If you’ve only been reading the Irish media, there’s a very good chance you won’t be aware of the mounting row in Brussels over whether or not the EU should issue so-called “Eurobonds” to help countries like Italy (and Ireland, indeed) get through the Covid-19 crisis. There has been some coverage, but not a vast […]
To be honest, after four abortive attempts at an opening paragraph for this story, and given the subject matter, it’s probably best to skip all the messing around and get right into the action: https://twitter.com/fintanwarfield/status/1243612777748594698 A confession: when Senator Warfield (that’s him on the right in the photo) sent that tweet on Friday, my fear […]
An amusing little tidbit, and a useful follow up and riposte to Gordon Brown’s call this morning for a one world government to tackle the global crisis. The G7, the group of the world’s seven most powerful economies, has been in talks over the last few days about a global response to the Coronavirus, but […]
This will drive the conspiracy theorists mad: “Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown […]
With reports emerging in recent days of gangs of little hoodlums roaming the streets coughing in people’s faces as part of the so-called “Corona Challenge”, the Gardai are getting new equipment, according to the Daily Star’s crime correspondent, Michael O’Toole: @@gardainfo purchases 16,000 spit hoods to be distributed to officers around the State during #Covid19Ireland […]
We missed out, the other day, on an absolutely fascinating and contrarian report from the Financial Times, featuring a new Oxford University study that says, in effect, that the nations of the world might be engaged in a mass act of self harm….. for nothing: “The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people […]
One of the more inspiring things about moments like the present national crisis is watching the way people from all parts of society are willing to work together to solve big problems. For example, in the past few days, doctors and nurses across the country have been making it known that the biggest problem they […]
It’s an interesting little footnote to history that while the phrase “never let a good crisis go to waste” is nearly always attributed to Winston Churchill, there’s no actual evidence that he ever said it. He may well have said it, but nobody can ever seem to record when, or where, or to whom. In […]
An incisive observation from Robert Burke on the twitter machine, here: https://twitter.com/robertburke84/status/1242750630592229376 He’s both right that the Irish Government has done a complete one hundred and eighty degree u-turn on testing in the space of seven days, and that the rest of the media seems unwilling to question it. More on the latter point in […]
Let’s take a break from Coronavirus for a moment to examine one of the most inexplicable Irish Times headlines in recent times: https://twitter.com/IrishTimes/status/1242131251584102402 If there’s one thing the Irish Times is good at, it’s lecturing the rest of us about what words to use and what you are, and are not, allowed to say. […]
There’s a sense in the country, and in the wider world, at the moment, that this is the time for everyone to pull together, and that old divisions don’t really matter in the face of a genuinely existential threat to human life. In so far as possible, therefore, we’ve tried not to dole out any […]
Over the weekend, American website Propublica published a story that hasn’t left me since I read it, and while we mentioned it briefly here yesterday, it really deserves its own post. They interviewed a doctor working in an intensive care unit in New Orleans, and he provided a rare insight into what a very bad […]