The scandal surrounding Cambridge University professor Jason Arday, the plagiarism (now beyond doubt), a fake CV and a Walter Mitty like complex about his achievements has provided ample ammunition to Britain’s Right, and further afield. It should also have provided a good opportunity for the Left to raise issues around race, class, education and the rancid self-serving set up that is academia. Unfortunately, the only ones that seem to be trying to make any headway on the issues are the Right.
Arday was the poster boy for Cambridge’s diversity credentials. He ticked all the boxes and probably added a few more of his own for good measure. We now know that very little of what he claimed about his life, his CV and non-academic activities is true. He does have a PhD which was awarded by John Moore’s University in Liverpool. But it has now been marred by the fact that it contains what have been described as significant examples of plagiarism. It is unlikely that he was non-verbal till age 11 and learned to read and write at the age of 18, given that he had sat GCSE’s before that age. Someone who knew him has claimed on Tik Tok that he wasn’t non-verbal.[1] The details are important, but more important is the reaction from various quarters. The Right are obviously having a field day, with most of the right-wing press giving over extensive coverage to the issue and surprisingly sticking to the facts on many occasions. Having smelt blood they see no need for fake news.
Ostensibly, the issue is about an academic who faked it till he made it, but in reality it has gone beyond that and become a discussion on DEI initiatives, university admissions and race. Though it should be said there are no DEI initiatives like those that exist in the US, though some on the right speak as if there were. He obviously did not deserve to get as far as he did and this is now being used to say no BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) students as they are termed deserved to get as far as they did and that Arday is the tip of the iceberg.
Arday was the poster boy for Cambridge’s diversity credentials. He ticked all the boxes and probably added a few more of his own for good measure. We now know that very little of what he claimed about his life, his CV and non-academic activities is true. He does have a PhD which was awarded by John Moore’s University in Liverpool. But it has now been marred by the fact that it contains what have been described as significant examples of plagiarism. It is unlikely that he was non-verbal till age 11 and learned to read and write at the age of 18, given that he had sat GCSE’s before that age. Someone who knew him has claimed on Tik Tok that he wasn’t non-verbal.[1] The details are important, but more important is the reaction from various quarters. The Right are obviously having a field day, with most of the right-wing press giving over extensive coverage to the issue and surprisingly sticking to the facts on many occasions. Having smelt blood they see no need for fake news.
Ostensibly, the issue is about an academic who faked it till he made it, but in reality it has gone beyond that and become a discussion on DEI initiatives, university admissions and race. Though it should be said there are no DEI initiatives like those that exist in the US, though some on the right speak as if there were. He obviously did not deserve to get as far as he did and this is now being used to say no BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) students as they are termed deserved to get as far as they did and that Arday is the tip of the iceberg.
His fakery was uncovered by an aggrieved racist who prefers the term “race realist” i.e. someone talking about race but with a tangential relationship to reality. Nathan Cofnas was a researcher at Cambridge, dismissed from the university for stating that in a real meritocracy blacks would disappear from most fields except sports and entertainment. This should be an easy debate to win, but the Left messed it up a long time ago and has been found wanting. They have bought into liberal identity politics and wokeism to such a degree that most of them frequently have great difficulty in distinguishing their own politics from those of Biden, Clinton, Obama and even Keir Starmer on a whole host of identity issues, including race and the odd war here and there.
They couldn’t even bring themselves to say that “this guy is a charlatan but….” Instead they have come out defending him on all levels, even excusing his fake CV and the plagiarism. The SWP stated that we are expected to embellish our CVs and that:
They couldn’t even bring themselves to say that “this guy is a charlatan but….” Instead they have come out defending him on all levels, even excusing his fake CV and the plagiarism. The SWP stated that we are expected to embellish our CVs and that:
Here Arday’s failing was not that he lied, but that he didn’t lie convincingly enough.
Universities as institutions choose to cover up any hint of scandal, rather than live up to standards they claim as sacrosanct.
That is part of a wider pattern generated by the collapse of state funding and the intense competition between institutions for students and investment.[2]
Nor quite. He did lie convincingly enough to get the professorship and was lauded by all and at the time of writing Simon and Schuster, one of the top publishing houses in the world, is due to publish his fantasy tale as an autobiography in the coming weeks. It took a racist degenerate to expose the lie.
And funding issues are an issue in education but not in this case. In 2018, Cambridge and Oxford had assets of £21 billion. In 2026 it was revealed that Cambridge had a £4 billion investment fund which is partly invested in the arms industry, though the university/company has refused to elaborate on exactly how much is invested in it.[3] A token black professor is virtue signalling when murdering millions of black and brown people around the world is apparently ok. Promote a black person from London, but murder some from Sierra Leone. Cambridge sits atop a pile of rotting corpses, not only historically but currently.
There is another path to be taken on this issue. One is to accept his charlatanry as they come in all shapes and sizes, fight against racist notions that BAME don’t deserve or are not capable of being at university and also challenging the notions of identity politics, DEI and replace it with class. The black Marxist US academic Adolph Reed has been to fore on this, placing class centre stage even with black and brown people. Before looking at what he says about race and class it is worth looking at the racial and class make up of Cambridge, which might surprise some. BAME make up around 16.2% of the English and Welsh population with the largest group being Asians, followed by blacks at 4%.[4] Cambridge university admits a great percentage of BAME to its programmes even when we exclude international students from the statistics. According to its Equality and Diversity Information Report 2022-2023:
When it comes to all staff, the percentage of BAME is closer to their actual percentage of the population and stands at 16%. In relation to just academic staff 13.4% are BAME, though blacks are extremely underrepresented at only 0.6% as compared to Asians at 8.1%, 3.4% mixed and 1.3% as other.[7] There is no breakdown on students within the BAME cohort, though I am going to take a guess and say blacks are underrepresented. It is part of the problem and is itself racist that all minorities are just lumped together as some great homogenous mass when there are clear differences in the experiences and lives within each community.
