'God has changed the settings'

 A Dominican asked another Dominican what week it was in the Psalter. He told him it was the first week in Advent. When the enquiring Dominican said he had forgotten about Advent and thought it was the third week, wondered if all his praying was invalid, the wise Dominican said: “God had changed the settings”, and assured him all our prayer is right and fitting and always valid.

The BBC got it so wrong yesterday morning - embarrassing

They say it is never fair to kick someone when they are down, it makes sense, and it’s the correct

action to take.

The BBC has been in troubled waters of late, but no matter how and why it is suffering, it must be admitted that it is a great organisation and its journalists and staff are among the best of the world, producing top class programmes. Its daily news service is rightly acclaimed as top class.

Yesterday morning the BBC got off on the wrong foot from the moment go. On its 6am news it said that the German President Frank-Walter Steinheimer and his wife were making a State visit to the UK. The man’s name is Steinmeier. They got it right 30 minutes later on their 06.30 news bulletin.

The rail poster says be happy - a great idea

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Last week I had an appointment in Hansfield. I’d never heard of the place before. Indeed, according to the old Ordnance Survey map I have, which was published in 1978, there’s no sign of it. It’s a new suburb of Dublin  close to Clonsilla. It’s marked on the old OS map as Phibblestown.

Using Google maps, the Ordnance Survey map, a rail timetable and the Transport for Ireland (TFI) app I was planning the best way to get there using public transport. As a result of my planning I’ve been greatly unimpressed with the TFI app, and not for the first time, may I add. It told me it would take close to two hours. I found a way that takes one hour 20 minutes. 

I arrive too early at Broombridge for my train to Hansfield. Broombridge is the last station on the Luas Red Line, where it links in with the Irish Rail network. Little or no shelter from the rain and wind for either train or tram.

It's still dark. I see a man with a bicycle and ask him how long it would take to cycle from Broombridge to Hansfield. He advises I cycle along the Royal Canal, he thought most of it was cyclable. We chat for some time. He tells me he cycles from Broombridge to his job in Dún Laoghaire and does it in approximately 50 minutes. We both agree our chat was most enjoyable; a lovely early morning encounter between two strangers.

The time passes, 10 minutes later the train for Hansfield arrives. There’s no realtime notice board on the platform, so to be sure-to-be-sure I ask the driver if this is the train for Hansfield. He assures me it is.  We chat for a minute or two, I tell him about my rail exploits, all he can do is smile before he tells me to get on the train before her closes the doors.

Eighteen minutes later, as we approach Hansfield after the recorded destination announcement is made, the driver adds: ‘next stop Hansfield'.

I get off with my fold-up bicycle, go to the train cab and ask the driver if he made that announcement especially for me; he smiles and says yes. 

We chat for a minute, he tells me he previously had been a bus driver with Dublin Bus but much prefers this job. 

He’ll be on that train the next day so I ask him if he could get me a timetable.

And then just before we part he asks me my name and shouts his name. Off the train goes. I might see him tomorrow.

What a lovely start to a new day.

The next day while waiting in Broombridge I meet the cyclist to Dún Laoghaire. We get chatting again; it turns out he knows someone I know, indeed, he works with her, a small world.

Paddy is driving again today and guess what, he has the timetable for me. This time we couldn’t really chat as he had an inspector with him in the cab. He’s only driving two years and is about to sit an examination/refresher course for locomotive drivers in the next days.

Off goes the train.

At Broombridge I spot a poster saying: ‘Be Happy’.

Time we said net to Americanisms in our English language

Why is the word ‘like' appearing many times in every spoken sentence?

A group of young people, aged between 16 and 18, were asked what the word ‘kind' meant. Not one person in the group knew that it was a young goat.

Why is the word child/children disappearing from our vocabulary?

Is it more of the negative American influence on our language? It would seem so.

Not a word on RTÉs evening news on Leo in Lebanon

German television, BBC covered Pope Leo’s first day in Lebanon last evening. Not a word on RTÉ 1’s evening news.

