There was a quote on this blog for today’s post from HL Mencken (1880 - 1956) writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun on Sunday, 26 July, 1920, where he said that one day the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
On further research it turns out this man made objectionable comments on many issues; he was clearly an anti-semite, hence the post has been removed.
Below is Lara Marlowe’s column in the weekend edition of The Irish Times.
It’s an excellent piece, a great read and tells the lie of Putin’s doctoring of Russian Ukrainian history.
Like most of his compatriots, Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak has been on an emotional rollercoaster since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“At times you feel everything is lost. You are heading into the abyss, and then suddenly victory seems very close. We go up and down with the news, especially since [Donald] Trump came to power, because Trump sows chaos.”
Hrytsak teaches history at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and is one of the most prominent historians still working in Ukraine. Stoicism and cynical optimism are the best attitudes to help one carry on, he says. “Just imagine. Next month this war will have lasted as long as the first World War.”
Paradoxically, Hrytsak says, the empathy and solidarity of the early days of the war made it a high point. “This feeling has died out, because the war has gone on so long.”
Hrytsak learned last December that his godson Arsan (33) had been killed in Pokrovsk on the eastern front. “He saved three cats from the war zone. He managed to send them to Lviv and on to Germany. The cats survived; he did not. The last time I saw him, he joked that he was married to a lady with a scythe, to death.”
Hrytsak calls Vladimir Putin “the embodiment of the Russkiy Mir” (Russian World), a woolly concept of transnational Russian identity which defends traditional values against a degenerate West.
“With this war, Ukraine is in the process of leaving a dangerous world, the famous Russkiy Mir that Putin talks about in his speeches,” Hrytsak says. Cradle-to-grave violence is the hallmark of this Russian sphere.
The Russian president’s idol, Peter the Great, began the colonisation of Ukraine in the 18th century. Peter renamed Muscovy as Russia, after the medieval Kyivan Rus’ dynasty which was extinguished by the Mongol horde in 1240. Hrytsak says the historical dispute over the legacy of the Kyivan Rus’ is as absurd as modern-day France and Germany arguing over which country is the legitimate heir of Charlemagne.
“If Putin committed no other crimes, he deserves to be punished for his crude, over-simplified exploitation of history,” Hrytsak says. “He uses history to legitimise his aggression. Putin’s claim that Russia has a 1,000-year history is a nonsense. The main story of this region is the lack of continuity.”
Hrytsak contrasts the trauma of Ukrainian historical memory with Putin’s belief that the Kyivan Rus’, the Russian and Soviet empires were a golden era. “Fortunately, Ukraine has no golden age, so Ukraine has nowhere to return to. Ukraine’s golden age is in the future. Ukrainians not only want to leave the Russkiy Mir, they want to leave the past behind.”
Putin will go down in history “in the same box with Stalin, Lenin, Hitler and other dictators who failed dramatically and provoked huge losses among their own populations and their neighbours”, Hrytsak says. “You can destroy a lot with violence, but you cannot build anything lasting on it.” Russia, he says, “has no good scenario for the future” whereas Ukraine has several.
“The worst-case scenario is a Ukraine destroyed by the war, lacking in reforms and in stagnation. Most people would try to leave because they would see no future. The country would move from the Second World to the Third World. The best-case scenario is that Ukraine succeeds in preserving most of its territory, carries out reforms, enters the EU and eventually becomes a very dynamic economy, a central European tiger.” The real outcome will probably be somewhere between, Hrytsak says.
The jury is still out on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “I believe he will be one of the few people from eastern Europe who will be remembered for a very long time,” Hrytsak says. “He consciously emulated Churchill, but when asked recently he said – with the sense of humour I like – ‘I’m more like Charlie Chaplin’. It depends not just on the results of the war, but on whether he is able to bring Ukraine into the European space, whether he will be remembered as a person who fought against corruption or as a person who enabled corruption. This is not clear yet.”
Putin developed a plan to invade Ukraine in 2008, right after the Russian invasion of Georgia, Hrytsak says. That plan was an open secret, and Putin seized on the Maidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014 to enact it.
Putin “wants to ‘make Russia great again’”, Hrytsak says. “He wants Russia to be a superpower. Without Ukraine, he cannot do it. With Ukraine, Russia is like the US. Without Ukraine, it’s like Canada.”