Though some 13% of the staff chose not to disclose their ethnicity, Cambridge’s diversity report is remarkably detailed. They can tell you how many whites, blacks, Asians, women, disabled and unsurprisingly trans-genders study or are employed by the university and can even break it down to some nationalities, Irish, Pakistani, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian, African, Caribbean etc. What it cannot tell you is how many working-class people study or work there. It cannot tell you how many BAME from working-class backgrounds study or work there either. Class does not figure. On the one hand, they don’t care about white working-class and on the other in their condescension they don’t recognise that there is any such thing as BAME working class. Being working-class is something you shall not speak of. It is like a disease. The Irish comedian Justine Megan wrote in a recent article that when she went to Ireland’s equivalent of Cambridge, Trinity College, she was asked what school she had gone to in order to socially pigeon hole her and she quipped that she was “diagnosed as working-class”.[8] Many of us have had that experience where they realise you are working class, one of their hoi polloi as they would put it and you realise their reaction would be milder if you told them you had Ebola.
We should be clear Oxford and Cambridge and other universities of their like (the Russell Group) and their feeder schools of Eton, Harrow etc. are not meritocracies, they are about class and money. Boris Johnson, Cameron, Blair etc are all about money, nothing else. Even Trump went to an Ivy League university and if you think that was about anything other than money, you have been asleep for some time. This is not about meritocracy as it has never existed in academia and most academics are opposed to changing that. Academia has always been about money and the Zeitgeist. A period in the 1960s and 1970s when working-class people went to university and came to the fore was just a hiatus, that no longer exists. The number of working-class academics is on the decline and has been for quite some time.
Adolph Reed has argued for the centrality of class. It is not surprising that the SWP and other cowards shy away from dealing with the difficult issues. Even someone of the stature of Adolph Reed has been cancelled because of his views on race and class. If a black Marxist academic can’t freely opine on the issue, who can? Those with nothing left to lose perhaps, and given the class nature of the SWP and most “Left” groups in Britain they have a lot to lose until they go back to mammy and daddy for their handout. In 2020, the Democratic Socialists of America, that vague liberal wishy washy group that so many on the Left invest time in, cancelled him over his views on race. He an academic, a product of the racist South where he was an organiser was cancelled by middle class wannabes who have never known real struggle and sacrifice and less still intellectual clarity.[9] Though Reed was not without his supporters, notably Cornel West, the black activist, academic, theologian and author of a ground breaking book Race Matters, first published in 1993.
And that is also what has happened in Britain and elsewhere. Their identity politics led to people like Obama being hailed as the Left whilst drones rained down on Pakistani and Afghan weddings, whilst police murdered blacks at will. It was seen at that time as arch identarian Ta-Nahesi Coates termed it in his eulogy to the Obama regime “Eight years in power”. This is all gate keeping and is not about opposing racism but making sure blacks and other minorities don’t turn their guns, literal or metaphorical, on their real enemies: the ruling class, not other working-class people. Such a situation would see the Oxbridge dons and a significant section of the leadership of the British Left shot at dawn, unfortunately only in the metaphorical sense, though I live in hope.
Reed doesn’t buy into the gate keeping and has opposed race reductionism time and again. Even in the face of mounting police violence in the US he stated that:
Indeed, he might have added that a black Yale graduate might be the one who murders other blacks as part of their service to the state and capitalism. When Freddy Gray was killed by the police in Baltimore, some of the police officers were themselves black, but tellingly the Mayor of Baltimore Stephanie C. Rawlings was black, the Police Commissioner, Dr. Anthony Batts was also black as was the prosecutor Marilyn Mosby. All of them attended prestigious universities such as Oberlin, Harvard and Boston College. None of that helped save Gray or anyone before or after him. Three of the police officers were tried and acquitted and the other three had the charges dropped, despite the city settling for $6.4 million. Even now, blacks represent 61% of the population of Baltimore, 41% of the police force but account for 88% of police killings.[12] Identity politics cannot and in fact has no intention of solving any of this. Too many jobs at stake in the Identity Industry.
It is an Oppression Olympics to keep the working-class fighting amongst themselves for crumbs to prevent them asking the big question posed by Bertolt Brecht. Fine that is the breadcrumb but where is the whole loaf? The upper-class have the whole loaf and the identity politics people want their patronage, they don’t want working class people of any colour to have the whole loaf. It is a reactionary game. The scandal at Cambridge should have afforded the Left an opportunity to question this nonsense, instead they came out swinging on behalf of the capitalists. Sections of the British Left in the 1980s used to chant on marches, Workers Black, Workers White, Workers of the World Unite! Now there real slogan is more akin to Workers Black, Workers White, Against Each Other Fight! Fight for crumbs of course, not the real prize. That is what identity politics is.