Ukraine peace plan written by Vladimir Putin

On this day in 1991 the people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

The people who voted that day would never have expected an American president would turn his back on them.

Below is Lara Marlowe’s column in the weekend edition of The Irish Times, where she argues Trump is committing treason.

There were positive noises coming out of the meeting in Florida yesterday between the US and Ukraine, but Donald Trump easily scupper those talks.

Putin is playing with Trump.

_______________________

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund – Vladimir Putin’s “slush fund” according to the US treasury – is believed to have the person who leaked a disgraceful 28-point “peace plan” to the Axios news site on November 19th. The leak provoked fears that the Trump administration was about to force Ukraine to capitulate to Russia and initiated 10 days of diplomatic turmoil.

The plan was portrayed as a US proposal and was ardently supported by vice-president JD Vance. But it bore telltale signs of Russian authorship, such as a ban on “all Nazi ideology or activity”. Vance’s rival for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, secretary of state Marco Rubio, initially told US senators it was drawn up by Russia but then backtracked.

US president Donald Trump gave Volodymyr Zelenskiy an ultimatum: sign off on the “peace plan” by Thanksgiving Day, November 27th, or lose all US support. Indications that the White House had adopted a Russian plan as its own shocked Ukrainians, Europeans and much of Trump’s Republican Party.

The plan gave Russia a say over the size of the Ukrainian army, Ukraine’s relations with third countries and even the country’s education system. For Kyiv, the most unacceptable provision was the demand that Ukraine give Russia the remaining 25 per cent of the eastern province of Donetsk, which Russia has failed to conquer in 11 years, and for which many thousands of Ukrainians have died. The draft agreement specified that the entire eastern province would be “internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation”.

Pursued attacks

Publication of the plan enabled Putin to drive a wedge between Europeans and Ukrainians on the one hand, and the Trump administration on the other – even as Russia pursued its attacks on Ukrainian civilians, killing 26 people in the western city of Ternopil on the day it was leaked. The Russian army continued assaulting Pokrovsk, the city in Donetsk which Russia has been trying to seize for more than a year.

Whatever American input there was made sure that Russia and the US profited together from “peace”, with the US slated to receive 50 per cent of all profits while Europe and the World Bank paid to rebuild Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. As an editorial in the Financial Times stated, the proposal laid bare, “the true cynical, money-grabbing and self-interested nature of [Trump’s] world view”.

The plan did not elaborate on the “robust security guarantees” promised to Ukraine. The Politico news site reported that Rubio told European allies the US would only discuss long-term security guarantees after a peace deal was signed.

Rather than offend Trump, Europeans and Ukrainians pretended to welcome the plan as a basis for negotiations. They met in Geneva with Rubio, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to produce a shorter, 19-point plan shorn of the most egregious Russian demands. The Kremlin labelled the revised plan “counterproductive”.

On the afternoon of November 25th, the Bloomberg wire service published transcripts of sensitive telephone conversations. The source of the transcripts was not stated, but no one contested their authenticity. The first conversation, between Witkoff and Putin’s diplomatic adviser, Yuri Ushakov, took place on October 14th, just after Trump imposed an extremely flawed ceasefire on Israel and Gaza. Witkoff coached Ushakov to ask Putin to telephone Trump to congratulate him, saying that if the Russian dictator flattered Trump sufficiently, “it’s going to be a really good call”.

Zelenskiy was due to visit the White House three days later, by which time Putin’s phone call had ensured the US president would abandon all possibility of transferring long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

In conversation with Ushakov, Witkoff accepted Russia’s demand for all of Donetsk. As Prof Timothy Snyder commented later, “Witkoff is not buying the Russian narrative; he’s selling it.”

Trump and Witkoff showed stunning amateurism in their intention to replicate the formula they had used in Gaza, as if ending wars in the Middle East and eastern Europe were as simple as developing beach resorts.

Played for a fool

“I’m even thinking that maybe we set out like a 20-point peace proposal, just like we did in Gaza,” Trump’s envoy told Ushakov. “We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace, and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you.” A few minutes later he added, “You know I have the deepest respect for President Putin.”

