The real debate about Ireland’s dysfunctional housing market is not about the problem but rather about how to fix it. The prevailing view seems to be that the underlying problem exists because there isn’t enough interference in the housing market. Accordingly, the only way to fix Ireland’s dysfunctional housing market is through even more government […]
Thank God for Mary McAleese. It was shaping up to be a fairly slow news day today, ad we were sitting around scratching our heads wondering if anything at all would pop up that was slightly interesting, and worth writing about. Thankfully, Mrs. McAleese has come through to save the day by saying something immeasurably […]
The Irish media is presently gorging itself on the revelation that for a number of years, at least four Irish political parties (and probably more) asked volunteers to pose as fake polling companies in order to go door to door and conduct market research. First, we learned that Sinn Fein did it. And then, because […]
One of the rather more desperate attempts by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to recoup lost ground to Sinn Féin has been to focus on the latter party’s apparent track record in voting against proposals to build housing developments. Sinn Féin has indeed pursued inconsistent policies, as we shall see, but the political reality is […]
TheJournal.ie has gone for gold in the clown media olympics this week, by declaring that the type of covid misinformation that is most dangerous and difficult to combat is the type that’s actually true. The article, entitled “’A distorted perspective’: How anti-lockdown groups are using data to downplay the impact of Covid-19,” describes how terrifying […]
Regular readers will be familiar with Dr. Michael Mina, the Harvard expert on antigen testing who pronounced himself feeling “sorry for Ireland” a few weeks back, after listening to Stephen Donnelly play down the benefits of antigen testing on the radio. Dr. Mina paid a visit to Dublin yesterday, presumably to see for himself the […]
Governments love to talk up renewable energy, describing it as green and low-carbon and the way of the future. They pump huge amounts of funding into it, and, in this country, are shutting down peat production and promising to leave carbon fuels like oil and gas in the ground, because they claim energy from wind […]
Social media platforms hold enormous potential to liberate ideas and information from the grips of national governments and media conglomerates. After all, ideas and arguments may now be publicised by just about anyone who is computer literate enough to open a Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube account. But the heavy-handed regulation of social media content by […]
The great paradox of modern Ireland is that the more power Irish liberals acquire, the more illiberal they become. We had, yesterday, a collection of taxpayer funded NGO’s in to visit the Oireachtas committee on Housing and Local Government, which is responsible for how Ireland runs its elections, amongst other things. Kitty Holland picks up […]
Ten days ago, panicked by scenes of revelry in Dublin’s South William Street area, the Chief Medical Officer, Tony Holohan, sent the tweet heard around the country: Drove into Dublin City Centre to collect someone from work at 815 PM. Absolutely shocked at scenes in South Great George’s St, Exchequer St, South William St area. […]
The Special Criminal Court is back in the news, because an interim report into it is being published in a couple of weeks. We can say something with absolute certainty right now about that interim report: It will make absolutely no difference. Regardless of what the report says, the court will stay. The court will […]
We’re not supposed to call it the “Indian variant”, any more, obviously, in case that makes ordinary people feel suspicious of Indian-looking people they see on the street (who comes up with this stuff, exactly?). But we are all supposed to be absolutely terrified of it. It is more transmissible, and it is on the […]