On Saturday, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) decided at a meeting of its national executive to ballot its members on strike action. Although part of this concerns the on-going and legitimate concern over the status and pay grades of some teachers, it is evident that the main issue is the re-opening of […]
The first thing that any new British Prime Minister has to do, upon taking office, is to pen “the letter of last resort”. We have no idea what’s in it, but we know what it is: Instructions given, in a sealed envelope, to the commanders of Her Majesty’s nuclear submarines, only to be opened in […]
It was a big weekend in media land for lengthy pieces about the apparently dangerous “rise of the far right” in Ireland. The Journal, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and the Examiner (to a lesser estent) featured couple-of-thousand-word plus pieces this weekend claiming to be detailed investigations into the phenomenon, and its apparent connection […]
Former Attorney General and justice minister, Senator Michael McDowell has slammed NPHET’s advice to send Dublin into a fresh lockdown as flying in the face of science. “It hasn’t been scientifically justified, it’s wrong, it flies in the face of the strategy that this government announced two weeks ago that they were going to open […]
The HSE has effectively fired a top doctor for stating his opinion on coronavirus. Ben Scallan reacts
Legendary blues singer, Van Morrison, is to issue three new songs that protest against the Covid-19 lockdown, where he describes what he sees as ‘government overreach’ as the behaviour of ‘fascist bullies’. The famed artist, known for songs like Brown Eyed Girl and Gloria, has accused the authorities of “taking our freedom” in a sharp […]
Left to its own devices, Coronavirus kills people one at a time. When it’s got the helping hand of Government and NPHET, on the other hand, it can wipe out whole cities: The Cabinet are to meet this morning where they will decide on the latest NPHET recommendations. The public health experts met on Thursday […]
It is a well-known fact, accepted by psychologists and psychoanalysts that the more you repeat a concept or thought, be it negative or positive, the more you come to believe it and eventually it is likely to become a reality. If you wake up each morning and go to bed each night with the thought […]
2FM’s Jennifer Zamparelli obviously didn’t get the update memo on allowed topics or opinions when she advertised a discussion on mask wearing on her morning show on 2FM. https://twitter.com/JenniferMaguire/status/1305518091229704200 The backlash from the wokeratti was instant and vicious, and Zamparelli said she received all kinds of absue in DM. A fair number of journalists were […]
Broadly amusing, mainly because of how the American left spends so much of its time, in normal times, accusing people who oppose it of being anti-vaxxers. How times change: “With deaths from the coronavirus nearing 200,000 in the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday assailed President Trump for playing politics with a potential […]
After months of enforced closure, Ireland’s small town/rural pubs are set to re-open next Monday 21st September. Pubs in the capital will remain in limbo – unless of course they are serving a virus-busting plate of chicken and chips for €9. While the recently announced five level plan “Living With Covid-19” is an improvement on […]
The headline in other newspapers is that he resigned, of course, but even their coverage has to tell you what really happened, down in about paragraph five: Dr Martin Feeley’s views that coronavirus is “much less severe” than the flu for most people and that restrictions were no longer justified caused a furore after they […]