Football banter (or, in modern usage, “bants” or even “#bantz”), can range from the strange to the self-deprecating to the plain awful, but it will always need its edge.
The concept of boycotts, and particularly cultural and academic boycotts, have for a long time been problematic for people engaged in the promotion of free expression.
Religious persecution is real, and should be fought. Freedom of belief is a basic right. But blasphemy laws protect only power, and never people.
Whatever it is you care about, think before you tweet: Is this too good to be true? Do I have any way of checking this for myself?
Three years ago this week, David Cameron announced that a public inquiry into phone hacking would be set up, under the guidance of Lord Justice Leveson. It may be difficult to imagine now, but this was generally seen as a positive step.
An Irish court has created a precedent where damage to a person’s reputation could lead to criminal sanction — and no one seems to have noticed, writes Padraig Reidy
The narrative of evil newspaper versus innocent, naive, poor little politician is self-pitying and self-defeating, writes Padraig Reidy
In an authoritarian society, with power utterly concentrated to the leader and his cadre, there is no such thing as an isolated failure. As a result, every aspect of life must be spun.
In over 80 years, the mechanisms of public outrage have changed very little.
The archdiocese of Rio is offended and reportedly threatening to sue Italian broadcaster RAI for an advert showing the Christ The Redeemer statue wearing the Italy Jersey. Such complaints of “offence” are really demands for “respect” — in the Corleone sense
Poets, we all agree, are terribly misunderstood and undervalued. If it were not for poets, how would we know what things were like other things. How would we live! How would we love! How would we die!
Belfast’s Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle is one of those things that makes a soft Southern Irish atheist Catholic like me think I’ll never truly understand Northern Ireland.