Actor John Connors has issued a major apology for leading what he describes as a “homophobic crusade” against Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman. Mr. Connors was the most prominent speaker at the so-called “hands off our kids” rally which attracted around a thousand people to Dublin last weekend in the aftermath of online reporting about the […]
Dubbed “deaths of despair”, opioid deaths are a significant reason why the life expectancy of Americans is falling. In 2017, the rate of drug overdose deaths (21.7 per 100,000) had increased to 3.6 times the rate in 1999. The demographic of America’s opioid epidemic is non-Hispanic white Americans, Native Americans and the working class, and […]
India is about to overtake China as the world’s most populous country (if it hasn’t already done so). With around 1.4 billion people and a population density of nearly 400 people per kilometre, one often associates population explosion with Indian demographics. Indeed, the sight of India in the 1960s was one of the major influences […]
The report on abortion presented by the Department of Health may have informed us that 6,666 terminations were carried out in Ireland last year (plus 375 in Britain), but aside from that, it is abysmally and purposely poor in terms of information given. It does not include typical data to allow us to analyse what groups are […]
One would imagine that the discovery of up to 10,000 slaves in a European city might have provoked a major response. Seemingly not, for following on from the Sun and Sunday Times exposure of such an abomination, there has been surprisingly little media or political attention devoted to it. On July 1 the Sun reported […]
Great pipers to the singers and storytellers,
This week Fergus Finlay called those who attacked new Childrens’ Minister, Roderic O Gorman, because of the photo he posted of himself with controversial LGBT+activist, Peter Tatchell, as ‘rodents’ and ‘the most repellent form of political cave life’. Angry words for sure. Hateful, just as surely. But would they be indictable under new hate speech […]
What fresh nonsense is this? Ms Foley said all individual grades will have to be checked and reviewed using different demographic characteristics – including gender and socio-economic status – to ensure they are as fair and equitable as possible. “I want to make sure that this work is done rigorously – so that the results […]
Last night the Dáil debated the National Oil Reserves Agency (Amendment) and Provision of Central Treasury Bill 2020. The aim of the Bill is to make it legal for the government to direct the funding generated by the levy you pay on petrol/oil products into its Climate Action Fund. Although the levy has been set […]
It’s now approaching six months since Covid-19 turned our world upside down, although China and other Asian countries have been tackling the novel coronavirus since late last year. Prediction and speculation are the stock-in-trade of fools but I think we’ve all been tempted to dust down our crystal ball and ponder what the future holds. […]
A grotesque report out of Kansas City drew attention to a problem that has begun to grow nearly unnoticed: The sexual assault of children—by other children. The Children’s Mercy hospital says that they are seeing “a disturbing trend in child sexual assault cases,” and that pornography has a lot to do with it. Heide Olson, […]
Well, we’ve come a long way from the days of “facemasks might make things worse”, haven’t we? The Government has announced that face coverings must now be worn in all shops, retail settings and shopping centres. It said the strong advice is for people to start obeying the guidance immediately, but said regulations will take […]