Michael Patrick Oleary News Today

Part Two by Michael Patrick O’Leary In my previous article I reviewed Hannah Barnes’s excellent book Time to Think about the bizarre and horrific events at the GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) clinic operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London. The NHS has closed the clinic after a number of […]

Part the Second By Michael Patrick O’Leary Declinism Last week, I wrote that for decades there had been a thriving literary genre consisting of works that portrayed Britain as the sick man of Europe (as the Ottoman Empire used to be known) and, indeed, in poor health globally. Much of this rhetoric came from the […]

Part the First By Michael Patrick O’Leary There is a certain class of Sri Lankan citizen who believes that their country would be better if still ruled by the British as part of its benevolent Empire. This is pure fantasy because the Empire was never benevolent and there would be no chance of Britain ruling […]

By Michael Patrick O’Leary SSAC In 1982, I moved from Manchester to London to take up a job as assistant secretary to the SSAC (Social Security Advisory Committee) which was then chaired by Sir Arthur Armitage, who was vice-chancellor of my alma mater, Manchester University. Sir Arthur introduced me to Lady Armitage thus, “Michael has […]

By Michael Patrick O’Leary As I was reading Finding Arthur, the word picaresque kept coming unbidden to my mind, because the plot revolves around a journey during which interesting and scary things happen to the protagonists. The author, Shama Perera, told me that one of her aims in writing the book was to take the […]

By Michael Patrick O’Leary On October 13, 2017, we heard the sad news of the death of our very dear friend, the Most Venerable Meeriyabedde Upananda Mahanayaka Thera, the Mahanayaka of Uva Amarapura Nikaya. We knew the Most Venerable Upananda for a long time before we realized how eminent he was. We just knew that […]

A review of the Liz Truss biography by Harry Cole and Richard Heale by Michael Patrick O’Leary The Life of Truss When Liz Truss sacked her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, she held a press conference in which she gave an even more inept performance than usual in attempting to justify the U-turn (now called volte face) […]