Let’s face it – cultural conservatism as a worldview can seem as if it’s on the ropes across much of the world. Sure, there are still some oases of traditionalism knocking about – Poland, Hungary – and there are some electoral or court wins in this or that country. And all of that is great. […]
With the economy in shreds and thousands of people forced into joblessness due to repeated covid lockdowns, the Irish government now wants to tax the pandemic unemployment payment and hand everyone a big fat tax bill to add insult to injury. As the Irish Times reports: “Thousands of workers to get Covid-19 tax bills next […]
2020 was a year of record population lows. Newly released Census Bureau population estimates show record lows in United States population growth, both in 2020 and for the entire 2010-to-2020 decade. California’s population shrank for the first time as far back as records go, with the Census Bureau estimates indicating that California’s population decreased by about 69,000 residents in […]
Who might the next Chancellor of Germany be, with this set to be Angela Merkel’s final year in office? As a political battle rages in Germany, Dominik Michalik walks us through the candidates: We are currently just a week away from CDU’s leadership elections which will begin on the 15th of January and will last […]
The concerning thing here is not the number of people in hospital, actually. 1,100 patients is a lot, but a modern first world health service should be able to cope with that. No, the concerning thing is this graph: 151 admissions in the past 24 hours, and the rate increasing at more than 100 a […]
Who are the activists and the NGOs who have contributed to stirring up tensions in the past week, especially around the suggestion that bias might have motivated Garda actions leading to the death of George Nkencho? And why are so many of them funded by the hard-pressed Irish tax-payer? These people range from elected TDs […]
There are a number of things that are remarkable about this tweet from the Chinese Embassy in Washington. The first, though, is that it’s still up, unmolested by twitter, with no warning, or clarification attached. President Trump gets banned for dopey tweets about how he didn’t really lose the election. China, on the other hand, […]
Freedom of expression, in a free society, is not unlimited but it should be allowed a very wide gate to run through. It is limited by other rights that belong to others – the right to a good name, to not be libelled as well as the right not to have violence incited against a […]
A former Green advisor to president Obama has a look at Joe Biden’s statements on the environment and says they are nonsense. In a point by point dissection of Biden’s climate assertions, he says Biden fails the fact check. Joe Biden’s sensationalist environmental claims were reviewed and eviscerated by Environmental campaigner, Michael Scellenberger, who found […]
The National Museum of Ireland has removed General Michael Collins’ blood-stained cap from public display on the basis that it may upset or cause offence to descendants of the slain rebel leader. As the Irish Examiner’s article on the subject read: “The museum removed the cap which had been on display for decades for ethical […]
At approximately this time yesterday morning, the question of “what to do about the schools” was remarkably uncontroversial, as these things go. In the face of an explosion in the number of cases, hospital admissions, and ICU admissions on foot of covid, the country had basically made peace with the fact that schools would not […]
Watching the highly disturbing footage from Washington DC, last night, my mind kept going back to the autumn of 2018. On October 4th, of that year, the US Senate was engaged in a confirmation hearing for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh had been accused, you’ll recall, of sexually assaulting a high school […]