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HACKED OFF AT THE JOURNALISM AWARDS

Date: November 23, 2020 - Affairs, Media

THE NEWSBRANDS Journalism Awards were conducted virtually this year, which allowed hacks who failed to bring home a gong the opportunity to present their best loser face via Zoom. While the annual back-slapping event has become famous for its post-ceremony tiffs over the origin of… Read more »

GOVERNMENT’S DOCTOR DEFLECTION

Date: November 20, 2020 - Affairs

THE RESUMPTION of attacks on public health advice indicate that certain figures in government and business understand the weakness of their own position. Those who complained bitterly about ‘yo-yo lockdowns’ just weeks ago now seek a return to the lowest level possible, whatever the consequences…. Read more »

FINN MCREDMOND’S ‘NUANCE’

Date: November 20, 2020 - Affairs

IRISH TIMES readers are fortunate that the paper’s resident young Tory is on hand to keep the nation’s passions in check. In the latest dispatch from her Westminster townhouse, Finn McRedmond calls for greater nuance against an alleged tide of “anti-Englishness”. The columnist points to… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: HOT WATER BRIGADE 2020

Date: November 19, 2020 -

THE MORE things change, the more they stay the same. This year may have seen economic carnage like nothing before, but there were plenty of scraps and scrapes in the world of Irish business outside of the problems caused by the pandemic. Covid-19 did play… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: MICHAEL O’LEARY’S PANDEMIC OPPORTUNITY

Date: November 19, 2020 -

MICHAEL O’LEARY is facing an existential moment for Ryanair, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a seismic difference to the company and help it change trajectory to take advantage of the current unprecedented circumstances for the aviation sector. There could be a landing slot for Ryanair… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020 – STOCKS & SHARES: WINNERS AND LOSERS IN 2020

Date: November 19, 2020 -

THIS YEAR, the company leading the winners’ table is one that has lost billions over the years, Providence Resources. The new management, under Pat Plunkett and Alan Linn, focused on farming out the already discovered Barryroe oilfield, with 350 million barrels of recoverable oil identified… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: BILLIONAIRES COME AND GO IN 2020

Date: November 19, 2020 -

IRELAND started off the year with the news that we had the fifth-largest number of billionaires per capita behind Hong Kong, Cyprus, Singapore and Switzerland, according to an Oxfam report for the World Economic Forum. The year didn’t quite turn out as expected for some… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020 – ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT: 2020: CANCEL CULTURE, COVID AND CONTROVERSY

Date: November 19, 2020 -

THIS WAS a year not much like any other given that the arts were savaged by the pandemic. Nevertheless, it was business as usual for many – or at least those who managed to avoid being cancelled in an increasingly fraught cultural environment. Certainly getting… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: BALLINA BIDEN TO BIFF BORIS?

Date: November 19, 2020 -

It’s been quite the rollercoaster year on the foreign affairs front. Covid-19 will of course be remembered as the defining global event of 2020. As the virus spread exponentially in March, caretaker Taoiseach Leo Varadkar decided to jet over to Washington DC for his St… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: INJUDICIOUS JUDGES

Date: November 19, 2020 -

IT WOULD be easy to think that nothing much happened in 2020 beyond the pesky coronavirus. In one way, that is right, but what the plague taketh away, it also giveth and there was plenty going on even while the country was locked down tight…. Read more »

ANNUAL 2020- CLERICAL ERRORS: IRISH APOSTATES CAST OUT

Date: November 19, 2020 -

On Saturday November 28, Pope Francis will preside in Rome at a ceremony conferring red hats on 13 new Cardinals, but none of them will be either Diarmuid Martin (75), the Archbishop of Dublin and Elder Statesman of the Irish Church, or 59-year-old Archbishop Eamon… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020 – AIRWAVES: COVID: A GOOD NEWS STORY

Date: November 19, 2020 -

While COVID nearly destroyed the economy and laid waste to the independent TV sector right across the country, the disaster zone that has been 2020 might just have saved RTÉ and Dee Forbes’s bacon. In a year that saw many casualties on the airwaves, with… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: ABC OF MEDIA ABANDONED

Date: November 19, 2020 -

Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the print media still managed to afflict some of the comfortable during a torrid year. Just ask the various worthies who thought it was a good idea to attend the Oireachtas Golf Society dinner in Clifden. Clear winner of… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020 – PROFILE: WILL MARTIN MAKE IT TO 2022?

Date: November 19, 2020 -

‘FIANNA FÁIL can kiss my ass – I’ve got the taoiseach’s job at last.’ That seems to be the political ditty that Micheál Martin hums to himself as his members see him strip away all the basic tenets of their party’s identity. Does he care?… Read more »

ANNUAL 2020: STORMONT RETURNS: PLUS ÇA CHANGE

Date: November 19, 2020 -

IS COVID-19 a Fenian virus? Does it mutate when it transfers to Protestant victims? Stormont’s DUP agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, injected a virulent northern strain into the Covid debate this year, claiming that Catholic areas had six times the infection rate incurred in law-abiding unionist… Read more »

WOULFE IN JUDGE’S CLOTHING

Date: November 19, 2020 -

HAVING BEEN transformed from predator into the hunted one vis-à-vis Supreme Court ‘colleague’ Séamus Woulfe, Chief Justice Frank Clarke may now feel he laid too much stress on a legal and political precedent that few other judges and legal correspondents seemed to have noticed. In… Read more »

BIDEN AND IRISH NEUTRALITY

Date: November 19, 2020 -

AS VICTORY for Joe Biden’s US presidential campaign inched closer, the Irish Times’s EU warriors became more exercised about the consequences for what is quaintly called “EU security”. On the one hand, warned one hack, Nato HQ and various EU governments would be pleased, as… Read more »

