Let’s face it: In one, very limited respect, this isn’t the worst idea in the world. January is everyone’s least favourite month, right? Maybe if we move Christmas, we can retain all the festive cheer of December, but keep the mince pies and mulled wine and Mariah Carey singing inappropriate lines about Santa Claus until […]
Wild Mountain Thyme is an upcoming RomCom set in Ireland, and though it hasn’t even been released yet, Irish twitter is already giving it both barrels. Due to be released in December of this year, the premise seems fairly straightforward – an Irish dad threatens to give the family farm away to his American nephew, […]
On the 102nd anniversary of the end of WWI we look at how colossal leadership errors and inability to learn caused catastrophic hardship and death, and how our leaders followed the same blundering style of management during the corona virus pandemic. On this day in 1918, Europe collapsed exhausted, with neither the Germans nor the […]
In the week since American voters went to the polls, most things about the result have become clear, and a few things remain outstanding. Joe Biden has been declared, by the media, Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, to be the President-Elect. He has spent the last few days beginning to assemble an administration, […]
It is very unusual for the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil to make any interventions whatever in political matters, given that the chair is generally sworn to neutrality. Which makes this one, then, all the more notable: Ceann Comhairle Sean Ó Fearghaíl said he was refusing to allow debates on an “inordinate number of complaints […]
The figures in relation to elder abuse, released yesterday by the HSE, are simply astonishing. Here’s Newstalk with a summary: The health service’s National Safeguarding Office received almost 12,000 ‘concerns’ of abuse of vulnerable people last year. Some 3,337 related to adults over 65-years-of-age – a 9% increase on the year before. One third (33%) […]
The raggle-taggle, baseball and medieval implement-brandishing band of conscripts converge with one accord on a pile of unsuspecting bargain T-shirts piled up in front of a roadside stall. As the whistle blows ferociously, they raise their weapons and bring them down repeatedly on the lifeless mound shouting “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Giggling uncontrollably, they are called […]
The publication, last evening, of letters between the Chief Justice, Frank Clarke, and Mr. Justice Seamus Woulfe, in which Clarke tells Woulfe that, in his opinion, Woulfe should resign, have caused a major political headache for the Government. On the one hand, the politics of this situation are fairly straightforward: Woulfe is a villain, who […]
Britain has entered a second period of hard lockdown to avert a wave of Covid-19 patients swamping hospitals. Holiday travel overseas is banned. However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that visiting the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas will be permitted, as an exception. This follows consternation in the media over a woman with terminal breast cancer […]
In June 2004, the Irish people voted in a referendum which inserted a new Article 9.2 into Bunreacht na hÉireann to limit the right to claim citizenship to children born here who had at least one parent who was an Irish citizen. An unforeseen consequence of the Good Friday Agreement had led to an amended […]
Sometimes it’s in moments of triumph that a person’s real character is revealed. For some Democrats in the US, vengeance is always the first item on the agenda. McCarthyism had nothing on these people and their new definition of un-American activities. First up, of course, was Democratic Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of a host of well-heeled political operatives […]
There was no accountability in media circles when Libya was destroyed by the Obama-Biden-Clinton axis, so we can’t expect they’ll suddenly bring that inconvenient reality to our attention during the current fanfare.