This week Emma Connolly rages against the wide and excessive availability of the humble but crafty jelly, the quickest way to inject a child with enough sugar and e-numbers to careen them into outer space (mentally at least). However, if we can defend the suppliers and dealers of cola bottles and gummy bears, at least they’re being eaten unlike the piles of grinning, soon-to-be-rotting, pumpkins.

In the latest satirical, sci-fi iteration of the history of religion, food is now sacrificed across Ireland in the name of Instagram and wall decorations, at the altar of American culture. Standing in the carpark of a German supermarket, the sheer number of pumpkins being wheeled by is startling. No one likes pumpkin soup that much.

However, this ship has sailed as the Irish continually prove, if there’s money to be made of something we’ll sell our souls quite easily. The Púca Festival in Meath describes itself as ‘authentic and immersive’ and ‘strongly rooted in tradition’. You can, and must, pay to experience ‘where Halloween began’. Everything is sponsored by Heineken and the Credit Union, some of the lesser-known otherworldly spirits of ancient times.

There isn’t much left to suck dry of Irish culture, but sure look let’s keep trying. The first year of St Brigid’s Day in 2023 was peaceful; this year, you could find your inner goddess for a price in the Triskel. Where was the Inner Goddess hiding before now, and why is she suddenly only appearing for a price? The truest embodiment of Irish culture is that our otherworldly spirits know they can charge an appearance fee, and they know that we’ll pay it.

Protecting women

Mary ‘May’ McGee, one half of the couple who took on the Irish state in 1973 and won, passed away earlier this week. Ms McGee and her husband Seamus, who passed away in 2024, fought successfully in the Supreme Court for the right to contraception.

In 1973 and at 27, Mary was a mother of four; another pregnancy could have ended her life. Don’t forget, this was just 52 years ago. The marriage bar was lifted the following year.

They were unlikely to have been the only ones to make such a case but they were the first, and to that we can all be eternally grateful. However, we can never let the actions of people like Mary and Seamus be easily forgotten, not when degenerate scumbags claim to be protecting women by throwing fireworks at guards in 2025. And not just the boys in Citywest either, but the lads muttering over their pints about immigrants and different cultures having no respect for women. Where are they when it counts?

Where are these men when female college students are getting groped at bars every day of the week when they’re queuing for a pint? Where are these brave men when 1,250 incidents of domestic abuse are reported to gardaí every week? Where are these noble barstool lawyers and immigration experts when women’s notes from counselling sessions are demanded and read aloud in an Irish court by the prosecution in rape trials, where the alleged perpetrators are very white and very Irish?

Unless these defenders of morality are ready to listen to Irish women all of the time, their protests mean less than nothing. They’re protecting no-one and nothing but their sense of racist, righteous entitlement, backed by no action and no understanding.

These ‘saviours’ do nothing but embarrass themselves, and the women of Ireland ask you for one thing: shut up and educate yourself.