Search Results for 'Andrew Baoill'

Galway's St Patrick's Day parade has become, somewhat unexpectedly, one of the things I most look forward to in the year. Some of my earliest memories are of uninspiring parades in the dreary 1980s. I swear that one year it consisted only of flat-bed trucks, with nothing on them. Before Macnas imported a theatrical approach to street performance, the parade was often more obligation than entertainment.

Did you know that many Americans cannot locate the US on a world map? I recently had a video show up on my social media that proved just that, as an anonymous camera person asked seemingly random people to locate North Korea on a blank map, with several pointing to Canada, Europe, and even the USA.

“You’re a true believer, right?”

I look forward to the first full week in October every year, as announcement of the Nobel prizes introduce me to some of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. For a moment, I can have a glimpse at the most impressive work in the sciences, literature, and human rights. The awardees - often recognised for work completed decades earlier - remind us of the immense body of effort behind the scenes that underpin the technologies we use every day. Last year’s winner of the prize in medicine, Katalin Karikó, was never granted tenure by the University of Pennsylvania, and yet she persisted.

Public representatives must be advocates for inclusion and not support bigotry and social exclusion, the head of the Labour Party in Galway has said after controversial comments were made by a city councillor last week about the alleged incompatability of Traveller and settled cultures.

The current upsurge in violence in Israel-Palestine which includes civilian deaths, the destruction of homes, and even forms of ethnic cleansing, “will not be solved” if the world turns away, and “lets the cycle of violence, oppression, and destruction continue”.

Galway city - officially, politically, and in the actions of individual people - has expressed its outrage at last week's terrorist attack in New Zealand, which left 50 people dead, while this evening, a vigil for the victims will take place in the Galway's Masjid Maryam mosque at 7.30pm.

While the referendum on blasphemy has been overshadowed by the presidential election, the Galway West Labour Party is calling for a Yes vote, saying it would “remove a problematic anachronism from the Constitution”.

In the great scheme of things, the increasing crisis of housing and accommodation in the State is a matter of far greater urgency and social consequence than the Blasphemy referendum.