Irish Ministers have taken 30 trips on the Government Jet this year, new figures reveal. The Jet has been in use for 125 hours, at an approximate cost to the taxpayer of just under half a million euros. The Jet has been used exclusively within Europe, with Ministers apparently preferring commercial travel for longer journeys […]
Yesterday on these pages I asked, I think reasonably enough, whatever happened to “peak oil”?. Today, it’s time to revisit a much more important question. Whatever happened to the 2004 top secret pentagon report on Climate Change? You know the one; it made a few, small, conservative predictions about the impacts of Climate Change: A […]
If you search the website of the Irish Times for the phrase “Peak Oil” you will find that it appears only once in 2019, in a motoring column, and only then as a throwaway comparison to the Chinese car industry. It is the first time the phrase has appeared in Ireland’s most august newspaper since […]
I confess I find this one a little hard to write about because there are, and should be, at least two conflicting emotions when watching this. On the one hand: She is clearly distressed, and not faking it. Whether you agree with her or not, she passionately believes what she is saying. On the other […]
Minister Bruton made the announcement this afternoon, using the Government’s favourite form of communication, the tweet: We will accept the advice of the Climate Advisory Council and end the exploration of oil in Irish Waters #ClimateActionSummit @LeoVaradkar pic.twitter.com/Ekj20mOhl7 — Richard Bruton (@RichardbrutonTD) September 23, 2019 What’s notable here is that the Irish Government is not […]
This weekend’s Sunday Times featured a chillingly authoritarian line from influential columnist Justine McCarthy, writing in frustration at events in Oughterard last week. Emphasis mine: “The people who repeat these mantras call themselves “the silent majority”. They are neither. They are, in fact, a minority in a country that has repeatedly shown itself to be […]
It’s tremendously disappointing when your heroes disappoint you, isn’t it? In this case it’s Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “best friend” to our Taoiseach, heartthrob to feminists worldwide, and famous for objecting to sexist words like “mankind”. Trudeau is the leader of Canada’s governing Liberal Party, and, five years ago, was swept to power in […]
This is a fascinating tweet from the European Parliament’s Chief Brexit Negotiator: The @Europarl_EN will never accept the UK can have all the advantage of free trade, and not aligning with our ecological, health & social standards. We are not stupid! We will not kill our own companies, economy, single market. We will never accept […]
Immigration is one of those topics that most reasonable, middle of the road Irish people run away from talking about, for the simple reason that there seems to be no way of talking about it without annoying somebody from one of the two camps that seem to dominate the discussion. Camp one, of course, is […]
Guy Verhofstadt, if you are not familiar with the name, is the leader of the ALDE group in the European Parliament, home to Fianna Fáil’s MEPs and the UK Liberal Democrats, amongst others. He is also the European Parliament’s head man when it comes to Brexit, and in that capacity, he was invited to speak […]
The good news: Even if Greta Thunberg is right, we have somewhere to escape to. The bad news: With current technology, and the 110-light-year distance, it will take us just over four million years to get there. We’ll start with the good news first, from Nasa: For the first time, researchers have detected water vapor […]
As George Hook said the other day, here he is again, trying to run the country by twitter: Harris today said that social media platforms should ban certain accounts and consider giving “badges” to accounts that are reputable and provide authentic information about vaccinations. “These are matters that I want to discuss with them, but […]