The education system is under attack from the Right who want it to be even more of a system at the service of industry than it currently is. They want to run down the humanities, people being taught to think is not good, though honestly some of the courses and postmodernist rubbish available from universities is not about thinking but confusing people and going off on tangents and they want to exclude the working-class as much as possible. Instead of arguing for pushing the Cambridge dons and their ilk off the edge of the cliff they have come out defending a charlatan as to do otherwise would undermine the identity politics they have latched themselves and their lucrative careers to for quite some time.
The right are wrong about hiring and admission practices, though not entirely. Academia is not a meritocracy, it is run by a self-serving club of narcissists, whether you progress or not within it depends partly on luck. Race and class are clearly factors and also whether you swim against the current or not is crucial. What would have happened had anyone at Cambridge dared say the Emperor Has No Clothes? They could have had a disciplinary proceeding opened up against them, lost their job, social and professional ostracisation etc. There are issues you can’t touch within academia. There is the case of James Caspian who was first approved for and then blocked from studying detransitioners at Bath Spa University.[13] The University made no bones about its reasons. They didn’t want to offend.
“The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university.”[14]
There is also the case of Alice Sullivan who carried out a review for the British government and recommended that sex and gender be recorded as two different categories. For her trouble her talk at Bristol University was disrupted.[15] David Gordon, a professor of Social Justice at Bristol had invited her. He replied to the Russell Group LGBTQ+ Staff Network defending his invite and saying it was in the interests of staff to hear her out. He was suspended.[16] Then there is David Miller sacked in 2021 after years of harassment because of his pro-Palestinian views under the usual fake accusation of antisemitism. He sued Bristol University. They fought him tooth and nail for years, but he recently won his case.[17] Join the dots and figure out what would have happened at Cambridge. Universities are not centres of learning, free inquiry and discussion, they are reactionary corporate entities that control what is said with a McCarthyite Zeal. It is damning of academia and the British Left that it was a racist reprobate who brought this issue up and not them and further damning that once exposed they circled the wagons and dug their heels in.
The whole episode encapsulates at once what is wrong with the educational system and universities in particular and also what is wrong with what passes itself off as the Left: middle-class wannabes with no criteria and little experience of struggle. The fad will be defeated and one day everyone will say they had always been against this. It is time to take note that it is not the case, lest they try for multiple runs at it.
[1] See
There is another path to be taken on this issue. One is to accept his charlatanry as they come in all shapes and sizes, fight against racist notions that BAME don’t deserve or are not capable of being at university and also challenging the notions of identity politics, DEI and replace it with class. The black Marxist US academic Adolph Reed has been to fore on this, placing class centre stage even with black and brown people. Before looking at what he says about race and class it is worth looking at the racial and class make up of Cambridge, which might surprise some. BAME make up around 16.2% of the English and Welsh population with the largest group being Asians, followed by blacks at 4%.[4] Cambridge university admits a great percentage of BAME to its programmes even when we exclude international students from the statistics. According to its Equality and Diversity Information Report 2022-2023:
Of students domiciled in the UK, 30.4% of UG students, 27.9% of PGT and 20.7% of PGR were BAME.
This compares against a Russell Group[5] average of 20.4% UK BAME, 9.1% of all PGT students and 10.1% of all research PGR students in 2021-22.[6]
When it comes to all staff, the percentage of BAME is closer to their actual percentage of the population and stands at 16%. In relation to just academic staff 13.4% are BAME, though blacks are extremely underrepresented at only 0.6% as compared to Asians at 8.1%, 3.4% mixed and 1.3% as other.[7] There is no breakdown on students within the BAME cohort, though I am going to take a guess and say blacks are underrepresented. It is part of the problem and is itself racist that all minorities are just lumped together as some great homogenous mass when there are clear differences in the experiences and lives within each community.
Though some 13% of the staff chose not to disclose their ethnicity, Cambridge’s diversity report is remarkably detailed. They can tell you how many whites, blacks, Asians, women, disabled and unsurprisingly trans-genders study or are employed by the university and can even break it down to some nationalities, Irish, Pakistani, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Indian, African, Caribbean etc. What it cannot tell you is how many working-class people study or work there. It cannot tell you how many BAME from working-class backgrounds study or work there either. Class does not figure. On the one hand, they don’t care about white working-class and on the other in their condescension they don’t recognise that there is any such thing as BAME working class. Being working-class is something you shall not speak of. It is like a disease. The Irish comedian Justine Megan wrote in a recent article that when she went to Ireland’s equivalent of Cambridge, Trinity College, she was asked what school she had gone to in order to socially pigeon hole her and she quipped that she was “diagnosed as working-class”.[8] Many of us have had that experience where they realise you are working class, one of their hoi polloi as they would put it and you realise their reaction would be milder if you told them you had Ebola.
We should be clear Oxford and Cambridge and other universities of their like (the Russell Group) and their feeder schools of Eton, Harrow etc. are not meritocracies, they are about class and money. Boris Johnson, Cameron, Blair etc are all about money, nothing else. Even Trump went to an Ivy League university and if you think that was about anything other than money, you have been asleep for some time. This is not about meritocracy as it has never existed in academia and most academics are opposed to changing that. Academia has always been about money and the Zeitgeist. A period in the 1960s and 1970s when working-class people went to university and came to the fore was just a hiatus, that no longer exists. The number of working-class academics is on the decline and has been for quite some time.
