Mike McGrath-Bryan

A black tote bag with a portrait and quote of James Conolly printed on it

Alright that's it! I'm doing it! I'm doing the James Connolly totes!

Gets yours here: selkiesstudio.com/shop/connolly-tote

RTÉ 2XM

Coming up at 5pm: another episode of Raidió Mar Dhea gets an encore on RTÉ 2XM!

New Irish music - and one of yer last chances to hear yer boi on 2XM before its closure on NYE.

www.rte.ie/radio/2xm/

Logan says Israel should be removed from Eurovision Three-time Eurovision winner Johnny Logan has said that Israel shouldn't be allowed to take part in the song contest.

"I don't think that Israel should be allowed to hide under the umbrella of the Eurovision... make it look as though, everything's okay, business as usual, because it's not."

Maith an fear Johnny! 👏

www.rte.ie/news/2025/12...
#Speirgorm

"Masculine leadership", says a man that looks like a 2000s-era Create-a-Wrestler.

More performative cruelty from UK Labour.

At this rate, literally anything and everything that emerges from humanity will be cast as "other" - for a divide-and-rule machine that has to work double-shifts to distract people from the state of the world.

#spéirghorm #ireland #actuallyautistic #adhd

Or non-binary folk? Performative cruelty

Literal red letter day.

And two absolute no-brainer sources for decent cheesy films, too, no need for it

Street Fighter, 1995. A disaster of a film that utterly defiles its source material and all that is good about cheap chopsocky films.

Rescued by the literal deathbed ham-job of Raul Julia, eating the scenery whole as a parting gift to his kids, who were fans of the games.

#spéirghorm #ireland

The inverse of that time I bought Wip3out second-hand for PS1, and mysteriously got the Special Edition disc!

"You rang?"

Two kittens in a cat bed - one, a tabby with a black nose blotch, lies coiled; the other, slightly more tiger-ish, stands alert.

People inside the phone, say hello to Cha and Miah - the pair of house goblins that have seen fit to adopt my partner and I. You will be seeing more of them.

#spéirghorm #ireland

Some footballer passed his driving test and you'd think the aul lads were his own fathers in the comments, but let them see the same type of fluff news about a woman and they're braying like lonely mules

What are these PACs, of which you speak - with reference to their place in Irish history?

Roy Keane stares straight ahead wearing a dark jumper

A child in a t-shirt and climbing helmet points to someone

This is ART. Someone give the #LateLateToyShow producers a raise.

How I was nearly a Late Late Toy Show child star - and what I learned A childhood brush with the Late Late Toy Show was an early life lesson in setting and managing expectations, acting as a milestone in Examiner man Mike McGrath-Bryan’s upbringing in the 1990s

My annual Toy Show tradition! Remininscing on that time I narrowly missed out on being a Toy Show kid!

#spéirghorm #ireland #latelatetoyshow

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ar...

The Best Albums of 2025: Day 2, M–Z Day two of our three-day look at the year’s best records.

My shout on @bandcamp.com's Best of 2025 list is here.

Dublin producer Ian Nyquist's album Gilded, which takes the bodhrán and recasts it as the controller of electronic music, rather than the sample. Pick it up this #BandcampFriday!

#spéirghorm #ireland #music

daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2025...

And I'd encourage anyone reading my post or Carroll-MacNeill's speech, to also look up Irish activists like @trasinscneach.bsky.social to find out what needs doing to fix Irish trans healthcare and law.

Trans-rights, neocolonialism & condemning transphobia - Doing Feminist Legal Work Fine Gael Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill spoke in the Dáil on December 3rd on the subject of transphobia, which she definitively and

Here, I wrote something.

"It is incumbent on the Irish government and the Irish public to fulfil the promise of the nation and to continue to fight any transphobic and neocolonial encroachment on Irish shores."

dflw.ie/trans-rights...

Or turning a blind eye to Rowling's actions in pursuit of the Harry Potter bucks.

lovely words but what about their actions? The HSE put the head of the NGS in charge their trans research. Hillary Cass described the NGS as the 'gold standard' despite being ranked the worst in Europe. They've fluffed on hate speech, gender recognition & no ban on conversion practices yet either.

82.7 BILLION. That much money shouldn't exist.

And for what? More fucking comic-book films. I can see AEW having its telly and streaming deals politely burnt off, too.

They won't like when a television puppet pops in to disrespect him either, though - not in the spirit of respectability, either

Wasn't on my bingo card, tbh!

It wouldn't even be nostalgia! You can slot that whole gang into the present day and they'd be relevant in different ways.

Cool music aliens with dad jokes, cutie half-cracked doggie, holiday-meat animals on the make, an infantile sock monster with a comfort object?

Yes.

Why would they? We're an independent People's Republic.

Honestly, that money should have gone into turning the Covid-era Den revival into a weekly family variety hour, and tour that around the island - The Everyman, The Ark, college function halls, arts centres, etc.

7. To gratify friends and irritate enemies.

In 1969 Roland Barthes drew up a list of ten reasons why he imagined that he wrote. Here, to gratify or irritate you, is number seven:

The High Kings performing in The Black Forge....
Go to hell guys. #McGregor