Hrytsak believes that Putin wants to annex only the Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine, which he sees as part of the Russkiy Mir, leaving a Ukrainian rump state that would be ruled from Kyiv by a pro-Russian puppet, similar to the president of neighbouring Belarus.
“The tragedy of our territory is that we are borderlands both for Russia and for the West,” Hrytsak says. “Unfortunately, we are at the centre of a titanic struggle. We want to have a different kind of life. We want to have a boring life.”
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s comment about what Gerard Hutch said about illegal immigrants is remarkable.
Canvassing in the upcoming Dublin Central bye election she said: “We can’t, comment on other people’s comments.”
Of course she can. Doesn’t Mary Lou comment on the comments of other people every day in and outside Dáil Éireann.
It is GUBU at its very best.
Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, and Unprecedented was the comment made by Conor Cruise O’Brein in criticism of then taoiseach Charles J Haughey in 1982.
People who use public transport in Ireland will be aware that on trains and trams company personnel make random checks to ensure passengers have a valid ticket. On urban and rural buses a different system is in use.
It seems to be the case that checkers are more often seen on early morning trams. It’s interesting watching them carrying out their job and how professional they are when they discover a passenger does not have a valid ticket.
In 2025 Luas fare evaders, who were caught in the act numbered 19,574.
The first driver-only buses were introduced in Dublin 1965; it was the mid-1990s before the last conductors were retired.
A story does the rounds that one of the last conductors when finished his job collecting fares continued going to work every day, arrived at his depot, did nothing all day, and the company paid him until he reached retirement age.
The veracity of this story cannot be verified but it is a story that has done the rounds with CIE/Dublin Bus staff for many years.
On this day, May 8, 2025 Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected the first American pope.
From day one Pope Leo has stressed the importance of peace and social justice in the world.
Today is also the anniversary of theGerman Instrument of Surrender signed at Berlin-Karlshorst on May 8, 1945.
Karlshorst is well worth a visit if and when in Berlin.
Until the unification of Germany it was in East Berlin, the capital city of the German Democratic Republic. Troops of the National People’s Army of the GDR kept a ceremonial guard of honour outside the building.
Inside the seating has been kept exactly as it was on the day of the surrender.
Among those who signed the document were Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces and Marshal Georgy Georgy Zhukov of the Soviet High Command, the Soviet soldier who played a significant role in defeating Germany.
It’s interesting that Pope Leo was elected pope on May 8, an anniversary that brought peace to Europe.
We all know how annoying and frustrating it is when calling our bank.
Read the link below to discover how Robert Prevost’s bank treated him.
Fr Liam Gerard Walsh was born in New York on February 24, 1933.
On completing secondary school at CBS, North Monastery, locally known as the North Mon, in Cork in 1950 he joined the Dominican Order, making his first profession the following year, and was ordained a priest on July 14, 1957.
Liam’s parents moved to the United States after the Civil War and returned to Cork shortly after the birth of Liam. Because Liam was born in the US he had dual citizenship.
Liam did his early studies in philosophy and theology in Tallaght and at the French Dominican house of studies, Le Saulchoir in Paris, where he was a fellow student with the late Tom McInerney.
He returned to the Dominican house of studies in Tallaght in 1958 to teach theology.
"He opened our eyes to the liturgy, lecturing us on the theology behind it instead of talking about rubrics and the number of candles that should be on the altar," a former student of his recalls. During his time teaching in Tallaght he taught and gave courses all over Ireland.
With the late Wilfred Harrington, Austin Flannery and others he was involved in translating and promoting the teachings of Vatican II.
He gave many talks and contributed to publications, explaining the documents of the Vatican Council. Indeed, on the announcement of his death a Dominican brother commented that he was teaching the theology of the Vatican Council ever before the Council began.
It was a time of hope and enthusiasm in the church and Liam conveyed that in his lecturing.
In the mid 1970s Liam was appointed socius for the intellectual life across the entire Dominican Order. He was appointed to the post by the then Master of the Order, Vincent de Couesnongle. It meant his moving from Tallaght to the Dominican HQ at Santa Sabina in Rome.
While in the job he presided over a radical revision of the Order’s legislation on studies, particularly the role of the regent of studies.
On completion of his term of office Liam taught for a short period at the University of St Thomas in Rome, before the then Master of the Order, fellow Irish man, Damian Byrne asked him if he would move to Fribourg to teach theology, where he later became vice-rector of the University of Fribourg.
