Public are enraged by the lack of disclosure
Thu, May 03, 2018
It sits there. On the desk. In your bag. In your hand.
With people hoping it won’t ring. And being afraid to use it to ring someone else.
Read more ...Will anyone be held accountable for Dunmore foster care lapse?
Thu, Apr 26, 2018
Images of child abuse come to us through grey-tinted windows. In our mind’s eye, they happen in a black and white world, with a smell of cold and talc and warm breath in an Ireland where the rain is incessant, washing down the gutters and the windows, gathering up shreds of hope, carrying them along to a drain where they disappear. And through the glass, just before the net curtains swing back to obscure the view in this miserable world, there is just enough time left for those without voice to witness that washing away.
Read more ...If you wait for the right time, you wait forever
Thu, Apr 19, 2018
Weeks pass by in the flash of an eye. There is such order to what we do now, that we become enslaved to the routine so that on Monday you do Monday things, on Tuesday, Tuesday things, and so on, until before you know it, you’re back doing Monday things again.
Read more ...A great citizen whose legacy will be felt in Galway for generations
Thu, Apr 12, 2018
A city is a patchwork quilt of faces, opinions, cultures, sounds, smells. It only becomes what it is through the juxtaposition of all of these things. From the difference which it has to other places, a difference created by the choices we make in terms of the type of place we want to live in. I think of this every week when the team and I here at the Advertiser sit down to put together a newspaper that we hope touches in some respect a variety of the issues and areas that go to make up Galway. A pot pourri to match the pot pourri that surrounds us all.
I also think of this every time we lose someone who has made a contribution to what is Galway, to the way we think and approach life. We are fortunate to have have myriad individuals who through their intellect, ability, and drive have gone on to plaster into place one of the building blocks of the city we have today and the city we will have in fifty years time.
Read more ...Food glorious food
Thu, Apr 05, 2018
Once it was just one of the basic needs of life, a fuel to survive, but food and our attitude to it has certainly changed course many times.
Read more ...No need to stock up, the pubs are open after 90 years
Thu, Mar 29, 2018
Tomorrow, for the first time in nearly a century, Galwegians can join their fellow Irish citizens and, if they choose, head to the pub.
Read more ...The price to be paid for mild voyeurism
Thu, Mar 22, 2018
I remember long ago in the mists of time, being stuck in a marketing class and being told about the power of subliminal advertising. How the ad with the sound of a can of cola being opened was sending a message to the brain to tell us that we wanted to quench our thirst there and then. How the colours in certain global brands stirred some desire in us, a desire undetected until it was pointed out.
Read more ...Science needs more rock stars like Hawking
Thu, Mar 15, 2018
They say that those who live in the shadow of death are those who live most. Those who have opportunity taken from them are those who see the greater wonder in the things that others just take for granted. And that is so true. It is only when you are faced with losing something that you start to miss it the most. At times like that, it hard to focus on the positive, to reach out and see a light when there is but a dim torch in the distance.
Read more ...The humanity of the brave
Thu, Mar 08, 2018
Every day, it passes over where I work and where I live.
Read more ...West feels left out being an onlooker on national weather drama
Thu, Mar 01, 2018
Like fading divas on an operatic stage, it has been a strange, although welcome, feeling this week not be the default centre of attention when it comes to adverse weather in this country. For the best part of two decades now, the west has been the owner of the weather monopoly.
If a rogue tide or a heavy gust of wind was spotted on the map at all, we were sure it was coming our way.
Read more ...What does the future hold for casinos in Ireland?
Mon, Feb 26, 2018
This is a question that many have been asking in recent times, and particularly in the aftermath of the 2013 Gambling Control Bill and the 2015 Betting Amendment Act, and it is by no means an easy one to answer. But before it is attempted it would be a good idea to take a look at the history of gambling in Ireland in general to put the current role played by casinos into context.
Read more ...Last thing Michael D wants is a coronation
Thu, Feb 22, 2018
We all think we know Michael D (President Higgins to the rest of ye).
He’s a man who eschews the comfort of his slippers and the Late Late on a Friday night to sit among us and shout on Galway United when he’s in town. Or to pop out to Inchicore when’s he up in the Big Smoke. He’s there for all the big occasions. For us, he was there beside David Burke for that moment in time last September.
Read more ...What’s with all the doubling up of dates?
Fri, Feb 16, 2018
As if there aren’t enough days in the year.
Three hundred and sixty-five of them. At least.
Time to enjoy that stretch in the evenings, fuel the saneness
Thu, Feb 08, 2018
Every year, the smell of thick gloss blue and grey paint would fill the evening sky, as the work continued past dusk.
Read more ...A woman who helped shape the place we all love
Thu, Feb 01, 2018
Galway, as we know it, did not just happen by accident. As a signifier of a wider context, what we associate with the city came about because of coincidences of time and place and ability and the juxtaposition of character.
Read more ...A hero whose visage symbolises his own place
Thu, Jan 25, 2018
There are some artists whose life falls onto the canvas, becomes part of it, whose angst is evident in the brushstrokes; whose empathy shapes the message of the painting. They become part of what they work on, and what they work on becomes the whole of them. They become one with each other until it is impossible to ever see them apart as separate entities. To rob one from the other is to divide it irrevocably.
Read more ...A glimpse back into an Ireland we deny knowing
Thu, Jan 18, 2018
Sometimes we imagine we are further removed from depravity that we actually are.
Read more ...New Gaelscoil a boost to the city’s bilingual status
Thu, Jan 11, 2018
There is something wonderful about a new school. It is as if the newness is willing you on to learn things. It is the equivalent of the nice clean blank page in your copy book. It dares you to write on it, to make sure that its journey from tree to page is not lost on something less than meaningful.
New schools have the same effect. Because you can see their purpose more clearly, the facilities provided act as an inspiration.
Read more ...When the rare becomes the commonplace
Thu, Jan 04, 2018
The thing about Once In A Hundred Years events is that, they self-implode. They are no longer sustainable as news events. Once Once In A Hundred Years events happen and are repeated soon after, they lose their appeal. They don’t carry the awe and wonder anymore.
Read more ...Look after the little things this Christmas
Thu, Dec 21, 2017
Look after the little things in life.
Because one day the time will come when you realise they are the big things.
Because one day the time will come when you realise they are the big things.
Read more ...