In the days following Leo Varadkar’s address to the Nation on St Patrick’s Day, there was a flurry of chatter online as journalists, politicos and those outside the bubble shared their thoughts and reactions. Most of the coverage was undoubtedly positive, much of the public seemingly reassured that the Government and the Taoiseach are making […]
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson garbled his government’s coronavirus strategy. The media reported that the UK (and the Netherlands) were adopting a “herd immunity” approach to combatting the disease. The chief scientific adviser to the government, Patrick Vallance, suggested that the UK would allow millions of Britons to be infected, boosting eventual herd immunity. “Our aim is […]
Over the past couple of years, the world’s media has been agog at Sarco (short for sarcophagus), the elegant suicide pod developed by Dr Philip Nitschke. Just close the lid, turn on the nitrogen, and you will die. The pod can also be used as a coffin, thereby saving relatives of the deceased time and money. For […]
This week marked the centenary of the killing of Tomás MacCurtáin, Mayor of Cork, who was shot dead by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) on March 20th, 1920. MacCurtain had been elected the first Republican Mayor of Cork City, and was assassinated in front of his family in a premeditated attack planned by the RIC with the […]
On Wednesday night, while 90 percent of the world was coming to grips with the impact of the coronavirus on their lives, a majority in the New Zealand Parliament voted into law one of the most extreme abortion regimes on the planet. That’s right. Just when emergency measures are being rolled out by the day to […]
The right to privacy is something that any democratic government should respect and defend, rather than ignore or even destroy, as the government of China appears to be doing.
There is now a total of 769 confirmed cases of Covid-19 north and south of Ireland, and tragically there have been 4 deaths so far. Many of these infections could have been prevented in my view. Many of these people are likely to have contracted the illness when flights were still arriving from northern Italy into […]
It seems the coming days will determine how Taiwan is remembered in the fight against Covid-19.
The internal troubles at The Guardian took an interesting turn this week when Suzanne Moore, the feminist writer, published the names of every signatory of a letter sent to Katharine Viner, editor of the Guardian, calling out Moore for writing supposedly ‘transphobic content’. Moore recently wrote an article, headlined Women must have the right to […]
When everything else in life is stripped bare, God is the one certainty that we can cling to.
Covid-19 looks likely to rank among the most startling black swan events of history. A black swan in economic parlance disturbs the existing paradigms, sails into sudden view out of seeming nowhere and shatters settled doctrines about white feathers, orange beaks and blacked up eyes. Who could have predicted? We were looking in the wrong […]
With whispers of an end to partition on the lips of many, with predictions of a border poll rife, and with the British government exhibiting increasing signs of disinterest in the Ulster Plantation, it seems the arc of history is slowly bending towards Irish unity. However, if Brexit has taught us one thing, it is […]