Opinion

MICHAEL WOLSEY: Time to end this sham fight and build the new hospital

By Kilkenny Now 27th September 2024 0

The politicians who are trying to block the construction of the new National Maternity Hospital on the site of St Vincent’s, in south Dublin, are waging a phoney war. This battle was won more than 40 years ago and even then it was a bit of a sham fight. The loser was not the Catholic […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Tread softly, Mary Lou, when you tread on unionist dreams

By Kilkenny Now 30th April 2022 0

It is more than 30 years since Dominic Murray published Worlds Apart, a book that has stood the test of time as a revealing and insightful study of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. It concentrates on the education system and has a section devoted to attitudes at neighbouring schools in the greater Belfast area – one […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Croke Park in September is where we all belong

By Kilkenny Now 23rd April 2022 0

The GAA has been running ads on television and other platforms featuring people with big hearts who play for small clubs. They show young lads running on beaches at the crack of dawn and girls training on pitches that look like the last event they were used for was the ploughing championships. The show  volunteers […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: When a glimpse of stocking was nothing shocking

By Kilkenny Now 16th April 2022 0

I was scrolling through television listings when I noticed the BBC was running some of the old St Trinian’s films. Not the 2009 version, with Colin Firth and Talulah Riley, but the originals, with Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell and George Cole . I vaguely remembered having watched them as a child, maybe a teenager, with […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: It’s little things that make our hospitals look sick 

By Kilkenny Now 10th April 2022 0

Big changes have just been announced for Ireland’s hospital system. That worries me, for I remember other announcements of big changes. They always cost a lot of money; they rarely made things better and they sometimes made them worse. The new plan for Regional Health Areas sounds disturbingly similar to the plan for Regional Health […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Sonia and the census get the gender question right

By Kilkenny Now 2nd April 2022 0

The first personal question on your census form asks your name; the second  says ‘what is your sex’. You have a simple choice, male or female. If you had been living in Scotland when its census was conducted last month you would have found that question more complicated. There you would have been able to […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Bah mumbug! Time to ditch this Mother’s Day nonsense

By Kilkenny Now 26th March 2022 0

What is a modern Irish mammy? Or mam, mum, ma, mom, mommy, mother? Whatever you’re having yourself. She has as many roles as she has names. She might be a business woman who also looks after a family. Or a carer who also holds down a job in a factory. She might have children but […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: How a dark horse helped Charlie beat the bookie at last

By Kilkenny Now 19th March 2022 Post a comment

Work was scarce when I was growing up and a lot of men, with nothing better to do, divided their days between the bookmaker and the pub. Once a week they collected the dole – the buroo, they called it, Belfast-speak for the employment bureau. Battle-hardened wives would swoop quickly to get some family money […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: Why we must stop depending on Russia and China

By Kilkenny Now 5th March 2022 0

Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister whose appeasement allowed Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia, opening the way for World War Two. Defending his agreement with the Nazi dictator, Chamberlain said he was keeping Britain out of “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing”. The folly of his words was […]

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MICHAEL WOLSEY: In the name game it always pays to be polite

By Kilkenny Now 26th February 2022 0

My granddaughter goes to a primary school where the children call the teachers by their first name. It is, from what I can judge, a very good school and she is happy there. But, as a general policy, I feel a bit uneasy about this first name thing. I certainly wouldn’t like to see it […]