Soapbox – The Archives

  • Racism survives the downfall of misogyny

    Somaya Mahmoud – 29-05-2018   So, in the aftermath of what has been one of the largest and most controversial referendums in Irish history, I was hopeful and perhaps naïve in expecting that the prolife people who have confronted me time and time again regarding my heritage, and the subsequent racial slurs which were associated…

  • GE16 – The bigger picture.

    The votes are counted, the seats are filled. We still don’t have a government of course, thanks to the ongoing punch and judy show of coalition negotiations. Some immutable facts remain however, amidst the legislative hubbub:   Fine Gael are still the biggest party in Ireland, with 50 seats. Fianna Fail are the second biggest,…

  • Interview with Shane Daly

      With the Andy Lee world title defence on the horizon, but not bloody close enough. David O’Connor caught up with Shane Daly, (seen on the left of the photo) head trainer at St Saviour’s boxing club to pick his brain about all things boxing.   Right, let’s break you into it nice and gently,…

  • Well, it’s nonsense isn’t it?

    I suppose it was a slight folly becoming a sports contributor on a new website at the beginning of the summertime. The soap opera that is top flight European football and the bruising beauty of European rugby are in hiatus. I am not in the humour to discuss GAA as Limerick’s summer is over at…

  • Review: Jurassic World (2015)

    When I first heard there was a new Jurassic Park movie in the works I was immediately excited. That excitement was quickly replaced with worry. Would Jurassic World (directed by Colin Trevorrow, executive produced by Steven Spielberg) be any good, or would it ruin an era- (and childhood) defining classic? Don’t worry, they got it right.…

  • Further Down the Rabbit Hole

    So I was wrong, Sepp has fallen and I suppose it makes sense that it would take a law enforcement agency, from a country that doesn’t like football all that much to bring down the governing body of the sport. This outsourcing is a theme that we should look into when the rebuilding or replacing of…

  • Populist politics – An age old legacy

    An article by Cliff Taylor in the The Irish times advocating a neutral budget for 2015 has caused … well, absolutely no reaction whatsoever, partly because he wrote the same article this time last year. It does however raise a few interesting points that bear consideration. He argued for what would be a classic case…

  • Review : Spy (2015)

    Spy stars Melissa McCarthy as Susan Cooper, CIA analyst-turned-agent, thrown into the field to do a job nobody else can. Shenanigans ensue. When director Paul Feig’s last film, The Heat came out, everyone raved about how funny it was, how great it was to see a female driven comedy that was genuinely funny, and how good…

  • The Pen and The Sword

    I love and loathe the law in equal respect and often for the same reasons. More often than not, the judicial system is quite clear on the confines in which we as a society must act. Sometimes, and this is where the love/loathe relationship really comes into play, the law is a complicated mistress, where…

  • The Only Loser is Democracy

    It must be great to own the news. Not necessarily be the news, but own it. Own the channels of distribution that give the public their knowledge, and in doing so, be the de facto gate-keeper that decides what knowledge becomes public in the first place. Now, presumably you must have some serious amount of money and power to…