A listen to the radio over the past week has been a way of confirming that we live in a time of extreme highs and extreme lows. On one side, the outbreak of rioting and violence in Britain and Belfast. On the other, Ireland cleaning up at the Olympics. It has been whiplash-inducing: one moment you were wondering what drives people towards such extreme hatred of others, the next you felt puffed up with pride at Ireland’s incredible athletes.
A bank holiday coupled with the shocking and ongoing nature of the rioting meant that news programmes chiefly focused on getting experts from across the UK and Northern Ireland to discuss what was happening. With fears by Wednesday that more violence was on the way, there was a collective grasp towards making sense of what was going on rather than holding a “debate” about why it was happening – which was a relief.
Some of the strongest words from the North could be found on News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), where Rachael English has been settling well into her new role. That’s what you would expect from a consummate broadcaster who spent years at the news coalface on Morning Ireland.
On Tuesday, Claire Hanna, the SDLP MP for Belfast South and Mid Down, joined English to give her response to the rioting. Hanna was not shy in describing some of the participants in the Belfast violence as “useful idiots” supplementing known far-right actors and “grifters who are trying to get themselves a profile”. While much of the commentary this week was strong, Hanna’s was among the most pointed, and a clear sign that there won’t be pussyfooting around the impact of violence against minority communities.
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When asked if she was surprised to see Tricolours at the Belfast anti-immigration protest, Hanna noted that the people holding the flags were associating “with groups who have marginalised, and oppressed, and attacked, and murdered people from this island for many decades”, which “shows what we’re dealing with” – and that this represents “an infection and not a tumour”.
When English went on to introduce Des Cahill with the latest from the Olympic Games in Paris, both struck completely different tones, perhaps due to the almost 20 minutes of difficult content leading up to their conversation. “It’s been a tough morning for Irish competitors,” English began, “with a series of disappointments and near misses.”
“We should start with saying ‘Happy Kellie Harrington Day’ – we’re keeping it all positive here as best we can,” Cahill said from Paris, perhaps a little conscious of the otherwise grim news floating around. But soon he too was talking about “drama and tension”, though at least it was in relation to showjumping and not something more nefarious.
There were strong words too when Micheál Martin spoke to Kerry Today with Jerry O’Sullivan (Radio Kerry, weekdays) on Tuesday. What started as a piece about the release of four white-tailed-eagle chicks into the wild was quickly turned around by O’Sullivan into a discussion about the recent violence.
This gave the Tánaiste the chance to decry the violence and “mindless, ill-informed” reasons behind it. He also aimed criticism towards social-media bosses, saying that governments need to take a “firmer line” on such incidents happening as a result of posts on their platforms. O’Sullivan asked an important question when he said to Martin: “Is Elon Musk going to pay any attention to what you say?”
Rather than insulting Martin, he was pointing out that, for all the fierce words, it might be hard to make an actual impact. “I would think it has to be a European Union approach,” conceded Martin, who went on to call Musk and his site X “problematic”.
Yet on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) the next day, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee stopped short of commenting on Musk but would say that social-media platforms “have a lot to answer for”. Unfortunately, by now we already know that. The move towards calling out Musk and X, where far-right members have been able to gather quite the following, is much overdue.
Why do girls as young as seven feel they’re held to different beauty standards from boys? That’s what the psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley discussed with Jonathan Healy (standing in for Ciara Kelly) on Newstalk Breakfast (Newstalk, weekdays) on Wednesday. It’s an important conversation; as O’Malley says, a focus on looks can have a negative impact on young girls. But the analysis was frustratingly narrow at times, particularly around the idea that the issue is largely down to girls being complimented on social media for their looks.
Perhaps that’s just the nature of having only eight minutes to talk about such a huge topic, but I was itching for a deeper probing of the impact of “vanity” on young girls – and what is even meant by “vanity”. I could also have done without time spent on making sure people thought it wasn’t a “bad” thing to compliment a girl on her looks. (Could there be a moment to ask: is it not?) But the discussion of the fact that it’s not just girls affected but boys, too, and O’Malley’s advice not to mindlessly compliment girls on their appearance, were certainly worth paying attention to.
Finally, if you did a double take when the sounds of Ireland’s finest showbands came blasting out of your radio on Monday, you can thank Charles Hendy of the “Dundalk supergroup” The Mary Wallopers for that. RTÉ Radio 1 slotted him into its bank-holiday schedule with an hour that gave us some throwback respite from the news cycle.
I’m not sure how many new fans of showbands he picked up, but I’d wager a fair few people were bobbing their heads to tunes that they’d normally roll their eyes at. Or maybe they stayed tuned in to hear more of that Dundalk accent. C’mon the town, as they say.
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