Handel’s Messiah was the soundtrack to Christmas Day in our house. It was a bit, or more likely totally, above our heads but it gradually, over many years, soaked up the strangeness and wonder, the mysterious otherworldliness of Christmas. The smells and tastes, the treats, the novelties that the kindly Santa left for us on […]
Leo Varadkar told the Washington Ireland Programme at a virtual event last week that Ireland, along with the rest of the world, is dealing with ‘a crisis of polarization due to the influence of social media’. Social media as distinct from mainstream media. According to the Tánaiste,one side of a story can become ‘accepted fact’ […]
Kevin’s Myers’ latest book is a memoir of a life dangerously and daringly lived both on and off the printed page. Despite the title, it is not a cascade of self defence against the signal injustice the author suffered when he was summarily dismissed by The Sunday Times in 2017 on the now thorougly debunked charge […]
According to Fergus Finlay, writing in The Irish Examiner, many ‘attention seeking’ journalists are getting the ‘woke’ phenomenon all wrong. Basically it’s a great force for awareness raising and we should not be unduly disturbed by the odd bit of ‘silliness’ when some of the overly woke push political correctness too far. For someone who […]
Even in a covid prioritizing world, there is something strange and no doubt significant about the low level reaction to the beheading of a schoolteacher on a Paris street last month. The equally tepid response to the equally barbarous killing of three people, in no way associated with the provocation, in a Nice church over a […]
No such thing as a shy Trump voter this time’, said Mark Little, RTE’s former US correspondent. Everybody in the studio chuckled in agreement. The polls must therefore be accurate. Biden was heading to a landslide. You don’t have to be a pundit to see how daft that view was and is. This is Hillary’s ‘deplorable’ […]
‘Answer a fool according to his folly’, is advice that could be adapted to ‘answer your opponents according to their stated principles, rather than yours.’ It calls them out on their inconsistency and prejudice and tends to put them on the defensive. This is not what the delegation of bishops did when they met Taoiseach […]
One of the derailing issues for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign was the diplomatically sensitive correspondence she sent from her personal account while Secretary of State. But there were also other emails brought to light allegedly by Russian hackers. This became an attack point for Democrats against Trump and drew the media’s focus […]
Last April, when we were under strict lockdown and confined to a radius of two, later four, kilometres from our homes, cases of covid19 were running at figures similar to what they are now. And that is without factoring in the lack of widespread testing back then. Back then too schools were shut and hospitals […]
The public deserve to be treated like adults. Especially by their elected leaders. As the covid crisis rolls on, it appears those who should be asking the questions on our behalf, testing the evidence, addressing public concerns are hiding behind selected experts and advisory groups. NPHET is just the latest manifestation of the watering down […]
The US Democrats’ presidential election campaign is a fine balancing act of managing a double ticket. Joe Biden is undeniably not in control of his campaign. Kamala Harris and her backers are the organ grinders. Behind them stand the forces of radical feminism, wokeism and leftist, liberal agencies like Planned Parenthood. These forces are challenged […]
Last week we learned that Ireland’s birth rate has fallen by almost 25% in the last five years. That includes all births registered here. Like most other European countries, we now have a birth rate well below the 2.1 births per woman needed to replace the population. In the more immediate term, we face the challenge […]