Happily Self-Segregated in my Rainbow-Coloured Safe Space   ‘Irish American News’, September 2019     The world is confusing me – again.  Nothing new there; it seems that a week doesn’t go past lately that I don’t feel as if I’ve fallen ass-first down the rabbit hole. I mean, didn’t Ireland fairly recently have a […]

Welcoming Trump…and Other Words We Mustn’t Use   ‘Irish American News’, July 2019.     I’ve been thinking lately about climate change.  And about golliwogs. There you go:  if talk of climate change has begun to bore you as much as it does me then that word – ‘golliwogs’ – probably grabbed back your attention. […]

Chicago’s Irish American News, June 2019.     “What were you doing when you were posted to Korea?” I ask Tony. “I was working on helicopters as an aerial observer.” Right here is one of the frustrating things about interviewing Tony Slevin, originally from Dublin.  In the past, people I’ve spoken with – hell, people […]

An Informal Chat with Tony Slevin, former U.S. Marine Corps. [from Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’, May issue]     I’m something of a slow learner, always have been.  Come to think of it, maybe the only time I learned something really fast was when I never got married again after making such a screw-up of […]

Tea, Sympathy and Donkeys I can…. I c-c-c-can… *woah*… Deep breath there Brady, you can do it.  I can see, well kinda see… ah, what the hell:  I can kinda see Leo Varadkar’s point. There.  I said it.  I can see Leo Varadkar’s point.  Was that so hard? Oh man, you will never know how […]

“Let’s be Careful out There…” Obviously written just after Liam Neeson upset the Usual Suspects — and before the most boring, right-on Oscars in history — this appears in Chicago’s Irish American News for March, 2019. It was the regular watch-your-backs utterance on most ‘Hill Street Blues’ episodes.  There was Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, played by […]

Who’s that Knocking at the Door? Chicago’s Irish American News, February 2019 “Well, how do you do? I see you’ve met my faithful handyman. He’s just a little brought down because when you knocked He thought it was the Candyman.” The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most of us had our own special little wish for […]

  Chicago’s Irish American News, December 2018       Good old Sinead O’Connor.  Well, as was.  Between the jigs and the reels I haven’t found a lot to smile about these past few months, but Sinead’s latest shenaninigans are… oh, different.  Even for her. As you’ll know by now, Sinead O’Connor is no more. […]

“All I ask is a Merry Yarn… when the Long Trick’s Over…”   Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ September 2018   It’s not the earliest memory I have of my parents, of course it isn’t; but it’s certainly one of the nicest. There was my brother Donald and me – he, six years of age and […]

Tricky Mickey Lowry & Other White Collar Crooks   Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’, August 2018   “What business had they, bringing me here to the special criminal court in Dublin?” wailed dodgy TD Michael Lowry after being slapped very mildly on the wrist with a €25,000 fine for tax offences. Gee, I don’t know, Michael, […]

How to Make Further Misery for Children with Cancer Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’, July 2018.   I have a story to tell.  And because it is about a children’s cancer charity that is very dear to my heart, it’s not a good story.  Nor do I think that my tale will have a happy ending. […]

Pain, Confusion, Betrayal… and the HSE   Chicago’s Irish American News, June, 2018.         “Hi Leo.  Today is the eighth of May.  It’s my sons’ confirmation, Seamus and Mario.  “I’m just back getting changed, ready for the party.  But, while I’m putting on a brave face for my children, I’m terrified what […]

Blowing Earth’s Dust Away…   Chicago’s Irish American News, May 2018.   I never wanted to have children.  I came to that decision back in my twenties;  and it was about the most sensible one I ever made, in a lifetime of doing things that weren’t all that sane at all. I’m too  selfish, for […]

Dream Cathedrals & Memories of the Past   Irish American News, April, 2018     It’s all good, this time around. I was at the cinema this evening, at a film by the name of Game Night.   It was an upbeat, very funny antidote to that over-hyped, over-rated and self-indulgent drivel called The Shape of […]

Gerry Adams and A View from Ballymurphy   Appears in Chicago’s Irish American News, March, 2018     Heaven knows that I’m not exactly the greatest Sinn Fein supporter in the world.  Or supporter of any of the other power-based political systems, dress them up how you will.  In fact I’d trust that lot about […]

Roaring Backslappers & Raging Bull Talkers                                              Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’, February 2018   “I’m not on speaking terms with half of the people here because I tell them what they don’t want to hear while they stand around like a bunch of glad-handing, back-slapping jackasses, congratulating each other on what they didn’t understand to […]

“The Ones We Dream On…” “The hardest to think on are the ones who let it go, from sadness or worry or just not wanting to carry the weight of this life no more.   They are the ones I dream on.”                                                                                            Justin Cronin, The Passage.     Between one thing and another, it’s just […]

