On Saturday 21st September, my neighbour collapsed and died while walking the hills of Northumberland. The coroner’s report confirmed only that she had had a heart-attack. She was fifty-one...

On 29th August BBC News At Ten headlined with a report on the conviction of the killer of a fifteen-year-old girl in a town in the northeast of England....

Along the high street where I live, there is an advertisement on the side of one of the bus shelters. It features a woman, heavy-set and pictured from behind....

The UK Metereological Office has just reported that we have enjoyed the hottest May on record. Meanwhile, those of us who have lived in the UK during May have...

Sinéad Murphy Driving home after Christmas, we pulled in at the last toll plaza on the M8 to Cork. It had been dark for hours with ‘Storm Gerrit’ still...

Sinéad Murphy On 6th November, Dublin launched its Autism Friendly City plan in a bid to become the world’s most autism friendly capital city. ‘It’s a really exciting day,’...

Sinéad Murphy Safe, Smart, Special – the three pillars of our doublespeak. ‘Safe’ endangers your life; ‘Smart’ degrades your faculties; ‘Special’ makes you normal. * ‘Safe’ would seem to...

Sinéad Murphy The University of Sunderland is advertising ‘masterclasses’ in ‘Menopause in the Workplace.’ The ad has been running on Smooth Radio, a station under the umbrella of Global...

Sinead Murphy As 2020 dawned, two concepts came to loom on our horizon: ‘pandemic’ and ‘lockdown.’ Within a month or two, they had cast their pall over the whole...

Sinead Murphy The showdown between Trudeau and the truckers has shown the real nature of a war that is by now quite obviously not about a virus. On 17th...

Sinead Murphy ‘Goodness’ is not the word I wanted to use in this article. But ‘ethics’ sounded too abstract, ‘morality’ too rule-bound, ‘virtue’ too archaic, and ‘kindness’ too corporate...

Sinead Murphy In the midst of outrage at restrictions on our living arrangements, issued by a UK government that has lost its orientation to reality, two questions arise. The...

The global ‘lockdown’ has sought to defy our capacities for analysis, with its shock-and-awe impact on what has been our way of life. I begin, then, with a more...