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 […]
Council chief has no mandate for ‘aggressive’ plan to restrict cars in Dublin city
I presume that Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, was speaking in a personal capacity when he addressed what this paper reported as “a cycling symposium in Dublin in recent days, attended by a delegation of cycling experts from Amsterdam”. The report did not say who had organised or financed the symposium or […]
I am gobsmacked at the ambivalence of Irish Marxists to Putin
We must be clear on a few things. Ukraine was not, is not, and never could or will be a military threat to the Russian Federation. Likewise, Ukraine is not governed by a Nazi government and is in no need of de-nazification. The excuse used by Putin for invading and annihilating a democratic sovereign state […]
Pressuring Putin the only option on Ukraine tragedy
There is a problem with talk about providing an “off ramp” to Vladimir Putin as his war on Ukraine gets bogged down in murderous annihilation. Clearly he believes either that he can pretend to negotiate with the Ukrainian government while all the while trying to annihilate it or else he believes that he can annexe […]
Restoring historic buildings beats letting them crumble
I have no more words this week left to condemn and abhor the ongoing barbarity, criminality and cynical dishonesty of the Russian war unleashed on Ukraine. It seems almost wrong to write about anything else. But there is another more banal topic which came to mind this week when I opened the latest edition of […]
We must accept severe sanctions if we are to stand for anything
Western democracy is under threat from outside and from within. There is a remarkable symmetry between Putin and Trump. Each is a psychological misfit with strong sociopathic tendencies. Each is part of a kleptocratic campaign to subvert democracy. Each admires the statecraft of the other. Each, I dare to say, merits the adjective “evil”. Trump […]