Kenneth Henry

[Siegfried Muresan 🇷🇴🇪🇺 @SMuresan]

We firmly reject the Irish Presidency’s negotiating box for the next #EUBudget. It cuts defence as threats multiply, reduces investment in competitiveness as Europe loses ground globally, and leaves farmers and regions underfunded.

After three months, the Irish Presidency has delivered little progress, no meaningful new solutions and a weaker budget. It has reversed the European Commission’s efforts to fund Europe’s new priorities. Europe cannot take on greater responsibilities with fewer resources.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.

[Jacob Coxon @hilbertspaess]

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

[Dolly Parton @DollyParton]

Global icon and humanitarian, Dolly Parton, known to the world as a beloved singer, songwriter, philanthropist, actress, playwright, and author died peacefully today in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 80 years old.

Dolly is preceded in death by her beloved husband of 59 years Carl Thomas Dean (1942 – 2025), her mother Avie Lee Caroline Owens (1923 – 2003), and father, Robert Lee Parton, Sr. (1921 – 2000).

A rhinestone life that shone bright enough for the world to see, Dolly will forever stand as an inspiration not only through her timeless music and prolific songwriting, but also her wit, warmth, and kindness that made us all feel like family. Dolly Parton’s legacy is one of love, compassion, and resilience. With a seven-decade career, she inspired multiple generations of artists and fans with her music and an unwavering commitment to making the world a better place. Her songs will continue to resonate with people of all ages, and her philanthropic work will have a lasting impact.

At Dolly’s request, a small, private service will be held for immediate family. Dolly’s fans and friends from around the world are encouraged to pay tribute to Dolly on social media by tagging @DollyParton or by leaving a message at https://t.co/cLu9I7M2wC

In lieu of flowers the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library at https://t.co/arzrqInqJA

[The Mind Scourge @TheMindScourge]

Contrast this with the pre-1950 practice when even in the midst of great crises (WWI, WWII for example) top leaders still took time to write diaries, retire to country estates, and so forth

In 1938, Roosevelt spends almost a month cruising onboard on a US Navy cruiser down the Pacific coast of Mexico, visits the Galapagos and Clipperton, then back to the Caribbean via Panama and disembarks in Pensacola

Chamberlain maintains his hobby of birding in the fall of 1939.

By comparison today, world leaders when nothing especially acute is happening never seem to have time. They’re barely sleeping, “always on”. There’s a cult of busyness in the modern world that seems inescapable. It’s undoubtedly a byproduct of our information ecosystem - everything is a media effect! - but nonetheless is a distinct phenomenon of our present moment

[Mr Memory @AmIRightSir]

Hilary Benn’s departure from government means that Andy Burnham will be the first Labour Prime Minister who has not (so far) had a member of the Benn family serve in their Cabinet at some point

[The Royal Family @RoyalFamily]

His Majesty received in Audience the Rt. Hon. Andrew Burnham MP and requested him to form a new Administration.  The Rt. Hon Andrew Burnham MP accepted The King's offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

[Kenneth Henry @Kenneth_Henry]

@PolitlcsUK Takes one to know one, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

[BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine @RobLooseCannon]

Brenda Fricker RIP. In honour of her life and legacy, this is piece I wrote about her last year.

For a certain generation of Irish people Brenda Fricker embodies the strong Irish mammy on screen. For younger people she's a movie icon for other reasons. But neither idea comes close to the full story. Fricker has six decades of stage and screen work, over thirty films, and one Oscar, which she won on this day in 1990.

Born in Dublin in 1945, she started out in journalism. Her father Desmond was a journalist at the Irish Times, her mother Bina taught at Stratford College. By nineteen, Brenda was assistant to the art editor at the Irish Times, eyeing a reporter's desk. She fell into acting by chance.

Her first screen role was uncredited in the 1964 British film Of Human Bondage. She honed her craft at the Abbey Theatre, then crossed to England with the National Theatre, the RSC, and the Royal Court. In 1977 she appeared as Nurse Maloney in Coronation Street, attending the birth of Tracy Barlow.

The role that made her a household name was as A&E nurse Megan Roach in Casualty, which launched in 1986. She played the character for 65 episodes across four years, a realistic combination of toughness and compassion that made her fellow cast look amateur on a good day, though she'd never say so herself.

