News Opinion Sport

MICHAEL WOLSEY: The GAA is not elite and I hope it never will be

By Kilkenny Now 21st October 2020 0

In these Covid-haunted times, the things that make the GAA great are also the association’s biggest weakness: the men and women who play its sports are all amateurs and they compete in every part of the country. They have been classed as elite under the new guidelines for virus control, which gives them the same […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Lament for sozzled cads and bonking trollops 

By Kilkenny Now 14th October 2020 0

The word ‘sozzled’ may be heading for extinction because, apparently, hardly anyone under the age of 30 knows what it means. Well, dear youthful reader, let me correct your ignorance right now. Sozzled means bladdered and hammered and wasted and bevvied. Not all at the same time, of course. That would leave you rat-arsed. Nowadays […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Why combating Covid is everyone’s business

By Kilkenny Now 7th October 2020 0

Selfish students whooping it up in Galway, Cork and Belfast did not cause the leap in the Covid infection rate. But they contributed to it. Thoughtless politicians and an arrogant judge attending a golf society dinner did not give the virus a new lease of life. But they helped it on its way. GAA fans […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Why I don’t want to pay for your marathon

By Kilkenny Now 30th September 2020 0

My neighbour, a fit and feisty man, has been running a marathon in his back garden. He now intends to crown this feat with some incredible number of press-up – a hundred or a million, something huge anyway. And he is planning an equal number of forward thrusts. At least I think that’s what he […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Covid is the elephant in the classroom

By Kilkenny Now 23rd September 2020 0

The Covid virus spreads when we get together in large groups indoors. So where have we been doing that?Not in cinemas or theatres – they have been closed entirely or restricted to very small numbers. Not at sporting events – they are mostly outdoors and only a handful of people have been allowed to attend. […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Memo to the Taoiseach – stop waffling, start governing

By Kilkenny Now 16th September 2020 0

To misquote George Orwell: all counties are equal but some counties are more equal than others. The Government says we are all in this together, but its five-step campaign against Covid-19 undoubtedly treats Dublin differently from the other 25 counties. Its wet pubs can’t re-open, it has tighter restrictions on attendance at outdoor events, and […]

Business Food & Drink News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: A pint and a pizza from the place next door

By Kilkenny Now 2nd September 2020 0

I recently went with some friends for a drink and a bite to eat in a small village pub. I don’t think it normally serves food. I’m not sure it even has a kitchen. But it had no trouble complying with the law because the village, like just about every little place in Ireland, has […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Green invaders from the Red Planet

By Kilkenny Now 12th August 2020 0

Is there life on Mars? Three new attempts are underway to find an answer to that old question, with missions launched recently by the USA, China and the United Arab Emirates. All three probes are due to land early next year when they will begin the search for signs of life, past or present. Let […]

News Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Without John Hume there might have been no peace process. Without Gerry Adams there might have been no need for one.

By Kilkenny Now 5th August 2020 0

  John Hume led Ireland out of darkness so it was fitting that Ireland lit a candle for John Hume – thousands of candles, in fact, in homes and churches all over the country. I don’t suppose they lit many candles on Belfast’s loyalist Shankill Road but I heard a Shankill woman on television declare […]

News Opinion

PAUL HOPKINS: Men, when it comes to the long summer and the shorts of it …

By Kilkenny Now 20th July 2020 0

Amid all the madness, and sadness, that is Covid-19, there has been one redeeming factor —  it has not been a bad summer so far, and, though the outlook, is, typically, rather mixed, let us count our blessings. The Irish summer is a vagary onto itself, our reaction to it even more vagarious: when it’s […]