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Caoimhin O’Muraile ⚽ Old Trafford, home of Manchester United certainly since the dawn of the modern era, the Premiership, was for twenty years the undisputed citadel of football. 

Like ancient Rome, Old Trafford was considered by many to be impregnable as United won 13 Premier League titles under their emperor, Alex Ferguson, a modern football version of Caeser Augustus. Then in 2005 a gang of crooks invaded, namely the Glazer family, who stole - just like the Visigoths did Rome in 410 - Manchester United. Caeser Augustus, AKA Alex Ferguson, was strong enough and good enough at his job to hold back the tide of corruption this gang of marauders brought to Old Trafford. 

Other lesser clubs suffered similar takeovers but it was the decline of Manchester United having ruled supreme which was most notable. Since Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 United have had, including the present incumbent Michael Carrick, twelve would be successors including caretaker managers and interim post holders. Did Alex Ferguson retire because he could sense the winds of change which even he may have been powerless to stop? He had just won his 13th league title and was it better to get out while at the top? 

I firmly believe he had another two seasons in him and had Manchester United, rapidly becoming a corporation with a football team attached, being managed at the top properly he may have stayed on. Perhaps he realised the wall of corruption built by the Glazers was growing in size and it was time to get out and if this was the case who could blame him! Alex Ferguson was in the managerial hotseat at Old Trafford for 26 years and during that time he had total control of buying and selling players, total command of the dressing room and all the latitude he required when dealing with the media. On one occasion he told Match of the Day’s John Motson he should have “known fucking better than to ask” and “fuck off” after the veteran commentator asked questions about Roy Keane.

The first of the twelve managers to be brought in, David Moyes, was reportedly Ferguson’s choice and, for me, was not given the time needed. Perhaps Ferguson in recommending Moyes thought the man would be given the time he himself was given to win a trophy, four years. He wasn’t and the rest is history. Michael Carrick, our present ‘Head Coach’, started off his temporary tenure with an unexpected win, 2-0, over bitter rivals Manchester City at Old Trafford with United completely outplaying the Blues that January day. This success was continued away at Arsenal where Man United came away, again unexpectedly, victorious 2-3. Things were looking brighter for Michael Carrrick as United finished third in the league and had regained entry into the once prestigious European Cup. In fact, if the league had started in January 2026 Man Utd would have pipped Arsenal to the title so good had been their form under Carrick.

Michael Carrick was given the job of ‘Head Coach’ – the job title relegated from Manager – later in 2026 after the team had taken the league by storm the second half of the 2025-26 season. They had played brilliantly at times and the future for the first time looked rosy. How wrong these perceptions were, United went down 2-0 away to Hull City on the opening day of the 2026/27 season and continued to underperform only beating Ipswich Town, 5-2, in the league so far. How in the space of a couple of months could players who had played so well, world beaters, in the latter half of the previous season suddenly not deliver the goods? They all hailed the arrival of Michael Carrick, after Ruben Amorin, a ‘breath of fresh air’ welcoming their new boss on a permanent basis. So, why are they not playing, just merely turning up? 

A European Cup away tie at Athletico Madrid proved difficult with the Red Devils going down to a 2-0 defeat. After the game United star, Lisandro Martinez, attacked, and rightly so, the club’s hierarchy - the Glazers and Jim Ratcliffe - but saving special criticism for Jason Wilcox, Director of Football (whatever the fuck that is), for not strengthening the squad sufficiently during the summer. United have Jim Ratcliffe, the Boss of INEOS Petrochemicals, now as a minority shareholder owning about 27% of shares and taking charge of the football side of the business. Ratcliffe like the Glazers knows fuck-all about the game, its culture, the club’s fans, the club or anything about the sport. Martinez attacked Wilcox and indirectly Ratcliffe which he was forced to apologise for, giving a guarded apology after the Madrid defeat. United then got a deserved draw away at in-form Leeds United, 1-1, and the club put a gagging order on players talking to the media. Captain, Bruno Fernandes, angrily told the press he was ‘not allowed’ to talk to them. The Head Coach does not have the call on who the club buys and sells -  that final decision rests with the Glazer’s, Ratcliffe, and Wilcox with Carrick having a minor consultancy role. Now, could anybody imagine Manchester United telling Alex Ferguson he no longer had control over the buying and selling of players, that he would have to ask Wilcox!

Following the draw at Leeds United Man Utd travelled to Italy for a game against minnows, Como. This should have been a formality for the Red Devils and the question was by how many would we win? Nothing could have been further than what happened with United going down 4-1!! So where is the rot, where did it start? Answer, it started back in 2005 when the Glazers took over the club acquiring it by nefarious means. Michael Carrick is not, in my view, the problem. How could a team which stormed the league latterly last season play so bad barely four months later for the same Head Coach? Are the players disillusioned with the club’s bosses? Are they protesting in their own way? If this is the case, and it’s only a theory, then perhaps Carrick should be supporting them. 

