Swans on the Grand Canal - a miracle in front of our eyes

Yesterday across Ireland

there were real signs of spring. 

The clocks have gone forward, the evenings are stretching out  and the days getting longer.

Just some six months or so we were worried, indeed. scared that we might run short of gasor electricity. We’ve survived. But what must it be

like for the people of Ukraine, the people of Yemen, for people all over the world who are suffering?

We have no understanding whatsoever of the suffering and trauma experienced by people who pay large sums of scarce money to travel in unseaworthy sea vessels to find peace and hope.

To an outsider looking on Britain’s plans to send such people to Rwanda is abhorrent.

These swans were enjoying life on Dublin’s Grand Canal near Charlemont Bridge yesterday. And how they care for themselves and for each other is a miracle in front of our eyes.

Shipping people to Rwanda is far from miraculous.

Jesuit resigns from papal child protection agency

German Jesuit Fr Hans Zollner has resigned from Pope Francis' child protection commission and has launched searing criticisms against the organisation's leadership and its alleged lack of transparency.

Below is the link from the NCR.

 https://www.ncronline.org/node/238366

That moment of death

When someone dies, whether a public figure or a private citizen, most times it is said they died peacefully.

What does that mean?

The good and the bad of public transport around the country

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has been in the spotlight of late on comments he made about how the abolition of public transport fares would increase the number of unnecessary journeys. 

Minister Ryan’s comment was backed up by a report from the National Transport Authority, which found that the abolition of public transport fares would incentivise excessive travel. It also found that universal free travel would not encourage commuters out of their cars. What’s needed right now is a much improved public transport service.

I have mentioned before in this column that the new buses, which are currently being rolled out across rural Ireland are not fit for purpose as there is no place on them for bicycles. And this is something that is a retrograde step as the buses they are replacing had facility to carry bicycles.

I saw in the last fortnight first hand, the good and the bad of public transport in Ireland.

According to the the Bus Éireann timetable the designated time of departure for the bus I was taking was 10.29. I arrived at the stop at 10.24, which I thought was ample time. The bus had already departed. I made some enquiries and one reason I was given for the early departure was that all the ‘usuals’ had boarded so off went the driver. And that bus operates only one day per week.

That’s the bad news story. The good news story is how the rural transport network called Local Link is working.

I wanted to travel from a small village to a town to link with a train to Dublin. Bus Éireann serves the village with a bus on only one day per week.  Local Link operates the service twice weekly, which means the village has public transport three days a week to the nearest town. 

And to my surprise and delight I discovered that Local Link would pick me up at my hall door. That’s some service. And the icing on the cake, I was also able to take my fold-up bicycle with me and the service linked in with the train timetable. I am forever baffled how Bus Éireann does not talk with Iarnród Éireann before it publishes its timetables.

Anytime I have pointed out to Bus Éireann that there is not a seamless connection between bus and rail I’m told that they are two separate companies. It’s difficult, well nigh impossible, to attempt any sort of discussion with that type of mind set.

And there is only limited space for taking bicycles on the majority of Iarnród Éireann’s trains as most trains have the facility for taking at max four bicycles. And these are all relatively new trains. 

With the exception of the Dublin Cork and Dublin Belfast trains, bicycle capacity is reduced to a maximum of four spaces and some Dublin Cork trains are also limited to four bicycle spaces. Many trains have only space for two bicycles. It is beyond belief that the Luas has no facility for taking bicycles.

But the State has to take a bow for the free travel system that allows so many people to jump on and off trains, buses and boats and all for free. Is there another country on earth that offers a similar programme?

The latest Trump rant as crude and rude as last time round

Below is the link to Donald Trump’s first rally for his bid to regain the White House in 2024. It took place in Waco Texas on Saturday.

It is a long boring rant interspersed with many vulgarities. But it’s also clever. He manages to get the crowds roaring and screaming in adulation. The poster this time round says: ‘Witch Hunt’.

With all the shouting, roaring and bad language it is still soporific.

How has the United States allowed Donald Trump to happen?

 https://www.youtube.com/live/AtB5jM8bnYo?feature=share

Uisce Éireann fixes over 1,500 leaks every month

The River Liffey supplies 80 per cent of drinking water for the greater Dublin area. Few other capital cities of similar size are so reliant on a single source. Plans afoot to source water for the greater Dublin area from the Shannon.

