A fascinating tidbit this, unearthed by a friend on twitter: https://twitter.com/scary_biscuits/status/1191868187027148800 The most popular story in the mythology of modern Ireland is the notion that our little country has recently stepped forward, out of the darkness and brutality of the past, to become a happier and more self-confident nation. Nearly everything written about the Ireland […]
Hate crime in England and Wales is defined as, ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. Yes. It is actually that broad and yes, it is actually that vague. The definition was agreed in 2007 […]
A 29-year old man, who is wheel-chair bound, has had charges dropped against him after being arrested for publicly praying at an abortion clinic. Christian Hacking became the first person arrested by UK police for praying in public. Police bodycam footage shows officers accosting Christian Hacking after he was spotted praying quietly on the grass […]
Mary McAleese’s criticism of the Catholic Church (‘Women the Vatican Couldn’t Silence’, Trinity College 2/11/2019) is largely about attacking ‘strawmen’ targets. She had strong words for ‘cowardly’ prelates. Yet, the two she mentioned, according to Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times, could hardly be described as ‘cowardly’. Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan took a bold step against […]
The British general election on December 12 will be held almost 101 years to the day since the 1918 general election in Ireland. The last time there was a democratic vote throughout the island on the same day, the outcome was a decisive victory for Sinn Féin which stood on the platform of Irish independence […]
Charlie Flanagan, the Minister for Justice, is doing a terrible job of balancing the needs of migrants and asylum seekers with the concerns of local communities. The sheer arrogance shown by his Department is extraordinary. They’ve refused to consult with locals before making high-handed announcements about direct provision centres opening in jig time, with everyone […]
Jurisdictions which permit assisted suicide or euthanasia suck all the oxygen out of media coverage of this topic. To put the issue in perspective, assisted suicide or euthanasia is only legal in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and a handful of American states. Nearly everywhere else, doctors have repudiated it. As a reminder of this, the […]
The links between pornography and human trafficking have long been established, but rarely have the connections been so horribly apparent as in a recent story reported on earlier this month by Newsweek. The mother of a 15-year-old girl from South Florida who had been missing for almost a year discovered that her daughter was still alive when […]
Belgian paralympian Marieke Vervoort died after euthanasia at the age of 40. Vervoort won gold and silver at the London 2012 Paralympics and another two medals at Rio 2016, had an incurable degenerative muscle disease. Vervoort had been preparing for euthanasia for a long time. In 2008 she completed all the paperwork. Despite her strength […]
Irish parents, and indeed parents worldwide, now live in a world where their children, as soon as they are old enough to access the internet, are never more than two or three clicks away from the most hardcore pornography. The normalisation of pornography over the past thirty years, and the consequences of that, has been […]
Last night, Fine Gael members in her Dun Laoghaire constituency voted, in effect, to boot Maria Bailey from the Fine Gael ticket for the next General Election, whenever that might come: The meeting last night heard from Deputy Bailey and her detractors, with some calling for her removal from the party ticket. A majority voted […]
No one quite knows what is going on in North Korea (although Michael Palin does have a book out which may be illuminating…but probably won’t be). Thus, when it comes to its population and predicted trends, it is hard to be sure just what the real story in in the Hermit Kingdom. But, from what can […]