The other telephone conversation, between Ushakov and Dmitriev on October 29th, confirmed that that the “peace plan” concocted between Witkoff and Dmitriev in Florida originated in Moscow.

“Well, we need the maximum, don’t you think?” Ushakov asked.

“I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal,” Dmitriev replied. “And let them do like their own. But, I don’t think they’ll take exactly our version, but at least it’ll be as close to it as possible.”

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said Putin has played Trump for a fool and warned that “a deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on”. Western commentators called Witkoff “witless” and “dummkopf”.

“It is clear that Witkoff fully favours the Russians,” Republican Congressman Don Bacon wrote on X. “He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired.”

In a normal country, Trump and Witkoff would be tried for treason. Trump dropped his Thanksgiving Day ultimatum and made optimistic statements about an imminent peace agreement. The week ended with Zelenskiy planning yet another trip to the White House, and Witkoff scheduled to call on Putin for the sixth time this year. Witkoff has never visited Ukraine.

Much as Trump disdains Europe, its leaders apparently still hold some influence over him. After the August 15th Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, eight European leaders accompanied Zelenskiy to Washington to stave off similar Russian demands.

This week, the Europeans did what they do best. They bureaucratised and diluted the crisis through endless meetings and declarations, preventing Trump from giving Ukraine to Putin, at least for the time being.

Leo calls for ridding ourselves of prejudice and mistrust

 Below is an NCR report on Pope Leo in Türkiye

https://www.ncronline.org/node/318466

Pope Leo XIV called on the world's religious communities to break down "the walls of prejudice and mistrust" that divide them at his first Mass abroad, rounding off a day of interreligious outreach and renewed appeals for Christian unity that included a pointed hint at a possible trip to Jerusalem in 2033.

Link below is an address given by Pope Leo in Türkiye.

https://youtu.be/9w2jDzpi064?si=B5wF38Bf5TwNQBkt

Black Friday is a day of insatiable consumption

Justine McCarthy’s piece in The Irish Times yesterday. It’s a great read. Life sure is one big mystery dotted all the time with contradictions.

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Click open those apps, stack those digital baskets to overflowing and wait for the Amazon man to stagger to your front door with your purchases all the way from China. Today let us eat, drink and shop till we drop because tomorrow we die along with our planet.

Today is Insatiable Consumption Day, a marketing wheeze dreamt up in some Madison Avenue brainstorm to kick-start the Christmas rush after Thanksgiving. Instant gratification is guaranteed, along with mountain ranges of polluting rubbish. Forbes magazine reported after last year’s Black Friday that trucks transporting packages around Europe raised CO2 emissions by 94 per cent above the level of an average week. That’s not counting the cargo planes and ships, the on-second-thoughts returned items, the blizzard of hard-sell emails and texts, the acres of packaging, the booty that falls apart after a single outing or the multitudes of plastic toxins absorbed into the atmosphere

November has been a darkly comedic month. Black Friday comes hot on the heels of Cop30, the save-the-planet summit destined to go down in history – if the history books survive – as Flop30. Lobbyists for fossil fuel corporations accounted for one in 25 participants. The absence of Donald Trump dominated Cop news to the virtual exclusion of commentary on women’s scant visibility in the photo-ops and the pathetic failure to agree a gender action plan.

Trump’s no-show was expected. Anyone who grabs a gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner and concretes over the White House rose garden would rather be anywhere else than discussing climate- mitigation measures. The apposite question was not where the US president was, but what he was plotting while other state leaders were, ostensibly, trying to save the planet. Poring over a world map of rare earth resources, I bet.

He may be a lying, hyperbolic, incoherent peddler of empty threats and promises but – give the man credit – Trump never misses an opportunity to make a buck. He harangues India and Europe for not buying enough American oil and gas when what he really wants is everyone else’s rare earth metals and minerals because he recognises that therein lies the new Klondike. He has signed a whirlwind of deals for them with Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, negotiated a supply flow with China and extracted mining rights in Ukraine as a quid pro quo for military assistance. His covetousness of metals-rich Greenland is unlikely to be driven by an ambition to construct a Mar-a-Lago-on-the-tundra permafrost.

