busy. An assistant told me it is their second busiest shop in Ireland.
There was a long queue at the Return machine; I asked the young woman beside me where she was from, she told me Brazil. She had a black sack of empty cans and bottles to dispose. The bag was as tall as she.
On Henry Street people were handing out leaflets titled ‘Is there Hope for the Future’, obviously some religious organisation.
I began to think about where the Catholic Church is in Ireland today. When I was a little boy and then later as a youth growing into manhood in Ireland the Catholic Church ruled supreme. The churches were full on Sunday, but I can clearly remember my mother saying that when the church would fade, it would collapse over night. What wise words.
The Dominican Order, of which I am member, was founded by St Dominic over 800 years ago. His idea was to gather a group of men and women together, who would try to live and talk about the Gospel in a manner, which would be understood by the people; even the clothes he wore were to fit in with the dress of the time, leaning more towards how the poor dressed.
When I read most of the Catholic Church material on social media I feel it is directed to a small group of ‘dedicated’ people but it is saying nothing, nothing at all to the vast majority of the people I saw on Capel Street, Henry Street and in the betting shop on All Saints Day. Why? Because, in my opinion, many 'church people' are not listening.
Right through the New Testament Jesus enthuses the people, they want to listen to his wise and sensible words. His words resonated especially with the marginalised and forgotten. He placed great importance in listening to those with whom he lived and spoke.
My cent’s-worth after a 60-minute stroll in Dublin 1 on the feast of All Saints.
On this day, November 11 the General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow women to be ordained priests.
“The Church is both divine (Jesus) and human (people). It is a blend of light (Jesus) and darkness (people). It radiates enough light for those who want to see and enough darkness for those who don’t.
- Mark Link SJ (1924 - 2017)
The quotation is to be found in Joe Egan’s book: 'Church, Sacrament of the World', published by Peter Lang 2025
On this day in 1989 the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
The Germans made sure not to make this date the day to celebrate German unification. Why? Because on November 9, 1938 the Nazis waged a pogrom against Jewish buildings across Germany. It's called Kristallnacht because of the shards of glass caused by the behaviour of the Nazis and their followers.
Below is the text of the famous document that was read at the press conference. It led to the people in their thousands rushing to the Wall.
The moral of the story; never let anyone tell you it can’t be done, that is, unless it is against the law of gravity, otherwise it’s bunkum.
| Text of the regulation | |
|---|---|
| Original German[24] | English translation[25] |
Zur Veränderung der Situation der ständigen Ausreise von DDR-Bürgern nach der BRD über die CSSR wird festgelegt: 1) Die Verordnung vom 30. November 1988 über Reisen von Bürgern der DDR in das Ausland (GBl. I Nr. 25 S. 271) findet bis zur Inkraftsetzung des neuen Reisegesetzes keine Anwendung mehr. 2) Ab sofort treten folgende zeitweilige Übergangsregelungen für Reisen und ständige Ausreisen aus der DDR in das Ausland in Kraft: a. Privatreisen nach dem Ausland können ohne Vorliegen von Voraussetzungen (Reiseanlässe und Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse) beantragt werden. Die Genehmigungen werden kurzfristig erteilt. Versagungsgründe werden nur in besonderen Ausnahmefällen angewandt. b. Die zuständigen Abteilungen Paß- und Meldewesen der VPKÄ in der DDR sind angewiesen, Visa zur ständigen Ausreise unverzüglich zu erteilen, ohne daß dafür noch geltende Voraussetzungen für eine ständige Ausreise vorliegen müssen. Die Antragstellung auf ständige Ausreise ist wie bisher auch bei den Abteilungen Innere Angelegenheiten möglich. c. Ständige Ausreisen können über alle Grenzübergangsstellen der DDR zur BRD bzw. zu Berlin (West) erfolgen. d. Damit entfällt die vorübergehend ermöglichte Erteilung von entsprechenden Genehmigungen in Auslandsvertretungen der DDR bzw. die ständige Ausreise mit dem Personalausweis der DDR über Drittstaaten. 