He retired from his teaching post and vice-rectorship on reaching the age of 70 and returned to Ireland and taught at the Dominican house of Studies at St Saviour’s in Dublin’s north inner city until he reached the noble age of 90.
Age and declining health necessitated his moving to Sybil Hill Nursing Home in Raheny. He suffered from a debilitating muscular problem but never complained.
He was granted an STM, which is the highest academic award bestowed by the Dominican Order on one of its members.
He wrote a number of books and many articles, notably a book on the Sacraments of Initiation.
His translation of a volume of the Blackfriars Summa Theologiae, on the Grace of Christ, is a masterpiece, a whole course of Christology is embedded in the notes to that volume, clear and precise, which is what people came to expect from him.
In the late 1960s Liam was famously fired from a diocesan liturgical commission by the Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid.
Liam disagreed with the way the archbishop saw the work of the commission.
He was he fired or did he resign? One or the other, but it was a cause célèbre at the time.
He was in many ways a reserved man, a polite person, who would be slow to offend.
A Dominican nun says of Liam: "He wore his erudition lightly and was warm and gracious and treated others as equals. Even as novices, who knew very little, he gave us great encouragement and was always eager to hear our thoughts and questions. He really loved to see us thinking. That struck me very much. He wanted to teach us how to think. Not to be academics or scholars but just how to think. I looked forward to his annual visits.
"Like Damian, Malachy, Tom Ryan, Flannan and Tom Jordan, he always called when home. They made the Order bigger than the Irish Province in Ireland for us and also made us feel very much part of the Province.
"One of my fondest memories of Liam is of his coming down our refectory to me, a few months after I had been ill. He shook my hand and asked me how I was and told me that he prayed for me every day. It was an unexpected and touching gesture, full of genuine care and concern. There always seemed to be a great sincerity about him probably because of his love for truth."
A fellow Dominican brother, some few years younger than he, on hearing of his death said: He was a great asset to any community where he lived. He was always there to help, give advice and do all those jobs that helped build up a spirit of camaraderie."
He was an eloquent preacher and meticulous in preaching the Word of God in a language understood by his listeners.
While teaching in Tallaght he had the nickname ‘Verbum’. It’s difficult to know how he acquired it but it may have something to do with his clear and articulate enunciation. He was also cantor in Tallaght and maybe the origins of the nickname are linked to that. Most likely it is linked to his teaching of Christology. Then again a former student of his said: "I always thought Liam was nicknamed Verbum because of the way he pronounced the word. Veerrrrbum! Not sure why I thought that."
Liam Walsh was a gracious person. He wore his academic achievements easily; he always had a listening ear. He was a man of great honesty.
May he rest in pease
Liam's body will be lying in state in St Catherine’s chapel (entrance is on Dorset Street ) on Thursday from 2pm until 5.30pm, prior to removal to the adjoining church on Dominick Street for evening prayer.
Funeral Mass on Friday at 11am followed by burial afterwards at the Dominican plot in Glasnevin cemetery.
This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane
I think it’s ok to announce your birthday after it has happened; it would not be good taste to announce it in advance.
I was 77 last Wednesday, April 29. In the days leading up to my birthday I always think of my parents but especially my mother. I am told my birth was complicated, that I weighed under one pound. I often mean to check the hospital records, but have not yet done so. I must do it.
By coincidence I collected my new electric bicycle on my birthday. I had ordered it a week earlier.
Twelve years ago when I bought a fold-up bicycle I was sure that would be my last bicycle to buy but once again I proved myself wrong; a common occurrence with me.
Fortunately, I was able to buy the bicycle on the Bike-to-Work scheme, which enables the purchaser to obtain tax credit on the first €1,500 on the price of the bicycle. The tax credit is based on the tax band the employee is on. The scheme only applies to PAYE workers. In shopping around for the bicycle I discovered the vast majority of bicycles bought today are bought on the BTW scheme. Two shops told me that over 90 percent of their bicycle sales are via the scheme.
It’s a great incentive to get people out on their bikes. But why not open the scheme to everyone? At present the employer pays the shop €1,500 upfront and then, usually over a period of a year, makes the relevant reductions in the employee’s salary, taking into account the employee’s tax band.
There are many people, who are not PAYE employees and it seems to me it is unfair that they are not eligible to avail of the deal.
