This Bloomberg piece about Japan’s rural depopulation is very interesting. And since it is not only interesting but also about demography, it seems perfect to share with you, the readers of the Demography is Destiny blog. As we have often said before, Japan is the canary in the demographic coalmine, the country that the rest of the world is […]
The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa is by far the biggest EU trust fund in existence. It emerged from the EU-Africa migration summit in Valletta in November 2015 with the aim of “fostering stability and to contribute to better migration management, including by addressing the root causes of destabilisation, forced displacement and irregular migration.” […]
“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” These were the spirited words of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg in her address last week to the United Nations. Miss Thunberg’s claim that we are “in the beginning […]
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. George Orwell, 1984 The recommendation of the National Council for Curriculum Assessment that the teaching of history remain an optional subject for the Junior Cert hardly came as a surprise. Anyone who read the 2016 NCCA background […]
Chronic loneliness is an increasing concern, and apparently not just among the elderly and social-media crazed millennials. A recently released YouGov survey finds that almost one in five men in the UK say that they have no close friends. The findings also show that men generally lead more solitary lives than women, who appear to be better at […]
Good news, folks. After what feels like a lifetime of waiting, a new, true, fully socialist Irish movement is here. Paul Murphy has finally stepped forward, to offer the people the revolutionary leadership we have all waited so many years for: “Speaking at the launch in Dublin today, Murphy said that after a year-long debate […]
A combination of anonymity, invulnerability, and defensiveness causes Twitter users to revert to a form of pre-civilization, in which kill-or-be-killed defines the conditions of exchange.
The Irish Medical Council has produced an updated version of the Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners. The most relevant changes follow the Ireland’s new abortion law. Let’s consider them in detail. Section 48 of the Guide was titled “Abortion” in the previous editions while now the euphemism “termination of pregnancy” is […]
When I was a child, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would reply that I wanted to be a zookeeper, or an airline pilot, or a racing driver. My love of animals and planes and fast cars has not abated, though sadly, I did not manage to […]
Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled this week that assisted suicide is legal if a person is experiencing “intolerable physical and psychological suffering”. Anyone who “facilitates the suicidal intention… of a patient kept alive by life-support treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology” should not be punished, the court ruled. The patient’s condition must be “causing physical […]
Serious concerns have been raised about the implementation of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation after a 61-year-old depressed but otherwise healthy man was euthanised in the province of British Columbia. Alan Nichols, a former school janitor who lived alone and struggled with depression, was admitted to Chilliwack General Hospital, BC, in June after he was […]
One of the interesting and worrying trends in the USA at the moment is its political polarisation. This is of course not unique to that country, but there is some evidence that the political divide is becoming increasingly reflected in an economic and geographic one. That is, people are becoming less likely to be living […]