3) Über die zeitweiligen Übergangsregelungen ist die beigefügte Pressemitteilung am 10. November 1989 zu veröffentlichen. | To change the situation with regard to the permanent exit of East German citizens to West Germany via Czechoslovakia, it has been determined that: 1. The decree from 30 November 1988 about travel abroad of East German citizens will no longer be applied until the new travel law comes into force. 2. Starting immediately, the following temporary transition regulations for travel abroad and permanent exits from East Germany are in effect: a) Applications by private individuals for travel abroad can now be made without the previously existing requirements (of demonstrating a need to travel or proving familial relationships). The travel authorizations will be issued within a short period of time. Grounds for denial will only be applied in particularly exceptional cases. b) The responsible departments of passport and registration control in the People's Police district offices in East Germany are instructed to issue visas for permanent exit without delays and presentation of the existing requirements for permanent exit. It is still possible to apply for permanent exit in the departments for internal affairs [of the local district or city councils]. c) Permanent exits are possible via all East German border crossings to West Germany and (West) Berlin. d) The temporary practice of issuing (travel) authorizations through East German consulates and permanent exit with only an East German personal identity card via third countries ceases. 3. The attached press release explaining the temporary transition regulation will be issued on 10 November. |
One can never condone wrongdoing, but surely there is a funny side to the story below. As someone who has an interest in public transport I have to admit I laughed out loud on reading this report in The Irish Times yesterday.
Dublin Bus, part of the CIÉ Group, as is Bus Éireann, has an onboard mechanism that allows control to keep an up-to-the-minute record of where the bus is. And this man was able to drive a Bus Éireann bus from Donegal to Dublin. On arrival in Dublin he had the decency to leave it at the side of the road with the key in the ignition; it’s hilarious.
And a wise judge not to commit him to prisons that are already overcrowded.
A young man stole a Bus Éireann vehicle in Co Donegal and drove it to Dublin after being told another bus was full.
Derek Dunne appeared before Letterkenny Circuit Court where he entered a plea of guilty and was given an 18-month suspended sentence.
Dunne, of Markievicz House, Dublin, is charged with unlawfully taking the bus at Bus Éireann Bus Station on Ramelton Road, Letterkenny on July 10th, 2023.
The 24-year-old appeared before Judge John Aylmer for sentencing after the incident during which he drove the €390,000 bus from Letterkenny along the M1 motorway before abandoning it in Sheriff Street in Dublin’s north inner city.
The court was told that the bus was not damaged and still had the key in the ignition.
Garda Pearse Glynn, led by State barrister Fiona Crawford, outlined the incident to the court. He said gardaí received a call from Bus Éireann on the morning of July 10th, 2023, to say one of their buses was missing from the Letterkenny depot and later learned that a bus had been found abandoned in Sheriff Street in Dublin.
Dunne was identified and he was arrested and interviewed on September 12th. He made full admissions.
CCTV footage showed a male in a green hoodie arriving in Letterkenny at 10.35pm and was seen waiting until 11.06pm until the bus driver had left. At 11.52pm, he entered a number of parked buses before stealing one.
Before mitigation, the judge said the offence merited a sentence of two years but he reduced it as the accused had only one previous conviction for speeding, was co-operative with gardaí and had entered an early guilty plea.
Justine McCarthy’s column in The Irish Times yesterday. How correct she is.
It is heartwarming to see a journalist criticise her own trade; a sign of a healthy profession. Need for far more of it in every grouping across society.
The inconvenient truth for bosses in the news media is that Fianna Fáil’s hiring of Ivan Yates as a communication coach has been public knowledge for almost four years. The Irish Daily Mail reported on January 2nd, 2022, that the party’s head of communications, Siobhán Russell, had recruited the former Fine Gael minister and bookie. It quoted Fianna Fáil Senator Fiona O’Loughlin as saying the training “was certainly worthwhile”.
