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 […]
You always know it’s something he feels strongly about when the tweet appears in capital letters: WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, […]
Niamh wrote something of a polemic on this site last week about that god-awful “celebrities singing Imagine by John Lennon” video, declaring that “the level of self-awareness (in the video) is between zero and minus infinity”. Well Niamh, I have some bad news. Just take a look. https://twitter.com/Madonna/status/1241768707631841281 Where’s it all going to end? If […]
There are two ways of looking at these numbers: “There are now about 40,000 people in Ireland waiting for a test for the coronavirus, the HSE has said. At a briefing on Sunday the HSE’s chief operations officer, Anne O’Connor, said the average waiting period for a test was four to five days. However, she […]
Irish people will have let out a huge sigh of collective relief this afternoon with the news that, amidst the unprecedented crisis afflicting the country, our best and brightest were assembling in the national legislature to come up with ideas to mitigate the worst of it for the people. Until now, the Coronavirus epidemic has […]
A very interesting conversation on my twitter timeline this morning that’s worth exploring in more depth: One point that has received very little attention is the upcoming Seanad election and, in particular, the impact that it may have on the timing of the appointment of a Taoiseach and, as a result, the formation of a […]
It is universally accepted that the Coronavirus outbreak that has shut down the western world originated in the city of Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province. It is less universally, but still generally, accepted that the virus made its way into humans via an animal sold at one of that city’s disgusting wet markets – probably […]
She’s not the first doctor to get it, and she won’t be the last: Newstalk presenter Ciara Kelly has announced that she has been diagnosed with #COVID19. https://t.co/FCu7VkVqy8 — NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) March 18, 2020 For those of you who haven’t been in radio studios, this obviously raises concerns about Newstalk’s entire staff. Almost every programme […]
God bless Vanessa Hudgens. Right across the media people are looking for content that isn’t utterly depressing, or isn’t about the bloody so-called “curve”, or “social distancing”. And let me tell you, it’s a bleak, bleak landscape for content right now. And then along comes a good-looking Hollywood starlet to say something absolutely outrageous. It’s […]