Fionnbharr Rodgers

1 week ago | sluggerotoole.com | Fionnbharr Rodgers

‘We took tough but right decisions in the budget… because we inherited a broken economy,’ said Starmer today after a close defeat at the Runcorn by-election, and more losses in the council elections. ‘Tough decisions’ is also the phrase Starmer invoked two months ago, defending the announcement that his government would reduce the already minuscule foreign aid budget to 0.3% in favour of raising defence spending.

2 weeks ago | sluggerotoole.com | Fionnbharr Rodgers

Last night I had a vision. A premonition of approximately twenty years into the future: DJ Próvai, his balaclava thrown aside, has just been appointed to Seanad Éireann after previously serving a single term as TD for the newly created constituency of Belfast West.

1 month ago | sluggerotoole.com | Fionnbharr Rodgers

‘My father made the walls resoundHe wore his collar the wrong way round.’The lines above characterise the complicated relationship that the poet Louis MacNeice had with his father. Rev.

2 months ago | sluggerotoole.com | Fionnbharr Rodgers

Recent polls have shown that sixty percent of voters in both the North, and the Republic believe it is important for governments to be for the reunification of Ireland.There are two points that most readily spring to mind: firstly, the question of ‘how important is achieving a United Ireland?’ is rather strange wording.

Dec 6, 2024 | sluggerotoole.com | Fionnbharr Rodgers

‘’You know, a lot of politicians talk about family values, but I think how your parents die is an important family value,’ writes Bill Clinton in his latest memoir Citizen, quoting a young woman who worked as a flight attendant on his first post-presidential shuttle out of La Guardia airport; both of her parents had gotten sick with no one to take care of them but herself and her sister, anf she availed of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the very first bill signed into law by President...