The Sigla Blog

While writing an article about the many legged music and culture machine that is Ladyfest Cork, I discovered several fantastic bands were on the line-up. Some I already know and am fond of - Janey Mac, Party Weirdo, Queen Kong, You’re Only Massive - but two in particular have really grabbed me, both all […]

Thanks to Jazz Biscuit who today took time out from making us laugh to post a video about Platelet Donation. Having received a lot of blood and platelet transfusions during chemotherapy, I used to do a lot of press stuff for the IBTS to raise awareness about platelets. Everyone knows about giving blood, but very […]

After picking up the Guardian yesterday for the third installment of The Great Poets series (Sylvia Plath, with a wonderful intro from Margaret Drabble), I spotted this this story:

“For men across Europe there is now an alternative to waiting in line, wrestling with a telephone operator or double-, triple-, quadruple-clicking on an unresponsive website. Yes, […]

Hilarious stuff from Harry Enfield’s Television Programme, partly inspired by:
a) today is International Women’s Day. Celebrate it.
b) the kind of spam mail that pops in Shane’s letterbox. Did you know that empowerment can be yours for an IWD discounted rate of €125?
c) many conversations about women, men, motherhood, mothers, feminism, blogging etc I had with […]

Back in December, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Doris Lessing recalled visiting a friend in Zimbabwe who was working as a teacher. The visit opened her eyes to a lot of things, including the dearth of books available in schools. The people she met had very little of anything, but they had a hunger […]

This weekend I’m chuffed to be heading off on a writer’s weekend. First a confession: I can’t decide if I’m more excited about the idea of writing or the thought of uninterrupted night-time sleep. Myself a a couple of other reluctant scribes are heading off together to do some mutual arse-kicking and get writing. This […]

No, not a deliberately provocative post title, but Sabrina’s new project and an excellent idea.

Two Tits and a Vote is a website intended to help Irish women become politically active around the issues that affect them. Basically it is set-up to make it easy to take action in under 10 minutes - you can send […]

Proof that one person can make a difference. Well done Claire.

*You’ve probably seen the above ad as part of Trócaire’s Lenten Campaign for International Women’s Day about gender inequality. If you haven’t, no doubt you’ve heard about the row with the BCI who have banned the ad because it was deemed to have a “political end”. Red Mum discusses the controversy and Hugh also […]

Seeing as George Bernard Shaw in was mentioned in the comments of today’s earlier post above, and we were talking about banned books yesterday, I just read this great quote from the man himself in the UK Indo today:

“Assassination is the ultimate form of censorship”.

The full article is well worth a read and linked to […]

Apparently The Vagina Monologues has had to be renamed for a production run in Florida. One of the play’s aims is to embrace the various words for vagina and encourage women not feel shame when talking about their bodies - a point lost on a local Florida woman who complained (after seeing the play’s […]

Perhaps it had something to with the spirit of the new year and resolutions, but after watching RTE’s excellent Arts Lives programme, Flann O’Brien - The Lives of Brian, I ruefully remarked to the other half about how I wished my spoken Irish wasn’t so patchy. Flann, who not only wrote many of his Cruiskeen […]