Adolph Reed has argued for the centrality of class. It is not surprising that the SWP and other cowards shy away from dealing with the difficult issues. Even someone of the stature of Adolph Reed has been cancelled because of his views on race and class. If a black Marxist academic can’t freely opine on the issue, who can? Those with nothing left to lose perhaps, and given the class nature of the SWP and most “Left” groups in Britain they have a lot to lose until they go back to mammy and daddy for their handout. In 2020, the Democratic Socialists of America, that vague liberal wishy washy group that so many on the Left invest time in, cancelled him over his views on race. He an academic, a product of the racist South where he was an organiser was cancelled by middle class wannabes who have never known real struggle and sacrifice and less still intellectual clarity.[9] Though Reed was not without his supporters, notably Cornel West, the black activist, academic, theologian and author of a ground breaking book Race Matters, first published in 1993.
God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation,” said Cornel West, a Harvard professor of philosophy and a Socialist. “He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness.[10]
And that is also what has happened in Britain and elsewhere. Their identity politics led to people like Obama being hailed as the Left whilst drones rained down on Pakistani and Afghan weddings, whilst police murdered blacks at will. It was seen at that time as arch identarian Ta-Nahesi Coates termed it in his eulogy to the Obama regime “Eight years in power”. This is all gate keeping and is not about opposing racism but making sure blacks and other minorities don’t turn their guns, literal or metaphorical, on their real enemies: the ruling class, not other working-class people. Such a situation would see the Oxbridge dons and a significant section of the leadership of the British Left shot at dawn, unfortunately only in the metaphorical sense, though I live in hope.
Reed doesn’t buy into the gate keeping and has opposed race reductionism time and again. Even in the face of mounting police violence in the US he stated that:
…a black Yale graduate who works on Wall Street is no doubt several times more likely to be jacked up by the police on the platform of Metro North than his white counterpart, out of mistaken identity. And that mistaken identity is what we might call racism. But it’s a shorthand. He’s still less likely to be jacked up by the police than the broke white guy in northeast Philadelphia or west Baltimore.[11]
Indeed, he might have added that a black Yale graduate might be the one who murders other blacks as part of their service to the state and capitalism. When Freddy Gray was killed by the police in Baltimore, some of the police officers were themselves black, but tellingly the Mayor of Baltimore Stephanie C. Rawlings was black, the Police Commissioner, Dr. Anthony Batts was also black as was the prosecutor Marilyn Mosby. All of them attended prestigious universities such as Oberlin, Harvard and Boston College. None of that helped save Gray or anyone before or after him. Three of the police officers were tried and acquitted and the other three had the charges dropped, despite the city settling for $6.4 million. Even now, blacks represent 61% of the population of Baltimore, 41% of the police force but account for 88% of police killings.[12] Identity politics cannot and in fact has no intention of solving any of this. Too many jobs at stake in the Identity Industry.
It is an Oppression Olympics to keep the working-class fighting amongst themselves for crumbs to prevent them asking the big question posed by Bertolt Brecht. Fine that is the breadcrumb but where is the whole loaf? The upper-class have the whole loaf and the identity politics people want their patronage, they don’t want working class people of any colour to have the whole loaf. It is a reactionary game. The scandal at Cambridge should have afforded the Left an opportunity to question this nonsense, instead they came out swinging on behalf of the capitalists. Sections of the British Left in the 1980s used to chant on marches, Workers Black, Workers White, Workers of the World Unite! Now there real slogan is more akin to Workers Black, Workers White, Against Each Other Fight! Fight for crumbs of course, not the real prize. That is what identity politics is.
The education system is under attack from the Right who want it to be even more of a system at the service of industry than it currently is. They want to run down the humanities, people being taught to think is not good, though honestly some of the courses and postmodernist rubbish available from universities is not about thinking but confusing people and going off on tangents and they want to exclude the working-class as much as possible. Instead of arguing for pushing the Cambridge dons and their ilk off the edge of the cliff they have come out defending a charlatan as to do otherwise would undermine the identity politics they have latched themselves and their lucrative careers to for quite some time.
The right are wrong about hiring and admission practices, though not entirely. Academia is not a meritocracy, it is run by a self-serving club of narcissists, whether you progress or not within it depends partly on luck. Race and class are clearly factors and also whether you swim against the current or not is crucial. What would have happened had anyone at Cambridge dared say the Emperor Has No Clothes? They could have had a disciplinary proceeding opened up against them, lost their job, social and professional ostracisation etc. There are issues you can’t touch within academia. There is the case of James Caspian who was first approved for and then blocked from studying detransitioners at Bath Spa University.[13] The University made no bones about its reasons. They didn’t want to offend.
According to Caspian, the university said: “Engaging in a potentially politically incorrect piece of research carries a risk to the university. Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher, but may involve the university.
“The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university.”[14]
There is also the case of Alice Sullivan who carried out a review for the British government and recommended that sex and gender be recorded as two different categories. For her trouble her talk at Bristol University was disrupted.[15] David Gordon, a professor of Social Justice at Bristol had invited her. He replied to the Russell Group LGBTQ+ Staff Network defending his invite and saying it was in the interests of staff to hear her out. He was suspended.[16] Then there is David Miller sacked in 2021 after years of harassment because of his pro-Palestinian views under the usual fake accusation of antisemitism. He sued Bristol University. They fought him tooth and nail for years, but he recently won his case.[17] Join the dots and figure out what would have happened at Cambridge. Universities are not centres of learning, free inquiry and discussion, they are reactionary corporate entities that control what is said with a McCarthyite Zeal. It is damning of academia and the British Left that it was a racist reprobate who brought this issue up and not them and further damning that once exposed they circled the wagons and dug their heels in.