For example, pensioners, who are not PAYE employees are not eligible. It would be simple for the State to deduct from their pension and do it over a period longer than 12 months if necessary. It could be arranged for all tax payers.
The State is making progress in making it safer for cyclists on our roads but the progress is far too slow.
Yes, there are a few trophy cycle paths in existence but the majority of our roads are simply not safe for cyclists. There was a time when I would tell every young person to get cycling.
Not any longer. We are taking our lives in our hands, especially in cities and built up areas, every time we get up on our bicycles. I know; I’m cycling 72 years. Guess who have become terrors on our roads; those speeding cyclists, who think they are on cycling tracks. There are the scooters, and e-bikes that are doctored to travel faster than 25 km/h. They pass me every day cycling at speeds of 40 km/h.
And then there all those motorists, cyclists too, who do not keep the 1/1.5 metre rule.
All that said, if you are super careful I hesitatingly suggest, especially in this, the best time of the year, to get yourself a bicycle and pedal your way through the spring and summer.
I feel a tiny bit guilty using an electric bicycle. But be assured, I’m still using my conventional bicycle.
Fr Liam G Walsh OP died early this morning in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital.
An obituary to follow.
May he rest in peace.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave a wide-ranging interview on the popular Caren Miosga show on ARD German television on Sunday evening.
He spoke about the recent difficulties the coalition parties have had and how matters have now improved.
He referred to his remarks made about the US and how as a result Donald Trump announced the removal of US troops stationed in Germany. He spoke about the importance of the German US relationship and agrees with US policy that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Merz insisted on Germany standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. He pointed to the poor economic conditions in Russia at present and that they are losing 1,000 troops every day in the Ukrainian war.
Before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States he claimed he would settle the war in Ukraine in close to 48 hours. He also said it would never have happened had he been president.
Within hours of attacking Iran Trump said the war would be over in days.
Is it not time for US to allow the people of Iran to solve their own matters.
On this day, May 4, 1989 former While House aide Oliver North was convicted of three crimes and acquitted of another nine charges dealing with the Iran-Contra affair; the convictions were later overturned in appeal.
A quote from US Catholic lecturer/preacher (American spelling): “Let’s pray with renewed fervor for our newly elected leaders, including President Trump.
"Let’s also be sure to keep praying for the blessing and guidance of Our Lord and Savior (Who was not elected last night 😉). Lord Jesus, have mercy on us all."
Friday was the anniversary of the fall of Berlin under the might of the Soviet Union.
What about praying for Vladimir Putin at Mass tomorrow, we might even include Stalin; it was on his instructions that the Red flag was flown aloft the Reich Chancellery?
Surely no more outrageous than what Scott Hahn is quoted as saying.
This from Google: "Scott Hahn, a prominent Catholic theologian and apologist, has maintained a complex relationship with the political landscape surrounding Donald Trump.
While encouraging prayers for him as a leader, Hahn has also faced criticism and polarization within Catholic circles regarding the intersection of faith and support for Trump's presidency, with discussions often centered on Catholic social teaching and moral choices."
The Irish Times yesterday ran a front page story on the price of butter in Berlin. The title of the story was: ‘Kerrygold is 65% dearer in Kerry the in Berlin.
That it merits a place on the front page is difficult to understand. But what makes it all so nonsensical is the fact that Kerrygold butter is on a week-long special offer in Lidl stores across Germany.
It is a non-story but to have it on the front page is mind boggling.
Indeed the second lead story on the front page is about the expectation that Kinahan will be held in Portlaoise Prison.
Really?
Is it any wonder newspapers are not selling.
They’ll be telling us next the price of jellybeans in Ulaanbaatar, that is, when they are on special offer in the Mongolian capital.
On this day, May 1, 1945 German radio announced the death of Adolf Hitler.
The statement said that he had ‘fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany.’
Nothing could have been further from the truth; the coward had killed himself.
That same day the victorious Red Army flew the Soviet flag atop the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.
Mother Russia lost between 20 and 30 million defending their country from the German hordes.
The following day, May 2, 1945, the Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin.
The Bike-to-Work scheme is a great idea and a wonderful incentive to get people out on their bicycles.
Many bicycle shops say that over 90 per cent of their new bicycle sales are through the BTW scheme.
But is there any chance local authorities will fix our roads? The pot holes are growing and deepening by the day, especially in bicycle lanes.