Uisce Éireann formerly, known as Irish Water, fixes over 1,500 leaks every month over a network of 63,000 kilometres of pipes.

The State owned company has reduced leakage rates across the network from almost 46 per cent in 2018 to 38 per cent at the end of 2021. It is aiming for a national leakage rate of 25 per cent nationally and below 20 per cent in Dublin by 2030.

Making sense of miracles

The Thinking Anew column in The IrishTimes today.

Michael Commane

When you read the Gospel stories, or hear them read at liturgical services how do you understand them? What about the Old Testament? I’m often inclined to think that so much of the many books of the Bible are beyond us, that is, unless we have some understanding of the time in which all the different books were written.

Some weeks ago I attended a talk given by Kieran O’Mahony, who is a renowned expert in Biblical scholarship. Listening to him I became conscious how readings from the Bible can so easily go over our heads if we are simply hearing them out of the blue. I often wonder how the Scripture readings at liturgical services can touch us when we are so often  unfamiliar with the background in which they were written. 

Is the mix of belief and reason something akin to that of oil and water. Do faith and reason contradict each other?

A work colleague suggested to me last week that I should watch a YouTube interview/chat between Professor Richard Dawkins and Fr George Coyne.

 

Dawkins is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist and author, who happens to be an atheist. He was professor of public understanding of science at Oxford University from 1995 to 2008. Coyne, who died in 2020, was a Jesuit priest and astronomer. He was director of the Vatican Observatory between 1978 and 2006.

The interview between the two men took place in 2008 to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species.

 

The YouTube version of the chat is divided into seven segments. It’s clear that both men liked each other, scientists who respected one another and indeed in so many places sang off what we nowadays call the same hymn sheet. I listened to the interview not as a scientist, not even as a priest but as someone who is interested in the God question.

I immediately empathised with Fr Coyne when he told Professor Dawkins to call him George, the name his mother called him, rather than Fr Coyne. I liked that. And in turn all through the interview I observed how Dawkins was clearly impressed, even animated by Coyne.

Of course they both tell different stories. One man believes in God, the other does not. All through their exchange Coyne keeps insisting  that he does not believe that God makes a direct intervention in the universe. 

In the interview he expressly says that he is speaking not on behalf of the church but in a personal capacity, adding that there are far more opinions and ideas within the Catholic Church than is generally appreciated. 

He points out that there are very great divergencies within the church, that there are many points of view on many subjects and that there is no official Catholic view on evolution. The Catholic Church is not monolithic in its thinking.

And then at one stage the atheist asks the believer what his opinion on miracles is. With a knowing smile, Coyne asks Dawkins if  he has any easy questions. The  priest admits this is where he has some great problems and concedes that he has difficulties with many miracles, but he does believe in the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. 

He does not believe in many of  the instances he has heard or read about because they are superfluous. God does not need to do this. With a smile he asks Dawkins not to push him on this subject.

He goes on to say that he believes in the God of Love who wants to save us.

And that’s exactly the story of tomorrow’s Gospel (John 11: 1 - 45) where Jesus expresses his love in such a manner that he raises Lazarus from the dead. Surely isn’t that another pointer in our faith in the resurrection, which Fr Coyne points out as one of those very few moments in the history of the universe where God directly intervenes. 

And of course, it is a matter of faith. But having said that, Fr Coyne insists that does not mean that God directed the hands of the individual authors as they wrote the books that today make up the Bible.

I strongly recommend the YouTube interview, all seven segments. I found it most helpful and really encourages me in my faith in the God of Love. 

God and the Constitution

 An interesting letter in The Irish Times yesterday. Thought provoking too.

A chara, – “I like to think of myself as unprejudiced”, wrote Fintan O’Toole (Opinion & Analysis,March 21st). It is difficult to reconcile that claim with what he wrote three days earlier (News Review, March 18th), when he used language of serious disrespect in relation to a religious faith which is held deeply by a large portion of the people of Ireland: “the 1937 Constitution is deep-fried in divinity.” “The people prostrate before the big boss in the sky.” “The utterly anomalous persistence of religious doctrine in the Constitution of a secular republic and a multi-faith society.”

