A great scoop in the independent by privacy reporter Ken Foxe: Details of the lump sums, pensions and termination pay for individual TDs and senators will no longer be made public following a decision by Oireachtas authorities. The payments have been published by Leinster House for more than a decade without issue. However, the Oireachtas […]
A strange contagion of self abasement and penitence has taken hold of the West. American politics and its jargon has invaded the consciousness of the world, even though we don’t share their political history or narratives. To use the terminology of the left, we have been psychologically colonised by American identity politics. Identity politics in […]
Norway is a country that appears to have fared well during the Covid-19 pandemic thus far. However, the country has another worrying problem it must also face: the population is aging fast, meaning tough economic times still lie ahead. Norway is a country that appears to have fared well during the Covid-19 pandemic thus […]
All of the caveats must apply, obviously, to polls, and the biggest and most important one when it comes to President Trump is that if you believed the evidence of the polling in 2016, as yours truly did, then you’d have been shocked by the result (as yours truly, and many others, were). But still: […]
Clever: Sinn Féin has proposed giving every adult and child a government funded gift voucher to spend in pubs, restaurants and hotels to kick-start the tourism industry. Under the €1bn scheme every adult would be given a €200 voucher and every child would get €100 to spend in local businesses that sign up to the […]
Each year the HSE is obliged to publish its Annual Report and Financial Statements for the preceding year. It has just done so for 2019. This year we read that it spent €17.9 million on Legal Fees & Legal Proceedings with a further €1.6 million on Settlements and a mere €97 thousand on Conciliation and […]
In a recent report on genome analysis of ancient remains found in Irish burial sites, one ground-breaking finding received little attention. In the tests conducted on the remains of over 30 people from the Poulnabrone burial site in the Burren in Clare, the earliest proven example of a skeleton of a person with Down Syndrome […]
Leo Varadkar, or so the polls tell us, is the darling of the nation. He saved us all from Covid and can do no wrong. Polls show that 88% of Irish people believe the government did a good job of handling the Covid crisis – while an almost unprecedented 72% expressed satisfication with the government. […]
Good news that failed to make the front page in London and New York A truly historic meeting took place last week between two countries that have been at loggerheads with each other for decades. This meeting between the leaders of Hungary and Slovakia was constructive, was aimed at reconciliation and was forward-looking. […]
Last week the Italian parliament passed a bill aimed at boosting the country’s low birth rate by supporting parents. “We have approved the Family Act to support parenting, combat the falling birth rate, encourage the growth of children and young people, and the help parents reconcile of family life with work, especially for women,” Premier Giuseppe Conte […]
Extraordinary: https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1275500569940176897 The background to this: Some weeks ago, anarchist protestors in Seattle set up what they called an “autonomous zone” – basically their own independent quasi-country, in the city. Two nights ago, protestors in Washington DC threatened to do the same. Trump was having none of it. Twitter says that Trump’s tweet constituted a […]
This is getting remarkably little scrutiny, after Irish Times scoop-getter general Fiach Kelly reported it last night: The Greens have widened the eligibility for members who can vote by telephone on the PfG. Was previously only allowed for those outside the country. Now members who have not received ballot paper can vote by phone. https://t.co/UKsBU23wJG […]