It is well nigh impossible to cycle in a bicycle lane without hitting glass or descend into a giant hole.
Country Councils please make it easier for cyclists.
This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane
I lived in Rome between 1974 and 1976. It sounds a long time ago, actually it is and if the truth be told it scares me to think about it; it’s half a century ago, ouch.
I’ve been back twice on short visits during which time I visited some old haunts.
I’ve forgotten most of the events in my life during those two years, though I can still remember an old Dominican, Fr Michael Heuston. He was the brother of Sean Heuston of 1916 fame. Fr Michael was an extraordinary genius and to add to his charm he was eccentric; maybe that’s why the two of us got on so well.
And something else I can remember was a group of young Augustinian priests I had the good fortune to meet. They stood out in the midst of so many strange men inhabiting the clerical world of Rome at the time.
The Irish Augustinians have a house in Rome. Back then it was where their young men lived while studying in the pontifical universities in the city.
They were great fun, ordinary young men, who had a great sense of humour, enjoyed life and were well able to behave as normal young students do. I was shocked to see the numbers of odd people preparing for priesthood. In contrast, the Augustinians stood out; normal people, who obviously came from typical ordinary Irish families.
The moment I heard Augustinian cardinal Robert Prevost had been elected pope I breathed a sigh of relief, though it would have been great to have had fellow Dominican Timothy Radcliffe elected.
From day one I’ve been keeping a close eye on Prevost.
Back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s Irish Dominicans were working across the world. When any of these men came home on holiday or to stay home, it was so clear to see they had a very different understanding of church. They had been impressed with what they had seen and lived. They insisted on working and living much closer with the people and learning from them too.
When I heard Robert Prevost had worked in Peru, where he was later a bishop, and then read that he had taken out Peruvian citizenship I knew the church, through the grace of God, had elected a special person as our pope.
Prevost did not take out Peruvian citizenship so that he could skip the queues at airports; he did it as a sign of his love and solidarity with the people of Peru, especially the poor and marginalised. He is also a highly intelligent man; his primary degree is in mathematics and he’s a polyglot.
He’ll be in the job a year next month and already he has made his mark. His bye-bye to the cardinal archbishop in New York, Timothy Dolan and appointing the charismatic Ronald Hicks, who is a protege of Cardinal Blase Cupich, as his successor has been a major statement about Pope Leo’s thinking.
And we all now know what he thinks of tyrants.
In The Irish Times on Saturday, author and columnist, Mark O’Connell wrote a powerful piece on Leo.
In these times of great upset, war and division, the world is fortunate that Augustinian Robert Prevost is pope in Rome.
The first tickets for the Ryder Cup to take place in Ireland in 2027 went on sale on Friday. The first tranche were sold for €500 a ticket in one hour.
The price of a return rail ticket from New York to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium during the World Cup this summer will cost $150. The same journey tomorrow costs $12.90.
FBI director Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over an article accusing him of excessive drinking.
Elon Musk is worth $778.3 billion.
Approximately 733 million people around the world have not enough food to eat.
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875, Prague, then in the Austro Hungarian Empire, today in Czechia - 1926, Montreux, Switzerland) Rilke wrote in German.
On this day, April 26, 1986 at 01.23 a chain of events in Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
In the weekend edition of The Irish Times Adi Roche writes an opinion piece about the disaster, arguing that it is not history but rather a warning to the world.
In 2022 invading Russian tanks drove through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, turning it into a military corridor and churning up radioactive dust that had lain undisturbed for 40 years.
US speaker Scott Hahn is talking in Dublin in late May. The day-long conference is being organised by the Irish Dominicans.
The conference is being currently advertised.
The following blurb appears on the ad:
'18-25 yrs, €15.00; 26-35 yrs, €25.00; 36 yrs plus, €40.00; Married Couple, €75.00. One ticket admits two spouses.'
A sense of humour goes a long way at times.
Is this somewhat ageist?
Does the ad mean that one can bring along two spouses?
And a more interesting question; can the spouse be of the same gender as the ticket holder?
How will ticket holder prove identity of spouse?
It could well turn out a fun day.
It’s easy to throw names at people, it’s easy to say s/he is left wing, right wing, fascist, conservative, liberal and zillions more.
In Trump’s world socialists and communists are all the same, they are the baddies.