Ten days later, the Clare Echo reported that local TD Cathal Crowe had attended a three-hour Fianna Fáil workshop on media interview skills given by Yates. “He was a hardball interviewer himself,” the paper quoted Crowe. “He played out interview scenarios with those of us in attendance.”
The national airwaves have been crackling with journalists demanding to know why Fianna Fáil did not inform its Coalition partner that it employed Yates to train its presidential candidate, Jim Gavin. The bigger question of why national broadcasting bosses kept trotting Yates out as a supposedly objective current affairs presenter-cumcommentator without any declaration of his conflicting interests went unasked. It’s time the media C-suite removed the mote from its own eye. The scandal at the heart of this controversy is not a political one. It is a media scandal.
TV3 – Virgin Media’s forerunner – knowingly opted for shock-jock audience ratings over journalistic ethics when it employed Yates to present the Tonight Show in September 2013. His Celtic Bookmakers chain of gambling shops had gone into receivership owing €6 million to AIB, precipitating his departure to Wales for a year’s bankruptcy exile. In a newspaper interview, he accused the bank of vindictiveness and of harassing and intimidating his family. The bank issued a statement of denial. Two days after Yates emerged from bankruptcy, he presented the TV3 show “asking if banks are doing enough to tackle Ireland’s mortgage arrears problems”, according to a report on the promo. “We’ll also look ahead to the new Personal Insolvency arrangement due to begin next week. Will they work for debtors or will the banks still hold the balance of power?”
To defuse the brass-neckery of this screaming conflict of interest, Yates delivered a disclaimer at the start of the show, seeking to “assure viewers that my own views will not impede me from carrying out a fair and balanced debate on the issue”.
Yates is a professional provocateur. “Bullshit” is one of his trademark words. “Arsed” – as in “I couldn’t be” – is another. His “smear the bejaysus out of her” has entered the Irish lexicon of quotable turpitude. Find it above “picked it out of my arse” (Anglo Irish Bank’s John Bowe) and “will we f**k?” (property developer Mick Bailey). A son of establishment cloth, Yates equips himself with the arsenal of the fake revolutionary. He scorns the “woke media” that has given him the platform to charge someone €1,500, according to figures quoted in 2021, for a day’s media training. He has not hidden his disregard for journalistic standards. On the contrary, he has paraded it as core to his CV.
On his last edition as presenter of the Hard Shoulder, he signed off saying he had “derided [and] ridiculed everyone that has come on the line against me”. He thanked Newstalk for putting up with the complaints from listeners and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. “I just want you to know that, yes, some of it is contrived because we’re in the business of being different.”
That business is called entertainment.
The danger is that many people mistake it for journalism. Broadcasting executives collude in this misconception by blurring the demarcation lines. Stations such as Newstalk, when it was owned by Communicorp, and the erstwhile TV3, turn willing loudmouths into current affairs presenters and, next thing, they are appearing on RTÉ as commentators. See the rise and fall of George Hook. How curious that RTÉ postponed a Scannal documentary on the Moriarty tribunal report during the presidential election campaign but seems to have had no compunction about featuring Yates as an ostensibly impartial commentator in the four years since he began training Fianna Fáilers.
In the US, ex-Fox News controversialists are now kingpins in the department of war, negotiating America’s relations with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, advising on national security and running the FBI. At White House briefings, the clock at question time is run down by quasijournalist podcasters brought in to massage Donald Trump’s ego. Eroding the distinction between journalism and performance is the start of a treacherously slippery slope.
The demarcation lines have been further smudged here by the departure of more than a dozen journalists from the news media who are now working for the Government. A big reason is that journalists, who are professionally required to comply with linguistic and ethical standards, are in general not lavishly paid – unlike certain celebrity shock-jocks.
