The Anti Room

There’s a whole lot of feminism going on in Dublin today – Choice Ireland’s annual Feminist Walking Tour of Dublin kicks off at the gates of St Stephen’s Green (which gates aren’t specified, but we’d guess the Fusiliers’ Arch one at the top of Grafton Street) at 1 today, if you’d like to explore Irish [...]

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Fifty jobs have just gone in Waterstones, between the Dawson Street and Jervis Street branches, and at the risk of sounding rather E.J. Thribbish, I’d like to mark the passing of the Dawson Street one in particular. When I were a lass, it was a large Laura Ashley shop which occupied that Dawson Street premises, [...]

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I’m sitting in a large auditorium with my husband. We, along with the hundreds of other parents present, are thinking of applying for a place for our son in the school which houses this impressive theatre. We listen to various speakers describe the amazing facilities on offer; the state-of-the-art science and computer labs, the 25 metre [...]

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Like many people in Ireland on Monday, I spent the day in a state of near-paralysis. I had the radio permanently tuned to news and current affairs programmes. It was almost impossible to tear myself away from Twitter. Because I follow a lot of people in the Irish media and journalism, the tweets were pouring [...]

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Prince William is such a cheapskate. Why’d he give Kate his mum’s old engagement ring? His dead mum’s old engagement ring. His unhappily married mum’s engagement ring. His broken-hearted mum’s old engagement ring. His divorced mum’s old engagement ring. His cuckolded mum’s old engagement ring. His vilified, ostracised mum’s old engagement ring. His canonised, sainted [...]

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There never was a truer proverb than “ignorance is bliss”; certainly, the daily trawl through the news sites can take years off a life. It’s a topic I turn to constantly in late-night discussions – is knowledge an essential weapon, or a poisoned chalice? Are we better people for knowing the dank corners of a [...]

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I remember the first time I saw a woman in Dublin wearing a burqa. It was May, 2003; the final day of my third-year college exams. I was sitting on the footpath on the South Circular Road, doing some last-minute revision. As I was skimming through my notes, I noticed what appeared to be a [...]

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It’s a very sad day when one of Ireland’s finest independent record stores, Road Records, announces it is to close down, its valiant fight against the recession and digital music sadly having come to an end. And it’s also sad (but in a rather different way) when some of its own customers use a post [...]

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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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L’Oréal loves to talk up the science. From its skin-and-hair labs in Paris to Jennifer Aniston steadying her gaze into your living room and warning that “the science bit” is coming, they revel in the white-coatedness of it all. But it’s not just the men in those white coats, no. The cosmetics empire also wants to [...]

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