Fintan O’Toole has every right to disagree with matters to do with religion, and the Catholic Church, just as he has a right to be critical of policies and actions of the Government of this State, as I do myself. What is out of place is the derision and ridicule with which he expresses it. He wrote (March 21st), “I hope I sloughed off in my early teens the hatreds I imbibed as a child of Catholic Ireland: of Protestants, queers . . . and communists.” It seems he replaced those “hatreds” with an alternative bitterness and anger.

I too am a child of Catholic Ireland. Growing up in my family, and in the years in primary and secondary school with the Christian Brothers in Synge Street, and in my parish then and in the intervening years, I had no experience of imbibing the hatreds he speaks of. Whatever is at the root of his bitterness, it is sad that it still expresses itself in insulting language.

As it happens, I agree with him about the need to re-examine our Constitution for the realities of today. I am a Catholic and a priest, and agree, for example, that the terms of the affirmation made by presidents, members of the Council of State and members of the judiciary should allow for members of different faiths and none.

Such is already the case for witnesses in court cases under the Oaths Act 1888.

In 1990, the Law Reform Commission issued a Report on Oaths and Affirmations, recommending that oaths be abolished, and replaced instead by a statutory affirmation, with suggested wording, but nothing was done.

I suspect that a citizens’ assembly would be of like mind.

The Irish Times supports freedom of expression, but perhaps it also has standards to guide the language in which such opinions are expressed in its pages. Disagreement can be both robust and respectful. 

Guidelines which discourage derision, ridicule and insult would help in civilised and respectful debate, including when dealing with those whose views and life experiences may be radically different. – Is mise,

PÁDRAIG McCARTHY,

Sandyford,

Dublin 16.

Anthony Massey RIP

Former Irish Dominican Anthony Massey has died.

Anthony was born in Northern Ireland in 1947. His family moved to Shannon during the Troubles. 

He joined the Dominicans in 1981 and was ordained a priest in 1987.

Anthony’s funeral service takes place on Monday, March 27 at 9.30am in Ravenhill Funeral Home and afterwards to Roselawn Crematorium for 10.40am.

May Anthony rest in peace.

It’s doubtful Russian troops are eating Siberian salmon

During the visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Russia he was treated by President Vladimir Putin to a six-course dinner featuring quail blinis, Siberian salmon, venison in cherry sauce and wine from Russia’s Black Sea coast. 

He stayed at the five-star Chinese-owned Soluxe Hotel, driving past a series of large billboards dedicated to his visit along the way.

What must life be like for the young and not-so-young Russian troops, the gunners, the men and women in the tanks as they do the fighting for President Putin?

It’s unlikely they are eating Siberian salmon as they trudge through the melting slush of Ukrainian soil.

War is ugly and bad. Invading armies should stay at home.

More threatening words from the Kremlin

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shogun, has said there were fewer and fewer steps left before a potential “nuclear collision” betweenRussia and the west, Interfax news agency has reported.

Shoigu, responding to reports that the UK will supply Ukarine with ammunition containing depleted uranium, said Moscow would respond, Interfax reported.

“Every war ends in peace”, Shoigu was also quoted by Russian state-run Ria news agency as saying.

Hats off to our postal workers for the great work they do

This week’s Mediahhuis/Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

I know Tommy Tiernan gets into trouble sometimes for inappropriate yarns or jokes he tells. He can straddle a fine line. I’ve never seen him live but I enjoy his Saturday evening RTÉ 1 television show. He comes across as a sensitive person, who never wants to offend any of his guests. Of course, he’s always on for a laugh but there is a serious side to him too. 

I’m often struck how in the midst of some sadness or other we find an opportunity to laugh.

Some weeks ago a man I know suffered a stroke. He can be extremely funny and has no trouble telling me what he thinks of me. He is a bachelor who lives on his own.

But for the postwoman, who arrived on the scene within minutes, it is highly likely that the man would either have died or been incapacitated for the rest of his life. Five weeks later he is still in hospital and making a good recovery.

Last week I visited him. I went straight to his ward to be told there was no visiting. After the ward clerk made a phone call and some charm from me I managed to gain access to my friend. I think he was glad to see me, at least that was the impression he gave me. He filled me in on what had happened. He was aware how lucky he was that the postwoman turned up just at the right time.

Within minutes we were joking and laughing. I explained that I had travelled a good distance to see him. Well, it wasn’t quite the truth as I was heading to that part of the world anyway.

