Give Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe some credit: The last time he was in the news, it was because he was the politician with sufficient foresight to realise that Fine Gael’s proposal to honour the Dublin Metropolitan Police would be unpopular, and his intervention resulted in that pleasant pre-pandemic month we all spent debating the […]
Here are the latest figures on assisting dying in the US state of Oregon. The 2020 data shows, among other concerns, that: The numbers continue to rise steadily — 15% per year average; they are 0.61% of all deaths in Oregon (2% of all cancer deaths), up 20% from 2019 From 1 Jan 2020 the 15-day […]
In 2011 the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan was hit by a 15-metre tsunami following a major earthquake. The resulting damage disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima reactors, causing a nuclear accident. Since then the Japanese government has worked intensively with a number of international bodies to reduce contamination, improve radiation […]
This ought to be a cardinal rule for TV hosts: never, ever, interview someone without knowing what he is going to say. Sad to say, a BBC anchor chose the wrong man to comment on the Derek Chauvin trial. True, he was black, and true, he was a former police officer. But he didn’t give […]
The trouble with writing about Ireland at the moment is that it is increasingly difficult to convey to the reader the full scale of the insanity that is going on, while not ending up sounding like a hysteric yourself. But nonetheless, it is important, too, to record things that are true, and here’s a statement […]
If you were scouring the Sunday Newspapers yesterday for a word of criticism of the Government’s plan to give an amnesty, and path to citizenship, to thousands of illegal immigrants, you will have been disappointed. Pieces like that do not tend to make the Irish newspapers. Part of it, of course, is the fear that […]
How is it that the state of Florida, a state run by a Republican Governor who has rejected wholesale the lockdown wisdom, has had such success in reducing Covid numbers? How is it that the same state, known as the retirement home of America, has been one of the most successful states in America in […]
Fianna Fáil TD Marc McSharry has gone rogue declaring his loss of confidence, if he ever had any, with the ‘lockdown only’ knee-jerk response in this country. In the US, the government’s leading voice on the epidemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, has tacitly admitted that the success of the non-lockdown, non-mask strategy in Texas has baffled […]
People who travel to South Korea often say that the most delightful aspect of their visit was the Korean people, who are hospitable, friendly, and “civic minded.” But those notoriously nice people come up way short in one very important aspect: reproducing. In 1960, South Korea’s fertility rate was 6.0. In 2020, it was 0.84. […]
In early March, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly confirmed to Cabinet that he had initiated a review of Ireland’s radical abortion law. It is important to note ,however, that this was less a political choice and more of a legal requirement given that Section 7 of the 2018 Act which legalised abortion clearly states: […]
If the country ever wakes up from its Covid induced coma, like Rip Van Winkle, it shall open its eyes to a radically altered society. First-time buyers or families looking to buy homes in Dublin, are up against investment funds who are bulk-buying whole housing developments in order to rent them out. This is a […]
At about two o’clock yesterday afternoon, RTE’s “liveline” programme erupted into one of those classic “liveline” debates that makes the country tick. The subject, of course, was the announcement by the Department of Education that from yesterday forth, all new toilets in Irish schools, as well as all renovations of existing toilets in Irish schools, […]