Christmas Greetings from Bono, Bob & the Banks     Although written in mid-November, this is from the December 2017 issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News.’     They’re worse than ever they were, the bankers; worse than ever.  More arrogant; more brutal; certainly more divorced than ever from their customers. I personally think that […]

‘Criminals and Mongrel Wretches’: The Anti-Irish Sentiments of H. P. Lovecraft   From the Chicago ‘Irish American News’, November 2017     Well now, I’m not the better for that!  In fact, I’m almost sorry that I came across this correspondence from 1918/20. You see, I’ve been a lifelong devotee of the writings of Howard […]

Shearing the Sheep and the Blood Sacrifice   Chicago’s Irish American News, October 2017   It’s probably just another sad example of my irredeemably perverse sense of humour, but one of the most amusing images I’ve come across recently is in a comic book where a panel depicts the Big Fella getting a kick in […]

The Narrow Minded Bigotry Doesn’t Come from Kevin Myers…   Irish American News, September 2017     Well, of course, if there was any REAL Justice in this sad old world at all, then Irish journalist Kevin Myers would not only have been sacked from his position with the Sunday Times, he should have been […]

Loveable, Laughing Leo and Empty Cant   Taken from the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ for August, 2017   I received a few nice emails on the back of last month’s piece, Robbery with a Fountain Pen.  They are always welcome and many thanks.  The graphic novel I mentioned was ‘Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl […]

This article appears in the July issue of Irish American News.  It was written just before Leo Varadkar surprised no one at all by indicating that he was to be a case of “Out with the old, in with exactly the same…”   It’s a bit messy-looking, to be honest.  In fact, I’m surprised they […]

The Black Monday Murders Vol. 1: All Hail, God Mammon “If you are going to earn more…if you’re going to earn real money, accumulate real power… then that is done on the backs of others.  Call them workers, call them proles, even call them slaves, I do not care.   Just know it is they who […]

Appearing in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ of June 2017   Did I realise how important they were then?  Those rituals, those ‘rites of passage’ from father to son ’way back in the 60s and early 70s.  As a kid, did I place much stock in them? Yes, I think so.  At some, not fully mature […]

We Really Have to Talk About Bill…   From the May, 2017 issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’   …Or do we?  I’m not so sure now.  Perhaps a few weeks ago — when he once more began to come out with his completely barmy and in-denial utterances concerning Catherine Corless and her findings at […]

The Fear in the Broken Wee Women   ‘Irish American News’, Chicago.   “There aren’t going to be any happy endings here.  No one is going to come out of this looking very good.  What were the fathers of these children doing?  Did they just watch and breathe a sigh of relief as their pregnant […]

This article appears in the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ for March, 2017 – their 40th Anniversary issue.   When you say it like that:  forty years ago… Ireland was still something less than two years in my future.  I had finished school and was preparing for my Great Tour of Europe and North Africa.  Happy […]

The Reverse Robin Hoods of the Irish Health Service   This article appears in the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ for February, 2017.   “Every single power system manipulates and uses ordinary people to further that system’s own supposedly noble aims.” I’m slightly paraphrasing that spot-on sentiment from the great American film director, Sam Peckinpah. With […]

This piece appears in the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ for January of 2017.   “Belfast has a tradition of murals celebrating victories and losses, and its political struggles on both the Nationalist and Loyalist side of the divide.  Some of them take up complete streets.  Some honour the dead, and others make martyrs of local […]

Are We Having Fun Yet…?   This article appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for December, 2016.   I wrote this straight after the Trump win.  When I suggested that within a couple of months he would be absorbed into ‘business-as-usual’, I really hadn’t expected it to start so soon.  I guess that’s politics…   […]

I wrote the following in a letter to a friend back in August.  Farewell, Mr. Cohen; thank you for the words…   With all the Doom & Gloom (sounds like a firm of Undertakers), it was nice this week to come across this…somewhat sad, somewhat lovely…little item. And I just wanted to share it – […]

This article appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for November, 2016.   If there even was such an outlandish idea as having a ‘gap year’ back in the 70s, then I had never heard of it.  It just wasn’t something that you did back then. All I knew was that I had just finished reading […]

Straight Outta Mayo: Kenny Finds his Mojo     This was written a couple of weeks back.  I don’t think that anything has really changed, apart from Mr. Martin clarifying the clarifications on the U-turn that’s not one. I am amused, though, at Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly commenting that when it comes to water charges, […]

This piece appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for September, 2016.   I want to stay away from negative news this month, so let me get my disappointment with Senator Billy Lawless out of the way.  Notice I say ‘disappointment’, not ‘surprise’.  Once a person has become a politician they have moved beyond surprising me.  […]

“I worked, long ago, in New York City, in construction, like many young men of the Mohawk Nation.  I found that whites were often like us, and I could not hate them one at a time.  But they do not know the earth or love it. They do not speak from the heart, usually.  They […]

