Fun thought experiment: Imagine for a second what would happen if a columnist with the Times of London declared that Ireland was a country “awash with ignorance and squalor”, and, as Fergus Finlay goes on to say, “riven with racism, and led by irresponsible charlatans”. How would we react, if that was written about Ireland? […]
You know what? Hands up. At the very beginning of the vaccine rollout, we at Gript were very critical of how slow and poorly co-ordinated it was. We ended up having a rollout that was significantly slower than that in the UK and Northern Ireland, and there was, indeed, much to criticise. But it would […]
There is no doubt but that the large protests against the Government’s proposals to pass legislation requiring people to provide proof that they have been vaccinated in order to access some services, caught the establishment by surprise. Some of the biggest crowds of any protest in Covid times turned out at both the Convention Centre […]
Credit to Julianne Corr at the Times for this entertaining scoop: The third level college that ran Ireland’s first influencer course hopes to offer the programme to secondary school students as part of their transition year studies, its organiser has said…. …Irene McCormick, the programme director, said that about 240 people had applied for the […]
2020 was a record breaking year for mortality in Ireland. In fact, a government report shows that some of last year’s rates were the lowest of all time. Every May, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) publishes its Vital Statistics Yearly Summary. This report contains data about births, deaths and marriages in Ireland for the previous calendar […]
Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly has indicated that pro-life protests outside abortion centres will not be outlawed under new legislation, a move that has been welcomed by pro-life activists. Abortion campaigners had sought to ban peaceful and often prayerful outreaches outside GP offices or hospitals, despite Gardai saying that no issues had arisen. Pro-life groups said […]
When we think of “covid cases in hospital”, the average person probably assumes, through more than a year of exposure to talk of covid, that they refer to people who have contracted covid 19, developed symptoms, and gotten so sick that they needed to be admitted to hospital for treatment. And indeed, in many cases, […]
Data centres, much like cars, air conditioning, farting cows, home heating, air travel, global shipping, and making anything out of wood, are fast becoming a bete noir for Ireland’s climate movement, summed up by an official denunciation of the fast-growing sector in the pages of the Irish Times yesterday, penned by Una Mullally. Here is […]
The movies do a strange thing to the human mind. All our lives, we have been taught that the good guys eventually triumph. The stories we tell, the books we read, the legends we pass down from generation to generation mostly have within them a comforting lie: That the heroes succeed. Movies like “Independence Day” […]
Quietly, this is one of the most scandalous episodes in Irish journalism for long and many’s the year. And rather than being appropriately embarrassed, the editor was out over the weekend, bragging about it. “An absolute box office piece”, says he, without shame: Sunday Independent P1– Gardai probe sinister calls to Nphet chiefs– Sinéad O'Connor […]
A few caveats here: First, Behaviour and Attitudes has consistently found Sinn Fein support higher, and other party support lower, than other pollsters. That does not mean they are wrong, but it is worth noting. Second, they were not hugely accurate at the last general election, though that also does not mean they are wrong […]
Not a name that would well-known, or known at all, in Ireland, Lord Sumption, with his title of Lord, is likely to be given short shrift as a credible commentator on the world, on Brexit, on Covid-19, or even the rule of law. Titles of peerage tend to induce a guttural reaction in Ireland […]