Painfully ironic though it feels to write this, it’s time to repatriate the taxes of the Irish companies relocated ‘offshore’ and call out the bogus non-resident non-tax-paying billionaire moochers who pay for nothing and walk away with everything, including lucrative Government contracts. (8 minute read)
the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful at the expense of the rest of us in a rigged system. Public waiting lists for medical treatment get longer as we shovel money into The private sector. Rich kids get a better education at our expense. And then the Government cheats on the Leaving Cert results to see that they get the top university places.
Despite a century of republican independence, the common ownership of Ireland’s wealth promised by the first Dáil continued to find its way into the hands of privileged private interests. Public rights and welfare are now subordinate to property rights, citizens are taxpayers, and workers are human resources. 15-min read.
Shaw said it’s past time to see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’; it’s time to dream of what never was and ask, ‘Why not?’ Why not a first-class, single-tier healthcare system, a first-class single-tier education system, housing for everybody, and a taxation system that makes the rich pay their share? 12-minute read.
Self-governing republican freedom is shared among equal citizens, and so is the responsibility for maintaining it. That requires active participation from us all, individually and collectively, taking responsibility for the state we’re in. Our democracy is broken. It’s time we did something about it. 10-minute read.
In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that laws criminalising homosexuality supported the ‘Christian nature of the Irish State’ and a two-to-one majority voted for the Eighth Amendment. But by 2018, we had legalised same-sex marriage and repealed the Eighth. 12-min read.
All other things being equal—Leaving Cert results, for instance—students who attend schools in working-class areas are less likely to graduate to third-level study than those from more affluent areas. Why is that? Two classic studies partially explain the disparity, but it took a pandemic to break it open.
The debacle surrounding ‘standardised’ Leaving Cert grades made it possible to see why students from private schools are disproportionately more likely to graduate to third-level study than all others. That’s the intention—quid pro status quo.12 minute read.
Two recent studies asked students whether the skills taught in their Leaving Cert courses prepared them for third-level study. An overwhelming majority said ‘No’, that they had not learned the intellectual skills they would need to succeed. 8 minute read.
Drunken, brawling, criminal, lazy, as thick as two short planks nailed together, and not wanted over here—that’s what ‘everybody knew’ about the average Mick when I was growing up in England. Creating a racist stereotype doesn’t need any basis in fact, just an ugly image repeated often enough. (10 minute read.)
