It is indeed time to stand up against real bullies and real hate speech. Not the sort that merely offends but the sort that demonstrably endangers. Our culture has become obsessed with microaggressions, yet it often fails to challenge the kind of thuggish aggression, masked as righteous anger, that threatens the fundamental freedoms of others. […]
“Armenia is facing a demographic catastrophe,” Nune Pashayan, a health department official, told a news conference this week. The government plans to triple funding for reproductive programs. Mr Pashayan cited a number of statistics. The fertility rate is 1.6 (and needs to be 2.1 to maintain the population). According to the latest data, 14.9% of women […]
The Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has confirmed there are 5,279 applicants residing here that are still waiting to receive what is termed a ‘first instance decision’ from the International Protection Office. A first instance decision is where the International Protection Office assesses the validity of an applicant’s claim before recommending one of the […]
If you have a son, or a daughter, approaching the age when the opposite sex (or, in these enlightened times, any one of the 43 genders) starts to capture their attention, and want to give them some really good life advice, might we suggest this: “don’t settle for anything less than somebody who loves you […]
On Saturday last, Prof Gerry Kileen of the Zero Covid group was a guest on ‘Saturday with Katie Hannon’ on RTÉ where he claimed that 1 in 30 school children would be hospitalised with Covid. In conversation with the presenter, Kileen said he was concerned about the reopening of schools and disagreed with NPHET’s assertion […]
Perhaps it is just me, but the first thing that sprung to mind when I read that the Gardaí had sealed off Mullahoran in Cavan yesterday to prevent people attending Mass, was how similar their reason given was to other places in other times. According to the official statement issued, the Gardaí were stopping people […]
On the one hand, everybody’s talking about Stephen Kenny’s job performance after a 1-0 defeat at home to Luxembourg. The team seemed lacklustre, toothless, and lacking in any kind of identity. The best thing you could say about the Irish performance on Saturday night is that all eleven players were definitely there, on the pitch, […]
For some time now, there’s been an ongoing outbreak of baited breath in legal and religious circles as the public try to decipher whether the Irish Government has adopted the policies of Elizabethan England (Popery firmly discouraged) as regards to the holding of masses in Ireland or whether it had gone a step further and […]
Today, the 28th of March 2021 marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Tracey Campbell-Fitzpatrick at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny. Tracey died from massive blood loss shortly after giving birth to her second child. It is only a short number of weeks since the HSE and the hospital admitted liability in her death […]
In general, sport ought not to be used to further political aims. In a democracy, there are numerous ways in which a person can express their views without using a public platform that has nothing to do with politics or campaigning – such as playing football, or golf or swimming or whatever. There is no need […]
The real controversy surrounds the appalling mismanagement of Covid-19 by both government and opposition. Sunday Griptoon by Brian Doyle #gript
I do not own a conventional smart phone. Instead, I intentionally use a style of flip phone whose rugged case and physical numeric keypad buttons won’t be injured by a drop of three or four feet to a concrete surface. It can receive some texts on its small screen, and I can even send texts […]