Yates presented Pat Kenny’s Newstalk show on September 24th, the day nominations closed for the presidential election and the day after he started coaching its candidate. “Jim Gavin has a clear run in Dublin,” he remarked on air, declaring geography would be a factor in the election. On Gavin’s GAA credentials, he opined that “the network of clubs – junior clubs even – runs deep in the psyche of people’s sense of identity”. When programme guest Sineád O’Carroll, editor of The Journal, noted Gavin’s lack of charisma, Yates responded: “The public don’t really know him yet.”
On October 11th on the Path to Power podcast, from which he has been dropped, he speculated that the rent overpayment Gavin then owed to a former tenant – which proved to be the downfall of his campaign – could have gone to the bank that held the mortgage on the property. “It would not surprise me if Jim did not get the benefit of this money,” he surmised.
These utterances may have been valid but they assume significance after Yates’s failure to declare his own commercial interest in Gavin’s success. When he delivered a podcast riff last January on Darragh O’Brien potentially becoming Fianna Fáil’s next leader, he did not mention he had coached the Minister for Transport for the 2024 general election.
This information was in the public domain. Journalists have grilled Fianna Fáil for failing to do adequate due diligence before selecting Gavin as its candidate. But where was the broadcast media’s due diligence when it selected Yates?
The Orange Order writes to King Charles criticising him for praying with Pope Leo.
Difficult to fathom.
Maybe there is a reader out there
A new coffee shop has opened close to this bridge; it means there are constantly vehicles parked on both sides of the bridge which has a single white line the length of it. The rules of the road seem to suggest such parking on a bridge with a continuous white line is illegal; such parking is certainly unsafe and causing concern to residents.
On the subject of cars and traffic; the owner of a motorbike shop was overheard saying that insurance companies are as good at stealing as are the honest-to-god thieves.
It’s worth a thought.
This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane
Over the years I have often written in this column about how frustrating it can be attempting to speak to a human voice when calling some facility or other. I’ve often been left waiting more than 10, 15 minutes to speak to an agent.
This Friday, November 7 is the deadline for submitting Local Property Tax (LPT) returns.
Last Thursday I happened to hear some mention of the deadline approaching on radio and television. I began to panic. Yes, I had received the letter from Revenue but put it aside on the day, intending to deal with it later, and then forgot about it.
Have you ever noticed when you are down, feel depressed, can’t do anything, that it is so easy to worry about the smallest things you have to do; everything takes on a significance away beyond its reality.
In some ways I’m slow to say this but in recent weeks I’ve been in a dark place; found myself wondering what everything is about, indeed, that terrible feeling of failure. Half jokingly, half seriously I say to myself there are advantages in being superficial; it helps to move relatively easily from a dark to a somewhat brighter place.
Being in a dark place makes one, it certainly makes me, more conscious of what it must be like for people who suffer all forms of psychological health issues.
Note, I didn’t call them mental health issues; that frightens me.
There are times when in a dark place it’s close to impossible to communicate with people, you simply shut yourself off from the world. But sometimes a kind or sympathetic word can open a curtain. How can kindness go astray?
It’s difficult to deal with the day-to-day business when down and depressed and it was in that mood I happened to hear the warnings about paying my LPT by November 7. More panic.
I use a computer most days of my life; I’m not saying I’m a whizkid but it’s one of my work tools. And yet when it came to completing the LPT on line I felt incapable of doing it. I was even scared to phone the number at the top of the letter. I eventually decided to call 01 - 738 3626.
Of course I was kept waiting, was this just to annoy me? Eventually I got through to Greta. I did not tell her the full story but I did say I was confused by it all. She could not have been nicer, we began to chat, even a few jokes were exchanged.
What a skill this woman had. Having given her my Property ID and PIN, she opened my file and told me she could do it all for me right there and then over the phone. What a relief it was. Will she ever know how she helped me and in more ways than one. And top marks to Revenue for having a person of Greta’s calibre at the other end of a phone line.
Do we ever know what’s going on in another person’s head? No, and that surely means we need to treat one another with care and empathy. We really need to try. I know that and to my shame I don’t always do it.
An opinion piece in The Irish Times yesterday written by Joe Humphreys.
How should world leaders deal with the Trump administration?