The whole episode encapsulates at once what is wrong with the educational system and universities in particular and also what is wrong with what passes itself off as the Left: middle-class wannabes with no criteria and little experience of struggle. The fad will be defeated and one day everyone will say they had always been against this. It is time to take note that it is not the case, lest they try for multiple runs at it.
[1] See
[2] SWP (07/08/2026) The racist witch-hunt of Jason Arday. Yuri Prasad.
[3] The Guardian (31/01/2026) Cambridge university accused of ‘obfuscation’ over armes investment. Geraldine McKelvie and Felix Armstrong.
[4] See.
[5] Russell Group is a group of 24 universities in Britain with its headquarters at Cambridge somewhat like the US Ivy League.
[6] Cambridge University (2024) Equality and Diversity Information Report 2022-2023. P.45
[7] Ibíd., p.11
[8] Irish Times (08/08/2026)Justine Megan: ‘It wasn’t until I went to Trinity that I was diagnosed as working-class.
[9] HAC (08/16/2020) The Canceling of Adolph Reed. Roger Berkowitz.
[10] NYT (14/08/2020) A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury. Michael Powell.
[11] WSWS (20/12/2019) An interview with political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. on the New York Times’ 1619 Project. Tom Mackaman.
[12] See
[13] The Guardian (25/09/2017) University ‘turned down politically incorrect transgender research’. Sally Weale.
[14] Ibíd.
[15] BBC (22/12/2025) University threatened with legal action after protest at academic’s talk. Branwen Jeffreys.
[16] The Telegraph (17/01/2026) Academic suspended after defending gender-critical speaker. Tim Sigsworth.
[17] See his own statement.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
A budding scientist from Cork city, set to do his leaving cert in September, he had been part of a team that was the recipient of the Ombudsman for Children Award at the Stripe Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2026. The team also won first place in the category of Health and Wellbeing for its work 'Bumblebee', its aim described by the Irish Times as being to support non-verbal children and adults living with dementia.
He had bags of potential and a long productive future ahead of him, all of it robbed when he died from electrocution while taking a shower, the result seemingly of faulty wiring. He had been holidaying with his mother and sister at the time. His mother is a Greek national and each year the family would travel to Kimolos, one of the country's southern islands.
Many of us heading off for holidays, if we worry at all, might be nervous about the flight, or increase our vigilance in anticipation of pick pockets. Nobody expects to be electrocuted taking a shower. If those responsible for maintenance had been as diligent with their wiring as Alex was with his science, he might still be alive.
Cork TD, Colm Burke, said of the dead teen:
It's extremely sad to hear that someone so young has died so tragically . . . He was a really talented young person with his whole life and huge career ahead of him. Earlier this year, he put a huge effort into getting to that stage in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition and was awarded for his efforts.
A fortnight back from a holiday abroad where I was accompanied by my own son, the news of the Greek tragedy concentrated the mind, making the loss of life all the more poignant. Family holidays are times for bonding and memory making. Along with my son and my daughter's boyfriend I would swim out to the buoys in the Mediterranean delineating the end of the lifeguard observed swimming stretch. We would joke that the best way to clear a beach of clerics is to shout 'buoy in the water', which would see them swimming out in their droves. That type of craic is what holidays are meant to be about. Happy memories are lodged and later revisited.
But there will be no happy memories for the family of Alex McKee, just grief and despair. Not any way to return from a family holiday.
How else are you meant to be sold the plot of the book you’re holding, but also what filter to use when reading it.
Here’s the one that was used for the novel currently being reviewed:
Trav, thirteen, is trying to come to terms with the death of his father. Jay, Trav’s best friend, is tasked with going through a decade’s worth of writing that Trav wrote after finding his father dead. Stella, Trav’s mother, is trying to keep it together for her son while dealing with irreparable fallout in her adopted family. Together, they try to make sense of grief and its druggy comedown, and what happens when cursed destinies intersect. Powered by the prose — the rhythm and technique — of accent, sociolect, and place, this novel is working-class but not council-estate chic, grim but not grey, and blessed with a slangy Birmingham vernacular not readily found in modern fiction.
If you read that and immediately thought of Close to Home, you’re not the only one. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing as Birmingham has a very different history, culture and the citizens have a different perspective from us Belfast types so it has the potential to be quite different in its delivery.
While certain aspects are a little different, the basic premise (working class kid from broken home does lots of drugs at university while harbouring pretensions at being a writer) is still close enough to invite comparisons. Still, are the characters distinct enough to stand on their own?
Yes and no.
The protagonist is drawn reasonably enough to be both direct and to allow for a small amount of subtext to be filled in by the reader. As he is also the writer (speaking about himself in the third person), he’s careful to ensure that he doesn’t come across as too much of a bastard (indeed, in the prologue, he freely admits that he’ll be telling some porkies in the name of ‘his Truth’). The end result is a half blank canvas for the reader to project their own takes onto instead of a solid character whom we are compelled to follow through thick and thin.
This is a shame as there are moments that are so powerfully rendered that they hit the reader in the solar plexus. The main example is the death of Trev’s dad. As an opening, it’s stark, filled with little nostalgic details that accentuate the sadness and leaves a lingering effect throughout. Likewise, a scene detailing allegations of sexual abuse and the aftermath is packed with claustrophobia, disbelief and rage.
