The ups and downs on a winter’s day commute

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Commuting is an art form, it’s special. We might read about commuting but you have to be in the middle of it to get a handle on what it’s like. It’s a great place for people-watching.

Watching people jump off buses and making a beeline for trams when it is still dark in the morning is a sobering experience. Crowded trains, buses and trams, and complete silence, most people either staring into their phones or working them hard with their fingers. 

Young people use two fingers to work their phones whereas the older folk use one and are far more clumsy at it. These days has anyone anywhere spotted a passenger reading a newspaper on bus, train or tram? They have to be an endangered species.

It’s not permissible to take a bicycle on tram or bus; one can take a bicycle on trains at designated times if there be space available. But it’s permissible to take a fold-up bicycle on bus, train and tram at all times. 

I boarded a Luas in Broombridge with my fold-up; I partially folded and secured it to a bar on the tram. It took up less space than had it been completely folded. 

En route a tall sophisticated-looking man and another man, less sophisticated- looking boarded the tram. They were strangers to each other but agreed the bicycle should not be on the tram. I owned up, said it was my bicycle and explained fold-ups were allowed. The sophisticated man, with a small black book in one hand and a phone in the other launched into a major attack, accusing me of being selfish with no regard for other passengers. 

He kept going, telling me he lived 20 years abroad. It was that that made me react; with a smile and in a loud voice I told everyone within hearing distance that this gentleman had lived 20 years abroad, how sophisticated he must be and how lucky we were to have him on our tram. 

He was not pleased, which led him to use a vulgar expletive. I jumped at the opportunity and explained to him that his sophistication was skin deep. He exited at the next stop. Was I glad to see the back of him. My, was he pompous and so full of himself.

But so far it’s only been a once-off incident. The commuting public seem a grand lot, getting on with their business, going to work, earning a few bob, coming home, doing the things that people and families do. And then back to work the next day.

We are made up of all shapes, sizes, ages, nationalities, beliefs; in many ways it’s a ginormous hodgepodge of human beings. But isn’t that what society is all about. How at all is it held together? I’m scared that we are living in times when that hodgepodge could be so easily manipulated and controlled by dictatorial forces or mega companies that have far too much power. 

It’s great to be a member of the commuting public, indeed part of the hodgepodge that we call democracy.

And guess what, Sunday is the shortest day of the year. After that it’s upwards and onwards. Great news.

Politicians should at least try to be consistent

Spotted on a laneway off

Fitzwilliam Square. Has anyone called for the name of the laneway to be changed?

What about Grafton Street, Westmoreland Street, D’Olier Street, Henry Street, Gardiner Street, et al.

Why change the name of Herzog Park? Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty TD said it was the will of the people that the park’s name should be changed. Who in the area was asked, does Mr Doherty know? Doubtful

The unspeakable horrors taking place in the world

The horror of our world.

In Sydney people of the Jewish faith are murdered.

On this date, December 15, 1941 Germans murdered over 15,000 people of the Jewish faith a Drobytsky Yar, a place made infamous by the savagery of the Germans. The place lies south east of Kharkiv.

Today in Berlin Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues his talks with the US team and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in an attempt to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, the war Mr Trump said he would end in a day.

Talking about the massacre in Sydney a resident of Brisbane commented that it makes little sense calling the perpetrators ‘terrorists’; it gives them a status, a weird type of pseudo importance. Just as with the Germans in Drobytsky Yar; by calling them troops we give them a pseudo importance.

The Middle East, Africa, South America.

Is there anyone about who can help stop the world heading for disaster? The pope?

Pope Leo calls for amnesty for prisoners

 From Crux

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/12/pope-leo-calls-on-governments-to-grant-pardons-for-prisoners-during-jubilee-year/

Bet Fr Byrne and Tiernan would have much in common

Tommy Tiernan was guest on

Tommy Tiernan

RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor show yesterday and as always he made for easy listening. He said some very funny things, including what he does at midnight on Christmas Eve.

He came out with a gem; he said that as a ‘young fella’ he told his father in no uncertain terms that he no longer needed him. Years later the two were having a pint in a pub and he reminded his father what he had said as a teenager. His father replied that it was the best thing he had ever heard.

The new series of the show begins in January on RTÉ 1.

When Fr Damian Byrne was Master of the Dominican Order on one occasion he told a group of fellow Dominicans that the time comes when a good teacher is no longer needed.  He went on to say that too applies to good missioners, when their work is done is time to let go. Wise words.