Isn’t it odd, on the one hand, there is a current tendency to move away from binary thinking and yet when words such as far left far right are thrown around we are back thinking in binary terms.
But that does not mean we can’t have concerns about trends and views.
We have all seen the world that Donald Trump is attempting to create in the US and further afield; it’s not a friendly loving environment.
Unfortunately Trump’s world finds echoes worldwide.
Over a number of years the American Catholic Church seems to be attracting Trump-like figures to its numbers. There is a significant number of bishops, who express unusual views of what it means to be a Catholic.
On a positive note, Pope Francis removed Bishop Strickland. Pope Leo was not slow to replace Timothy Dolan as archbishop of New York with Ronald Hicks, who is a protege of Blase Cupich, one of the US’s most outstanding bishops.
Dolan’s canonical visit to Ireland in 2011 proved little or no help to the faith of the Irish people. And that’s being kind about it.
Unfortunately some groups within the Irish Catholic Church seem to be influenced by an American church that causes division and hankers after a past that is over.
It is a pity that the Irish episcopacy and provincials of religious congregations are remaining quiet about the upsurge of this US fundamentalist trend.
Yes, it might well have a flurry and bustle to it, there might be something catchy and attractive to it, it might well be full of drama and attract media attention but in the long run it will not serve well the Catholic Church in Ireland.
It will be interesting to see whom P0pe Leo will appoint as bishops in Ireland in the months and years ahead.
There is every reason to hope.
On this day, April 23, 1993 the people of Eritrea voted overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations monitored referendum.
A 17-year old girl, who has recently arrived in Ireland from Eritrea was asked what was the difference between Ireland and her country. Without hesitation she answered in one word, and that word was ‘peace’.
Ireland has every reason to be proud for what it is doing for this young woman.
The extract below is taken from Google.
Eritrea is one of the world's least developed countries. It is a unitary one-party presidential republic and a de facto totalitarian dictatorship, in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held.[36][6] Isaias Afwerki has served as president since its official independence in 1993. The country's human rights record is among the worst in the world.
This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane
Rory was eight on Saturday. His grandfather Donal and I are lifelong friends. Donal sent me a video of the Lego train Rory received for his birthday. The little fellow assembled it himself. I called him to wish him a happy birthday.
He told me he got up at 6am and built the train between then and 2pm at which time he had it running on its tracks, which he also assembled.
I was reminded of the disappointment I had when the train set I was expecting never arrived. But for whatever reason, to this day I have a great interest in trains.
Since mid-November I have been a daily rail commuter. I have been greatly impressed with the service, there have been only two occasions when I was late for work and they were weather related.
I regularly chat with the locomotive driver. There is always a minute or two to chat before the train moves off and since November I have talked with many drivers. It’s a matter of going up to the cab, knocking at the window and chatting. I don’t think there has been driver, who has told me to get lost. Once or twice I realised the driver did not want to engage; no problem; I walked away.
In the past locomotive drivers came from other jobs on the railway, men working on the platform, train guards, gate keepers or permanent way staff, et al. The permanent way is the track, rails and ballast. And drivers call the track or line ‘the road’.
Railway jobs went down from father to son.
But all that is now changing. Today many of the younger drivers come from ‘outside’. They apply online, do a number of preliminary online tests before they are called for interview. Once successful they begin a period of rigorous training before they are appointed as drivers to a station.
Just last week the driver, with whom I was talking, told me he came to the job from outside and had no problem telling me he would never again give out about his job. He was loving it. They are coming from all walks of life and the money is attractive with a decent pension.
Another of the changes is that women are now driving our trains. Up to recent years it was an all-male profession; it was unthinkable that a woman would drive a train. Like everything else they are adding a new dimension to the job.
There are always quirky things to every job and Irish Rail is no exception. While Irish roads changed from miles to kilometres per hour in 2005, the railway is still on mph and has no intentions of changing. The next time you are on a train look out the window and spot the mile posts along the track; every quarter of a mile there is a post.
Check the web, Irish Rail is regularly looking for drivers.
But how long will it be before we have driverless trains? This AI business is driving us all crazy.
If I had my life all over again, I think I’d have been a locomotive driver. The question is would they have employed me and then kept me? I’ll never know.
There was a quote on this blog for today’s post from HL Mencken (1880 - 1956) writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun on Sunday, 26 July, 192...