Friendly-fire casualty

Rare earths are the 21 century’s gold. They are in our smartphones, televisions, laptops, laptop bags, desktops, wind turbines, electric vehicles, fighter jets, lasers and drones. Lithium and europium are the matrix of our individualised age when there is no need to go to the shop because the shop will come to you. In Ireland, two-thirds of Black Friday purchases are transacted online, their convenience increasing road traffic and further reducing any need for human contact. Mining their ingredients can turn prospectors into overnight oligarchs in our technological age. And Mother Nature is the friendly-fire casualty.

“Capitalism depends on making our environment pay,” writes former dot.com entrepreneur Gerry McGovern in 99th Day: A Warning About Technology, his new book unearthing the dirty facts of clean energy. An early smartphone might have contained 10 of these materials, he says. The latest device could have many more. No wonder Trump scoffs at climate change activists when there are spondulicks to be made from mining rare earths. Mining being the operative word; a process that erodes great chunks of the planet and fills it with the sludge of waste. Once mined, the products comprising them need a marketplace. Ergo, we have Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year sales . . .

Are “green” industries healing Earth or are they killing it? The question is moot when obsolete wind turbines have to be dumped after their use-by date, homes are getting e-car chargers quicker than water pipes and AI is adding to the cloud’s demand for energy-gobbling data centres. According to the gospel of capitalism, gaps in the market are to be milked like cows.

Trump is not the only opportunist. Most governments face the conundrum of cheerleading climate mitigation policies while protecting jobs that accelerate the environmental damage. The dilemma is visible in poorer countries where foreign-owned mines are busy depleting ore stores and a jumper that was recycled in Termonfeckin ends up in Karachi, but Ireland has its own paradoxes. The Government is charged with protecting employment created by IT behemoths while, at the same time, providing for their massive electricity needs.

The Aughinish Alumina refinery in Askeaton graphically illustrates the political quandary. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the EU imposed economic sanctions on Russian businesses and oligarchs, the Irish Government lobbied Brussels for special exemption for Limerick’s Russian-owned plant that turns bauxite, shipped from other countries, into alumina and employs about 450 people. That is an awful lot of families and an awful lot of spending money flowing around the region.

No protest

State bodies are exacerbating society’s vulnerability to the digital culture, which is increasingly beset by scams, hacks and breakdowns. Their communication with citizens is mainly by electronic means. They send texts and emails telling us to check their websites for their correspondence. They offer discounts to those who do their transactions online. Anyone without the means or nous for digital engagement is regarded as a Luddite. When Ryanair announced that henceforth it will only accept e-boarding passes, there was no protest from Merrion Street.

As individuals, we do not have to face Hobson’s choice. We can walk, take a bus or cycle without inviting an economic crash. We can post a letter or a card, keep cash in our wallets, go to the takeaway instead of the takeaway coming to us, buy local, maybe even visit a shop, talk to the stranger at the till, carry our own purchases home, resist the capitalist pressure to surrender to the robots and Amazon Man.

That may sound crazily radical, but we might find life is better for it. Our planet certainly would be.

Why don’t journalists challenge Trump’s insults?

US President Donald Trump asked a journalist today if she were stupid and then shouted at her that she was stupid.

When this happens why is there not a journalist anywhere in the world who will challenge him and  tell him not to speak in such a manner.

Why do so many people bow to authority, especially when the authority is inept, inefficient and downright rude.

Then again, those who do, know the price that has to be paid. But it’s worth it.

Christianity taught but not practised - Ireland in the 1950s

Below is the final paragraph in Dermot Ferriter’s opinion piece in The Irish Times today:

The Burkes are usually described as “fundamentalist Christians”, prompting another reminder from history: in 1957, Irish trade unionist John Conroy, president of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, lamented how “nowhere in the world was there a country where so much Christianity was taught but so little practised ... the practical application of Christian teaching is put aside when selfish personal interests are involved.

