Johnson will try to keep NI protocol centre stage
As predicted here and elsewhere widely, the Assembly elections resulted in Sinn Féin becoming the largest party and thus becoming entitled to nominate the First Minister, the DUP coming in second and only entitled to nominate the Deputy First Minister, and the Alliance party getting a boost from voters disillusioned with the orange/green polarisation. If […]
Planning Regulator makes a sham of local democracy
Does it really matter whether most people own their own homes or rent them? In my view it does matter. While some may say, and with a good deal of common sense, that the social priority must be that people have homes in the first place, rented or not, it does not follow that there […]
Ireland is drifting towards permanent energy crisis
Fintan O’Toole wrote last week about the desirability of Ireland really getting serious about off-shore wind farms and the possibility that Ireland might become an important exported of energy to the EU. I imagine that few people would oppose such development and that most people would strongly support it. That in turn raises the question […]
Renegotiation of Belfast Agreement looks inevitable
The paramilitary demonstration by dissident IRA members in Derry on the occasion of their commemoration of the Easter Rising demonstrated yet again that the vein of hatred that runs like a deep seam in the former heartlands of paramilitarism – green and orange -is still there to be mined and exploited for political purposes, especially […]
Rich must not be allowed to use farmland as a vehicle for investment
I have been meaning to write here about ownership of agricultural farmland for a while, but other topics came first. This week I read a striking piece in the online business magazine, TheCurrency which draws our attention to a large and growing transformation of property ownership in Ireland – investment in Irish farmland by wealthy […]
Putin has overplayed his hand – but is the West bluffing?
Olga Sukhenko, the mayor of of Motyzhyn, a satellite town of Kyiv, was found dead – dumped with her husband and son in a pit grave when the town was liberated by Ukrainian forces five days ago. She had been kidnapped by Putin’s soldiers on 23rd March. Her execution, presumably after torture and threats to […]