@radiobrendan A significant factor in man’s ability to obliterate his fellow man, as has happened on countless occasions, is to view him as less than human: mere vermin to be exterminated. Such a mentality is usually witnessed amongst competing cultures or races; the...
@radiobrendan Colombia’s recent high-level gay sex scandal that has caused somewhat of a sensation brings into question, yet again, journalism’s role as a watchdog with the public’s interests at its heart (it’s always been a grand theory that). This latest...
@radiobrendan What heady times they are experiencing back on the homeland. Excitement is almost at an unprecedented level as the electorate in the Republic of Ireland gets ready to go to the polls on February 26th to vote for a new parliament. In the relatively short campaign — the election was only called earlier this […]
@radiobrendan I’ve never really agreed to doing what are variable types of work by numbers. For example, back in my radio newsroom days we would be given a certain amount of stories to file daily, while the length of the hourly and main news bulletins had to be the same...
@radiobrendan It was with some bemusement I found myself watching the Fox News hosted US Republican Party presidential candidates’ debate the other night ahead of the upcoming Iowa caucus. Most of it was utterly cringeworthy — no surprises there I hear you say. Perhaps we should cut them some slack; it is after all just […]
@radiobrendan We are, as it’s said, shaped by our history; and certain past experiences define us more than others. This year, Ireland is gearing up to commemorate the centenaries of a couple of such ‘game-changing’ events. In general, they are viewed as...
@radiobrendan A couple of years back the sister blog to this looked at some of Bogotá’s ‘broken windows’. That is to say, in relation to the broken windows theory on crime and its prevention, things in the Colombian capital that could be seen as pointing to a...
@radiobrendan In many ways there is a sense of inevitability to all of this. Although those who call the shots in both Colombia and Venezuela are pretty much from the same stock, the ideologies they (claim) to follow are far from similar. Considering socialist Venezuela’s...
@radiobrendan Well, that was pretty clear cut. Not only did the British Conservative Party get re-elected, but it did so in rather impressive fashion, securing an overall majority in the House of Commons. There’s no need for a messy coalition with those annoying Liberal...
@radiobrendan Colombia’s unique strata system has been under the spotlight of late. To the uninitiated, this basically divides the population into ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ according to the area they live in, not by the actual living standards of each individual or family. The...