Bet Damian and Tommy would have much in common.

The seldom-seen Dee Forbes continues to influence RTÉ

Below is Justine McCarthy’s opinion piece in The Irish Times yesterday. She’s somewhat tough on Dee Forbes but it makes great sense. Surely managers have to be held to account for their stewardship, especially in the public sector.

If Ms Forbes is unable to attend or give account for herself why not have someone represent her at hearings.

RTÉ’s corridors were throbbing with joy last Friday afternoon. Children skipped and squealed with excitement in the countdown to curtain-up for the Toy Show. Workers in the television building watched on and wondered if they were witnessing the final act.

Plans to outsource the Late Late Show are in train. The move could be a fait accompli by Christmas next year. Fair City is for dispatch to the private commercial sector too, along with Lotto draws and religious services.

The TV documentary unit behind exposés such as Leathered: Violence in Irish Schools and Trackers: The People v The Banks is being shut down. Claire Byrne, one of the country’s best current affairs broadcasters, has decamped to Newstalk where, unlike at RTÉ, presenters’ pay is not capped.

Up to 400 other employees are being urged to go with voluntary redundancy packages. Among them are make-up artists, wardrobe-keepers, sound engineers, riggers and technicians who have kept the studio lights on during the bleakest times. Tumbleweed on a John Wayne scale is coming for Montrose.

The Oireachtas media committee’s meeting with RTÉ on Wednesday was more Shakespeare than cowboys-and-injuns. Dee Forbes was not on the list to appear.

Like Banquo’s ghost, RTÉ’s director general and board member quit after news of undisclosed payments to Ryan Tubridy detonated a scandal involving barter accounts, false figures and fancy flip-flops. She has hardly been seen in public in the 2½ years since then but her legacy continues to influence Montrose and its television schedule, which is littered with programme repeats. The State’s purse is €725 million the poorer from the broadcaster’s annualised bailout by the Government.

While RTÉ workers and viewers are forced to pay the price for poor administration, Forbes has eluded accountability. By resigning – albeit reluctantly – following the revelation of Tubridy’s €120,000 “consultancy” fees, she was automatically exempted from the Broadcasting Act’s requirement that the DG must answer to the Oireachtas committee. Since then, she has consistently refused the committee’s invitations to appear before it, citing medical grounds.

Exit package

When asked to appear remotely or to submit a written statement her lawyers replied that she was unfit to do either. Eight independent reports have examined RTÉ’s finances, governance and culture. It is unknown how many – if any – she co-operated with because most are anonymised, although McCann Fitzgerald’s report on voluntary exit schemes does note that Forbes was unavailable for interview “for medical reasons”.While we can only accept that she is afflicted by a medical condition, the public are still being denied access to information that the person who ran the place has about the crisis that befell it on her watch.

“We believe there should be accountability, and to a certain extent there has been, for the events covered in our review,” states the examination team chaired by Niamh Brennan. However, it adds, “several RTÉ executives” did not attend the nine Oireachtas committee hearings that had been conducted by the time the report was written “and therefore could not be held to account”.

Forbes was the first external DG appointee in half a century when she left Discovery Networks to take up the job in 2016. Perhaps her government taskmasters hoped an outsider would be more ruthless in implementing cost-cutting measures in an admittedly bloated organisation. Instead, some parts of it got even cushier. Money poured like molten gold into the production of Toy Show: The Musical at the Convention Centre in Dublin. The extravaganza bombed, culminating in losses of €2.2 million. Forbes has never explained why the doomed show was not brought to the RTÉ board for final approval.

The Brennan Report states there are “several examples of the former director general not providing RTÉ’s board and others with information”. Another glaring omission was the €450,000 exit package for chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe in 2020. A report by McCann Fitzgerald states that Moya Doherty, the then-chair, was not informed in advance of O’Keeffe’s departure despite it having been agreed three years earlier and, reportedly, with Forbes’s imprimatur.

Section three of the Broadcasting Act requires the DG to prepare the organisation’s annual accounts. One of three reports on RTÉ by Mazars said expenditure through barter media agencies went unreported in financial statements until 2019 and that credit balances with such agencies were not recorded on the balance sheet until 2022.

