Posted in Anti-Heroines, Books, Economics, Environment, Feminism, Film, International, Politics, Society, Women on Sep 29th, 2011
Perhaps the most distressing statistic emerging from the current economic crisis is that the suicide rate in Greece is reported by the Wall Street Journal to have risen by at least 40%. The Greek collapse is described as a financial catastrophe of their own making but with soaring unemployment, harsh cuts to education and healthcare budgets and [...]
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Babies are dying in the Horn of Africa. Their pitiful faces, and the faces of their mothers are being beamed into our living rooms; they are on the Internet and they are in our newspapers. We are hearing about this new drought, which is bringing famine as an unwelcome visitor to millions of Africans. According to UNICEF, [...]
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Posted in Environment, News, Uncategorized on Mar 6th, 2011
We have one of the lowest percentages of forest cover in Europe (and it’s mostly Sitka spruce, though broadleaf trees now make up 20 per cent of new planting) though we’re supposed to be increasing from the current 7 per cent to 17 per cent cover by 2030. What we do have is owned and [...]
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Posted in Environment, Family, Health, Personal, Rants on Nov 15th, 2010
I once bled onto a Flintstone sock for four days in a Ballsbridge bedsit ’til it was hard enough to slash through human flesh or qualify for a Garda weapon’s seizure. Another time the man I was sleeping with just plain refused to crawl into my bed: ‘June, I can’t…there’s a phone in there and a half-eaten plate of pasta, [...]
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On Thursday night I accompanied a pal to a debate at Trinity College just as the government announced free cheese for its citizen mice and Met Éireann breezed on about an approaching hurricane. Most definitely the start of winter: clouds skirted by much too fast, cobbles were drenched in drool, the wind did its Kate Bush thing and the LaDiDa of [...]
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Posted in Economics, Environment, Ireland, Rants on Oct 16th, 2010
I have tried to picture the child estate agent to be: pasty and sulky, selling on satchel-warmed lemon curd sandwiches or a half-eaten Mars bar in the school playground for a stupidly inflated price. Failing English grammar and spelling tests…dreaming of a commission-loaded life with a leatherette clipboard and a Smart car. A life of ‘gently urging’ people to buy poorly [...]
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Posted in Economics, Environment, Family, News on Jul 6th, 2010
As Mosney residents continue to protest against the transfer of 111 people to different hostels across Ireland, an Irish Facebook group is migrating its own brand of racist invective. [Atrocious grammar in the following is not my own]: Stop scaming the State, GET THEM ALL OUT, And reopen it for the Irish! – Janice Smith, Baldoyle. [...]
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Posted in Environment on Jun 28th, 2010
On a day when the weather finally appears to have broken I find myself in one of those office discussions you can’t win. This morning the usual tirade against the unfairness of our nation’s over enthusiastic rainfall has been momentarily swapped for sulky mouthed speeches to the effect that it’s too hot, the pollen count [...]
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