There Was a Crooked Man…     This article appears in the August issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’. Since writing it a couple of weeks ago nothing much has changed, although we have learned that Creepy Conman Kelly can’t even tell the truth about his own sister’s suicide.  He is still swanning around with […]

Yes, I’m all Gay-ed out; just plain flat Gay-ed and Transgendered-out.  I’m fed up hearing both of those words, to tell you the truth.  I’m also tired of the initials LGBTQ. Q for Questioning has to be stuck on the end of this now? Hell, we’re all questioning – I’m always questioning everything.  Well, not […]

“It’s really depressing at the moment that there is so much attention on refugees and migrants nearly losing their lives, then not being treated well when they get to Europe. “ Such were the wise words from ex-Irish President Mary Robinson this week.  She didn’t go quite as far as Independent Mick Wallace and have […]

And so his real legacy is now that future generations will read about him and remember him as being one of the chief instigators and main players in helping along a conflict that will never end.  Well, certainly not in my lifetime and possibly not in the lifetimes of those who are many years younger […]

  This piece appears in Chicago’s Irish American News for July, 2016   Ah, two weeks of straight sunshine! You know, with all of my moaning and griping I sometimes forget what a great place Ireland is.  In fact, if it were only possible to transport all of the venal, money-hungry, principle-free vultures and hyenas […]

  Norman Bates, Freddy Krueger, Enda Kenny & Me   This piece appears in Chicago’s Irish American News for June, 2016   “Would we be better off without slasher films? I don’t think it really makes the Top Ten of things we would be better off without.  I think that we would be better off […]

As we in Ireland approach seventy days without a government it is beyond simply disheartening to watch the endless cynicism with which our politicians manipulate election results in order to ensure their own greedy survival into another long period at the Golden Trough. And most of us find ourselves musing once more on how the […]

This article is from the May, 2016 issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’.   Forgive those who trespass against us…That’s a big one, isn’t it?  That’s a really big one.  I’m not getting that at all.  I’m trying; but I’m just not having much success. It’s exactly a year since I returned to the Catholic […]

The Psychopath Test A Journey through the Madness Industry   (Just for a change, I think that this piece belongs on both blogs…)   ‘But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths,’ I said. ‘Serial-killers ruin families‘ shrugged Bob.  ‘Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies.  They ruin societies.’ — Jon […]

    From the April 2016 issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’.   At this stage – the third week in March – I should be able to report that  the dust has settled on the February election and that for good or bad the country is back to business.  I SHOULD be able to, […]

I can’t say that I was sorry to see that Lorraine Higgins has been unsuccessful in getting nominated to stay on as a Senator.   A lady who comes across as singularly condescending and unpleasant, she is so enamoured of her own appearance that if she were made of chocolate she would undoubtedly eat herself.  And […]

It was almost as if they had read my mind, saw that I was a bit fed-up at the opportunities we missed in last week’s election; and then decided to cheer me up by giving me a right good old belly-laugh. Not one but two – count them, two – ex-Dublin Lord Mayors came out […]

Remember me telling you about the nasty old threatening letter I got recently?  Well… by recently I mean that it arrived on January 20th and came (just to make me feel special) from the imposingly-named Central Arrears section of the Allied Irish Bank group. It warned me that my account was overdrawn and needed immediate […]

Your banker is your friend. No; it’s true.  Honest.  They worry and fret about your welfare and if you should wander into the red, then they want to advise, comfort and soothe you immediately. Take this full page letter (five paragraphs) that I received from Allied Irish Bank this morning –from the Central Arrears in […]

I had just posted the following article to Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for inclusion in their February issue, when I heard just how much of a crisis the Hand in Hand children’s cancer charity were really in. As a result the editor/publisher Cliff Carlson has kindly given me permission to print it here ahead of […]

The debacle in Germany and by extension in Europe – starring a cast of refugees and economic migrants from near and far — continues to trundle on towards what promises to be an inevitably depressing conclusion, presided over by Ireland’s own CEO and Commander-in-Chief, Angela Merkel. It would be amusing, were it not so serious, […]

This appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for December, 2015.  And if you saw Councillor McElvaney in action then you can now be under no illusions as to what they think about you or the contempt in which they hold you.  In fact, if you only needed ONE reason to hate him (and he offered […]

Written on the 16th of November, this is the December 2015 piece for Chicago’s ‘Irish American News.’   It is, of course, too soon to attempt any kind of serious, objective article on the Paris outrage; but on the 16th of November, as I write this, I’m already over the deadline. I’m also, like most […]

  “If We Should Weep When Clowns Put on Their Show…”   This article appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for November 2015. If I Could Tell You Time will say nothing but I told you so Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you […]

