My husband’s grandmother took her life yesterday in a Victorian nursing home. After 87 years of a life well-lived, she swallowed state-sanctioned poison to end her life. The “health” professionals here called it medication, but the aim of taking medicine is to improve one’s health, not destroy it. Use all the Orwellian double-speak you like […]
The re-opening of schools has brought the illusion of normality to our country. After all, what’s better and more normal than seeing little ones and older children return to the business of books and school bags, lunches and learning, drop-offs and pick-ups. Families are the hinge of a healthy society, the pivot of a robust […]
Last week, Taoiseach Michael Martin said he expects Ireland to be living with coronavirus restrictions until late 2021 or early 2022. Deep breaths everyone, remember it’s all only temporary… but let’s backtrack a few months, shall we? Back in March, what seems to have been another life, we were put on lockdown for two weeks. Nobody […]
Last month, hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition asking Netflix to cancel a movie, Cuties, after a poster advertising the film showed young girls in sexually suggestive poses, leading critics to say it “promoted paedophilia”. Last night, Netflix uploaded ‘Cuties’. It’s not as bad as people thought it would be: it’s worse. This […]
Now that Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, has picked the new Irish commissioner it seems that all is well once again in the aftermath of that embarrassing interlude widely known as golfgate. Von der Leyen got her woman and it seems that another step has been taken on the long road […]
At the very beginning of the Covid 19 panic, Anthony Fauci, the chief scientist in the American anti virus programme, speculated that Americans might never shake hands with one another again. It is not yet illegal to shake hands but it is certainly frowned upon. Which might be regarded as a victory by the person […]
Whereas Trump appears at ease confronting the much-vaunted industrial-military complex, Biden’s record would suggest a tolerance for war that should disquiet those who would pay most for yet more destruction.
Two cases of “what was he thinking??”, here: First, what was he thinking when he actually downplayed the risks of Coronavirus? Even if you’re a big Covid sceptic, surely the low-risk play back in March was to go all out and warn people that the virus was potentially deadly, and to stay at home and […]
Democracy, as some of you will know, is a Greek word which means “rule by the people”. “Irish Democracy”, on the other hand, is an English phrase which means “rule by the right sort of people”: Quotas for young people in politics, similar to gender quotas, and lowering the voting age to 16, were among […]
Even with the current Covid panic, the issue of homelessness continues to exercise many. The current estimate stands at around 10,000 people homeless in Ireland, of whom almost half are in Dublin. The exact criteria for such a determination is somewhat vague, but even so, many people are finding it difficult to get a home […]
Since 2012 at least 800 sex offenders have been released from Irish prisons with little or no effective safeguards in place for those whom they may wish to harm, including children. This is according to the Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway Denis Naughten, who, yesterday challenged the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee on the glacial pace […]
Music icon and animal rights activist Cher was ecstatic earlier this year when a Pakistani court ruled that an Asian elephant named Kaavan, held in solitary confinement at the Islamabad Zoo, should be released to a sanctuary. The animal was being mistreated at the zoo and missed his mate Saheli, who died in 2012. “We were […]