Overall, it’s a decent debut novel which is entertaining and poignant, tells its story in a manner that is direct and thoughtful (I finished it in a day) but doesn’t harness the power of the aforementioned scenes to create a compelling narrator and/or narrative. Maybe an extra 50 or so pages would have helped the story go in a different direction or fleshed out the characters a little more. Regardless, there are worse ways to spend your time.
In this case, the blurb didn’t lie to us so it did its job correctly.
Taylor Burns, 2026, Trav: A Novel, Zer0 Books. ISBN-13: 978-1803418537
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
(NKJV)Matthew 23:27: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
On 22 June 2026 The Right Honourable Sir Jeffrey Mark Donaldson, PC, MP was found guilty at Newry Crown Court of all 18 charges against two victims who were children at the time of the abuse: one count of rape, four of gross indecency, and thirteen of indecent assault.
Not a great surprise, you may think, as many politicians in Westminster have had similar exposures in time past. All power tends to corrupt in this evil world. But Jeffrey Donaldson made his political career on the premise of being an sound Evangelical, opposed to gay marriage and the expansion of abortion. He constantly wore a fish symbol on his lapel and spoke about his faith in churches and Premier Christianity magazine. In 2023 he told a GB News broadcast that his faith was at "the core of his being".
His 2004 biography, Not By Might - a Journey in Faith and Politics, written by Noel Davidson is a glowing presentation of a devout Christian standing for righteousness in our nation, and labouring for the welfare of his constituents.
The reality behind the front was a man not only guilty of serial sexual abuse of two children, committed beginning in his twenties, but a series of adulteries, gay encounters and heavy drinking. Some of these were known by fellow politicians, some of whom are Evangelicals.
The fall-out from the case doesn’t end with whatever sentence he faces in September. The two poor women have the memory of the offences to carry for the rest of their lives, even though they have been vindicated by the jury. The scandal has smeared the gospel, for his very public assertion of his faith is known to all, at least in Northern Ireland. Added to that may be the discovery that several Evangelicals knew of his godless conduct (except for his paedophilia) and allowed him to continue as both MP and Party Leader. They abhorred his behaviour, but were content to remain in the party he led. This may have grave consequences for the DUP if this crisis for the party is not clearly resolved, for most Evangelicals in NI vote for the DUP or the TUV. Voting for a party that embraced serial hypocrisy may not be an option for many believers.
Jeffrey Donaldson's standing as a true Christian is almost zero. Not because of his abuse of the children, for even that may be forgiven if there is true repentance. Donaldson however has shown no sign of true repentance, marked by his denial of guilt and making the women go through the ordeal of testifying in court and being cross-examined.
His serial adultery, gay encounters, lying, and drunkenness while talking Christian talk mark him as a hypocrite. That is a sin that is often hard to leave.
Any chaplain or evangelist visiting him would know they are not dealing with a common sinner, but one able to lie most convincingly. I hope they will call him to true repentance and wait to hear a full account of all his sins, and his crimes acknowledged fully in a letter to each woman. Then a similar letter to his church and party, apologizing for the pain he has caused them.
Then, maybe then, he can turn to Christ, confessing all to Him and asking His forgiveness. A changed life will be the only acceptable indication of a changed heart.
⏩Ian Major grew up a heathen Protestant, was converted at 17. He lives out his Evangelical faith as a Baptist.
Although the Asian country is prone to geological disasters including earthquakes such happenings should not be viewed in isolation. There is no evidence earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are on the increase, though severity on the Richter scale of earthquakes are on an upward trajectory. If we view such disasters within the overall climatic changes which are occurring in general and a very different picture emerges.
The earthquake in Japan caused multiple deaths and huge evacuations around the Kumamoto region of Kyushu Island. This quake occurred at the same time France and Spain were experiencing huge wildfires rampaging across the terrain which are on the increase annually. Wildfires do not recognise national borders or capital cities. Madrid, the Spanish capital, has been under threat from these abnormal infernos on more than one occasion as have other Spanish cities and cities around the globe from their regional wildfires. Thousands of people, many of them holiday makers, have been evacuated and many homes will be lost forever while firefighters struggle to cope.
Along with the earthquake in Japan, the wildfires in Spain and France, here in the Twenty-Six-Counties we have had a wildfire on Sliabh na mBan (Slieve Namon), Mountain of the Women or Maidens Mountain, in County Tipperary. Firefighters responded to renewed fire activity while reassuring the public the blaze remained under control. Despite these reassurances the south eastern flank of the mountain “eased down then resurfaced” with a vengeance. Many of the isolated areas were described as “isolated hotspots”. A spokesperson commented; “outbreaks of fire activity such as those experienced are to be expected following a wildfire event on this scale”. Greece also had wildfires about the same time and a mid-air helicopter crash killed the crews of both machines - these were helicopters trying to extinguish the fires. The problem here is “wildfire events on this scale” are happening with increased regularity and severity. Along with winter floods, and big freeze ups, increased earthquake severity, summer wildfires are becoming regular and to be expected. Global warming is the cause of these unprecedented changes in our climate and the results can be seen by all but the congenitally stupid every year and are getting worse.