Everything changed in 1989 when Jim Sheridan cast her as Bridget Brown in My Left Foot, the fiercely protective mother of Dublin artist Christy Brown. Fricker became the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, taking Best Supporting Actress. She beat Julia Roberts, Anjelica Huston, Dianne Wiest, and Lena Olin. Her acceptance speech was short and memorable. She thanked Christy Brown simply for being alive, then noted that any woman who gives birth 22 times deserves one of these.

Later that year she appeared in The Field alongside Richard Harris. Years later, asked which films had genuinely moved her forward as an actress, she named three: My Left Foot, The Field, and Cloudburst. Not a Hollywood blockbuster among them. American fame brought offers like Home Alone 2 in 1992, where she played the Pigeon Lady. She was honoured with the Maureen O'Hara Award at the Kerry Film Festival among others. She was no Hollywood robot. Before the Weinstein scandal broke she said publicly he was repulsive, and he would have known it.

Fricker has been open about a difficult life. A teenage car accident put her out of action for nearly two years. She battled tuberculosis and had a kidney removed. She was married to director Barry Davis for fifteen years. They divorced in 1988, partly due to his alcoholism, reconciled in 1990, and he died the following year. During their marriage she suffered six miscarriages.

Fricker played the quintessential Irish Mam on screen while enduring a childhood defined by severe physical abuse at the hands of her own mother Bina. She had self-harmed since childhood, linking it to self-hate and the Catholic imagery of suffering she was raised inside. She made over thirty attempts on her own life before finding a psychiatrist she could trust. She still lives with chronic daily pain, and has described what she goes through as a dreadful death.

I don't want to overshadow her achievements, but it want people know she is not living the comfortable life the label of national treasure might suggest. She lives quietly in the Liberties. She loves her dogs, Guinness, reading poetry, and snooker. She once beat seventeen members of the My Left Foot crew at pool, one after another. I genuinely wish Brenda Fricker a beautiful life, and all the goodness she deserves. We love you Brenda X

[Olivier Awards @OlivierAwards]

Following the passing of beloved actress Dame Penelope Keith, West End theatres will dim their lights for two minutes at 7pm on Wednesday 1 July in her memory.

Dame Penelope began her acting career in repertory theatre and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963. She went on to win the 1976 Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance for the play Donkeys' Years.

[Irish Times Opinion @IrishTimesOpEd]

Gerard Howlin: Keir Starmer made bad choices. Micheál Martin avoids choices altogether https://t.co/GzNK3veduo

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The "Hot Podium Guy" has arrived at No 10

[Kenneth Henry @Kenneth_Henry]

@SamCKx “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Starmer may have achieved more than he ever managed to communicate but he was undone by mistakes he too often lacked the political instinct to avoid.

[Sam @SamCKx]

If Keir Starmer does resign, history will look back on his reign and scratch its head as to why the hell he was so hated.

On paper, he's probably delivered more to working British people in such a short time than any PM for decades.

After inheriting an absolute mess: NHS waiting lists fallen. Worker's rights improved. Rail operators nationalised. Improved relations with EU and improved UK's global reputation. Removed non-dom tax status. Halved childcare costs. Boosted state pensions. Lowest homicide rate in 50 years. Lifted 550k children out of poverty. Immigration vastly reduced.

We are in the age of billionaire funded misinformation, whose sole purpose is to topple democratically elected leaders, and insert leadership that favours the wealthy elites over the working people. Looks like the game plan is working...

[justin serb-ert 🇷🇸🍉 @markocantdunk]

Just finished reading Hemingway’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and I had to stop and take a picture when I got to the famous line about the United States:

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In the era of #ArtificialIntelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/6i9MWs6LJl

[Mark W. @DurhamWASP]

“His deepest need was that people should like him. An admirable trait that; in a spaniel, or a whore — not, I think, in a Prime Minister...”

Francis Urquhart [Ian Richardson] House of Cards

[Timeless Colours @timelesscolours]

Children of the Ruins

Dublin children scavenge through the rubble in search of firewood, just days after the Easter Rising. The human cost of the rebellion was felt most harshly by the city’s poorest.

📷 National Library of Ireland

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

Peter Mandelson has a history. It's one thing for the PM to say nobody told him anything. The question is why didn't he ask?

[Independent Voices @IndyVoices]

"The Profumo scandal and the Epstein files – both steeped in money, sex and a privileged class of people – mark defining moments in social and political history…"

By Anne McElvoy