Liar, Bullshitter or Mentally Ill…We Need to Know!   Good Lord, could this appalling waste of oxygen possibly get more creepily condescending than this?  At a Fine Gael Presidential dinner last night (the thought of which alone makes me want to throw up), Enda Kenny – fresh from brazenly saying that he’ll get rid of […]

This article is from Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’, October issue.   Well, I might as well just jump in and get started because there’s no way to write this column without getting the usual abuse thrown my way: RACIST.  That’s always a good one.  If someone has little to say outside of the regular soundbites, […]

Ireland: The Frog in the Pan of Cold Water   Written for Chicago’s Irish American News, September 2015   “I do believe in Justice; I believe in a man’s word. And we must have some form of Law.  So when it’s broken, I have a tendency to stand up and fight.”                                                                                     Film director Sam […]

Dead Animals as Fashion Accessories   It’s probably not the right thing to say at the moment – and God knows it’s not the most popular – but this past week I’ve watched with a mixture of amusement and bafflement as the entire globe appeared to go completely bananas over the killing of Cecil the […]

Beware Irish Politicians Bearing Advice to Greeks   Plus:  Chancers Stephen Donnelly and James Charity     Originally written for the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ in mid-July (before I went into shock at hearing about Irish white-collar criminals going to jail) and appearing in the August issue   As I sit down to start this […]

The Good, the Bad… and the Tragic.   Plus:  Councillor Mike Cubbard     Originally written for the Chicago ‘Irish American News’ in mid-June, when there still seemed some hope of a Summer. Anything appearing in this column today will seem hideously irrelevant, as it is being written just two days after the deaths of […]

If You Are Offended by the Word ‘Nigger’ Then Stop Reading Now.   I was up in Castle Road, Oranmore, just a couple of weeks back. That’s Oranmore, County Galway.  There I was, just enjoying the sunset and looking at the castle, when I heard the most unmerciful screaming coming from a young black couple. […]

Normally, when people go on the Joe Duffy Show, they are angry.  Many of them have a right to be angry and this is their way of getting it off their chest. Catherine Byrne, showing the rigorous intellectual discipline that we have come to expect from the overpaid buffoons of our government, went on Joe […]

It’s a funny thing:  the more that Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his little toy wind-up Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, put the boot into Greece prior to this weekend’s referendum, the smaller in stature the two seemed to get. And they never looked all that big to me in the first place. As they threw a […]

“I go to the shopping centre on the weekend, like most normal people.  I try my best with my budget, to fill it out and get what I need.” I don’t really post much on this part of the blog these days.  Truth is, I haven’t the stomach for it anymore; and people like the […]

This article originally appeared in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ magazine for June 2015   The Soul of the World and the Elephant in the Room   Right.  Deep breath.  This is the difficult first article which follows the one where I came out of the closet. Perhaps the wrong choice of words, considering that two […]

Are you sure you’re sitting down?  Because I’m about to tell you something that will shock you.  Ready? I spent most of today in the company of a gay man – an openly gay man.  And I’ve known that he was gay since…well, since I met him several years ago.  Today we travelled to Dublin […]

Ever since the late seventies or early eighties, when John Pilger’s reports from the Killing Fields of Cambodia led me to some kind of political awakening, I have always tried to keep up with what this great, courageous and Award-winning Australian journalist was writing. For some reason I had missed his 2003 updated book called […]

The Sinister Silencing of the Irish Media   Come to think of it, looking at the jib on him, he reminds me of a bully from my schooldays:  big, chunky and nothing much to look at, but good at blustering through a situation and with a firm conviction that no one he encountered ever really […]

The following was written in mid-April and appeared in the Chicago magazine ‘Irish American News’ for May 1.   Gwyneth Paltrow and Irish Politicians Have Something in Common   You’d never guess we were about to start the election countdown, would you?  Not much, you wouldn’t.   You know, if you didn’t shake yourself out of […]

  Buccaneer of Bullshit Boldly Bounces Back   I know that I often find myself puzzled by what goes on around me.  It often seems like I’m watching the workings of a parallel universe:  one that’s a little bit– but not quite– like ours.  Yet even by those standards the reporting on Johnny Ronan officially […]

   Using the Instruments of Fear Can Backfire   “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear…” So wrote the great New England writer H. P. Lovecraft, way back in 1926.  And although our corrupt government leaders may not be familiar with the author, they are surely more than familiar with the sentiment. Having […]

I feel that an open letter of apology to Luke Flanagan is in order.  I have become so entrenched in my dislike for all politicians that in some cases I may have become a blinded fool indeed.  I think that it’s probably understandable, but when Ming took on the job in Europe my immediate reaction […]

Good Lord, but that was painful to watch; and not for the reasons that I have no doubt Taoiseach Enda Kenny thought it would be.  He doubtless believed that he was humiliating Independent TD Mick Wallace this week, when he refused to answer in English a legitimate question that had been put to him by […]

