Page 8 - John Downing News Today

Referendums often bring king-size political headaches to governments – especially the apparently easy and well-intentioned ones.

It would have been worth a surprise win just to see the mask of horror on key Sinn Féin people’s faces as they faced into a snap mid-winter general election caused by their own playing with political fire.

Over 20 years ago, in July 2001 to be precise, Bertie Ahern was on an official visit to Brazil and Argentina and in conversation over a quiet beer with journalists he was asked: “Do you think we’ll be having the same conversation about political deadlock in Northern Ireland 20 years from now?”

It would have been worth a surprise win just to see the mask of horror on key Sinn Féin people’s faces as they faced into a snap mid-winter general election caused by their own playing with political fire.

I was in Paris for a weekend in late March 2004 when Ireland’s smoking ban in all indoor public places – including pubs – kicked in. French friends were flabbergasted at the resultant headline news as the ban totally bucked the stereotypical view of the Irish.

As a legend of diplomacy Henry Kissinger had a very deft way with words which left one thinking: What is he actually saying here?

For more than a decade, the Keene Family YMCA has been helping families in need buy gifts for Christmas. And this year, by paying $2 to wear jeans on Fridays,

The Black Thursday riots in Dublin city centre were the biggest flashpoint so far in the emergence of the far right in this country.

Austrians’ greatest trick, we are told, has been to convince the world that Adolf Hitler was German and the sublime Beethoven was Austrian. But we are reminded by an ongoing row about Hitler’s birthplace that the opposite was the case, though both men obviously had strong associations with both countries.

Ours is a country that doesn’t have a national independence day. Ireland got its first leg up the ladder of international respectability in the UN due to its inclusive ethos and sympathy for small nations.