Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, as reported on this forum, argued that quarantining travellers upon arrival in Ireland would be ‘disproportionate’, because people already living here who test positive for Covid-19 do not have to quarantine. He also argued that it would go against the European Union’s strict rules on allowing freedom of movement and open borders […]
A new poll has found that half of Britons no longer wish to pay a TV licence fee – and that many of them feel the BBC is biased in its reporting. A poll of 1,700 people by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that 56% of respondents supported scrapping the licence fee and believed the BBC […]
“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” WT Yeats said this in Easter, 1916, and I first heard it said during Michael Noonan’s Budget 2014 speech. At the time, the context of their use seemed appropriate, though after a few years of mere cutbacks, bailouts and uncertainty, the context of their […]
During her first press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about President Joe Biden’s stance on certain abortion policies. “I will just take the opportunity to remind all of you that he is a devout Catholic and somebody who attends church regularly,” Psaki responded. “He started his day attending church with his […]
Politicians around the world must be held to account for mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic, argues the executive editor of the BMJ, Dr Kamran Abbasi. At the very least, mishandling Covid-19 might be classified as ‘social murder’. When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths, for the sake […]
The debate over human “enhancement”, or the biotechnological heightening of human abilities, is prominent in bioethics. The most controversial stance is transhumanism, whose advocates urge us to develop biotechnologies enabling the “radical” elevation of select capacities, above all, rationality. Transhumanists insist that their vision of the radical bioenhancement of human capacities is light-years removed from […]
Should Micheál Martin go to the White House for St Patrick’s Day? VOTE in our poll below and leave your comments here and on social media.
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” Did F. […]
The very difficult subject of assisted suicide is coming into sharp focus, with the Oireachtas Justice Committee having received written submissions on the somewhat dubiously named Dying with Dignity Bill. There has been fair criticism of the wording of the Bill and the dangers resulting from that wording. The biggest problems with the Bill though […]
Last Thursday, January 28, emergency responders in Gainesville, Georgia, about 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, began to receive 911 calls from Plant 4 of the Foundation Foods Prepared Food Division in that city. One caller reported, “I’ve got two people not breathing.” Another said he had gotten a call from another part of the plant saying that […]
Anyone familiar with the Bible is familiar with the Mark of the Beast: Without this mark, no man may buy or sell. Regardless of one’s religious faith or lack thereof, there is an illustrative case in this biblical story: When one cannot buy or sell, one is metaphorically up the creek. Short of producing […]
Is €292,000 a fair salary for the new Secretary General of the Department of Health? VOTE in our poll below and leave your comments here and on social media.