The club Captain, Bruno Fernandes, was played well out of position against Como, something which was unavoidable due to injuries, he was substituted. He complained about Carrick’s tactic’s almost stamping his feet like a spoilt brat. Imagine if Matt Busby back in the 1968 European Cup Final when he played Brian Kidd further foreword than usual due to striker Denis Law's knee injury, if he, Kidd, had started creating like Fernandez! He may have played his last game for United, 19th Birthday or none. Matt, in fact, could have played George Best in goal with immunity so much was his managerial hold over the club and player’s respect. Both United’s great managers, Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson, had total control of the players and there were no glaring eyes, no stamping of feet, and those who tried, Roy Keane comes to mind, were on their way. Michael Carrick’s lack of this authority such as that enjoyed by a manager could be proving a difficulty, and a case could be made for not taking the job until full control of playing matters was given. United’s greatest ever manager, Matt Busby, warned back in 1970 against the interests of the sport “being sacrificed on the altar of big business” which is what has happened. And this is where the problems begin but don’t end!!

After Sunday’s humiliating home defeat to Bournemouth the players again looked to me lethargic. Michael Carrick might be caught between players who are less than interested in playing and the hated club owners, the Glazers and Ratcliffe. The Stretford End are still with Michael, and rightly so, perhaps it’s time to up the ante in the get rid of the Glazers campaign! Against Como, Michael Carrick hauled off Skipper Bruno Fernandes who was frankly playing fucking shite, as were the rest of the team. Fernandes anger showed when he glared in the direction of his Head Coach expressing his dissatisfaction. Michael Carrick had played him out of position which he had little choice but to do. No manager likes putting players in less familiar positions but sometimes ‘needs must.’ Alex Ferguson often had to play somebody slightly out of position but there were never any tantrums like Fernandes expressed and being the club captain he should have known better. Imagine him glaring at Ferguson like that! Carrick had no option and if Jason Wilcox had done his job properly in recruiting players the situation would probably not have arisen. Better still let the manager manage and let him buy and sell players. The fault therefore lays not with Michael Carrick but Jason Wilcox and, indirectly, Jim Ratclifffe.

Manchester United have had 11 managers – including caretakers and interim – since Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, and they have sacked 6 of them. United have had success, the League Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup which, at any other club would have been considered successful. However, at Old Trafford these days coming fourth in the league appears to carry more weight than winning the FA Cup, though not with me and many of my generation. For us fourth place means fuck all, winning the FA Cup or even the League Cup is silverware. Albert Einstein is often misattributed to have said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” something Manchester United have done six times and now, if reports are to be believed, are embarking on doing the same again! That logically means those at the top at Old Trafford are a bunch of clueless imbeciles who perhaps should be in a place where they can be cared for, a secure institution.

Michael Carrick will according to reports be in charge for the game at Chelsea this weekend. I for one hope he’ll be around for some time to come and not relieved of his post by halfwits who know fuck all about football, the players, the fans or the culture, a culture rapidly being eroded.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Rome Once Impregnable ⚽ Fortress Old Trafford Once Undefeatable

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Thirty Seven

 

A Morning Thought @ 3308

 

A Morning Thought @ 3307

Jim Duffy ✍ I am always bemused at the angst in Ireland when there are long queues for beds in hospitals, and when annual expenditure on health always exceeds the budget allocated. These problems entirely are government-created, not created by the health service.

The shortage in bed was entirely created by deliberate decisions by Mary Harney and the first head of the HSE. They insisted Ireland had far too many hospital beds and slashed the number to a far too low level. (Note: a 'bed' does not mean the physical bed but also the staff needed to look after that patient.) Until the disastrous decisions of Harney and Drumm are completely reversed there will always be people on trollies unable to get a bed.

Secondly, the HSE blames 'bed-blockers' for the queues, meaning patients who should not be in hospital but at home or in care facilities, but cannot leave hospital as the care package for being at home, or space in a retirement home, is available. There actually is a simple solution - turn one of closed hospitals into a step-down facility where the person can be moved to, and receive non-medical care, until the final home can take place. That was the obvious use that Baggot Street Hospital could have been put to. Instead it sold it to a developer. The County Infirmary closed down in I think the 1990s. It too would have been ideal as a step-down facility for the north east. Instead the 18th century was left to go semi-derelict, then sold to a developer who is letting it go completely derelict (you can see through the roof as it is disintegrating) so it can be knocked down. 

I happened to know that hospital well. My mother was a nurse there. I often dropped into her there when in Navan, and she showed me around it. The upper floors were the nurses used to live were derelict but the rest of the building was perfectly fine for use as a care facility.

However, joined up thinking is not something the HSE, a monstrous incompetent bureaucracy, is capable of. One part closes a hospital, while another part never thinks what other uses do we have for that building? If the HSE created a step-down facility, then potentially hundreds of beds in hospitals could be freed up.

The biggest farce is that every year the health service spends more than the budget allocation given by DPER (Dept of Public Expenditure). DPER throws a hissy fit, as to commentators in the media, and accuse the Department of Health of losing control of spending. It hasn't. It knows, and people in politics knows, the DPER never ever gives health the budget it needs. It always gives too little, so invariably proper necessary spending exceeds the budget allocation. It always will. If it stuck within the budget, then it would have to decide to allow X% of patients die.

