Identity politics is as much about the collapse of old identities as the forging of new ones. The current discussion about how the centenary anniversary of Ireland’s partition should be marked shows how radically political identities can be re-constructed over time. When Michéal Martin stood up in Dail Éireann about a year ago and declared […]
Since March of this year, or perhaps earlier, it’s safe to say that opinions greatly differ with regard to all things related to Covid19. However, in the midst of much disagreement and what has become a very contentious subject where one can hardly express an opinion that goes against the WHO or RTE without being […]
In 2020, the world has been hit by an unprecedented public health crisis, with the effects of COVID-19 being felt across every aspect of people’s lives. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of the United Nations—the mission statement that stands at the very heart of the inclusive multilateralism […]
It is important, generally, to try and not get personal when it comes to the people who govern us. For the most part, they are doing their best. Being wrong, as they regularly are is a human fault, not one that is specific to one party, or one person. Politicians want to be remembered well, […]
The International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) exists to hear appeals on the decisions of the International Protection Officer on applications for protection in the state. In plain English, it’s the body which decides whether an asylum seeker is properly entitled to asylum in the state. People appearing before it, then, have a right to expect […]
‘Clean’ energy may not turn out to be so clean A recent article by Maddie Stone at www.slate.com warns that in the next decade or three, the world will face a novel but entirely predictable problem: what to do with millions of square feet of worn-out solar panels. This problem is especially ironic because […]
It is remarkable what politicians and political campaigners can get away with, when journalists fail to call them to account – and nowhere is this more evident than around the issue of abortion. In the abortion referendum in 2018, pro-choice campaigners were allowed to create the impression that legalising abortion was a women’s health issue, […]
Advice from a business consultant about how to keep PC from taking root in corporate culture. This week the Goodyear Tire Company had a bad day. An employee at its Topeka factory leaked a photo of a diversity and inclusion slide which listed both acceptable clothing expressions — “Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Lesbian, Gay, […]
The Democrats virtual convention was a bit of a damp squib despite the effusive coverage not least from our own Brian O’Donovan the RTE correspondent in Washington who must be due a Consular post in Andorra or Tierra del Fuego if Biden wins. Just 6.1 million viewers bothered to tune into the TV coverage last Tuesday […]
Here in Ireland and across much of the Western world, the issue of mandatory masks has become a controversial and contentious issue, with many people being divided into “pro-mask” and “anti-mask” camps. The former argue that masks are akin to seatbelt laws – a necessary inconvenience for the common good to prevent the virus from […]
What is ‘Excess Deaths’? The Excess Deaths statistic estimates the total mortality impact of a disease on a society. Excess Deaths tells us how many people died in excess of the number we would normally have expected over the same time period. It’s like the ‘real’ metrics that remove the effect of inflation from the observed economic […]
The government has now introduced a return to many Covid-19 restrictions. But what do the numbers actually show about how deadly Coronavirus has been for Ireland? On July 3rd, the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) acknowledged that Coronavirus fatalities in Ireland were overestimated by 60%. A Central Statistics Office report published on the same day proved […]