Blog

The decline of the Post Office in Ireland continues with the planned closure of 169 of them. This week’s announcement brought a flurry of letters to the correspondence columns of the national press the vast majority of them sent, no doubt, by email! It is not possible to be on any street in central Dublin […]

This week, in conversation, one of us remarked that the Christian year actually begins now. Our new year should not commence on 1st January but 1st September! All the church activities that took a break during the summer resume. The Christian community arouses from its slumber and what better time to remind ourselves of the […]

What kind of a man can command an anticipated audience of 500,000 in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon? What gems of wisdom can he produce in order to garner the grain, remove the dross, comfort the broken and shore up the edifice of an ailing church? With expectations running […]

The somewhat detached response of the Vatican to the hole that the church finds itself in Pennsylvania shows that the adage to stop digging is being ignored. Perhaps they are leaving it to the Pope to sort out when he comes to Ireland to the World Meeting of Families next week. This week the Pennsylvania […]

In one of these simple quiz questions the Question Master asked the competitors to work out what the initials RDS stood for and to phone in the answer to him. He had, of course, been talking about the famous Horse Show which takes place in the Royal Dublin Society’s property in Dublin, annually, on this […]

The recent announcement of the resignation of the American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals (the first Cardinal to do so since 1927) following allegations of sexual abuse has highlighted the all-embracing nature of the problem. Co-incidentally RTE broadcast the 2015 film “Spotlight”. This was largely based on the investigative work of the […]

After an extended period of no rain we went to bed last night to the sound of water filling the near empty rain barrel. We have come through an official drought (no rain for 40 days) which was declared by the Meteorological Office some time ago. The hosepipe ban and a real endeavour to conserve […]

We have heard a lot about Artificial Intelligence this week as practical uses of appear on the market. The popular idea that a robot will do the housework etc. however, may be some way off! It is interesting how these robots have been personalised by their designer giving them names. We are invited to learn […]

The heat-wave is official – more than 5 days with temperatures over 25 degrees. Indeed, the mercury soared into the 30ies with 32 degrees being recorded in a few places. And it’s to continue, perhaps dropping a little, for the foreseeable future. The emerald isle has become the baked brown island! The grass, normally so […]