The average health spend across the EU is 10% of GDP. Ireland spends the fourth Lowest in the EU on Health - at 6.6%. Only Hungary, Luxembourg and Romania are lower. (Eurostat figures). And yes I know the GDP percentage is problematic in Ireland. Even if you use GNI, Ireland is way below the average. So it is no wonder the health system is in the mess it is in when Ireland is chronically underspending on Health. If DPER gave Heath the correct allocation there would be no "overspends". The so-called 'overspends' are entirely a creation of inadequate allowances by DPER. It constantly gives Health far too little money, then throws a tantrum when Health inevitably "overspends", meaning it spends the right amount that it needed to spend. One former Health Minister openly admitted to me that there are no health overspends. The 'overspend' is simply the amount that the heath service was underfunded by DPER.

Then again, DPER has long shown itself unfit for purpose. It doesn't allocate funds based on what is necessary for a system to function, but clueless book-keeping. It doesn't focus on limiting excessive spending but on chronic underfunding that in health would mean patients would die if the health service stuck to its budget. It so chronically underfunded Defence that it left the Defence Forces unable to fulfil its basic duties.

Then again it continually insists that Ireland has too many nurses. As anyone in hospital knows, it hasn't. It has too few. A TD who is a friend of mine went on a rant on there being too many nurses. I was in Beaumont Hospital, in a ward with a couple of elderly patients. They were confused and had mobility issues. They were supposed to have a nurse full-time watching them. However our nurse had to look after three wards - two with large number, one a single room with a seriously ill Covid patient.
I ran that TD at 3am to tell him the reality of the shortage of nurses. The nurse for two hours had been stuck in the woman's ward dealing with a series of problems there. I was going through radiation and chemo and was not supposed to be out of bed, but I and a young man opposite has spent the last two hours helping elderly male patients go to the toilet, and changing the sheets for another patient who was incontinent and had shat in the bed. We then had to bring him into the shower to clean him up. That young man and I were acting as nurses looking after a ward of patients despite being patients ourselves. The nurse was in the other ward doing the same with elderly patients there. One nurse physically could not look after those three wards. Yet she had to because Beaumont couldn't hire another nurse.

The young man and I both left the hospital on the same day. The night before, the nurse thanked us both for all the help in acting as stand-in nurses and that she would miss us enormously as she we did things she couldn't do as she was stuck in the other women's ward fulltime. She would hear bells going off in our ward but she was in the middle of helping old women go to the toilet, or cleaning up people who had thrown up. She would get back to our ward as quickly as she could, only to find to her relief that Dean and I had helped all the old men get to the toilet.

The TD was initially miffed at I calling him but at the end said he was glad I had. He had no idea what was really happening. He later withdrew his statement that there were too many nurses and realised there were too few in many hospitals. There were a large number in daytime, but they too were so busy to be spared so they could work nights.

Yet, whenever the government gives money to hire nurses they would find that most of it wasn't used for that, as the HSE used it to hire yet more bureaucrats for itself.

So the next time you hear about about a supposed overspend in health, realise that there was no overspend. They are simply spending the basic amount they needed to run the health service. The problem isn't that they are overspending. It is that DPER never gives enough for the health service to run. It chronically underfunds the health service, then has a hissy fit when health spends the funds it has to spend to keep the health service functioning and stop patients dying. Ireland in fact chronically underfunds health. Countries that are far poorer than Ireland, like Slovenia, Czechia, Greece, Malta and others spends a far greater amount in percentage terms than Ireland. Ireland spends just 6.6%. Slovenia spends 9.3%, Czechia spends 8.4%. Malta spends 8.8%.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

The Myth Of Health Overspend

Irish Times 📰 Written by Fintan O’Toole.

If Israel-Palestine is, for us, a story about Ireland then it should not be a simplistic narrative of good and evil

According to Maurice Cohen, chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin cancelled a booking for 70 delegates to last week’s international conference on combating anti-Semitism.

The conference was held here as part of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Some of the delegates are Jewish, some are not – Ireland’s representative, Colm O’Loughlin, is a principal officer at the Department of Justice.

According to Cohen, the hotel manager asked him whether the Israel Defense Forces would be involved. “Nothing I had said had anything whatsoever to do with the Israeli army, yet somehow that was where the conversation had gone.” The booking was subsequently cancelled without explanation.

Whatever the intentions of the hotel (and one suspects that the cancellation was motivated more by a desire to avoid the possibility of protest than by any conscious prejudice), this should be just as upsetting to Irish people as the effective cancellation of Sally Rooney in the UK over her support for Palestine Action.

Continue @ Irish Times. 

Zionism Is Not Racism, Any More Than Irish Nationalism Is Sectarianism

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on  26-October-2026.

What a 50/50 split on burning down the state reveals about who Sinn Féin, and the rest of Irish politics, are actually listening to


Fifty-Fifty

While listening to Tony Groves’ (tonygroves@bsky.social) podcast: The Political-Media Echo Chamber — Shop Mannequins and the Politics of the Out of Touch, Simon McGarr (tupped.bsky.social) pointed it out as he worked through a Hope and Courage Collective (H&CC) survey. The wording was straightforward: on a spectrum running from our institutions are worth preserving to I cannot help thinking just let them all burn, where do the supporters of each party actually land. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Greens were firmly on the side of preservation. Independent Ireland and Aontú tilted the opposite way. Sinn Féin’s voters were divided right down the center.