Emerging climate science can reveal, which many of us have suspected for some time, that global warming is the engine of climate change. Such warmings have occurred on a much slower scale over several periods of millennia but more recent research can reveal “human driven atmospheric warming is physically altering the earth’s crust”, thus affecting the weight distribution on the earth’s surface. Earthquakes occur due to a release of “tectonic stress” and this “weight distribution” modifies the “seismic clock” altering earthquake regularity. First, we are told there has been no increase in earthquake regularity then, in the next breath, they imply the “seismic clock” is being modified, implying the rapidity and regularity of earthquakes are increasing. What are we to believe? It is accepted that the rate of climate change is “human driven” even the boffins who are trying to defend those humans responsible for these increases in global warming through their business activities and profiteering admit that the rapidity of these changes to be “human driven”. This human behaviour, by a minority of people, is overwhelmingly driven by the relentless “pursuit of profits and economic growth”. Space exploration directly alters “the chemistry, physics, and climate conditions” across all five of the planet’s atmospheric layers.
All around the globe so-called natural disasters are on the increase most notably, wildfires. Along with the terror unleashed by these fires in France and Spain, Greece has been ablaze as flames tore across the island. Can people remember some years ago in Australia businessman and climate change denier, Rupert Murdoch, telling us climate change is a “myth”? He said this while in the background film footage of Australia burning could be seen by all. The business fraternity in general appear to hold the opinion, or pretend to, that climate change is either exaggerated or non-existent, the work of left-wing activists trying to cause chaos. To these profit seeking bastards just look around you, it is you and the likes of you, who are greatly to blame for the possible premature destruction of planet Earth. The likes of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and various space agencies around the globe are systematically contributing to the earth’s destruction! While we are constantly told of the need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, a major contributor towards climate change, we are told nothing of the much worse space exploration contribution to such climatic changes.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is in the process of commercialising space travel, hoping to make it, one day, as readily available as domestic aviation excursions. Should this happen and it probably will it almost certainly will mean more and more rockets taking off, each lift off the equivalent of twenty-eight Jumbo Jets taking off simultaneously. The amount of domestic aviation travel we have is already far too great for the sustainability of the planet but throw this volume on top and global disasters are sure to increase.
Emerging climate science can reveal, which many of us have suspected for some time, that global warming is the engine of climate change. Such warmings have occurred on a much slower scale over several periods of millennia but more recent research can reveal “human driven atmospheric warming is physically altering the earth’s crust”, thus affecting the weight distribution on the earth’s surface. Earthquakes occur due to a release of “tectonic stress” and this “weight distribution” modifies the “seismic clock” altering earthquake regularity. First, we are told there has been no increase in earthquake regularity then, in the next breath, they imply the “seismic clock” is being modified, implying the rapidity and regularity of earthquakes are increasing. What are we to believe? It is accepted that the rate of climate change is “human driven” even the boffins who are trying to defend those humans responsible for these increases in global warming through their business activities and profiteering admit that the rapidity of these changes to be “human driven”. This human behaviour, by a minority of people, is overwhelmingly driven by the relentless “pursuit of profits and economic growth”. Space exploration directly alters “the chemistry, physics, and climate conditions” across all five of the planet’s atmospheric layers.
All around the globe so-called natural disasters are on the increase most notably, wildfires. Along with the terror unleashed by these fires in France and Spain, Greece has been ablaze as flames tore across the island. Can people remember some years ago in Australia businessman and climate change denier, Rupert Murdoch, telling us climate change is a “myth”? He said this while in the background film footage of Australia burning could be seen by all. The business fraternity in general appear to hold the opinion, or pretend to, that climate change is either exaggerated or non-existent, the work of left-wing activists trying to cause chaos. To these profit seeking bastards just look around you, it is you and the likes of you, who are greatly to blame for the possible premature destruction of planet Earth. The likes of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and various space agencies around the globe are systematically contributing to the earth’s destruction! While we are constantly told of the need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, a major contributor towards climate change, we are told nothing of the much worse space exploration contribution to such climatic changes.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is in the process of commercialising space travel, hoping to make it, one day, as readily available as domestic aviation excursions. Should this happen and it probably will it almost certainly will mean more and more rockets taking off, each lift off the equivalent of twenty-eight Jumbo Jets taking off simultaneously. The amount of domestic aviation travel we have is already far too great for the sustainability of the planet but throw this volume on top and global disasters are sure to increase.
On the heels of Musk is another space cowboy capitalist money grabbing bandit, Richard Branson. His primary space travel project is Virgin Galactic, a commercial company focused on suborbital space tourism. The company was formed in 2004 to take private passengers to the edge of space. Flights are expected to reach an altitude of around 54 to 55 miles, or 85-88 kilometres, giving passengers a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the earth’s curvature. This altitude is the separation point between the Mesosphere, below 85km, and the Thermosphere, above 85 km, known as the Mesopause, where temperatures plunge as low as -90 to -100 degrees C. Damage is caused to the two main layers and the sub-layer Mesopause and to reach this point traveling through the all-important Troposphere and Stratosphere also causing irreversible damage to these important layers.
The Troposphere is of great importance, though not the only layer where damage occurs and is concerning, because it directly affects the earth's weather patterns and temperatures. It is in all probability damage to this layer in particular, though not exclusively, which is causing the increase in adverse weather conditions epitomised in these wildfires across the planet. With Musk and Branson aiming to increase the amount of damage caused we can expect more and more fires and floods. As large chunks of ice the size of a small country like Wales falling off the ice caps at the poles it is only a matter of time before a country like Ireland is underwater. These seasonal floods we experience one day will not recede because the water will have nowhere to go as the oceans fill up and rise. Already the wildfires are proving too much for over taxed firefighters in various countries. And yet, despite all this, and overwhelming evidence the likes of Musk and Branson are allowed to continue damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate.