He asked me to show him how to find names and numbers on his phone. I eventually mastered it and showed him how it worked. The first name and number that popped up was that of the postwoman who discovered him after he had fallen as a result of his stroke. 

I phoned the number. She immediately thought I was the owner of the phone, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice when she realised she was not talking to the owner of the phone. 

I handed the phone to the patient in the bed and so began their conversation. I could see his face light up. He was delighted to talk to her. I thought or presumed they’d talk for a few minutes and then we could get back chatting. Nothing of the sort happens.

The conversation continues. Time is moving on and I had to be somewhere else within 30 minutes. I try explaining that to the man in the bed. He is having none of it and continues his conversation with the postwoman. 

Eventually I tell him I have to go. At that, he looks up at me and waves me off, indeed, sends me off with an expletive. I say goodbye and off I go.

I know as soon as he comes out of hospital we’ll both give each other an earful of it.

He’s a great character.

I’ve been thinking about my visit, our chats over the years. Aren’t they the moments we remember, that stand out. I’m back thinking of The Banshees of Inisherin. 

So many of those incidental moments, the throw away comment, the laughs, surely they help make up the fabric of our lives.

 

And what a good story it is for the wonderful work our postal workers do. 

Demonstrators take to the streets of Tel Aviv

Over 200,000 people have taken to the streets in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the Israeli government's plans to lessen the independence of the judiciary.

It has been the largest ever protest in the country.

Much talk in the world about weapons and armies

The main item on the 8pm ARD German news last evening was the visit of the German chancellor with six of his cabinet colleagues, including the defence minister, to Japan.

Ukraine and energy supplies was high on the topics discussed.

The next item on that news programme was the build up of the Polish army and how is has doubled in size  in a short time. It showed an 18-year old boy signing up to join the military.

Poland with 325,000 personnel has the largest army in Western Europe.

The Russian Army is made up of 1.15 million active soldiers with another two million reserve troops.

Ukraine’s army has approximately 500,000 troops.

On Monay Chinese president Xi Jinping visits Moscow

Are we inexorably heading towards war?

Putin enables the lifestyle of the rich

A good read in yesterday’s Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/17/putin-lifestyle-russia-elite-peace-military-loyalty?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Pope talks about President Putin being a cultured man

This is an interesting link. John Allen Junior in his weekly Vatican news report discusses aspects of Pope Francis’ words and thoughts. 

Pope Francis' take on Putin is interesting and his comments on priestly celibacy worth a thought or two. And then the analogy between Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope Francis makes for a most interesting read, scary/worrying or positive, depending where you are with the Catholic Church right now.

Is a schism possible?

Happy St Patrick’s Day to all our readers.

Did the Pope praise Putin and Modi?: Last Week in the Church with John Allen Jr.: https://cruxnow.com/last-week-in-the-church/2023/03/did-the-pope-praise-putin-and-modi-last-week-in-the-church-with-john-allen-jr/

Pricetags - the drone and the SU-27 $30 million a piece

A US drone was downed in the Black Sea yesterday. The drone cost approximately $30 million. The Russian SU-27 that caused the downing of the drone also has a price tag of $30 million.

Shares in Rheinmetall, manufacturers of the Leopard battle tank, have made substantial gains on the stock market in recent weeks.

Every gun, every piece of killing equipment on both sides in the war in Ukraine, indeed, in all wars, is paid for by taxpayers.

And all the time, thousands of people are being killed and maimed, lives ruined, villages, towns and cities obliterated.

Below is a link to an interview with The Edge on the Ryan Tubridy RTÉ Radio show yesterday. In the interview the U2 lead guitarist talks about the war in Ukraine. The piece on Ukraine begins 41.23 minutes into the clip.

 

Wednesday 15 March 2023 12:07

 

The Ryan Tubridy Show Wednesday 15 March 2023 rte.ie

Different times, different people but the reign of death again

The poor people of Kharkiv in Ukraine.

On this day, March 15, 1943 in the third battle in Kharkiv the Germans defeated the Soviet Army. This in turn eventually led to the battle at Kursk where the Soviets were victorious. 

Kursk was the biggest tank battle in world history and it was the beginning of the end of the Hitler regime.

The US drone that was downed in the Black Sea yesterday cost up to €32 million. Every dollar of that drone was money from US taxpayers.