  There’s a very funny episode of Two and a Half Men where Charlie Sheen has his therapy group round and they include Sean Penn, Elvis Costello and Harry Dean Stanton – all playing themselves and bitching about getting old.  One of them is bemoaning the fact that they have to get up to use […]

Claire Byrne, Hunger Strikes & Eating Disorders     Well, you pretty much knew that you were in an RTE hospitality room from the get-go.  In few other places would you get a statement quite as bizarre. It was Monday night’s ‘Claire Byrne Show’, and we were being told that we would be discussing the […]

‘Another Sinister Twist to the Water Protests’.   Yes; that is the actual, button-pressing headline they gave it. I’ve mentioned many times that the Irish Daily Mail is one of my favourite newspapers. I’m also rather fond of Ger Colleran at The Star, even when I’m not agreeing with him. And I’m aware that stating […]

I’ve always maintained – in a sort of half-joking manner—that the only reason that I’ve reached middle age without the accompaniment of a bloody great big politician- assisted stomach-ulcer is because I just bang away on the keyboard whenever the bastards are annoying me.  It doesn’t even matter if no one is reading; at least […]

I normally have a fairly happy outlook on life, trying – not always successfully, but trying – to see the funny side of even the darkest situations. These past days have been different, though. What happened on the streets of Paris this week would strain the efforts of most people who hope that sanity and […]

  I’m an unapologetically vindictive bastard and never pretended otherwise; so this is a good morning for me.  Well, at least it’s a start.  Thanks to America –nothing to do with us, we didn’t have the balls to go after him—David Drumm wakes up today in the knowledge that he is no longer able to […]

  I had meant to post this some days back.  If you missed this letter it is well worth reading…not to mention startling in its implications.  A big ‘thank you’ to Kathy Sinnott.   “The Irish Exemption” Update on Current Situation by Kathy Sinnott I recently tried to alert people to the existence of the […]

    There was a ‘sinister fringe element’ at the Anti Water Charges March today in Dublin.  The thing is that it was rather heavily represented not by those who were there to peacefully protest but by those who represent our government. For me, that sadly includes members of the Garda.  I say sadly because […]

     This is a reprint of a piece posted December 2012. Not much has changed.         Like many another in Ireland I have found myself, in the years since the Recession kicked in, at times coming perilously close to falling through the cracks.  I would never have been particularly well-off but […]

  The death of a homeless man on the streets of Dublin in the early hours of yesterday morning brought back memories of Rachel Peavoy.  At the time of her inquest I wrote variations of a piece for the New York Irish Examiner USA and for Chicago’s Irish American News.  It seems appropriate to reprint […]

On Being Lectured to by Mick Wallace and Lorraine Higgins…   I’m not the better for that, I can tell you.  That was twice in two days this week that I’ve had my flabber gasted. Twice. You would think that with living in Ireland I would be immune to that sort of thing, but no.  […]

Back Door Joanie and Other People with Big Brains “Money and corruption are ruining the land Crooked politicians betray the working man Pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep And we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep.” —Ray Davies, ‘The Kinks’. I know that I’ve harped on at length in […]

Proud to have been at the Galway Water March! So what did I learn at the November 1st Galway march in protest against the water charges?   Well, I’m not the most sociable, so marches and demonstrations are things that don’t hold appeal for people like me.  Yet most of the people who were marching […]

This Weekend…Let’s Start Taking Back Our Country!     Listen up if you please, friends and occasional readers. I haven’t been posting on this site half often enough, due to time constraints as much as anything.  But I know that there are people out there who occasionally tune in to see what I’m up to […]

Make a Politician Happy:  Commit Suicide.     “Will you close that damned door? Were you born in a barn?” That used to puzzle me when I was a nipper.  On so many levels.  I mean, sometimes this was my parents talking (although it could have been any adult) and even at five years old […]

The Intimidation Begins… …and the Cronyism Continues.  You’ll all have received your little packs by now, courtesy of the Irish Water clique; and as things get worse and as the mailed fist in the velvet glove becomes simply the mailed fist, it will be instructive to remember that this is the quiet way in which […]

A Not-So-Quiet Man…     A version of this piece appears in the October issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’.       So… the week in which I’m writing this is the one in which Ian Paisley went off into that good night; and at the end, I suspect, he did go gentle.  After […]

Launch of the Cong Festival   Originally written for the Hand in Hand website   I happened to be looking at Paddy Rock’s face on the evening of the 10th of September when Jennifer Carpenter said: “Eventually you run out of favours to call in.” That little tic at the side of the cheek; that […]

The Scottish Referendum– and Why it’s None of My Business   This will be short and sweet because to be quite honest I don’t have a lot to say on it.  In fact, I wouldn’t even address the question of the Scottish Referendum on September 18th if some normally sane people wouldn’t insist on being […]

