Imagine, for one fleeting moment, that an eminent scientist who had regularly appeared in the media throughout the pandemic took to social media one day to declare that having considered the matter, he had developed suspicions – without any evidence, mind you – that the Covid vaccines might cause autism in children. Do we think […]
Lockdowns are conferring little benefit, but causing colossal damage, a Economics professor has concluded, using a cost benefit analysis to calculate that strict Covid restrictions caused 282 times the loss of years of life, that it saved. Economics Professor Douglas W. Allen, from Simon Fraser University in Canada looked at the effect of loss of employment, loss […]
Fine Gael Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has said that Ireland needs to “build back better” in regards to the climate crisis, echoing the words of the World Economic Forum, US President Joe Biden, and others. Speaking on Wednesday the 19th to the Dublin Climate Dialogues, Donohoe said: “The pandemic has progressed our understanding of the […]
Begun, the wailing and grinding of teeth has, amongst Ireland’s political class. Who the villain is depends on whether you are in Government, or opposition. If you are in Government, the villain is Aer Lingus, as one Limerick Fine Gael TD took to social media yesterday to assert: Devastating decision by @AerLingus to close cabin […]
It is not really the done thing, in Ireland, to criticise Judges. When, in December of 2019, this writer published a piece arguing that it was time to impeach Judge Martin Nolan, and remove him from the bench, legally minded friends warned that the article had gone too far. Judicial discretion and independence, after all, […]
4,941. And rising. This number can only increase or, at best, stay the same. It can never go down. Of all the innovations that governments and media around the world have come up with, seemingly independently of each other, during the ongoing Covid period, perhaps the most insidious is the daily running total of deaths. […]
Defence Minister Simon Coveney spent all last week obsessing over a conflict halfway across the world that most people couldn’t find on a map. Meanwhile, our own country was rocked by massive cyber attacks, and he’s been notably less vocal. Although Coveney supposedly fills the role, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we had nobody […]
I was ten in 1974. It was the year that I mainly remember for the fact that Dublin won the All-Ireland and I had been at my first big game – although not my first ever game – in Croke Park, when they beat Cork in the semi-final. The other main memory I have is […]
Every time we report one of these polls, the comments on Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms are the same: “fake poll”, or “they didn’t poll me”, or words to that effect. And that is understandable, nobody likes to be in the minority, or feel the country is against them. Least of all, […]
In fairness, every other left wing hobby horse lobby group in Ireland already gets taxpayer funding, so why should the prostitutes, of all people, be left out? Well, they’re left out no longer. The full, ahem, ins and outs of how the money was channelled from your pockets into the pockets of the campaign to […]
What effect did Covid-19 have on the number of weddings that took place in Ireland last year compared with 2019? As you can imagine, a very big effect. In fact, the figure halved, but the reduction in the amount of Catholic weddings was bigger than in the number of civil weddings. Why might that have […]
Journalist, Eoghan Harris, is the most recent high profile personality to be punished for posting offensive comments on social media, on twitter to be precise. His offence was greatly exacerbated by his use of an anonymous handle. ‘Barbara J. Pym’ was a flag of convenience that allowed Harris to post the kind of comments in […]