Every bullet, every tank, every gun being used in the war in Ukraine is paid for by ordinary people, millions of them as poor as mice.

Link below is to a Guardian article about the drone incident in the Black Sea.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/14/russia-downing-us-drone-ukraine-signalling-analysis?CMP=share_btn_link

Spring puts a spirit of youth in our step

This week’s Mediahuis/Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

There was a hint of cold weather last week. So far this winter we have got away very lightly. I remember one day, back in 1985 cycling in West Berlin, it was 20 degrees minus, indeed, it was so cold I had to get off the bicycle and go into a shop to warm myself.

We are fortunate to have such a mild climate in Ireland. We have no extremes of weather, at least not yet.

The garden in the hospital where I work is beginning to burst with new life. The birds are at full voice and making hay too.

Every day is getting longer, the clocks go forward at the end of the month, proof positive that spring is here.

It happens every year, you might say the same old story. But whatever it is about it, the arrival of spring and the expectation of summer days and nights gladdens our hearts.

 

We have been through some tough times but on the scale of things it is small compared to what people experience in catastrophes. 

I have no idea whatsoever what it must be like today in those parts of Turkey and Syria, which were hit by February’s earthquakes, or what it must be like in Ukraine as the invading Russian army kills, maims and razes buildings to the ground. It is unthinkable. 

When I see soldiers on the front line being interviewed and capable of laughing I’m lost for words. 

There must be some sort of mechanism in the human spirit that kicks in and gives people the strength to cope with almost any pain or suffering. Is that what resilience is? Honestly, I don’t understand it. You hear people talk about the adrenaline rush that kicks in in dangerous or stressful situations. 

The worlds of medicine and the related sciences are constantly discovering how our minds and bodies work and how we cope with all the situations with which we have to deal.

The anti-war film ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ is an eye opener to the savagery of war and how people cope in unimaginable situations. And there are those who don’t cope. But why do we allow such evil to happen? What is it about us that drives us racing into such horrible acts of barbarity?

Is it all part of the cycle of our lives? A friend told me he had been watching the RTÉ programme ‘Reeling in the Years’ and it struck him how it’s the same old stories that keep turning up year after year. The events that were happening 20, 30, 40 years ago are the same events happening today, just dressed up in different clothes.

 

What at all is it all about? I keep asking the question, never getting closer to a satisfactory answer. 

But in the meantime, make the best of these fabulous days of spring. And guess what, a smile rather than a frown will put a spring in our step.

Everything about our lives is cyclical and right now we are on the up curve. Enjoy it.

‘April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.’ - Shakespeare. And we’re nearly there. 

No manual for perfect parenting

Maia Dunphy has an interesting article in yesterday’s

Sunday Independent.

It’s about the joy and wonder of parenthood and how it changes everything.

Dunphy goes on to talk about the Enoch Burke story and how she disagrees with their thinking. She writes: “What I’m not envious of  are those who only want to remind us eternity is forever, and the time for excuses is over.”

It’s an engaging piece of writing.

  

What happens when the ‘facts’ are actually not factual?

In the current issue, March 9, 2023, of The Irish Catholic the paper’s Editor’s Comments by Michael Kelly are about gender theory being a divisive issue and that parents have a right to be concerned.

The editor expresses his concerns and argues that there is a lack of scientific consensus on the issues.

He writes: "The latest battleground appears to be in primary schools with both Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar backing calls for children as young as four to be taught 'more about what it means to be transgender’.” 

Fact or fiction? Who is Taoiseach and who is Tánaiste in March, 2023?

Facts are indeed facts. And spin is always spin.

The link below is worth a read:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/11/farage-fox-and-rolling-outrage-the-inside-story-of-gb-news?CMP=share_btn_link

Pope Francis says war is fuelled not just by the Russians

 It will be interesting to hear what Pope Francis has to say. Will he explain what he means by ‘the empires from elsewhere’?

PopeFrancis said the conflict was fuelled by "imperial interests, not just of the Russian empire, but of empires from elsewhere”. 

He expressed a readiness to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin to call for peace. Pope Francis was speaking to Italian Swiss television RSI, in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday.

Should HSE decide national gender policy?

This is an interesting article by Michael McDowell. It appeared in The Irish Times on Tuesday. 

The Health Service Executive proposes to develop a new policy in relation to gender dysphoria, transgender issues and the availability and access to gender transitional counselling and medical treatment.