  Rogue States and Irony-free Lectures     As we mercifully witness yet another ceasefire taking place in the endless conflict between Israel and Gaza, you have to wonder when we (this collective race of human beings) will ever get sense.  What a waste; and yet the usual nonsense of both sides announcing that they […]

Garth Brooks and Cappuccino Catholics Make Me Cry     Ok folks, I know that you didn’t want to see the GB name again for a while but this was actually written last month and appears in Chicago’s Irish American News for August.       I like that headline; it sounds like a Country […]

Painter in the Grey Zone: Talking with Jude Sibley   This article originally appeared on the Hand in Hand Children’s Cancer Charity Website in July, 2014.   Extraordinary, really.  We go into things with such pre-conceived notions. With the best will in the world, we do that.  And when those notions are met with…oh, someone […]

 Words of Advice from a Liar to a Thief     I experienced a moment of vertigo as I felt the earth shift beneath my feet last week.  I had the same feeling on December the 8th, in Gerry Smyth’s bar in Limerick ’way back in 1980 when I heard that John Lennon had been […]

Dispossessed Lollipops as Pro-Pigeons Senator is Unfair to Seagulls   Between my typically shambolic personal life and the global news of recent days, it was a relief to be provided with a laugh from one of our beloved politicians last week. It also made me damned glad that we held onto the Seanad recently.  Our […]

Normal Service Has Been Resumed     Well, I’m hoping that at least somebody out there missed me.  I haven’t been on either of these two blogs— www.charleybrady.com  or its companion   www.cbsays.com   for quite some time. The Horrible Political Side I don’t know how other bloggers manage it when they are also working a day […]

Suffer the Little Children: the Atrocity at Tuam     “His daughters are now in Purgatory, a country of slow fires and ridged ice.  Where in the Gospels does it say ‘Purgatory’? “Tyndale says, now abideth faith, hope and love, even these three; but the greatest of these is love. “Thomas More thinks it is […]

Chicago Irish American News: May 2014: A Sick Note from Angie; Two Fingers from Frankie In an article posted on my own website and sub-headed Random Thoughts of an April 3rd I wrote, amongst other things, of the continuing Angela Kerins (ex-CEO of Rehab) saga: “The overbearing feeling of entitlement that drips from this ghastly, […]

‘Hoovering’ Nigella and ‘Silver Linings’ Angie: Random Thoughts of an April 3rd Well, they do say that timing is everything; at least I’m sure that the finally-resigned Angela Kerins, that ex-Rehab boss and inexplicably arrogant, full-of-herself enemy to charities everywhere, would have hoped so. After all, she arranged her resignation, following long months of dithering–it’s […]

As we hear that Angela Kerins may be about to resign, it seems rather appropriate to post this piece, written two weeks ago, but appearing currently in the April issue of Chicago’s Irish American News.   That would be a Whole Other Conversation…   Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein:  “What would your expenses run to […]

This piece appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ magazine for  March 2014   National Broadcaster is Savaged by Delicate Flowers   Wasn’t that a weird and wonderful carry-on last month, just the same?  It certainly added to the gaiety of the nation!  And on top of that, just to give a nice added dimension to […]

This piece appeared on the ‘Hand in Hand’ children with cancer website on 28th February 2014 Surprise as a Politician Gives an Honest Answer!     A few days ago something unusual happened to me; and I’m not the better for it yet, I can tell you.  It was one of those things that nothing […]

This article is from the February 2014 issue of Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’.   Defending (Kind of) Enda Kenny…   I’m pretty sure that if you take a glance out of the window just before you start this article, there’s a good chance that you’ll see a blue moon illuminating a scene in which a […]

This piece appears in the January 2014 issue of Irish American News   The Contemptible Wages of Greed   I couldn’t really have had worse timing than with last month’s article, could I? There I was, happy out for a change, enthusing about my new job with Hand in Hand, the only charity in the […]

This piece was originally posted on the Hand in Hand website for December 9th, 2013.   A Choice at Christmas   ‘The most wonderful time of the year’… Well, so the song says, anyway.  But of course in the real world, like most things, it’s good for some people.  For others?  Depending on circumstances, perhaps […]

This piece appears in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for December 2013.   A Different Kind of Christmas Message   So it’s almost upon us once again, that time of the year that we look forward to so much, he said with customary sarcasm:  Christmas, with all of its ghastliness, family squabbles and the adulation of […]

A couple of months ago I started working for the West of Ireland children’s cancer charity ‘Hand in Hand’.  I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed a job so much, nor ever had a boss that I actually liked so much; or at all, come to think of it (take a bow, Jennifer […]

Priorities; and Separating What is Real from What is Not (This article originally appeared in Chicago’s “Irish American News” for November 2013)   I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, Ye Editor of the IAN needing any copy in by tomorrow, so information on last night’s drive by shooting in Dublin is scant. Still, what […]