It is always interesting to hear how people talk about the value of Catholic schools in Ireland, the ethos of Catholic schools.

What happened, what went so wrong?

When people talk about Ireland surrendering to secularisation, John Conroy back in 1957 saw how unchristian we were as a nation.

Just as civil war is an oxymoron so too is a poor church

This was a headline on a story in the property section of The Irish Times some weeks ago, it ran:

"Little Sisters of the Poor seeking €20m from nursing home sale”

No one expects any charitable organisation to sell property below the market value.

Still, the headline must set the reader thinking. There is a real sense of oxymoron about it. There’s a funny side to it but there is also a deadly serious aspect to it.

Money is always a delicate subject and it is an extremely delicate topic for the church, all churches.

On the one hand the church is on the side of the poor, it says so and it is. On the other hand its portfolio is gigantic; it employs the top bankers, top legal teams, top architects, top fund managers. But it never seems to engage decent PR companies, which is a real mystery.

The Catholic Church, all the churches, have done extraordinary work for the poor, the sick, the old, the homeless. It has played a positive role in the education of generations of Irish people.

So often the churches simply mirror what’s going on in society.

All part of the mystery of life? 

President Connolly got it wrong on German rearmament

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Watching the horror that Russia is inflicting on the people of Ukraine, I keep thinking of what President Catherine Connolly said during her electioneering for the top job. She said that Germany’s current military spending had ‘some parallels with the 1930s’. People say daft things during election time.

I criticised both my parents for being gullible people; they would believe what the last person said to them, at least that’s what I thought at the time. But these days I’m finding myself not just as gullible as they were but even more so. Honestly, when it comes to differing views and opinions I am so easily swayed.

I believe all forms of violence simply don’t work; the carrot is more effective than the stick. Young people who grow up in a caring and loving environment have a much better chance of being good people than those who see and experience bad behaviour on a daily basis. But it’s not always as straightforward as that.

It was the military might of the Soviet Union, US and UK that stopped Hitler’s Germany. Peace talks would never have worked with Hitler. 

After World War I Germany was humiliated, it became a land of hyperinflation and poverty, a breeding ground for Adolf Hitler. Had Germany received aid from the west Hitler could never have happened.

Ukraine is a sovereign independent State and has been since August 24, 1991. It has a long and difficult relationship with its neighbouring Russian Empire. 

Today it is an internationally recognised independent State and has all the rights to which a State is entitled. In breaking away from Russia it agreed to surrender its nuclear capability to its former masters.

In February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. It is estimated that well over one million people have been killed. Russian is spoken in parts of eastern Ukraine; many people in these areas feel Russian.  Putin used that as one of his excuses for this war, but that’s the trick Hitler played annexing Danzig and the German speaking districts of Czechoslovakia.

It is upsetting to admit that the only language Putin understands is the clenched fist. The world has to stop the Russian aggressor. But how?

And that’s the only reason why Germany and other European countries are now in the process of rearming.

It’s a cruel world when an American president seems to favour tyrants and dictators rather than democratically elected leaders in open and fair elections.

It would be great if Russia would listen to diplomacy and peaceful words. But there is no chance of that happening. How would President Connolly stop the Russian Bear?

Putin has a history of being a bully and tyrant; he certainly does not know how to tell the truth, just look at the lies he told about the invasion of Ukraine, how he occupied Crimea in 2014. 

Have we forgotten the name Alexei Navalny and how Putin tortured him before he died in a gulag? The murders he has committed across Europe?

These days I hesitatingly believe that Putin has to be stopped, and if that means using force, so be it. 

Then again, have I been swayed by the opinions of western thinking? I don’t think so. Why have close to a million people left Russia since Russia invaded Ukraine? 