This raises the immediate question as to who or what the HSE is at present. It is an executive agency of the State with wide responsibilities in the provision of public health services. But it is by no means clear that the board of the HSE is competent to evolve national policy on gender issues.

There have been repeated calls for proper parliamentary consideration of these issues based on reflective debate. That seems more urgent than ever.

The great majority of Irish people are not activists in relation to gender issues. But the airwaves and newspaper columns seem to be dominated by activists who seek to frame the discussion in terms of the denial of human rights and discrimination against the small minority who have dysphoria or who consider themselves to be gender fluid or who argue that the conventional male/female binary gender distinctions in society are oppressive or unjust.

For my part, I am very sympathetic to anyone who is experiencing gender dysphoria. I think most feel the people same.

Challenging

That does not mean discussion of these issues must be conducted only in the vocabulary or with the conceptual understanding of those activists. I have difficulty accepting that there are many genders; I readily accept that there are shades of gender.

Gender is important. Maleness and femaleness are realities for the great majority of people, including gay and lesbian people. The great majority is not obliged morally to simply discard fundamental social and psychological concepts such as masculinity or femininity because a minority find those concepts limiting, challenging or even offensive.

The linguistic chaos of using the plural pronoun to describe a single individual is, I think, contrived. Most people have no problem with addressing someone by their chosen name or dealing with them on the basis of their chosen gender identity. But using a plural pronoun with a single verb stretches, confuses and distorts meaning.

The idea of a broad LGBTQI+ coalition is fine. But I have been struck by the number of gay men and lesbian women who privately dissociate themselves from some of the demands of trans activists. One can readily appreciate a sense of mutual loyalty among members of the broad LGBTQI+ movement which has won out huge advances for equality for gay and lesbian people. One can sympathise with the idea that these successes should leave no one behind. But surely there is, at the same time, nothing wrong with straight, lesbian or bisexual women wanting to pursue feminist agendas on the basis of gender as they see it.

Particularly, as regards dysphoria among minors, we must be very careful and protective of children. Prepubescent, peri-pubescent and post-pubescent children are transitioning into adulthood. Adolescence is a psychologically challenging time for many children. We cannot simply expose children to a random lottery of ideologies or treatments in the light of what went wrong at the Tavistock clinic.

Conversion therapy

The emergence of transgender issues on social media in the last decade seems to have created a much greater interest among adolescent children in gender identity.

There is little evidence that there has been significant use of conversion therapy in Ireland for children with homosexual orientation, and all children must be legally protected from conversion therapy as we have seen it in the United States.

At the same time, children may or may not be experiencing long-term gender dysphoria. They may be experiencing different temporary uncertainties about their gender orientation or about their own personalities or identities.

The Tavistock clinic experience highlights the risks and dangers of irreversible and inappropriate interventions, from puberty blockers to reconstructive surgery, for highly vulnerable minors and for their parents.

At a recent highly informative briefing in Leinster House, Irish experts from the National Gender Service reported a very high correlation between adolescents and young adults seeking to transition and autism. It is not simply good enough to dismiss that correlation by saying that young people with autism have the same rights as anyone else. Of course, they do. This correlation needs to be explored and understood.

In developing policy on transgender health services, we badly need a fact-based objective approach which is firmly rooted in care, consultation and counselling. We need a national, inclusive debate.

This is not just a matter for the HSE. Nor is it a matter only for activists. It is a matter for all citizens and all politicians to devise good policies.

For that to happen there must be a broadly based national discussion from which, hopefully, a caring and careful consensus emerges.

Preacher on Fulham bus offers to take them to paradise

Mark Paul’s London Letter in The Irish Times yesterday.

While we have Enoch Burke London has the woman on the Fulham bus who offers to take the passengers to paradise.

The woman got on the 295 bus near Clapham Junction, the railway spaghetti junction in southwest London that is Europe’s busiest train hub. I wasn’t sure where exactly she boarded because I was sitting upstairs with my head in my phone, on my way to Fulham. The woman remained downstairs. She said she was on her way to paradise.

The first thing we noticed from the top deck was her singing. It started off low; a soft, joyful melody pirouetting its way up the stairwell. I noticed it immediately because people usually don’t even make eye contact with each other on London’s public transport. Yet here was a woman singing unabashedly.

