A lovely, neat little bow to stick on top of the entirely stupid row about whether Mr. Martin should go to Washington: They might not even want him: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this evening that she has a “special place in my heart for the Irish” but she could not confirm whether […]
A little microcosm of the way the state spends your money, here. At this link, you’ll find a tender document issued by Mayo County Council, seeking a person, persons, or company to author an “LGBTI+ inclusion strategy” for County Mayo. There are a few notable things about the document. First, and most oddly, for a […]
Technically, of course, it’s not a proposal to send people to jail for going on holiday. But taken in the round, the intended effect of it is to scare the living daylights out of any Briton who fancies a week or so of debauchery in Santa Ponza: Failing to quarantine in a designated hotel after […]
Originally, this piece was headlined “lockdown until May, says Taoiseach”. But that actually might be too optimistic, because additional sources appeared while it was being written. And, according to the Irish Times, one of their sources at the FF Parliamentary Party meeting told them that the country was effectively in a state of “indefinite lockdown”. […]
The result of last night’s vote was 56 to 44. That wasn’t on the main question, about whether former President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against his own country’s Government. That vote will come later. Last night’s vote, actually, was about whether the US Senate has the authority to put Trump on trial […]
Another entry in the very large file of evidence that exists for Aodhán O’Riordáin being Ireland’s most shameless politician: We are against the Investor Court System in #CETA and how it will impact on everything from workers’ rights to environmental standards. That’s why @labour TDs and Senators agreed today we will vote against the Govt […]
It’s fair to say that there is a significant cohort of the population who have, shall we say, some suspicions about the various vaccines for Covid-19, and their true purpose. If you’re in that cohort, then there’s little enough that’s likely to convince you. But let me offer you an argument anyway: If there was […]
The Gardai are very busy at the moment, of course, with Covid 19 duties meaning that their force is spread thin across the country stopping people in their cars to ask them where they are going, as well as fining people at the airports, and on the beaches, and just about anywhere else you can […]
One of the odd things about Irish politics is that what one might call the soft left – the sort of people who believe passionately in things like social justice, and liberal causes, and climate change – have not one, not two, but three political parties, all of whom believe basically the same things. On […]
There’s a golden rule when it comes to the Irish weather, and the Green Party: Any unusual weather at all is de facto evidence of Climate Change, and we can expect to be flooded and drowned within mere years if we do not immediately act. There is one exception to that rule, though: If the […]
The big problem about writing about “period poverty”, as a man, is that, well, men don’t have periods. While some of us may, on occasion, have been deputised to purchase sanitary items for the women in our lives, we don’t need, or use them, ourselves. So the idea that period poverty is an all-pervasive issue […]
I wonder, you know, whether this is constitutional: “A spokesman for Mr Donnelly said gardaí now had the power to call to people’s homes to ensure they were quarantining but they could (not) enter the person’s home. Antoinette Cunningham, the general secretary of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) said on Thursday evening […]