Two charming encounters with strangers at dawn

It was one of those days. I arrive too early at Broombridge for my train to Hansfield. It is all new territory for me, even railway runnings are an unknown. It's still dark. I see a man with a bicycle and ask him how long it would take to cycle from Broombridge to Hansfield. He advises I cycle along the Royal Canal, he thought most of it was cyclable. We chat for some time. He tells me he cycles two days a week from Broombridge to his job in Dún Laoghaire and does it in circa 50 minutes. We both agree our chat was most enjoyable; a lovely encounter between two strangers.

The time passes, 10 minutes later the train for Hansfield arrives. There’s no realtime notice board on the platform, so to be sure-to-be-sure I ask the driver if this is the train for Hansfield. He assures me it is. 

Eighteen minutes later as we approach Hansfield after the recorded destination announcement is made the drive adds that the train was stopping at Hansfield.

I get off with my fold up bicycle, go to the train cab and ask the loco driver if he made that announcement for me. yes, he had. 

We chat for a minute, he tells me he previously had been a bus driver with Dublin Bus but much prefers this job. And then just before we part he asks me my name and shouts his name. Off the train went. I might see him tomorrow.

What a lovely start to a new day.

The State must regulate cyclists employed to deliver food

Winter is here, it is far more

dangerous on our roads than in summer or spring. Cyclists, pedestrians, drivers need to be super alert, especially in the dark.

The behaviour of the delivery cyclists is now out of control. Among the culprits are Deliver, Eats, Uber, and others.

It is now commonplace that these food cyclists pay no attention to traffic signals, many have no front or rear lights, few, if any wear hi-vis jackets. And most of those with electric bicycles doctor them so that they can travel faster than 25km/h.

These cyclists are considered to be sole traders, we are told they work for themselves. The companies, whose names are written on their bags and backs take no responsibility for their behaviour. This is outrageous and the State is duty-bound to stop this nonsense. These cyclists are under unacceptable pressure to deliver as many meals as possible in as short a time as possible so that they can eke out a living. 

The companies for whom they work should be held responsible. Why is it that the little person is always treated so badly and then punished when something happens.

There is going to be a serious accident involving these food deliverers. Why can’t or won’t the State make these companies responsible and answerable for the behaviour of the cyclists and scooters?

The State is obliged to ask now, and not tomorrow.

Oscar Wilde’ musings on men and their masks

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth”. 

- Oscar Wilde

What would he have said about sailors, soldiers, police in uniforms; priests in black and in habits, sisters and nuns in habits?

Not everything Wilde said was correct; no one has all wisdom.

Dates in Russian history worth mentioning

On this day, November 22, 1942, General Friedrich Paulus telegrammed Adolf Hitler explaining to him the German Sixth Army was surrounded by the Red Army. 

Hitler refused to take Paulus’ advice and ordered him to fight on.

It was the first significant defeat for the Germans in the war and the defeat in February in Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for Germany.

But for Stalingrad what might have happened?

Irish history school books gave little or no mention of   the significance of what happened on the River Volga; we were told the US and UK won the war. Not so.

And then following the collapse of the Soviet Union the West refused to give Gorbachev the funding he requested.

Had the West helped the newly formed Russian Federation would it have been possible for Putin ever to have become President of Russia?

Two signs that tell many stories

A reader came across these two signs within

Heuston Station, Dublin

the last 24 hours.

The top picture is at the Luas rail/pedestrian/cycle bridge at Dublin’s Heuston Station. It’s difficult to know what it means. The idea of a directional sign is to help the traveller get to a place. Maybe the sign is for tram drivers, but most unlikely.

Heuston Station is called after John Heuston who was excecuted by the British for his role in the 1916 Rising; John had worked with the rail company. His brother Michael Heuston was a Dominican priest. He was a wise, kind and gentle person, eccentric too, but a great character, someone never to be forgotten. I said to him once that he was ahead of his time. He looked at me and quipped: “No, the church is behind the times’. What at all would Fr Michael Heuston say about the sign? He had much to say about his brother’s bust in the main concourse at Heuston Station.

The second picture is on a farmyard gate in West Kerry.