She sang sweetly and with real emotion, puncturing the anonymity of this often-hard city with verses about love. I didn’t recognise the tune but, as she sang so well, it didn’t dampen my enjoyment. Then came the first clue she wasn’t merely a joyful commuter letting it all out on a Sunday. “Jesus loves us all!” she proclaimed. “Bless you, bus driver. Jesus will take us to heaven!”

I would have settled for him just taking us to Sherbrooke Road. I was behind schedule on my way to a friend’s house. Not even Jesus can rise above the weekend traffic on Battersea’s Plough Road.

London is a proud bastion of the forces of Mammon, a hedonistic dominion where you can buy anything or anyone you desire at any time of the day or night. This is not a stronghold of puritans. Yet newcomers may notice, like other great global cities that attract diverse characters, there are street preachers everywhere.

It is most obvious on some of the busiest thoroughfares of the commercial heartland of the West End. Many use amplifiers to penetrate the crowds, the word of God booming up city streets. One particularly loud fellow hangs around near the John Lewis store on Oxford Street. He makes the windows rattle in the shops. I could still hear him clearly one day, warning me from outside to avoid damnation as I ascended an elevator to buy a duvet.

Britain’s values venerate the freedoms of the common man and woman, and its laws generally protect the right to speak publicly and to evangelise. But sometimes preachers are a source of annoyance or offence.

One Free Methodist minister wrote on a conservative blog about how he was approached by multiple police officers on a busy road a mile or two from Heathrow airport in 2021. There were complaints he was being homophobic as he preached the Book of Genesis. The way he told it, the response was overkill. Not everyone wants to hear your views on same-sex marriage outside Uxbridge station. But it shouldn’t take, as he claimed, 14 officers to deliver the message.

Arrested

The case of another preacher arrested for a breach of the peace in Enfield in 2019 was raised in the House of Commons by Theresa Villiers, the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

Back on the 295 to Fulham, things were kicking off. The woman’s joyful singing had given way to haranguing. A woman had clearly cursed at her to shut up. “Lady, don’t swear,” the preacher shouted. “The Bible says ‘let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth’.” From her accent and the sound of her voice, I concluded she was African. So-called “bus preaching” is common in countries such as Nigeria, where Christianity is more evangelical than here.

She demanded to know of the woman who had sworn whether her companion was her husband or her boyfriend. Neither answered. For those of us listening from upstairs, it was like tuning in to a rowdy radio play. “No ring on your finger! I pray that this time next year you are married and have children. Today is a good day to propose, sir.”

I had boarded alongside two women wearing hijabs and their kids. The preacher clocked them. “Muslim ladies, you think I’m going to tell you off. But I’m here to say Jesus loves you and your children belong to him.”

The bell rang. The woman proclaimed finally that “Jesus commands us to be courageous”, before alighting at Wandsworth Bridge. Upstairs, 20 faces were pressed against the windows trying to catch a glimpse of the source of the commotion.

The woman stepped off the bus, dropped to one knee and blessed herself. She had long hair tied back, although it was possibly a wig. She was aged about 45 and wore a long, lavish animal print coat and a flowing, bright red dress. She looked striking. Beautiful yet ferocious. She marched towards another bus stop, presumably to save more commuters.

“Thank God,” sighed a man across the aisle from me, “she didn’t come up those bloody stairs.”

Still no sign of Malaysia Airlines Flight 3

On this day, March 8, 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 329 passengers and crew disappeared off radar en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Nine years later there is still no account of the missing  aircraft. It is almost beyond belief that the plane disappeared without trace.

The lack of official information in the days immediately after the disappearance prompted fierce criticism from the Chinese public, particularly from relatives of the passengers, as most people on board Flight 370 were of Chinese origin. Several pieces of debris washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean during 2015 and 2016; many of these were confirmed to have originated from Flight 370.

Four months later, on July 17, 2014  Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine.

'Be yourself - everyone else is taken’

This week’s INM/Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Tell the truth, would you like to be someone else?

Over the last few months I have been watching closely events unfolding in Ukraine and how Ukrainian people, who have found refuge in Ireland, are coping. 

Their lives have been turned upside-down, many have lost family and friends, all their possessions. And yet I guess if any one of them were asked would they like to be someone else they would say no.

When people ask me if I got a second chance would I live my life differently I hesitate and probably say I’d do this or that differently but not for a million years would I like to be someone else. In many senses it is a silly question. 

