Bunker Roy explains his solar-engineering college and castigates the vested-interest aid industry to Samuel McManus (Simon Cumbers Award) It is is Diwali, the most important festival of the Hindu calendar,…

Where’s the interest in creating money? We’ve become used to the idea that a society based on loans is normal and sustainable     ‘In most countries, about three per…

Irish Election Literature: Hardiman blooded for FF in Dun Laoghaire Supreme Court Judge, Adrian Hardiman Libertarian, scourge of the state and political correctness. by Kyran Fitzgerald ‘Politically promiscuous, he was…

UniCredit breached liquidity requirements in 2007.  Matthew Elderfield nods.  The interconnectedness of banking dysfunctionality. Michael Smith There is a general official view that Ireland’s ethical delinquencies are in the past. …

We need a ‘Social Europe’, not just Stability, Jobs and Growth   By Niall Crowley Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, did for it last year, in the…

Unions should sponsor research as to their impact on the equality measure, the gini co-efficient; or risk being seen as a force, sometimes, for the already relatively privileged   By…

The battle to protect our climate appears lost, with humanity condemned to a slow and strange form of collective suicide   By James Nix Suicide is a controversial word to…

Early acceptance of the life-changing science on climate, resources and biodiversity curtails the stages of grief for the doom of humanity   By John Gibbons Once upon a time the…

Maggie Armstrong interviews coming (now IMPAC-nominated) author, Kevin Barry   Kevin Barry has for some time been creeping in the background of the literary establishment, and of my mind. The…

Is Guggi any goodi?   By Maggie Armstrong   One of the wallflowers in Woody Allen’s ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ notes the danger that we “fall in love with the artist,…

Fifty years of Irish Planning The  1963 Planning Act left a legacy of sprawl and dross By Ian Lumley   2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the legislation which has…

Since the last edition of Village, in August, the global economy has teetered. From its foundation in 2004, Village has been one of the few local publications that systematically criticised the thrust of the direction of the economy and society. If it did not necessarily predict the at least temporary rout of capitalism then surely it would not have been surprised by it. The new Village takes up where the previous one was suspended.

The Famine led to land-clearance and an unhealthy fetish for livestock, beef and milk, as well as for sugar, white bread and tea, a new book reminds us   Article…

Despite being a relatively mundane product, cement has created some of the richest corporations in the world, not least Ireland’s CRH plc Article by Seamus Maye In a simple world,…

  The Outsiders’ Insider by Donncha O’Connell   ‘she used her privileges well and usually for the betterment of others ‘ ‘She seems more radical because she is a change…

Judge’n’all as he is it is disingenuous for Mr Justice John Cooke to say the “motion for him to recuse himself from hearing the case was not necessary as, if…

  Nearly all Ireland’s banks breached liquidity requirements, leading to the lack of liquidity that the government provided a guarantee against, and which ultimately emerged as the insolvency that bankrupted…

Hogan’s magic touch So water charges will not become fully operational until 2016, at the earliest. Coincidentally, a general election will be held before that date. Big Phil Hogan who…

Michael Smith interviews Trina Vargo, President of the US-Ireland Alliance   With no particular political connections, 25-year old Trina Vargo, from small-town Pennsylvania, and fresh from a politics degree in…