Search Results for 'Insider'

Insider has been a keen observer of activities in City Hall for two decades and, regardless of what the public think, it is always best for Galway when there is a good working relationship between the elected members and senior management.

One recent evening Insider watched the 1967 Jean-Luc Godard film La Chinoise in which a small group of French students sit around their apartment, located in what is described as a “workers’ district”, and engage in theatrical discussions about how they must overthrow the bourgeoise and, in particular, the hierarchal French university system which saw students as passive receivers of knowledge handed down by their god-like professors, rather than participants in a dialectical exchange in which both students and teachers learn from each other and grow as a result. No one, with the exception of chairman Mao, is radical enough for most of these students. The French Communist Party which, to draw an Irish parallel, would have been more or less the political equivalent of present day Sinn Féin, is condemned as hopelessly “revisionist”. The Soviet Union, in particular its then president, the now largely forgotten Mr Kosygin, is convicted by the students at their kitchen table discussions of failing to do enough to support the Vietnamese in their war against Lyndon Johnson. And the French working class, with whom said kitchen table debaters absolutely sympathise, are seen as hopelessly passive. In a mix of desperation, madness, and idealism, the students decide to mount a campaign of terrorism, which will involve them doing something they have singularly failed to do for most of the film; getting up from that kitchen table and going outside. They plan to kill the visiting Soviet minister for culture who has been invited by President de Gaulle’s own culture minister, the novelist and decayed Stalinist intellectual Andre Malraux, to open a new wing of the university. After that, they hope to bomb the Sorbonne in the belief that this will spark a revolution. Insider is against blowing up universities. Partly because he knows such actions more often provoke backlash than revolution. But also because Insider happens to teach at a university and coming out in favour of blowing up universities might lead to an awkward email from one’s department head.

Is Galway’s Extinction Rebellion extinct? Has it fallen victim to Covid-19 or is its silence political due to the Greens going into Government?

Ordinarily, at this time of year, there is a sense of renewal as politicians, with their batteries recharged, return to work and a new Dáil term begins.

These past few weeks have been a surreal experience for the people of this country. At times it almost feels like the stuff of fiction with, at one stage, Taoiseach Leo Varadkaar’s return to medical duties drawing comparisons with President Whitmore in that 1996 blockbuster Independence Day.

As the dust settles on a tumultuous General Election, attention turns to the central question – who governs? If this looked like a conundrum in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, then if anything a solution is even less apparent on this occasion.

Insider has been in constant contact with people from all parties since the election was called in mid-January, and has never seen such uncertainty in the closing days of a campaign, so let’s look at the position of each party and Independents as we approach polling day.

What a time to be alive. The window for action on climate change is rapidly closing; democratic politics are under threat from a resurgent far-right in many of the world's most influential countries; and there are few obvious reasons for hope or optimism.

As the Dáil prepares to head off on its summer recess, with local and European elections behind us and with a general election looming ever nearer, Insider felt it a good time to take stock and consider the state of the various parties.

Europe is likely to be a recurring theme in Irish politics during 2019. The fate of the Brexit process across the Irish Sea has been Issue No 1 for some time, and despite all that happened last week, including the thumping defeat for Theresa May's deal in the Commons, the only certainty is the promise of further drama to follow.