We are where we are, and have what we have. It is a matter of making the best of what we have, cultivating our individual potential and running with it. 

Not for a moment am I suggesting we should not have ambition and drive but it’s so easy to fool ourselves by thinking that if we had this or that, if things were different, we’d be a much happier person.

Last week someone said to me that if you put your own troubles in the middle of the road with everyone else’s  you’d take back your own. That’s insightful.

I can give you examples, chapter and verse of people who have loads of money and are not at all happy. I know poor people, sick people who have impressed me with their happiness and contentment.

This life of ours is a gigantic mystery and I am amazed with all the complexities, contradictions and simple mess that I experience all around me. And the mess of my own life too.

That’s why I think we all need props, supports, indeed other people to keep us afloat. After all, we are forever saying that we are social animals. We sure are.

We all need a handrail to grip firmly to keep us on a reasonably steady path. Yes, we can reach to the heights but never forget we are all extremely fragile. 

Pull away the tiniest support and we can suddenly be at sea, lose our way. But even when that happens and the roof falls in on top of us we still never want to be someone else.

In January Ryan Tubridy on his RTÉ radio 1 programme interviewed 43-year-old Sarah de Lagarde, who lost her right leg and arm in a train accident in the London Underground the previous September. 

Listening to her talk I was amazed with her resilience. It sounded as if she had dusted herself down and was getting back to business. There was a great sense of joy and, indeed, contentment in her voice.

Yes, we can go through great trauma, our lives can be greatly damaged but we seem to survive and get on with it. I’ve never yet met a person who genuinely wished to be someone else. 

In preparing this column I asked a number of people would they wish to be someone else. Not one person said they would. 

Quoting Oscar Wilde, indeed, two weeks in a row: ‘Be yourself – everyone else is taken’.

Every one of us has gifts to offer the world. And there are no exceptions, none. The uniqueness of the individual person is really a master act. There is only ever going to be one ‘me’ and one you.

Russian leaders from 1721 to the present day

Russian leaders from 1721 to today. 

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is reported recently to have said that Vladimir has three ‘advisers’, among them is Catherine the Great.

Emperors of Russia (1721–1917) (Romanovs)

• Peter I the Great (October 22, 1721 — January 28, 1725)
• Catherine I (January 28, 1725 — May 6, 1727)
• Peter II (May 6, 1727 — January 19, 1730)
• Anna Ioannovna (February 4, 1730 — October 17, 1740)
• Ivan VI (October 17, 1740 — November 25, 1741)
• Elizabeth Petrovna (November 25, 1741 — December 25, 1761)
• Peter III (December 25, 1761 — June 28, 1762)
• Catherine II the Great (June 28, 1762 — November 6, 1796)
• Paul I (November 6, 1796 — March 11, 1801)
• Alexander I (March 12, 1801 — November 19, 1825)
• Nicholas I (November 19, actually from December 13, 1825 — February 18, 1855)
• Alexander II (February 18, 1855 — March 1, 1881)
• Alexander III (March 1, 1881 — October 20, 1894)
• Nicholas II (October 20, 1894 — March 2, 1917)

Chairmen of the Provisional Government (1917)

• Georgy Lvov (March 2 (15) — July 8 (21), 1917)
• Alexander Kerensky (July 8 (21) — October 25 (November 7), 1917)

Leaders of Soviet Russia (1917–1991)

• Vladimir Lenin (November 9, 1917 — January 21, 1924)
• Joseph Stalin (January 21, 1924 — March 5, 1953)
• Georgy Malenkov (March 5, 1953 — February 8, 1955)
• Nikita Khrushchev (February 8, 1955 — October 14, 1964)
• Leonid Brezhnev (October 14, 1964 — November 10, 1982)
• Yuri Andropov (November 12, 1982 — February 9, 1984)
• Konstantin Chernenko (February 13, 1984 — March 10, 1985)
• Mikhail Gorbachev (March 11, 1985 — December 25, 1991)

Presidents of Russia (1991–present)

• Boris Yeltsin (July 10, 1991 — December 31, 1999)
• Vladimir Putin (May 7, 2000 — May 7, 2008)
• Dmitry Medvedev (May 7, 2008 — May 7, 2012)
• Vladimir Putin (May 7, 2012 – Present)