It goes without saying that the big problem with Northern Ireland is that almost everything in it is, or has been, completely corrupted by tribal politics and whataboutery. A wrong committed by one “side” can, and will, inevitably be matched by a wrong committed by the other. The history of that place is alive, and […]
Sixteen European political parties, including some who are in government, have launched what they call a ‘Manifesto for Freedom” saying the EU is “becoming a tool of radical forces” who aim to build a “European superstate” to cancel “European traditions” and ‘transform moral principles’. The context of the document is the recent attempt by the […]
I started the [Twitter] account because I was in Australia. I thought it was safe here. I thought they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to me. In March 2020 the local police department contacted my parents and asked my parents to come to the police station and issued an official warning and they […]
Irish liberals have spent the last half decade accusing everyone remotely to the right of Karl Marx of being a “Nazi-Fascist-Far-Right-Uber-Hitler.” But now that label has been levelled at the government and their lockdown, that comparison is too far and simply beyond the pale. The controversy came when Mattie McGrath TD of the Rural Independent […]
On Sunday night I heard a commotion out on the road. Rambunctious voices were passing and one was singing “football’s coming home.” At first I thought England had won the European cup, then I looked up the result and the reason for the celebratory atmosphere became clear. How things have changed. When Ireland made the […]
President Higgins, for all of his life, has been a man of the left. Although his views on international affairs have not always aligned with his personally expressed support for civil liberties, he has, nonetheless, always taken the side of personal freedom in political discussions in Ireland. His biography on the official website of the […]
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Boris Johnson’s two chief scientific advisors, Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, were in front of the media yesterday to face a grilling on Johnson’s plans to fully re-open the UK next week. The assembled media (doing their job, to be fair) were very eager to poke holes in the plan, and extract quotes about […]
Some people, including many readers, will be downcast by this, or angry, or feel that their suspicions have been validated. Personally, though, it is not something that overly concerns me, for reasons set out below. If it is necessary, then sign me up: Pfizer says it plans to meet with top U.S. health officials Monday […]
As we noted last week on Gript, the result of the Dublin Bay South bye-election, where the media set the posh against the privileged, was never going to be much of a surprise. The constituency is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. As far as gated houses and disposable incomes are concerned, DBS is not so […]
Is the Communist one party state in Cuba on the verge of collapse? The weekend has seen unprecedented protests across many cities including the capital Havana. It comes after a series of hunger strikes and other events largely ignored by the world media, though covered on this platform. Cubans, incensed by food shortages, lack of […]
As new delays and price hikes to the National Children’s Hospital are announced, it’s worth looking back to 2016 at the broken promises and false assurances of then-Health Minister Leo Varadkar. The hospital, which had been planned since 1993, and was originally to be completed by 2014, only received planning permission from An Bord Pleánala […]