Every other group on that graph presented a clear account of itself. Among non-voters, the result was just over a majority for preservation, which is important because it undercuts the usual idea that not voting means wanting everything destroyed. The governing parties wanted their institutions maintained. The parties furthest to the right wanted them abolished. Only Sinn Féin’s voters were unable to agree among themselves on the most fundamental question any political movement can face: is the thing we belong to worth keeping.

McGarr described that division as an impossible coalition, and he argued that it explained more of the party’s conduct across the past three years than almost anything else he had observed. He is correct, and the basis for that judgment goes beyond a single chart. Over the last two years, Sinn Féin has been tugged toward whatever stance is loudest in the moment, not because it has abandoned its principles, but because it no longer has a settled internal baseline against which to measure a noisy signal.

The Kettle

McGarr had already sketched the frame for this a month before, in a column (The Gist: What if?) that had no connection to Sinn Féin whatsoever. He pictured a political class trying to read the public via social media as a dog, ears pricked, staring at the automated, endless, wholly artificial rendition of His Master’s Voice. In his account, the old order had spent decades calibrated to detect real feeling through slower, tightly controlled media. By contrast, constant online clamour generates a transmission that resembles an emergency and never lets up, because responding to it does not silence it.

Both McGarr and Groves sharpened that point on the podcast. If you are using an X feed to work out what the public genuinely wants, you are not checking the public’s temperature. You are plunging a thermometer into a steaming, bubbling kettle and then acting surprised that the public is boiling mad.

The Synthetic Public

This is what actually fills the kettle. Hope and Courage Collective, an Irish civil society organisation that monitors far-right organisation, issued a detailed narrative analysis this year, Ireland In Focus 2025: Mind the Gap. It should be stated clearly that H&CC is an advocacy body with an explicit position, not an impartial academic institution, and some of its wording shows that. Its underlying data collection does not. It includes two complete rounds of a nationally representative survey, correctly weighted by a professional pollster, along with a systematic tracking effort covering hundreds of thousands of individual mentions. Even if the group’s own framing is openly partisan, the methodology stands up to ordinary scrutiny.

One figure does more heavy lifting than the rest of the report combined: 75% of the far-right narrative volume mentioning Ireland comes from outside the state. The UK and the US together account for more of it than Ireland itself does. Three in every four posts that shape what looks like a domestic migration dispute are not domestic at all, and the platform that carries the largest share of that volume by a wide margin is X.

That argument has also become harder edged. “Ireland is full,” a claim about capacity and resources, declined by 68% year on year. “Irish Lives Matter,” a claim about identity and threat, increased by 303% over the same period, even as the far right’s own electoral push fell apart and its street mobilisations diminished. Defeat at the ballot box did not reduce the noise. It only made it more furious.

Now compare that with what Irish people actually said when polled properly. H&CC’s own survey ran two full nationally representative waves, weighted identically in both years, and showed the public moving in one direction on every measure tested. Two thirds now say immigrants add positively to Irish life. Almost four fifths say working class people are being squeezed because the system is stacked against them, not because of who has moved in next door. Three quarters support trans people’s right to live their lives as they choose. Four fifths say Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people encounter greater barriers than white people. And specifically on wealth, 69%, up six points in a year, now say the rich prosper because of the advantages they were given, not because they earned everything on their own.

This is not a public drawing back. McGarr’s account of what politicians are reacting to instead, rather than to this, is nearly exact: a noisy display of refusal, staged exactly where the cameras happen to be aimed.

Matt Carthy, Twice

None of this is peculiar to Sinn Féin. Jim O’Callaghan has already had his week dissected in depth, both by McGarr directly, The Gist: The Petty Bourgeoisie, and by TheJournal.ie on its own, Jim O’Callaghan is proving to be a Teflon justice minister, which described him as a Teflon justice minister after he pushed a flimsy allegation about which court cases a solicitors’ strike had intentionally aimed at into the same week as a ministerial pressure drive against an independent rape crisis centre. That terrain is for other authors. This article’s focus is Sinn Féin, and Matt Carthy in particular, because the same instinct appears there too, and it really should not do.

Return to April and the fuel blockade, (The Blockade Is The Message), Carthy spoke to the crowd from the back of a truck on O’Connell Street, on the second day of a protest whose organising network had already been linked to far-right actors, alongside Aontú and Independent Ireland figures doing likewise. When The Journal asked plainly whether Sinn Féin regarded the blockade of fuel depots and the tactics used toward tanker drivers as legitimate, the party’s own justice spokesperson refused to answer yes or no: we can get bogged down in what’s legitimate or not. A justice spokesperson declining to take a stance on methods that involved threats against gardaí and the drivers carrying out their work. He later used the same platform that week to demand the carbon tax be abolished as an emergency measure, which is very different from judging whether the people making that demand were the right people to heed.