Even if she bears no legal obligation to explain these decisions, Forbes has an ethical obligation to RTÉ’S workforce and its audience to fill in the gaps in public knowledge. Why, for instance, did the organisation not have a chief compliance officer from 2018 until this year?

Poisoned chalice

The answers to these questions matter. They matter to workers loyal to RTÉ who fear it is being stripped of essential assets. They matter to RTÉ viewers who should not be subjected to the same episodes of Cheap Irish Homes, Scannal and Room to Improve on a loop. They matter to democracy, when the absence of a dedicated security correspondent arguably undermines RTÉ’s public service while hostile drones and ships are skulking in Irish territory. And they matter to Kevin Bakhurst, Forbes’s successor handed the poisoned chalice of cutbacks, who must while away more time in front of the Oireachtas committee than in front of the telly.

He did a good PR job at Wednesday’s committee hearing when, like a Wise Man at Christmas, he brought great tidings that the broadcaster has emerged from financial deficit. But at what cost? RTÉ is an important crucible of information, culture and heritage. Its welcome decision to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s involvement is testament to its seminal role in Irish life.

RTÉ has not been helped by incomplete information in the process of addressing its travails. For an organisation duty-bound to reveal national truths, this deficit is as significant as any monetary one.

Luas must give real answers for close down debacle

No Luas on the Green Line until 6pm yesterday, and then a half-hearted service. 

Luas is operated by Transdev, a large international public company. Like all companies its primary purpose is to make money for its shareholders.

What was the fault that kept the Green Line off the tracks for close to two days? Is there enough staff employed to ensure maintenance is given top priority? Obviously if equipment is properly and thoroughly maintained a fault like this is most unlikely to happen.

The story the company released to the media was meaningless and that the media printed it as per Luas HR has to make one critical of media outlets. 

Why did Transport Infrastructure Ireland allow this to happen? How is TII monitoring Luas? Will Luas be fined for this debacle? Will the bosses in Luas and TII be held accountable? Highly unlikely.

Why not hand the operation of Luas over to Irish Rail?

Where do the profits of Luas go?

Shame on Luas management and PR people

Because of Storm Bram on

Not a word from Luas

Tuesday and part of Wednesday there was a limited disruption to transport around the country.

Yesterday the  Luas Green Line was out of commission for a number of hours, the Red Line for a shorter period.

These things happen and nature most times has its way. But yesterday’s behaviour of Luas management is not acceptable.

Rail passengers, who were interchanging with the Luas, were given no prior information.

Why did Luas not link in with Irish Rail to inform passengers who were linking in with the Luas that the Green Line was not working.

One example: passengers travelling on the Sligo/Longford/Maynooth line, who disembarked at Broombridge to travel with the Luas, were left stranded at Broombridge. 

Had it been announced on Dublin bound trains passengers could have stayed on their train and then disembarked at Drumcondra, Connolly or Docklands.

A perfect example of shoddy and poor management at Luas. 

Where were the PR people yesterday? 

That’s no way to run a public transport company.

An ideal fascinating read for a Christmas stocking filler

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

CEO of bookshop chain Waterstones, James Daunt, was on radio last week talking about the influence of Artificial Intelligence in the book trade. He said that if they were to sell AI books in their shops it would have to be expressly mentioned on the book.

 

Listening to James Daunt I was reminded of a book I’ve just read and how I came to buy it.

I was waiting for a bus on Dublin’s Camden Street, which is outside a treasure trove second-hand bookshop. A book caught my eye titled ‘Marzahn, Mon Amour’. I quickly had a glance, bought the book and ran. If ever there had been a random book buy this was it. 

Some years ago I went with a family on holidays to Berlin; we stayed in an Airbnb in Marzahn, which is an eastern suburb of Berlin.You might rightly say what a weird reason to buy a book. Guess what? It turned out a gem.

The author Katja Oskamp is in her late 40s, considers herself a failed writer, decides to change trades and becomes a chiropodist.

It’s a collection of interactions she has over a number of years with clients. She tells some extremely funny stories, sad ones too.

Marzahn was in the former East Germany. What struck me reading the book was their life stories differ little from those of us who live in the West; people’s feet come in all shapes and sizes East or West.

Oskamp has a great ability of building a lovely rapport with her clients.

It’s mainly elderly women who visit her but there is the occasional man and also two young girls have been sent by their mothers, worried that their children’s feet are not perfectly correct down to the smallest detail.

