Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: ‘A paper jam is what your printer creates when you try to run an A4 sheet through its evil, word-devouring works’

By Kilkenny Now 3rd April 2019 0

I BOUGHT my first home computer more than 30 years ago. It was a huge contraption. The actual computer rested in a box on the floor with the keyboard and screen on a sturdy table above it. The table had to be sturdy to cope with the weight of the equipment. It was nearly as […]

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WINE O’CLOCK: A nice wee Prosecco, just what mammy ordered

By Kilkenny Now 29th March 2019 0

WHAT’S your mum’s favourite tipple, asks a flier that has popped into my email basket. I didn’t have a mum. I had a mam, sometimes a mammy, and her favourite tipple was tea. She drank gallons of the stuff and always in the same minuscule measure. Whether quaffed from a giant mug or sipped like […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: I’m asking our neighbours to do us a favour and vote against the folly of a directly-elected mayor

By Kilkenny Now 27th March 2019 0

KEN Livingstone was London’s first directly-elected mayor. Although he loved the job he thought the position should never have been created. “I was always opposed to having a directly elected mayor because it concentrates all the power in one person and there’s a huge potential for corruption,” he told RTÉ. In an interesting interview with […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Time to bring down the curtain on Britain’s parliament panto

By Kilkenny Now 20th March 2019 0

BRITAIN’S parliament has been compulsive viewing of late with its ‘ayes to the right, noes to the left’ and the demented Speaker shouting for ‘aw-DA! aw-DA’. It reminds me of nothing so much as the pantomime, with its set pieces, stage villains and the audience hissing and booing. It also calls to mind another old […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Here come the leprechauns, let the green beer flow!

By Kilkenny Now 13th March 2019 0

AS THE festival of green beer and drunken leprechauns staggers towards us it is startling to reflect that, in the not-so-distant past, Ireland’s pubs were closed on St Patrick’s Day. The ban, imposed in 1903 to combat public disorder, was not lifted until 1972. A great deal of ingenuity was devoted to defying it. One […]

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KATHLEEN FUNCHION: ‘Why are autistic children being treated differently in Kilkenny?’

By Kilkenny Now 7th March 2019 0

THIS week I had the opportunity to put the question to our Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh on why is there an acute shortage of ASD classes for secondary students in Kilkenny. I also asked what measures his Department is taking to address this. In black and white terms, the lack of ASD […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: ‘Why try to save the pay-phone when half the country doesn’t even know what a pay-phone is’

By Kilkenny Now 6th March 2019 0

A STRANGE dispute has broken out between Eir and ComReg, the outfit that governs the telecom industry. Under a regulation dating from its Telecom Éireann days, Eir is obliged to maintain the country’s last few public pay phones and ComReg insists it should keep the service running. Eir says the ruling is “absolute folly” and […]

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WINE O’CLOCK: A papal favourite but it’s not infallible

By Kilkenny Now 1st March 2019 0

MOST of us know it as the name of a wine, but Chateauneuf du Pape is also a village near Avignon, the southern French city that housed the papacy when it moved from Rome for much of the fourteenth century. It is a pretty village of stone walls and cobbled streets, spread around the foot […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: ‘Social drinking is no longer fashionable – coffee shops are the new pubs’

By Kilkenny Now 27th February 2019 0

DEARLY beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the passing of an old friend who stood by us through thick and thin, in good times and bad. He was there for all our celebrations, confirmations and graduations; when the boat came in, the lottery ticket came up or the dark horse proved a winner. […]

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WINE O’CLOCK: When it’s easier to drink it than say it

By Kilkenny Now 22nd February 2019 0

THERE was a time, apparently, when German wines were highly regarded and expensive. Hock, named for the region of Hochheim, was the drink of kings, sipped from special hock glasses, with a green bowl and ribbed stem. I say ‘apparently’ because I don’t remember that time. I do remember a market flooded with thin, sugary, […]