Then comes October, and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre controversy, which matters more because of who Carthy is. He chairs the Oireachtas Justice Committee, so he has the institutional role of examining precisely this sort of ministerial excess. A government funded consent campaign, intended to teach children they could refuse a hug, went viral and was withdrawn after ministerial pressure on an independent, state funded body. Carthy’s reported view was that the minister had been correct to shut it down, and that what was actually required was a review of how publicly funded campaigns are approved in the first place. No question about what the video itself said. No question about why an independent rape crisis centre had just been leaned on by a government department that depends on it for funding. The one TD in Leinster House whose actual job is to scrutinise ministerial overreach chose instead to call for tighter oversight of the side that had already lost.

It should be stated clearly that this was a choice, not something inevitable. Among the opposition TDs who spoke on the issue, Gary Gannon (garygannontd.bsky.social) of the Social Democrats issued a statement defending children’s right not to be touched against their will. A Green Party councillor put it even more simply, saying that asking a child whether they want a hug is just normal, regardless of the adult’s age. Neither of them had to wrestle with it for long. Carthy, despite holding an actual committee chair and an actual mandate to scrutinise exactly this kind of ministerial conduct, reached for the other answer first.

H&CC’s own narrative report, produced independently and with no connection to McGarr, to this piece, or specifically to either of those two incidents, describes Sinn Féin’s migration narrative as hybrid and, at times, incoherent: a party that mixes real and legitimate criticism of government failure with an increasing readiness to normalise the idea that the answer to a housing crisis is fewer people seeking shelter in the country at all. Three separate readings, reached independently, describing the same pattern.

Credit where it is due. Sinn Féin’s core critique of IPAS profiteering and government housing failure is genuine, and H&CC’s own report says so outright. The issue is not that the party lacks legitimate ground to stand on. It is that legitimate criticism and reflexive surrender have become genuinely difficult to distinguish from within the party’s own machinery, which is exactly what you would expect from a party whose own base cannot agree on whether that machinery is worth retaining.

Why This One Matters More

The real case is here, and it only comes into focus after everything else. When a party possesses a disciplined internal agreement, it can measure a noisy outside cue against what its own supporters truly believe, and disregard that cue if it does not hold up. Sinn Féin’s coalition lacks that capacity. Its supporters are divided precisely in half over whether the state is worth preserving at all, so there is no baseline beneath the party from which to judge anything. The stance that appears most publicly confirmed prevails by default, not because of principle, but because figuring out what the party’s own base actually wants risks reopening a split that already hurt it badly once.

That split has a clear record, and its fault line is exactly this one. In December 2023, the party found out, at genuine electoral cost, that putting a definite price tag on housing drove its own coalition apart: “Not A Proper Dubliner”, Siobhán Fenton And The €300,000. During 2024, the same constraint governed immigration: the issue was continually postponed instead of resolved, because any resolution meant deciding which half of the base to address and which half to alienate. In November, the party’s vote fractured along that same break. None of that is being reargued here; it has already been covered extensively elsewhere. For this discussion, the only point is that the rupture is real, time stamped, and still unresolved, and that a coalition that cannot really function, once created, does not remain silent. It merely shifts to a different arena to repeat the same evasion, again and again, with whatever loud external cue is most available that week standing in for a choice the party cannot actually afford to make.

That is why Carthy is more instructive than O’Callaghan, not less defensible than him. For a government minister, reaching for the loudest available signal is nearly part of the role. Sinn Féin is meant to be the alternative to that: a party whose identity was built on listening directly to communities rather than reflecting a feed back at itself. This year’s evidence suggests it can no longer do that any more dependably than the government it spent a decade trying to replace.

The Backstop

McGarr’s final remark on the podcast is the one that merits lingering over. He contended that journalism, along with the older media institutions, has largely forfeited its ability to determine the public’s real position, with RTÉ perhaps as an exception. What remains available to them is merely the power to establish the frame within which other commentators debate, a far smaller sort of influence than newspapers once enjoyed, back when purchasing one was itself a social signal. In his telling, the last meaningful correction is the one democracy has always possessed: an election, when the wider public has the final say no matter what the loudest feed repeated throughout the year.

His case in point was Fine Gael, a party that has long had an almost ingrained tendency to enter a campaign assuming its own message is getting through, only to be truly puzzled when the outcome arrives and proves otherwise. “Let’s keep the recovery going,” it campaigned amid austerity as if the recovery had already reached the people being asked to endorse it; that remains the clearest single example, though it is not the only one. The divide between what a party thinks it has been communicating and what voters actually took in is the space where elections do their genuine work. And, as McGarr and Groves’ points suggest, it may be the only place left that still does that work reliably at all.

Whether that final safeguard still operates for Sinn Féin is the unresolved issue, not a settled matter. If a party’s own supporters cannot even agree on whether the institutions deserve to be preserved, an election may not provide a clean verdict on whether this instinct is costing it anything whatsoever. It may simply continue mistaking the boiling, bubbling kettle for the room, and keep being as astonished and confused by the result as anyone who keeps reaching for the same thermometer.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

The Impossible Coalition 🪶 Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy, Jim O’Callaghan, And The Synthetic Public

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.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand One Hundred And Thirty Six

 

Hate Theology @ 19

Gary Robertson ⚽ In the late 90s connoisseurs of late night Channel 4 TV were entertained by one of the most bizarre shows ever to hit our screens - Eurotrash.