Eberhard Pietsch was born in 1941, a retired maths and history teacher, married with one daughter. He joined the Community Party and rose through the ranks. He was proud of his sexual conquests and suggested Katja would add to his number. She politely refused. And goes on to tell the reader: ‘I get the better of his woody toenails, which are never easy to trim.

There’s the lovely old Gerlinde Bonkat, who experienced much suffering in her life but managed it well. Katja Oskampf was greatly impressed with her: ‘She has seized the opportunity to make up for her difficult start in life, defending her independence to this day.’

The author tells us in her years in the job she took care of 3,800 feet, in other words 19,000 toes.

What must doctors, dentists, chiropodists, all those who attend to people, hear and see every day?

No doubt AI could write this but what about Katja Oskamp’s lived experience?

If only we all looked around and paid more attention to the other we’d be surprised what could land on our ears and eyes.

Catching those moments surely adds to the quality and reality of our lives.

Katja listens carefully to her clients, takes them seriously and they know that.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier says of the book: 'Katja Oskamp knows how to capture the essence of people beautifully. They really come to life in her portraits. A powerful book’.

It would make an excellent Christmas stocking filler.

It’s the capitalists who are taking Christ out of Christmas

Joe Humphreys in The Irish Times yesterday. Interesitng, worrying too.

I’m here to report a case of mad “Xmas” disease. Elon Musk’s social media platform X, best known these days for promoting Russian disinformation and crypto scams, has been channelling rage in recent weeks about the “wokerati” who are apparently out to ban Christmas.

These include those Satan-worshippers in Dublin City Council who have been hosting a Winter Lights festival each December since 2018 – it includes a ticketed event at Merrion Square.

Among those triggered by the announcement of this year’s Winter Lights was Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who complained that it should be called Christmas lights. He suggests a “strain of aggressive secularism in Ireland that seeks to remove elements of faith and culture from the public square” is at play. (This is just weeks after President Catherine Connolly had to take a religious oath “in the presence of Almighty God” when being sworn into office.)

News stories claiming Christmas is being displaced by Yuletide, Winterval and Xmas are hardy annuals for the likes of The Daily Telegraph, but they have been given a new impetus on Musk’s X.

Several of the comments on X go much further than Tóibín and include claims that the State is erasing Christ from Christmas to placate Muslims.

Many more repeat the familiar theory that “they” are out to make ordinary, decent Irish folk strangers in their own country. Much of that commentary knits seamlessly into anti-immigration rhetoric that is amplified by Musk’s algorithm.

The fact that the naming decision was made seven years ago, but is only controversial now, says something about the political times we are in.

‘Overton Window’

Amid a blitz of posts condemning Europe over its perceived leniency on immigration, Musk recently declared in characteristically gnomic fashion: “The Overton Window opens wider each day.” The notion of the Overton window refers to the range of subjects or arguments that are acceptable to the public at any given time. In theory, the wider the window, the more that is open to debate.

In practice, widening the Overton window means creating an environment where a United States president can call Somali people “garbage” and a woman reporter “piggy” without fear of censure. It means Maga bros praising Hitler and calling rape “epic” can be written off as laddish banter. Telling “edgy, offensive jokes” is “what kids do”, said US vice-president JD Vance when downplaying the controversy over the Young Republicans’ leaked chats last October.

Widening the Overton window has also meant redefining the meaning of Christianity. Vance argues Jesus would back America First on the grounds that you should love those geographically closer to you first – a position Pope Leo XIVhas publicly contradicted.

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel – who has bankrolled Vance’s political career and cofounded Palantir, the data surveillance system used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport illegal migrants – is another self-proclaimed Christian eager to reimagine Jesus’s teachings.

Recently, Thiel took to the lecture circuit, delivering a series of talks about “the Antichrist” to audiences in San Francisco. He argues that humanity is in danger of being duped into trading liberty for a false security – suggesting agents of the left are leading us to hell with their nanny state calls for financial regulation and their stark warnings about environmental destruction.

Thiel credits John Henry Newman – founder of the Catholic University of Ireland, later University College Dublin – as the inspiration for the lecture series. There is a superficial parallel. The 19th century theologian delivered a series of sermons arguing that “apostasy” – or rejection of religious belief – was paving the way for the Antichrist.

Thiel sees enemies elsewhere, fearing a hellish fusion between a “woke American pope” in Leo and a “woke American president”. As for the Antichrist? He believes it’s Greta Thunberg. Or at least, the Swedish climate activist is “an Antichrist”, he says. “I don’t want to flatter her too much.”