If space travel is commercialised as Musk and Branson make no secret of their intentions we can multiply the planets problems. It is bad enough with domestic aviation travel which if any sense and continuity of argument exist should be at least reduced. One breath the so-called politicians, who we are foolish enough to vote for, tell us of the danger’s aviation poses to the planet then they talk of building another runway at Heathrow Airport or Dublin Airport. More runways equals more aviation transport and the math here tell their own story. More aircraft equals more aviation fuel emissions and general usage which in some cases result in spillage into the ground. There may be hope with the domestic flight travel because research work is underway to electrify the transport mode, the airplane. Progress will depend on the level of investment into this electrification of flight is expended. Will the capitalist class consider it important enough or, to be precise, a high enough profit return to invest?
Elon Musk has recently been hailed as the world’s first trillionaire much of this wealth being amassed on damaging the planet with his space toys. His company, space X, is expected to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. This is a phenomenal amount of money made by nefarious means involving missions which destroy the planet in the process. Many of those who have unfortunately lost their homes in Spain, France, Greece and anywhere else where these wildfires have hit are probably the same people who applaud the genius of Elon Musk and the likes of. While they were watching on their television sets news of Musk’s financial achievements little would they have realised these same financial gains may cost them indirectly their homes and livelihoods. Surely the time has come to catch ourselves on collectively, listen to people like David Attenborough and the young Swedish activist, Gretta Thunberg, and stop listening to the lies spun by the likes of Trump, Branson, and Musk to name but three brigands.
If space travel is commercialised as Musk and Branson make no secret of their intentions we can multiply the planets problems. It is bad enough with domestic aviation travel which if any sense and continuity of argument exist should be at least reduced. One breath the so-called politicians, who we are foolish enough to vote for, tell us of the danger’s aviation poses to the planet then they talk of building another runway at Heathrow Airport or Dublin Airport. More runways equals more aviation transport and the math here tell their own story. More aircraft equals more aviation fuel emissions and general usage which in some cases result in spillage into the ground. There may be hope with the domestic flight travel because research work is underway to electrify the transport mode, the airplane. Progress will depend on the level of investment into this electrification of flight is expended. Will the capitalist class consider it important enough or, to be precise, a high enough profit return to invest?
Elon Musk has recently been hailed as the world’s first trillionaire much of this wealth being amassed on damaging the planet with his space toys. His company, space X, is expected to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. This is a phenomenal amount of money made by nefarious means involving missions which destroy the planet in the process. Many of those who have unfortunately lost their homes in Spain, France, Greece and anywhere else where these wildfires have hit are probably the same people who applaud the genius of Elon Musk and the likes of. While they were watching on their television sets news of Musk’s financial achievements little would they have realised these same financial gains may cost them indirectly their homes and livelihoods. Surely the time has come to catch ourselves on collectively, listen to people like David Attenborough and the young Swedish activist, Gretta Thunberg, and stop listening to the lies spun by the likes of Trump, Branson, and Musk to name but three brigands.
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| Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist. |
Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.
Before We Conform, Or Condemn, Let Us At Least Be Curious
♜One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it - Albert Camus♞
1. Fine Gael will demand that any supports with electricity, etc Must be universal - meaning much of the money will go to millionaires (who admit to being embarrassed at getting it. Michael O'Leary called giving him those payments "disgusting").
Most of the money will go to people who don't need it and those that do will not get enough as so much is wasted on those that won't. Fianna Fáil, independents and the civil service will try to block such a dumb policy. Fine Gael will threaten to collapse the government unless all aid is "universal". So the dumb policy will continue - despite being condemned by every expert and everyone from the ESRI to the Fiscal Council. Fine Gael is fixated on the idea.
When working for Fine Gael I tried arguing against the idiotic idea of "universality" in payments. It was impossible to convince Fine Gaelers of the idiocy of the policy. Even the Fiscal Council, which is hardly left wing, calls the policy idiotic. However for some reason it is an article of faith for Fine Gael.
2. Harris will demand that social welfare recipients not get payments adjusted for inflation so he can give the middle and upper middle class tiny tax cuts. Fianna Fáil will say "over our dead body" and threaten to collapse the government. Fianna Fáil, thankfully, will win that one.
3. Chambers will demand cuts to spending on Defence, calling them savings, despite the fact that Defence in Ireland has been so chronically underfunded that there is no room whatsoever for cuts. Asking it to cut spending is like suggesting to a skeleton that they lose weight. Hopefully, Fine Gael will stand their ground on that one and threaten to walk if Defence spending is not increased as committed to.
4. Chambers will demand a complete embargo on hiring staff in the health service - despite mental health services chronically understaffed to such an extent that an "urgent" appointment, that elsewhere is provided in days or weeks in Ireland takes six months or more.
It is literally third world standard. That is not an exaggeration. It is quicker to get urgent appointments in much of Africa than it is in Ireland. In Britain there were calls on the health secretary to resign due to a delay of three Weeks. In that very week I was offered an "urgent" appointment eight Months away!
As a result there are people dying by suicide in every parish in Ireland as they cannot get appointments with psychologists. I have heard of a scary number of suicides in my home parish. I was in a group of people who used to meet weekly in a support group. Two of that group killed themselves entirely because of the lack of access to appointments. One young woman killed herself when for the fourth time her appointment was postponed and she was offered an appointment in the following year. She could not take it anymore. She killed herself. DPER simply saw that as having one less person to pay money to and one less person in the queue.
⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.
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