Once watched, never forgotten, it leaned heavily to the bizarre the provocative and downright unusual from the world of European TV.

In 2026 Eurotrash has a somewhat different meaning in Robertson Towers and undoubtedly many more households around the globe.
 
I am of course talking about Celtic.
 
The whipping bhoys of the Europa league managed once again to find a way to lose on Thursday, this time to Celta Vigo.
 
Yes the “giants” of La Liga came saw conquered and left along with several thousand happy fans having secured 3 points.
 
Celtic on the other hand were left rooted to the bottom of the table and pointless.
 
As pointless as the next five Europa League games we have to play.
 
With teams such as Marseille and Union SG to come Celtic could easily be staring down the barrel of some heavy defeats.
 
I had a little optimism last week after the crushing of Hearts. I thought perhaps finally things were taking shape and with players returning from injury then we might see a better performance against the Galicians.
 
We might share a Celtic identity and their music does feature the bagpipes but in footballing terms we’re a long way apart.
 
Once again the home team flattered to deceive.
 
A goal from the boot of Baur in the 47th minute gave Celtic the lead, a lead that lasted a whole twenty one mins before in the space of three Celta had equalised and taken the lead.
 
It’s the same old story, poor recruitment, bizarre tactics (If any) and a lack of determination.
 
We are perhaps Conference League level but honestly I’m pretty certain they’d find a way to f**k that up too.
 
Looking further afield and away from the pit of despair that is CFC (yes I’m aware they beat Hibernian at Easter road 2-1 but I’ll get to that and why it’s hardly cause for celebration later), despite stormy conditions the Scottish Premiership saw no postponements. All four home teams walked away with 3 points. Dundee Utd coming out on top of a five goal thriller at the Calforth Construction Arena at Tannadice Park (sponsorship eh? For those old buggers it’s just Tannadice) against Aberdeen. Three points that leave the Arabs in fourth place, a point ahead of city rivals Dundee who lost out 2-1 away to St Mirren. United are Celtic's next visitors on Wednesday 28th and whist rife bookmakers see a massive gulf in odds there is, in my opinion at least, very little between the two on the pitch. A fascinating game that sadly Sky have overlooked in favour of Rangers v Hearts on the same night (understandable but frustrating nonetheless).

Falkirk walked away with a comfortable 3-0 victory over Kilmarnock, helped greatly by the away sides prowess at shooting themselves in the foot, not once but twice with own goals from Killies McCarthy in 29 mins and Stanger in the 68th. The bairns (as Falkirk are known) did score the only actual legitimate goal of the match from the foot of striker Murrell on 38 mins.
 
Rangers continued to show why they’re a massive threat to Celtic with another home demolition, this time of St Johnstone. A 4-0 victory in no way flatters McInnes' men. They (as much as it pains me to say it but remaining unbiased) play some very attractive football and with the League Cup looking almost certain to be theirs Ibrox fans will have much to cheer about in the coming months. Of course Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs will fancy their chances in the semi finals but on this form it would take a brave punter to bet against them lifting the trophy.
 
Saturday saw the clash of the top two in the Championship, Partick and Stenhousemuir. This game looked much tighter on paper than the final score line suggested. Partick ran out very comfortable 3-0 winners and took them to the summit, a point clear of Stenhousemuir who despite having more possession never managed a single shot on target in the entire 90+ mins of the match. A deeply frustrating afternoon for the men from the Central Lowlands but a highly satisfying one for the Jaggys of Maryhill.
 
The gap between 3rd and 4th was also closed to a mere two points as fourth placed Inverness Caley overcame Raith Rovers (3rd place) by two goals to nil.
 
League One - and the shootout continues between Hamilton and Ross County. Both sides predictably winning their respective matches: Hamilton 2-1 over East Fife and Ross by 4 with no reply over Airdrie.
 
League Two fixtures were replaced with Scottish Cup round two instead and some notable results included Huntly of the Highland League holding league strugglers Annan to a 2-2 draw only to succumb to the cruellest of finishes, a penalty shootout that saw the league side win 4-1.
 
Bo’ness of Lowland League East took care of League Two Falkirk by a solitary goal and the gloriously Scottish named Clachnacuddin (of Inverness) put three past Bonnyton Thistle (of Kilmarnock).
 
Sunday
 
The storm has yet to pass but as I write the wind is easing slightly so I think the worst is past. Hopefully. 🤞
 
We have two matches to look forward to this afternoon: Motherwell at home to Hearts, and Celtic away to bottom side Hibernian.
 
Hearts were well worthy of their 2-0 victory over Motherwell, a header from Braga in the 29th minute and the 3 points assured when Calvin Miller struck home in 86 minutes.
 
Over to a blustery Easter Road.
 
Having had another rough night Saturday (I won’t bore you with details) I woke up Sunday feeling incredibly nervous. All the stats pointed to a Celtic victory and by all accounts a comfortable one if the odds were to be believed. Yet despite everything I couldn’t shake this feeling that it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as many would have you think. Top against bottom what could go wrong? Plenty, and plenty did.
 