Most presidents and prime ministers are opting for flattery and servility. But the head of the Catholic Church is different.
Pope Leo XIV’s first Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te, published last month, could not be less Maga-like. Emphasising the duty of Christians to serve the poor, it condemns “ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation”. This is awkward for JD Vance, who previously clashed with the pope, when he was mere Cardinal Robert Prevost, over their very different understandings of Jesus’s teaching.
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 – a few years before he converted to Trump (having previously likened him to “America’s Hitler”). He later wrote about that transformation, crediting the French philosopher René Girard (1923-2015) for helping him to ditch his atheist ways.
Who was Girard, and can he help to explain Vance’s brand of Christianity? Dermot Roantree has been researching Vance’s faith in his role as editor of the Irish Jesuit journal Studies. He offers some enlightenment as this week’s Unthinkable guest.
“It was that human desire is imitative: we come to desire things by seeing them desired by others. To use a simple example that Girard himself gave: If you place two toddlers in a room full of toys, as soon as one shows interest in a particular toy that toy becomes an object of desire for the other. Such mirrored desires lead to rivalry, which in turn gives rise to escalating and contagious violence.“In early societies, Girard held, it was the need to contain this violence that led to sacrificial rituals as a means of purging the source of conflict and restoring social cohesion. Internal conflict would be channelled towards a single target – an innocent scapegoat who would then be cast out or destroyed . . .
“As societies evolved, the sacrificial mechanism was transformed into other means of conflict containment that didn’t entail open bloodshed, such as legal systems, civic institutions, and moral or ritual traditions. But these substitutions are fragile. When they weaken or are disregarded, the underlying sacrificial logic re-emerges. Societies revert to building group cohesion by excluding or persecuting the ‘enemy’ – a person perhaps, but often a group, an ideology, or even a historical construct.”
“Religion is at the heart of it. Girard held that the earliest rituals and sacrifices served to legitimise the violence of the scapegoat mechanism, representing it as necessary for social order and sanctioned by the gods. “But for Girard, who returned to the Catholicism of his childhood as he developed his anthropology, the Judeo-Christian narrative tradition, while it shares in this mythic structure, at the same time turns it on its head. Uniquely, the Bible takes the side of the victim – think of Job, the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, the lamenting Psalmist, and the widow, orphan and stranger that God’s people were commanded to protect.
“Think too of Christ’s passion. That, for Girard, is the ultimate exposure of the fiction, the lie, at the heart of human progress, namely that those we victimise are actually guilty. By revealing this, precisely through his own innocence, Christ deprives the scapegoat mechanism of its power.”
Which brings on a crisis, as what Christ offers is a more difficult path: “The frightening principle that you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
“It was the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel who introduced Vance to Girard’s thought. Thiel, who studied under Girard and became Vance’s mentor, found in the concept of mimetic desire a way to understand competition – to see, for example, the value of investing in Facebook, an ideal vehicle for monetising human imitation and envy.“What Vance, for his part, found in Girard was an anthropology that helped explain the web of conflicts, damaged relations and scapegoating in his Appalachian world and a Christian vision that could break the destructive patterns.”
“Thiel also appears to have introduced Vance to the thought of the German jurist and Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt argued that political order requires a strong leader who distinguishes between friends and enemies and acts decisively on that basis, even if it means suspending legal constraints . . .
“This Schmittian perspective is also evident in the Catholic postliberal right – Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari and Adrian Vermeule, for example – that had a deep influence on Vance in the lead-up to his conversion and continues to do so.”
“Vance understands Girard’s insights well, but his political alignment with Trump has led him to abandon them. Worse, having learned the power of scapegoating, he appears to exploit it rather than expose it . . .“Vance has vigorously defended Trump’s attacks on his perceived enemies . . . As Girard warned, this is precisely what occurs when the restraints on violence . . . are cast aside. Cohesion – in this instance, of the Maga base – is achieved through scapegoating.”
See studiesirishreview.ie, edited by Dermot Roantree