I’m Caught!  Time to Join Sinn Fein!   (This article first appeared in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for October 2013)   The 19th Century American essayist Charles Dudley Warner is the man who first came out with that famous and well-used statement:  “Politics makes strange bedfellows. “  And that was once again proved to be […]

A Few Personal Remarks on Cyber Cowards     This article first appeared in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for September 2013   Last night (Tuesday 13th August as I write), in a television interview, Lorraine Gallagher spoke movingly of the awful deaths of her two daughters.  Mrs. Gallagher of Ballybofey, Co. Donegal was the mother […]

More Evidence that the Dail is Just a Drinking Club for Misogynists     Did you hear the sound of the latest set of knuckles to drag their way across the floor of the Dail last week?  It is of course a familiar one to any person who has had the misfortune to spend any […]

In Ireland the Law is not an Ass; it’s a Goat.   “I’m not saying that pacifism is unmanly.  For all I know, pacifism may even be the highest form of manliness.  All that I’m saying is that if a man cuts off your left hand with an axe, you don’t offer him your right […]

Too Few Are Emerging from the Abortion Debate with Much Dignity   People never cease to surprise or disappoint me.  It might have been reasonable (well, in a parallel universe perhaps; admittedly it was always unlikely in this one) to suppose that the whole abortion debate would have brought out the humanity in those who […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for25th June, 2013      No Fighting in the War Room: Bono and the Obama Clan Hit Ireland   Snigger ye not, vile cynics!  I know that a lot of you out there are having a good laugh at the itinerary for Michelle Obama […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for18th June, 2013          Enda Does a Caesar but He’s Really Doing a Nero   “To end Crony Capitalism, you have to end Crony Politics.  It is not enough to dismantle the Galway tent—we have to break up the cosy cartel […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for11th June, 2013       Muppets in the Seanad, Clowns in the Dail:  It’s Debate, Irish-style!     Our beloved Taoiseach Enda Kenny has quite obviously been hanging around with, and taking orders from, our German masters for far too long.   This week […]

  This article originally appeared in Chicago’s ‘Irish American News’ for June 1, 2013     Beam Me Up: Chris Hadfield Makes Children of Us Once More       ‘It’s nice to be against things; but sometimes we have to be for things also.’             –from the brilliant film, ‘The Libertine’ with Johnny Depp […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for4th June, 2013       Things I’d like to Have Seen over the Bank Holiday     Writing this on Monday afternoon, the Bank Holiday Weekend is winding down; and it’s been a pleasant but quiet and overcast one, at least for me.  […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for28th May, 2013     Honestly, I Was Never in a Foursome; No Matter What Alan Shatter Says!     “Don’t think of them as people:  think of them as flees on the body of a dog that has been run over by a […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for21st May, 2013   There’s Nothing to be Paranoid About.  Trust Me; I’m the Minister for Justice.     “It’s strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.” —–Philip K.  Dick   Back in January of this year former policeman Niall […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for14th May, 2013       Tell Them to Put Those Rattles Down: They’re Upsetting the Other Children in the Kindergarten   I do love it when all of my favourite types of people are at each other’s throats.  I don’t know, it just […]

  This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for7th May 2013   Going Beyond Outrage and Recrimination:  Higgins Comes through Pure Gold     For me it was as exhilarating and marvellous as it was unexpected.  And yet, having given it a little thought, unexpected is something that it should not […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’  for 30th April 2013   We’re all just Sitting in a Pan of Cold Water     You know, I give out yards about our Taoiseach Enda Kenny all the time.  Let’s be honest, I break out in a really painful rash when I […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for 23rdh April 2013      Everybody Should like Everybody: but, Andy, They Don’t and They Never Will     A good few years ago I was on holiday in France with my then partner.  Whilst wandering around Cannes I came across a shop […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for 16th April 2013 Gilmore’s Commentariat and My Return to God-bothering     Honestly, this is beginning to turn into a war based on who can come up with the fanciest words.  I mean, last week I wrote of my admiration for that great […]

This article originally appeared the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for 9th April 2013   ‘Tiny’ Gilmore Hides in His Bunker Whilst I Hide From the PC Police     You know, I just have to tell you:  maybe it’s only Old Father Time mellowing me out a little but I’m beginning to develop mixed […]

This article originally appeared in the New York ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for April 2 2013.     Post-Easter Thoughts:  ‘Earth is the Alien Planet’   Last Friday there—Good Friday—I found myself going through a mass of old books in order to figure out (and if you love reading, it’s always a difficult one) which to […]

Humbly Bowing to Our Betters Whilst Passing Bowling Balls     I am sometimes asked, in the Public Bar toilets of this country, if I really feel as strongly towards our appalling politicians as I appear to when I write this and other columns.  I also get asked if I’m really that angry all the […]

