@radiobrendan For many of the old and not-so-old bearded lefties, both men and, um, women, it’s a nightmare scenario. A presidential candidate under the auspices of former heads of state Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana sweeping to victory in next year’s election....
@radiobrendan After eight years of the good, the bad and the ugly with Juan Manuel Santos, next year the Colombian electorate will vote for a new president. There’s still a bit to go before we know the, um, range of candidates on the actual ballot paper, but there are a few who have already indicated […]
@radiobrendan In a similar fashion to our Bogotá ‘bull’ report a few weeks back, the following is the original script of our latest report for RTÉ’s World Report, this time on the growing number of Venezuelans entering and staying in Colombia. You can listen...
@radiobrendan «Be careful lads, it’s not safe to walk around here on your own at night.» «Yea, yea, we hear you. Don’t worry, though, we’re well used to perceived ‘dodgy’ areas, we’ll be fine.» After over five years living in Colombia...
@radiobrendan We’ve a slightly different approach to things with this post. Below is the script of a report we did for Ireland’s state broadcaster RTÉ on the recent return of bullfighting to Bogotá. So for English-language learners, you can listen to the report on...
@radiobrendan For a small country without a history of conquest, the Irish do certainly get around. Of course the chief reason most left and still leave the island was and is for economic reasons. Ireland has only ever been able to sustain a certain number; whether it could or...
@radiobrendan As we looked at in our last post, Colombia is, from a tourism perspective anyway, ‘the country of the moment’. In the coming months and years it may be about to see unprecedented numbers visiting its shores as word has finally got out of the many natural beauties the place has to offer. What’s […]
@radiobrendan Stop the presses! ‘Colombian politician in corruption scandal!’ In a country that does corruption as regularly and spectacularly as the ‘best’ of them, it’s not a very exciting announcement, is it? It’s even less so when the story comes from the country’s backwater department of Putumayo. ‘Move on, nothing to see here.’ Yet, digging […]
@radiobrendan It’s been quite a year so far. In the sporting world, people have called it the ‘year of the underdog’. The biggest representation of that was Leicester City Football Club’s remarkable triumph in England’s Premier League; from 5000-to-1 outsiders to top dog in the space of nine months. You also had unheralded Iceland, with […]
@radiobrendan In a country with such vast inequality, along with a significant disconnect between officialdom and the masses, to say Colombia’s ‘vote for peace’ is its moment of truth might be overstretching it a little. Nonetheless, in the unlikely event of the Colombian electorate rejecting the October 2nd plebiscite on the agreement reached between the […]
