Tag: European Union
In Memoriam Christopher Booker
On July 3rd Christopher Booker, the greatest journalist and social critic of the last 50 years, died. His fields of journalistic expertise were ‘global warming’, the EU, public scares, and the UK family courts. His criticism was focused on groupthink...
EU-Mercosur Deal is a Symptom of Neoliberal Exhaustion
The culmination of twenty years of intermittent trade negotiations, the EU-Mercosur trade deal stands to open up fissures in Irish life. Aiming to liberalise trade barriers between the EU and the four membered South American bloc over a ten year...
The Resurrection of Hungary: A Modern Parallel for Ireland
“The new state that we are building is an illiberal state, It does not deny foundational values of liberalism, such as freedom, etc. But it does not make this ideology a central element of state organization, but applies a specific,...
Raging at Bono
I am not a fan of U2. I first encountered the band in 2003 at the opening ceremony for the Special Olympics, at a time I was vaguely aware of a song called Beautiful Day and didn’t even recognise Pride...
Putting the Irexit Conference into Perspective
Back in 2009, Irish voters were going to the polls in the re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Ireland had voted no to this treaty in 2008 but as was the case with the Nice referendum, the authorities of the...
The Neo-European Empire: Why Louis Hoffman’s Analysis of the EU Falls Short
It’s funny how times change. At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe was the hub of a number of different global empires, such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Britain, all of which were vying for the control of the world’s...