The following article first appeared in New York’s ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for 19 March 2013     The Borg; Ming the Merciless Informer; and a Delightful Absence of Politicians   Well, it’s been a relatively quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Ireland.   There have been relatively few scandals; relatively few new ways thought up in order […]

The following article originally appeared in New York’s ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for March 12 2013.     The Chocolate Fantasy Factory And The Magical Money Tree     For some bizarre reason and I can’t see it myself— certain readers, in particular my mum, a couple of disgruntled ex-girlfriends and some fundamentalist religious nuts—seem to […]

The following article originally appeared in New York’s ‘Irish Examiner USA’ for Tuesday March 5 2013.   Drunken Politicians; And Some Remarks on the Killing of Eugene Moloney     Last month I commented briefly and sourly on that night of shame in which our Europe-whipped, Merkel-whipped, Brussels- whipped toadies rushed through an emergency piece […]

Blood and Vomit: The Yearly Nightmare that is St. Patrick’s Day     Dear God in Heaven, it’s almost upon us again:  St. Patrick’s Day, that appalling celebration of everything from serpents to leprechauns that is and always has been the Bane of the Serious Drinker. You will certainly get drinkers out on Sunday March […]

In an Otherwise Grim Week, Bertie Does Boston     The following article originally appeared in slightly different form for the New York “Irish Examiner USA” (Tuesday 5 2013)   By now, most of you reading this or any Irish American newspaper will have read thousands of words on it; you will have seen many […]

 Sinead O’Connor is Moaning Once More   The following article originally appeared in slightly different format in the Chicago monthly “Irish American News” (February 2013)   I’m going to put my hands up here and say that I like Sinead O’Connor.  Well, I don’t know the woman at all but I like—no, I LOVE—her music.  […]

It is Called ‘Choice’:  Why I Do Not Use Non-National Taxi Drivers     There are a couple of words that are gnawing at me this evening.  One is RACIST.  The other is BULLYING. ‘Bullying’ has been used a lot of late because of the dreadful reports of young people who take their own lives […]

What Goes Around: Judge Carney   As a general rule I try to avoid writing about people who are certifiably mad.  People who in a sane world would be just sectioned and locked away with no hope of remission. I’m not talking here about people who are border-line mad.  Some of my favourite writers were […]

“Profoundly Corrupt”:  Happy New Year, Same as the Last One     Give me strength.  It’s less than a week into the New Year, the magical Golden Year of 2013 when all wrongs shall be righted; and already the same smell of pure political horse shit is wafting across the delicate patrician nostrils of Your […]

Kenny Sings and Mullen Waffles in Christmas Greetings to make you Heave.     I’m just getting ready to head off to see my dear old mother in Scotland, so I should be in a good Christmas mood; but there’s always some complete toss-pot of a politician who manages to upset you and turn you […]

  Like many another in Ireland I have found myself, in the years since the Recession kicked in, at times coming perilously close to falling through the cracks.  I would never have been particularly well-off but I had always been very far from poor. With work beginning to dry up and with the pension that […]

  Images from the Budget: They really are Fat Cats   There’s quite a few defining photographs that emerge from the latest assault on Irish sensibilities relating to this 2012 budget; quite a few that illustrate  this most recent of kicks in the teeth to people who are being punished for the sins of the […]

We’ve gone and done it again.  Yes, we’ve dropped the soap in the prison showers once more, bent over to pick it up and suffered the usual consequences.  I’ll try not to be crude, but Ireland does seem to spend an awful lot of time these days in being shafted.  Indeed, we’re rather the laughing […]

It depended on which ‘informed source’ you were listening too, really.  And it also depended on their agenda.  And everybody has one of them, to be sure. [pullquote align=”left”]Fascism, is it? I would have thought that it was far from Fascism they were reared but who am I to question the wisdom of Trade Union […]

Here was that preening popinjay, Enda Kenny, this morning: “I would appeal directly to Praveen Halappanavar, who is a decent man, to meet with the chairperson of the investigation team without prejudice because it is very necessary that the truth of these circumstances be found out.” Seriously, could this guy actually get more damned patronising […]

Triumph Over the Mushrooms     You’ve all heard that old adage that is applied to looking after mushrooms:  “Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.”  Well, with the Irish voters as the mushrooms our detestable Government has taken that one to heart, for sure.  They’re no longer content with just actively keeping […]

Gushes for Sweet Enda; Blushes for Mortified Ireland.     I honestly thought it was a joke at first. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?  I mean, there was the famous masthead—in green—of Time magazine.  And there was the face of Enda Kenny, Ireland’s hopeless and hapless Taoiseach, right there on the cover.  There was no […]

Bedtime Stories from Hell:  Gerry Adams vs. Dolours Price.         God almighty, they’re just two beauties all the same, are they not? One couldn’t be sincere  to save his life—well, he is a politician these days so I don’t suppose that we should hold being dodgy with the truth against him—and the […]