Covid-19 looks likely to rank among the most startling black swan events of history. A black swan in economic parlance disturbs the existing paradigms, sails into sudden view out of seeming nowhere and shatters settled doctrines about white feathers, orange beaks and blacked up eyes. Who could have predicted? We were looking in the wrong […]
With whispers of an end to partition on the lips of many, with predictions of a border poll rife, and with the British government exhibiting increasing signs of disinterest in the Ulster Plantation, it seems the arc of history is slowly bending towards Irish unity. However, if Brexit has taught us one thing, it is […]
Just when you thought things in this #Covid-19 landscape couldn’t get more frustrating, along comes some god-awful celebrity video to annoy us. Everyone is already restless, housebound, kind of scared, and fairly fed-up. The kids are moping around the house, emptying cupboards of food at a speed that would rise envy in a swarm of locusts, and […]
Terms like ‘self-isolation, ‘social distancing’ and even ‘cocooning’ are fast becoming part of our national vocabulary. For the vast majority of people, these new practices and behaviours will be somewhere between a major and minor inconvenience. Some businesses may close-others will bounce back; but we will go on, even if it is in a radically […]
Tim Jackson is in agreement with Joe Brolly about the Taoiseach’s speech.
Recently, it’s felt like Students’ Union leaderships are more concerned with political posturing and furthering their agendas than acting for the student body. This could not have been made clearer than from the recent exposés we have seen from The Burkean on USI and TCDSU officers. When I first arrived at University, I tried leaving […]
Irish Ambassador to Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, penned a book with Dr. Oliver Johnson entitled ‘Getting to Zero (A Doctor and a Diplomat on the Ebola Frontline). The title, as indicated, relates to getting to zero cases of Ebola at a single time, meaning when the last infected patient had […]
Beginning with denial and ending with acceptance, the five stages of grief proposed by Swiss-American psychologist Ellizabeth Kubler-Ross made her famous during her lifetime and even became a staple of popular culture. Sometimes one almost wonders, watching the Irish reaction to one event after another, whether she would have been tempted to slot ‘Brit-bashing’ somewhere […]
Most of the praise for the Taoiseach’s well-delivered speech to the nation last night has focused on his reassuring tone and calm embodiment of national determination. Those things, are, of course, entirely subjective. For myself, I thought it was very good – his finest hour in fact, not that there’s much competition for that particular […]
There was undoubtedly more hardship to contend with then, from constant threat of pagan kings, to a creaking health system that relied more on nettles than morphine.
It is now readily acknowledged that China, through a series of unprecedented and restrictive public health and quarantine measures ‘bought the world some time’ in the global fight against Covid-19. Most of those actions would not have been possible in western democracies, relying as they did for their implementation on the authoritarian nature of the […]
In 1880 – 140 years ago – one of the most significant events in the social history took place on the estate of Lord Erne near Lough Mask in Mayo. It involved a campaign of social and economic ostracism – collective actions which have been known ever since by the name of Erne’s land agent […]