Ok, so Celtic walked away with the three points having won the match 2-1 and whilst in terms of league positions and titles a victory is a victory and fans should be happy, on closer inspection you’d see the massive flaws in this team that on any given day could be seriously exploited by any other team in the league.
 
It came as absolutely no surprise to anyone when Hibs took the lead. In 3 mins in front of a sparse crowd Celtics defensive vulnerabilities were there for all to see as Hibs' Owen Elding fired past Johnstone in goal and the bottom side led and while a shambles in front of goal from a Celtic corner where Hibs' Kerr headed by his own keeper to make it 1-1 the away side looked once again like a team that had been assembled from hitchhikers at the service stations on the way to Edinburgh. No cohesion, no aggression, no tactics. I defy anyone to tell me what they are because other than hoof ball it’s back pass after back pass. Two very poor teams playing in very poor conditions, passes going astray, shots wide and without the individual brilliance that is Camilo Duran putting the Celts in the driving seat on the 43rd minute and in fairness at least one wonder save from the much maligned (and possibly rightly so) Johnstone in goal. There was nothing else to note in this game.
 
I hate to say it but it was rubbish. I’ve watched thousands of matches in my life, from all sorts of leagues and this would rate highly in the least enjoyable ever list.
 
Now I know some will say “but three points are three points” and whilst that’s true we need to look at this not as Celtic fans but as unbiased football fans. Neither team looked good, neither team dominated, neither side looked like they had any clue what they were meant to be doing, and it certainly didn’t look like there are ten teams between them in the league.
 
Martin O’Neill came out afterward and called it “our best win of the season” and “Even better than last Sunday.” Now far be it from me to criticise the man but was he watching the same match as the rest of us? To believe that was better is Trump level delusion. Høgh once again failed to fire, our defence torn open time after time (and but for poor finishing and a wonderful save this could have been a very different column) our midfield M.I.A and our captain practicing his windmill impression while standing a few feet from Liam Scales.
 
It’s a mess and even the introduction of Jota made no difference.
 
Of course now they’ll probably go out on Wednesday and crush Dundee United (but I wouldn’t bet on it).

So I think that’s enough of a rant from me. Celtic are still top of the league by four points from Rangers so I guess it was effective rubbish.

Have a great week and whatever you’re doing do it well, stay safe and have fun

Til next time …… 🐼

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Eurotrash

Tinfoil Tuesday 🧪 Sci Man Dan takes a look at Owen Benjamin appearing on the Jake Shields podcast where they both just get everything wrong about the moon!



This is What "Not Having a Clue" Looks Like

Barry Gilheany ✍ How African Babies Run The Risk Of Hepatitis B Infection As Part Of RFK, Jr’s War On Vaccines.

On the surface, it looks like an excellent story of medical innovation; another attempt to reduce the scourge of infectious diseases especially in Africa, a continent which has been racked with successive waves of the most appalling diseases known to humanity from HIV to Dengue fever and the Ebola virus. Researchers want to run a clinical trial on an infant vaccine against Hepatitis B in the west African country of Guinea-Bassau an incurable and frequently fatal disease which affects up to one in five adults in that nation. Hepatitis B kills in the most painful and degrading ways possible though liver cancer or liver cirrhosis and in a nation such as Guinea-Bassau that lacks any sort of functioning public health and hospice care services; news of such a development is surely a godsend. What’s not to like?

But strip back the back story (or more accurately the emerging front story) to this clinical trial, then a much more disturbing vista emerges. For why run a ‘trial’ on a vaccine that was developed in the 1970s, licensed in the 1980s and which is widely regarded as safe and effective? The explanatory trail leads all the way back to the US Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK, Jr), and his pathological anti-vaccine agenda that he has pursued for many years before entering President Donald Trump’s second administration. For the question, the trial is posing is whether or not there are unnoticed side effects caused by giving the babies the vaccines within hours of birth which is the current protocol. If one recalls that vaccine scepticism towards, for example, the Covid-19 vaccine was based not overtly on administration of the vaccine itself but in isolated incidence of cardiopathic responses of miniscule proportions of those who had taken the shot, then such drip-by-drip attempts to undermine public trust in vaccine safety as opposed to overt blanket opposition to inoculation makes sense. The idea is to sow confusion and uncertainty among the public in order to undermine vaccination programmes. Introducing a cloud of ambiguity was the MO behind Dr Andrew Wakefield’s notoriously fraudulent study of eight child subjects in 1998 which purported to show a link between receipt of the MMR vaccine by infants at eighteen months and the onset of autism and which has been categorically debunked but not before the re-emergence of measles in certain parts of the world due to the drop in herd immunity levels caused by belief in the MMR-autism link by worried parents.

The damage that would be wrought by this unnecessary clinical trial would be even worse at the micro level for the people of Guinea-Bassau. For without vaccination, around 14 in every 100 babies born of mothers of Hepatitis B will develop chronic hepatitis themselves. If babies receive a vaccine at birth, with routine doses on follow-up, that drops to just four in a hundred. But without that birth shot, the rate almost doubles to seven or eight per hundred[1].

