Right, cards on the table, and feel free to boo at the screen if you are so minded: This writer is backing England on Sunday. Not quite to the extent of wearing an England shirt (in the part of Monaghan were I grew up, that would invite a bullet, and to the kneecap only if […]
Yesterday the Irish Government made a truly extraordinary announcement: under plans they propose to put into legislation, indoor hospitality will return in Ireland on July 26th. But only for those who have been fully vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, like me, then you will be able to sit indoors in a restaurant or a pub. […]
The great puzzle about the lockdowns has been how support for the restrictions has divided along class lines. In general, low income earners, especially manual workers, oppose the lockdowns strenuously, while high income earners – the laptop class – seem to support it strenuously. This class divide, the elite versus the workers, is reflected in the […]
There was a time when humanity’s heroes were almost invariably the champions of freedom. In politics, philosophy, story-telling, and beyond, our idols were those who fought the good fight so that people could live free and in peace. It was viscerally understood, by all of us, that freedom was a good thing and that no […]
Last night the Government succeeded in passing a last minute amendment to the Finance (Covid and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 that will allow institutional investors, otherwise “vulture funds”, to avoid paying stamp duty on housing units if they agree to lease them to local authorities. This represents a huge concession to the investors who have […]
There is good news here, and bad news. The good news is now that we are a rogue state, the chances of the Americans deciding to launch a pre-emptive strike and liberate us from the tyranny of NPHET or whoever have increased dramatically. The bad news is that it is unlikely that many serious people […]
It is not hard to feel sympathy for the organisers of the Dublin Marathon. Speaking to Kieran Cuddihy on Newstalk’s Hard Shoulder last evening (an item in which yours truly also featured), lead organiser Jim Aughney said that the cancellation was not because the organisers lacked faith in the vaccine programme, or personally believed in […]
The Irish Government has now announced that it will rush through legislation so that emergency generators required to fill the gap left by the State’s switch to ‘green’ or renewable energy can bypass planning laws. The move is in response to serious concerns about electricity blackouts in the winter months – with senior sources saying […]
Bye-elections are a curious beast, not least because with just one electoral area, and therefore a smallish number of candidates, the focus of politicos becomes hyper-intense. There’s gangs of them digging for gold, or even votes, in the leafy streets of Dublin Bay South at the moment. Ministers are pictured getting down with the party juniors […]
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Benito Mussolini’s formulation remains one of the most enduring definitions of modern totalitarianism. The hyperventilated discussion about the new national maternity hospital has revealed some surprising – and not so surprising – tendencies of most of the political leadership in Ireland. Notwithstanding the […]
The Bank Bar in Dublin has issued a mea culpa for sharing accurate information about Ireland’s excessive lockdown, after a gang of left wing activists online falsely called the information “far right.” Speaking on Twitter, the bar said: “This is not acceptable anymore, we’ve done all that was asked of us. Let us live again. […]
The point of the media – the reason it exists – is to report the news to the public. Our job, as journalists, is to pull together relevant information about the things that are happening in the world, and present it to you, the public, in a way that is accessible, understandable, and accurate. When […]