UNICORNS’ PROFITS

Date: November 19, 2020 -

LAST YEAR the Dáil declared a biodiversity emergency and, in recent months, the EU’s Farm To Fork strategy set out ambitious targets to cut the use of environmental poisons like chemical pesticides. Tough times, in other words, to be in the pesticide business right now…. Read more »

IRELAND’S SPYCOPS

Date: November 19, 2020 -

A British spy in the Real IRA, Dennis McFadden, is alleged to have a ‘love child’ with a woman from Donegal, whom he is said to have left shortly before the birth of the child. On settling in Belfast, he then had a child with… Read more »

COVID SAVES EXECUTIVE

Date: November 19, 2020 -

Former BBC journalist and veteran commentator Brian Rowan recently quoted a senior unionist who said, “The executive is on sticky ground. If we didn’t have Covid, it wouldn’t last.” That was before the behaviour of DUP executive ministers in the second week of November, when… Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S CORK REBELS

Date: November 19, 2020 -

RTÉ AND its Drivetime host, Sarah McInerney, managed last week to transform a most interesting story about Fianna Fáil abandoning its republican traditions – in rebel Cork, of all places – into a feminist grievance. An Taoiseach and party leader, Micheál Martin, will be especially… Read more »

INM’S MIXED RESULTS

Date: November 19, 2020 -

A CHEERFUL report in the Irish Independent last week gave figures from the annual results of Independent News & Media Group Ltd, the holding company for various titles now owned by Belgian-based Mediahuis. The story’s headline stated that INM had incurred €2.5m costs relating to… Read more »

WILD MOUNTAIN JAM

Date: November 19, 2020 -

THE NATIONAL public broadcaster as well as the rest of the media (social and otherwise) got their knickers in a twist over Emily Blunt and Christopher Walken’s excruciating Oirish accents in the trailer for John Patrick Shanley’s upcoming film, Wild Mountain Thyme, but they neglected… Read more »

LISMORE CASTLE’S ARISTOCRATS

Date: November 19, 2020 -

NICE TO see the vaunted Book of Lismore returning home. The priceless medieval manuscript has been donated to UCC and the good news is that there appears to be no tax wheeze associated with the transaction, which makes a nice change. The university told Goldhawk… Read more »

KEANE’S AMERICAN DREAM

Date: November 19, 2020 -

THIS YEAR’S Breeders’ Cup, held at Keeneland racetrack in Kentucky, was a mighty success for Irish trainers and jockeys, none more so than Colin Keane, who was also crowned Irish Champion jockey the same day. Keane had made the trip to Kentucky to partner the… Read more »

Annual 2020

Date: November 19, 2020 -

FARRELL’S FALL

Date: November 19, 2020 -

GOLDHAWK’S OLD friend, security specialist Jim Farrell, has just been adjudged a bankrupt in relation to a row over his former company. Business Mobile Security Services (BMSS) may have a dull name, although the company was anything but and will be well known to fans… Read more »

LONDON CALLING

Date: November 19, 2020 -

CONGRATS TO the chaps in News UK, London head Office of the Sunday Times – which dictates the tone and tenor of its aawrish edition – for perhaps the most ironic headline and story in modern Irish publishing. “Ceann Comhairle accused of ‘meddling’ on China’s… Read more »

WILD MOUNTAIN MEN

Date: November 19, 2020 -

WITH ALL the fuss over the trailer for Wild Mountain Thyme, it is interesting to note that the taxpayer has put a fair few bob towards the film that features bad accents and big names like Emily Blunt (see p15). One of the private companies… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: November 19, 2020 -

I did a major declutter of my ‘Dulux colour’ coats – the pinks, the oranges, the reds, which I only wore for TV. I gave them all to a charity shop. Then I ordered lots of minimalist black. That’s when I knew I was moving… Read more »

IVANA TRIES AGAIN

Date: November 19, 2020 -

LABOUR SENATOR Ivana Bacik has let it be known to her fans in Dublin Bay South (DBS) that she will – for the fourth time – be looking to stand for the Dáil. This brings the word ‘indefatigable’ to a new level, especially given what… Read more »

WOMAN MD FOR ‘IRISH TIMES’?

Date: November 19, 2020 -

WOMEN JOURNALISTS at the Irish Times will surely be pleased should yet another woman take the post of managing director now that Liam Kavanagh is stepping down (Kavanagh succeeded Maeve Donovan as MD 10 years ago). More recently, IT female journalists launched a campaign against… Read more »

STEPHEN COLLINS’S OMISSION

Date: November 19, 2020 -

A MOST arresting headline on the recent weekly column of former Irish Times political editor Stephen Collins declared, “It’s worth recalling defining moment in Irish democracy”. Before he even identified this momentous event, Collins compared and contrasted it to the dangerous and threatening behaviour of… Read more »

LEO’S NEXT CHAIR

Date: November 19, 2020 -

ONE OF the next appointments to be made by Leo Varadkar in his role as enterprise minister is the chair of the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland, where Pennys matriarch Breege O’Donoghue is stepping down after four years. The new chair will inherit an… Read more »

SNOW – JOHN BANVILLE (FABER)

Date: November 19, 2020 -

OVER RECENT years, John Banville has written a relatively commercially successful series of hard-boiled noir thrillers under the name of Benjamin Black. This latest crime novel, however – the first to be published under his own name – turns out to be a conventional mystery… Read more »

PAT’S PILE

Date: November 19, 2020 -

A SALE price has been recorded in the Property Price Register of the Co Meath mansion owned by software moneybags Pat McDonagh and it looks like he has come close to his eye-watering asking price. Carbalton Hall, outside Tara, was put on the market last… Read more »