Anti-vaccine groups cover their tracks with the common ruse that there is nothing sinister in checking if something is safe, all the while deliberatively refusing to recognise welters of evidence that prove the given vaccine or procedure is safe. And vaccine trialling does not come without human cost. A randomised control trial necessitates that a large cohort of people do not get the treatment – meaning that babies in a country where one in five mothers has Hep B would be denied a working, lifesaving treatment, just to satisfy the curiosities of RFK, Jr, and his deluded, cultish followers.[2]

But why pick Guinea-Bassau for an experiment to test the side-effects as opposed to the efficacy of vaccines? The answer is that no similar clinical trial would meet required ethical standards in the US or any other advanced First World nation. The legally dubious nature of the proposed trial were sufficiently apparent to the judicial police in Guinea-Bassau who raided the offices of the researchers and seized Hep B vax doses in order to clarify the circumstances surrounding the vaccine.[3]

The researchers were associated with the Bandim Health Project and received $3.2m in combined funding from the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the Pershing Foundation, and the Bluebell Foundation. The research was controversial because of RFK Jr’s eulogising of Bandim Health Project’s co-founders Peter Aby and Christie Hubell as “the deities of vaccine research” for their work on the supposed effects of the DTP (Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussion) vaccine. He praised Aby as a ‘very famous’ researcher on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2023. He also cited Aby’s work in discussions surrounding his decision to halt US aid to Gavi – the Global Vaccine Alliance. RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine views were a major factor in the shelving of an Agricultural Department’s avian flu response plan in February 2025, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter; a pause which caused alarm amongst lawmakers as it is at that time that wild birds begin migrating for the winter.[4]

As stated, before vaccination within 24 hours of birth is an established public health intervention that can automatically reduce the risks of infection. Tarik Jasoevic, a WHO spokesperson, has stated that withholding the immunisation would be unethical and would expose new-borns to serious and potentially irreversible harm. In the words of Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has stated bluntly that Kennedy ‘wants to make it so we don’t use a birth dose here in this country…. That’s the goal.”[5]

Stig Bassen Hansen, a founding member of the project based at the University of Southern Denmark where an ethics committee gave the go-ahead for the trial, resigned from it on these grounds:

You are now enrolling numbers in a lottery to test a hypothesis … The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose; those who “lost the lottery” face in their earliest possible days the risk of contracting Hep B which can cause irreversible, lifelong damage. They contact Hep B in the context of a research project which makes their infection happen, in effect, by design.[6]

A closer look at the health profile of Guinea-Bassau and the nexus between the Bandim Health Project and figures within the African nation’s administration throws into sharp relief the preposterous nature of the now abandoned clinical trial. Guinea-Bassau has some of the highest rates of Hep B globally with about 8% of adults carrying the virus. While it may be transmitted from mother to child during birth, it can also be transmitted from another parent, relative, sibling, or caregiver. Children infected with Hep B in the first year of life are significantly more likely to develop severe outcomes, including chronic infection and liver cancer.[7]

The Bandim Health Project has operated in Guinea-Bassau for decades and is closely embedded in the country’s health system. In the words of Mogda Rabolo, former health minister and president of the Institute for Global Health and Development in Guinea-Bassau, the country does not have a single credible institution in public health at this point in time. It is hardly surprising that at least one top official, the current director of public health held a dual appointment with Bandim as recently as December 2025 and that mixed messages have emanated from what pass as health authorities on approval of the clinical trials.[8]

The health security of the people of Guinea-Bassau to the depredations of such experiments would have been further imperilled by the obstacles to obtaining informed consent because of low literacy rates and language barriers. For the phrase in the local Creole for Hep B and any other illness causing jaundice is “febri amarelu” or a yellow fever which is also the name of a separate disease. How is any form of “informed consent” possible in such a milieu?[9]

But for once there is a happy, if not ever after encomium, to this story. For in a post on his LinkedIn account on Wednesday October 21st , the lead researcher on the project Frederic Schultz-Buchhalzer announced that the trial had been halted as it had not been given the necessary government approval.[10] Global outrage at this attempt by influential voices and interests in the US to coax a vulnerable African nation into hosting a totally unethical and likely harmful “clinical trial” which they would not dare attempt on their fellow citizens has led to this very welcome climbdown. Voices around the African continent have been alerted to this attempt to exploit, in the words of Robolo “the asymmetric relationship between Global North research institutions and the Global South”[11] in order to foist this Tuskegee type medical experiment on an unsuspecting population. Is it too much to expect that this is a first step towards vaccine justice in its totality for the Global South.

References

[1] James Ball. RFK, Jr’s anti-vax gamble with African babies’ lives is an experiment in cruelty. The New World 17 October 2026.

[2] Ibid

[3] Nilay Chakrobarty. Police raid offices of RFK, Jr – endorsed research planning vaccine trial for 7,000 African newborns. International Business (IB) Times UK

[4] Rachel Shin and Marcia. Brown RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine views helped sideline a bird flu plan. Politico.

[5] Melody Schreiber. Experts fear ‘unethical’ vaccine is a prototype for US studies under RFK, Jr. 

[6] Ibid

[7] Melody Scheiber. Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK, Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bassau.

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid

[10] Melody Scheiber Controversial US-backed trial on African newborns halted 

[11] Ibid

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

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