Apparently there are 43 million people in the United States who claim Irish ancestry. So if we believe that, Irish Americans outnumber Irish people by over eight to one. The latest Irish census puts the population at 5.5 million. We are all familiar with the Irish Famine in the 19th Century. Now apparently the Irish population before that disaster was 8.5 million and following the deaths of over one million from starvation and the emigration of at least another million if not

As an Irish person, I can well appreciate different peoples or ethnicities disputing the same territory. I only have to look to the north of my own country to see that Republicans and Unionists have been fighting over the same small piece of land for hundreds of years. Nowadays, thankfully, peace has broken out and it seems that future arguments about territory and sovereignty will take place in parliament or at the ballot box, where they belong. Sadly, we cannot say the same

I mentioned this in my travel blog, but it is such an unusual phenomenon that I felt it deserved an article of its own. I drove around Azerbaijan for eight days and discovered something rather strange about the country’s roads: there are speed cameras everywhere. Now, I DO mean everywhere. Even on super-wide motorways, the speed limit can suddenly decrease from 110 to 60, for no apparent reason. Watched on every road: Not occasionally, and not just on dangerous stretches – ev

I recently visited Azerbaijan and I wrote a very complimentary travel blog recommending it as a tourist destination. I didn’t mention the political situation there at all as I didn’t feel it was relevant to tourism. However, I feel it does merit a separate article as the issues of history, geography and politics interest me greatly. President Ilham Aliyev, ruler of Azerbaijan. On my first night in Baku, I got chatting with a local man – we weren’t talking about politics or an

I visited Azerbaijan in late summer; well it was September but it was still up to 30C most days and the skies were pristine blue. I think summer there probably runs well into October. The country’s best features for me are its mountain scenery and I reckon a lot of the high mountain passes would not be navigable in winter. Road to Khinaliq The country is not a mainstream tourist destination and is unlikely to become one for some time. It is a land of contrasts. In the capital