Greg Daly

They’re still remarkably funny even now, revisiting them as an adult - and as my (American) wife has noted, they’re exceptionally well observed, in that you can tell they’re written by a teacher who knew the realities of teaching, teachers, and small boys.

Oh, to be in Maynooth this evening…

Oh, to be in Maynooth this evening…

That’s great to know: I’d always thought it looked promising. Thank you.

Is this one good?

De Valera was a smart man. Eisenhower was no fool. Even Chaim Herzog could get it right on occasion. It’s worth paying attention to our forebears. They got plenty wrong, but they were often right where we go wrong.

This “perpetual law” ruled that anyone who killed a child *or witnessed the killing without trying to prevent it* would have to pay large fines and do extensive penance for every child who had been killed. Warfare which killed children was, it seems, recognised as fundamentally immoral. 3/3

Now, I’m not saying this worked, but for all that people talk about just war *theory*, it’s notable that the kings and chief clerics of Ireland - as well as the Gaels and some Picts of what would become Scotland - assembled in Birr to agree that some things were not acceptable in war. /2

Christian attempts to regulate violence have historically tended to be incremental, meeting and societies where they were and pushing them to do better. Strikingly, the first law to attempt this seems to have been the Irish Cáin Adomnáin of 697, protecting women, children, and clergy. /1

February was a big month for reading - I used weekends, evenings, mornings, lunches, and commutes to bizarrely good effect. The Chesterton one, I should say, is a reread, which is often where books really come into their own. It’s his first essay collection and has a couple of his very best essays.

This is where I used to go for Confession when I was with the Dominicans. I liked the church, though it was usually quite empty. Even aside from declining practice, inner-city churches in Cork and Dublin have really suffered through demographic change in the “real capital” and the actual capital.

I wish these clowns would reject that specifically twentieth-century achievement called “the internet”, log off, and go and do the following productive things: pray, help poor and other vulnerable people, read books, think, work, learn other languages, and chat with other people who do such things.

Gosh. Congratulations!

Aristotle, Politics ‘... and further, it is part (of the nature of tyranny) to strive to see to it that nothing is kept hidden of that which any subject says or does, but that everywhere he will be spied upon ... Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars.” Third leaflet, White Rose

The bishops are in no sense saying that only birthright citizenship is moral, or that other routes to citizenship are immoral, merely that it is fine, utterly in line with Church teaching, and that depriving innocent people of their citizenship is wicked and destructive. 4/4

Crucially, they’re not saying that only birthright citizenship is consistent with Church teaching, merely that it is. And the second thing is that removal of people’s citizen status would be detrimental to the vindication of their human dignity and contrary to Church teaching. /3

In a nutshell, the bishops are saying two things here from the point of view of Church teaching. The first is that birthright citizenship is a good thing, consistent with Church teaching in a range of ways that enable the vindication of human dignity. /2

Unsurprisingly, among those attacking this are people claiming the bishops are misrepresenting Church teaching by claiming birthright citizenship is mandatory, when it’s the attackers who are misrepresenting the bishops: this amicus doesn’t say that, but says something quite different. /1

We are.

It absolutely was there; I took these screenshots last week.

I’m not sure we’ve argued that that successfully. I still come across people with clueless attitudes to depression. I mean, they’re pig-headed clowns, but still…

That seems the healthiest policy.

Wise. Though I still occasionally think that was a worthwhile facet of their equation.

Getting ahead of the quip there, good call.

I occasionally think we should revive the venerable Athenian democratic tradition of ostracism.

Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. A blue sky day. In the foreground a blue rowing boat, paint peeling, sits on a mound of lime grass. A few metres behind, running horizontally across the painting, is a stream, or narrow inlet, half full of orange seaweed with dark rocks protruding. Along its far side is a line of rocks, black and brown where they meet the seaweed and pale grey on top. Above the bank is a large area of gorse, a dense dark green bush with small yellow blossoms. The gorse reaches over half way across from the left edge. Back a few more metres in the centre of the painting is a small outbuilding in a warm grey with a blue corrugated roof and two very small dark windows. Rocky hills stretch behind it with a house behind a small orange hill on the left, and back some distance behind dry-stone walls and ruins is a larger house further back on the right also nestled behind a mound. Both houses have dark trees immediately behind them. Larger rocky brown and green hills are behind them, and behind again is the bottom of a large mountain of sage green which slopes down from the top left corner then flattens out as it goes behind the far house on the right. At the back across the painting is a line of pale blue rocky mountains with jagged peaks. Signed bottom left in red, Liam Daly

Time for a west of Ireland #painting. "Connemara Boat" was painted a couple of years back. It came out of a day I'd been cycling around north Connemara thinking how ridiculous everything was, having been arranged for me to paint by whatever forces it is that arranges such things. #art #SpeirGhorm

It’s almost as though the introduction of preferential voting, as proposed in the 2011, AV referendum, would have made more votes matter, and made votes matter more.

Not a bad way to spend my lunch break - collecting mended shoes and then diving back into this combo before returning to my desk. It’s my sixteenth book this year, which is a good sign, I think. I’m managing to annotate most of them too! (I’ve no idea how much tea I’ve had.)

So, I did a little trawl. I think the bit he’s responding to - and, frankly, taking out of context - starts about 41 minutes into this TU Berlin event with Bundestag member Isabel Cademartori on how people in Munich responded to her call for more wealth distribution: m.youtube.com/watch?v=L5V-...

My favourite thing about this article - www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dubl... - is how everybody interviewed is a woman identified as being in their 40s. Presumably the journalist met a group of ladies coming from brunch and asked their ages. “40s,” they laughed. They’re in their 50s.