I think it was Aneurin Bevan who, when a UK cabinet Minister, dreamt of purchasing a rail ticket from Waterloo Station to anywhere in the world without the need for a passport. This last week it almost required a passport to get into the Dublin Passport Office such was the queue created by the current strike! No doubt Bevan would have agreed with the monetary nature of the strike despite the fact that the people most hurt by it were the people he wanted to protect.

Fortunately, this week, as our thoughts focus on the cross of Christ and his resurrection, they point the way to heaven. No purchase of a passport is required. The free invitation of Jesus encapsulated in Joseph Hart’s hymn puts it together for us.

Come you needy, come and welcome; God’s free bounty glorify;

True belief and true repentance, every grace that brings you nigh.

Without money, without money come to Jesus Christ and buy.

  ... Read More »

“Where does it say in the Bible that the pubs should be closed on Good Friday” was the question troubling a heckler at an Open Air meeting? The question came around again this week when those who enjoy pub-time after full-time realised that the Magners League rugby match was scheduled to take place on Good Friday in Limerick.

The vintners did their sums and reckoned that the loss to the community would amount to a cool €5,000,000. Presumably they were factoring in a home win over Leinster!

A local priest kicked for touch with the suggestion of a public debate. He claimed to know of a couple of players who said their prayers before matches but it is hard to see how he could arrive at a majority without the accusation of tampering with the results!

An appeal was made to keep sacred the two most important days in the church calendar – Christmas and Good Friday. Regarding the latter he said, “There was something emoti ... Read More »

When “grade inflation” was highlighted in the press this week it was a term new to most of us. It sounded sophisticated. Rather status enhancing. The truth was quite deflating when we learned that exam results in many schools and colleges were being massaged upwards to enhance their reputation. The students who received these higher grades were not going to complain neither were the educational institutes who wanted to look better in the competitive world of academia.

There was, what one columnist termed, an “evaluation deficit”. In other words no one was testing the teachers work. The irresistible temptation to step up the grades because others were doing it produced a similar situation to that of the banks but without the international money market to blow the whistle.

That was until the consumers of the products from our colleges got together, Google, Hewlett Packard and Intel – all high users of our graduates – and spelled it out. Our educational standards ... Read More »

In a country awash with sexual perversions it is almost a relief to read of the serial adultery of Tiger Woods. So skewed has our moral compass gone that the philandering of this superb athlete does not seem so remarkable. What makes his fall from grace intriguing is the fact that he had all his liaisons while he was in the limelight as the world’s top golfer. His wife did not know and the journalists, who make careers out of delving into the secrets of the rich and famous, were taken by surprise.

His ability to control the media was in evidence on Friday when he delivered a prepared confession before a hand-picked audience of friends and sympathisers with only three journalists in attendance. They were there simply to take notes – no questions were permitted. After 45 days of therapy Woods was in control.

Addictions are hard to handle and Woods struggled to rationalise his behaviour. “I convinced myself normal rules did not apply…I thought only about myself…I ... Read More »

At this time of the year we have cows calving in the farmyard so it was with some curiosity that I learned of the Mertz glacier in Antarctica calving earlier this month. Apparently the gesticulation period is not as predictable as cows occurring every 50 or 100 years but when the calf is an iceberg the size of Luxembourg it must make quite a splash!

The birth was assisted by another iceberg called B-9B, itself a mere 60 miles long, bumping into it like a gigantic dodgem car. Scientists reckon the pair may have some effect on global ocean circulation.

As I write news is breaking of a massive earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale.

The epicentre was 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live. President Michele Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe." Buildings collapsed and phone and electricity lines are down, making the extent of the damage difficult to determine. A ... Read More »

We have had a famine of resignations in Ireland but recently this has turned into, what for us, is something of a flood. Some have been voluntary like the two politicians who resigned this week. Others like the handful of Bishops whose resignations were involuntary came reluctantly.

The reasons given by the politicians are somewhat obscure. In their explanations the temptation to wash someone else’s dirty linen in public proved too hard to resist. The Bishop’s suffered from the general blindness of society towards child abuse but since they knew about it they were faced with no alternative but to go.

What exactly was the deciding factor that brought them to their decision may never be revealed. What was the straw that broke the camels back, the bridge too far, the action or word that triggered the letter of resignation? We may never know. What is certain is that none of them ever expected to end up this way.

There are no resignations in the ... Read More »

Gender Matters.                    Word on the Week.                                       6^th February 2010.

We are not told in the Bible why God made Adam and Eve instead of Adam and Steve but it makes sense when a short time later he commands them to "be fruitful and multiply".   We are not told why the one man and one woman in lifelong monogamous relationship was the best arrangement to rear a family but we can see ... Read More »

This film, from the director who gave us “Titanic” is the hottest thing to hit the science fiction world. Aided with 3D glasses audiences can see where the $280 million went in making the film and the Director’s bankers can see the $1 billion it netted in the first 17 days!

It is impossible not to be fascinated and enthralled by this action-filled vision of adventure and battles in an iridescent jungle on an alien planet, where hideous, dragon-like creatures appear to leap off the screen, flora and fauna wave in the air and a heroic avatar does battle with a pterodactyl-like beast before subduing it and soaring off on its back.

This is Pandora, an Earthlike-planet with a lush rainforest environment, trees a thousand feet tall, floating mountains and an abundance of life forms, some beautiful and some terrifying.

Into this new world our hero, Jake, is sent on a spying mission. Here the natives, the tall blue-skinned “Na’vi”, (navy blue perhaps!) have long resisted the miner ... Read More »

There is something satisfactory when, in a National scientific competition for schoolchildren the winner out of the 1,000 plus entries was the designer of a home-made stove. It heightens the satisfaction to learn that he did not make it for the cash prize nor for its marketing potential but to have it taken up by Charities working in developing countries.

Richard O’Shea, an 18 year old sixth year student from Blarney, Co Cork, designed his biomass (wood dung and plant material) fired cooking stove out of tin cans. It can be made with a screwdriver, a small knife and a nail! The stove uses small quantities of fuel and produces little or no smoke.

It is reckoned that over 2 billion people in the world depend on fires for cooking. These use a lot of fuel and produce smoke. The beauty of Richard’s simple design is that it can be made from materials readily available. The life-span of the stove was not examined but, given the ease with which it could be made; replacements could form a su ... Read More »

This New Year’s Eve, at a family gathering, I was asked to quote the words of the above Scottish song. Traditionally it is always sung at the start of a New Year, usually by people gathered in an out of door setting who mangle the words! I, coming from Scotland, was asked to supply the words and only just managed to remember the first verse and chorus!

We did make some attempt at the last verse which involves the crossing over of hands, grasping the hands of your neighbours on either side and shaking them in time with the music.

The handshake, of course, is symbolic of friendship and the whole poem reminisces over the old times when the singers were growing up together.

An interesting change took place in the chorus from when it was first penned in 1788. Then the toast was to “Jo”. The Bard’s waywardness with the ladies caused him to substitute the anonymous “dear” five years later and it is this inclusive version which we now sing!

For auld lang syne, my dear, ... Read More »