Asked for a view of Thiel’s lectures, Dan Deasy, director of the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions, says “whether or not Thiel is sincere” in his proclaimed faith “it has become clear that Catholicism offers an appealing mythos to some people immersed in a certain kind of hyperbolic, good-versus-evil, meme-driven internet culture.

“For instance, I don’t believe Thiel literally thinks Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist. But the hyperbolic claim that she is – that familiar blend of performative sincerity and knowing absurdity – clearly serves a particular kind of techno-infused, end-times, good-versus-evil politics that benefits people like Thiel.”

In truth, the campaign by tech billionaires to widen the Overton window is not about free speech. It’s about flooding the public sphere with enough weird opinion and tribal hate bait so that citizens can’t focus on the issues that really matter: rising inequality, the weakening of democratic institutions, existential threats from technology and, yes, climate change.

For Christians, be they devout or “cultural”, there is a more immediate calculation. Anyone concerned about Jesus being disrespected this winter should not look to Dublin City Council. Look instead to billionaire preachers like Thiel. Because the wokerati isn’t taking Christ out of Christmas, capitalism is. Bad enough that Jesus’s birthday is an occasion for gross consumerism and monumental environmental waste, Christianity itself is becoming – in the hands of a wealthy priesthood – an ideology of cruelty and exploitation.

Has the world lost the hope the EU flag symbolises?

On this day, December 8, 1955

the flag of Europe was adopted by the Council of Europe.

Was there any significance that December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception? What’s the symbolism of the 12 stars?

Below is an interesting link to an article in yesterday’s Guardian. Fine if it were true. But it’s important to remember Russia’s history. When last was Russia defeated by an outside power?

It would break the hearts of the European leaders of the 1950s and 1960s to know what is unfolding in Europe today and Europe’s relationship with the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/07/putin-accept-trump-deal-russia-economy-ukraine-war?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Launch of book in honour of Leonard E Boyle OP

Benjamin Earl OP (Dominican Province of England and Procurator General of the Order), Paul Lawlor OP (prior of San Clemente), Vivian Boland OP (member of the San Clemente community, co-editor of the volume of essays), John Harris OP (provincial of the Dominican Province of Ireland), HE Frances Collins, Paul Murray OP (member of the San Clemente community), Luigina Orlandi (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, co-editor of the volume of essays), Bruno Kelleher OP and Benedict McGlinchey OP (members of the San Clemente community), Don Mauro Mantovani SDB (Prefect of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

On Thursday, December 4 the Irish Embassy to the Holy See hosted the launch of a book, Un Innovatore nella Tradizione (An Innovator in Tradition) published to honour a distinguished Irish Dominican scholar, Leonard Boyle, who died in 1999. 

A day conference on his life and work had been held on November 13, 2023 at two venues in Rome, the priory of San Clemente to which Boyle was assigned and the Vatican Library of which he was the prefect, or head, for thirteen years.

He was born in Donegal in 1923 but also had strong family connections with Tralee. He was one of the first Irish Dominicans to study at Oxford, just after World War II, where he excelled in the study of history, in particular of palaeography. 

He spent the main part of his teaching career in Toronto introducing students to that subject. It may seem like a dry, unpromising, field to till but he did it in a way which he termed ‘integral palaeography’. 

This meant receiving ancient texts not just as old writing to be deciphered but as communications from real people to be received as one would receive the people themselves, to be carefully understood and interpreted in the broadest possible social, cultural and intellectual contexts.

The conference in 2023 brought together fellow Dominicans, colleagues from Toronto and Rome, former students, and members of his family. 

The Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Frances Collins, also attended the conference. She was very taken by the personality and achievements of Leonard Boyle, saying that if the papers were published the embassy would be happy to host a launch of the book. This is what happened on Thursday. 

It was launched with contributions from the ambassador herself, from the present prefect of the library Don Mauro Mantovani, from Luigina Orlandi one of the co-editors of the book, and from Viliam Doci OP, president of the Dominican Historical Institute.

The book is available through the Vatican Library website and is in four parts, dealing with the man himself, his work at San Clemente, his work as teacher and scholar, and his years at the Vatican Library. A report on the launch of the book can be found on the Instagram account of the Irish Embassy to the Holy See.