It says it on the tin

And it’s saying exactly what it means. Clear and precise. It leaves the reader in no doubt about what to do.

The top sign was probably designed by an expensive agency and cost the taxpayer a few bob.

No comment on expense of lower sign.

Good to be able to laugh.

Over one million homeless people living in Germany

Figures issued on Monday show there are 1,029,000 homeless people living in Germany. That works out at one in every 80 people have not a roof over their heads

The F-word seems to be part of every sentence these days

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

The CEO of the Dublin Airport Authority (Daa), Kenny Jacobs has been in the news. He’s a person who easily attracts attention. Before moving to the Daa he worked as chief marketing officer with Ryanair. He always catches my attention when he’s on radio or television. 

For the last few months there has been talk of his leaving the job and being offered a mega settlement deal. The original contract was for seven years. But as I write this column there are moves afoot to keep him on board.

There have been allegations made about his style of management. The Sunday  Independent has reported that a complaint was made against him. 

Rumour has it that Mr Jacobs has the tendency to use ‘flowery language’ in the workplace.

I have no idea if that be true, all I know about the man is what I read and see in the media. I have to say anytime I see him on television or hear him on radio I am drawn into what he has to say. There is fire in his belly. As someone who tries to say a few wise words at Mass I’m always interested in those who can catch our attention and how they do it.

I’ve no doubt the style of people such as Jacobs and Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary can annoy people, nevertheless, I bet they are few and far between who don’t listen to what they have to say.

It set me thinking about how we use vulgar or ‘bad language’. Up to recently the F-word seldom if ever appeared in print or broadcast but I think I’ve seen it in one or two tabloid newspapers in the last 12 months, and I’ve certainly heard it on radio and television. Maybe some people can use bad language and get away with it. It seems to work sometimes for comedians. Are there times there is no other word to use?

When I heard Ivan Yeates advising Fine Gael to ‘smear the bejasus’ out of Catherine Connolly I was annoyed. Honestly I considered it disgusting, cheap and low. On hearing it I immediately said to myself: ‘how dare he speak like that, who does he think he is’. It all sounded unprofessional.

If I heard my boss use bad language on a regular basis should I tell her/him to stop? I hope I would have courage to do so? What would happen if I were working for a company or organisation and went public on the general use of bad language? Is it really that big an issue? It seems managers and bosses can get away with using vulgar words but what happens if I tell my boss to F-off. Maybe that tells us something.

Only yesterday talking to a stranger about the weather for a few minutes, he used the F-word twice. 

This week I saw the letters WTF on an advertisement on the side of a bus. Most people know for what that stands. Because the F-word is now used so often has it lost all meaning and sense? 

I find it hilarious when a stranger says the word to me and suddenly says: ‘Oh, sorry Father for the bad language’.

A funny old world indeed.

Pope Leo signals his intererst in caring for the poor

Pope Leo has opened an outpatient centre for homeless people at St Peter’s.

Below is the link for Vatican News

https://share.google/t0rJQ8mn1JD84FjmY

Pope Leo sent a video message to the bishops and cardinals of the Global South participating in COP30 in Brazil, urging cooperation and stressing that it is not too late if we choose deeds over words. 

 https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-11/pope-leo-xiv-videomessage-cop30-amazon-global-south-bishops.html

Could Artificial Intelligence have a goal to destroy us?

Nobel prize winner Geoffrey Hinton

Geoffrey Hinton

spoke with Brendan O’Connor yesterday. It was riveting radio. Hinton won the Nobel Prize for his work on machine learning, which were the foundations for modern Artifical Intelligence today. 

He left Google so that he could talk about his safety concerns surrounding AI.

He explains here to Brendan why he thinks AI is now at a stage where it can think and understand.

For anyone, who is involved in attempting to talk about the Word of God this interview is intriguing.

The Catholic Church, maybe the world, should feel somewhat relieved that Pope Leo is literate in mathematics; he studied the subject at university.

If you did not hear the interview yesterday, the link is below; it is sensational, but scary too.

 https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22559818/