Children’s Book Festival Competitions for Young Writers This year sees three competitions running as part of the Children’s Book Festival. Check them out here .. Young...

Check out the line up for this great new Cork film festival @            http://indiecork.com/

The Scottish Premiership has been dominated in recent years by Celtic and Rangers, collectively known as the Old Firm Derby. The Old Firm Derby involves these two big teams from Glasgow. Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland but isn’t the capital; the capital is Edinburgh. Another example of the administrative city being smaller than the biggest city in the country can be found in Canada, where Ottawa is the capital but Toronto (and Montréal) are bigger. Toronto is home to the CN Tower, one of the tallest buildings in North America. Another tall building in that continent is the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower. Willis Tower is located in Chicago. Chicago is a city which had a crime-ridden past with such “luminaries” as Al Capone resident there. Al Capone was eventually imprisoned in Alcatraz, not for killing anyone, but for tax evasion. Alcatraz is located on an island just off San Francisco. San Francisco is twinned with Cork but Aer Lingus doesn’t fly between the cities; instead, from next April, they will fly from San Francisco to Dublin. From here, you can make a connection flight, still on board Aer Lingus (albeit Regional) to Aberdeen. In the 80s, Aberdeen, along with Dundee United, were known as the New Firm Derby. At this time these two teams dominated a league called the Scottish...

Was World War II some kind of nadir in the long and tragic history of violence? Was the twentieth century the most violent of all centuries? Not necessarily, according to Pinker. For one, there were a lot more people on the earth to become involved in both World War I and II; furthermore, the technology was there to kill more people; this may not translate as a greater intention to cause harm but simply a greater means. Steadily, despite horrific war being far from a thing of the past, violence and war are being pushed to the...

p. 226: “We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there should be absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both.” Isn’t this an earlier version of Yeats’ “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/ It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”? Does it not echo Rodney Crowell: “Democracy won’t work if we’re asleep.”? Voting is exposed here for what it is, a cop-out, something we do so as we don’t feel bad about not doing more: “At most they give a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary custodian of it.” If we were all virtuous men and women, the vote would be, at most, the beginning of our involvement in politics; as it is, it’s our stopping point. Thoreau asks why we feel the need to elect a man to...

Seanad Eireann: A Reform Vision The current Seanad is completely useless. This is an undisputed fact. The question of what to do with it is what divides the nation. Various groups, lobbies and bands of independents have put forward proposals to change it. The Government is trying to go full retention or full abolition. I have decided that, in this article, I will try to get across my vision of a reformed Seanad and how it will affect the Irish political landscape. Firstly it must have independent power. The current Seanad is like a child. Its mammy, the Dáil, tells it what is right and what to do and the Seanad has just played along like a good obedient mammy’s boy. Even when it has decided to use its powers, it only delayed a bill by 90 days. If the Seanad is to be an effective house it must have true, independent power. In order to fulfil the independent part of the brief, I would ban all political party affiliations within the Seanad. In this Oireachtas, The Dáil is for politics, the Seanad would be where the real work gets done. For the power part, I would grant the Seanad to permanently amend bills and to reject ad infinitum. However, they would not be able to propose bills. This would be that way because, as a independent chamber, they would not have the cohesion to propose bills. The only civil servants would be the chair of the Seanad and the Attorney General. Secondly, there would multiple Seanads, corresponding to each ministry. There would be 100 members to each Seanad and they would be paid an allowance only for days on which they sit. Tenure would be for 8 years, of which the senators could...