“Government ban household visits”, blared the Irish Examiner, last night, as the latest round of futile covid restrictions were announced: Government ban household visits – except for compassionate or essential reasons https://t.co/WSRGeVB06R — Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) October 14, 2020 Futile is a good word, here. The “restrictions” announced last night are not really restrictions at […]
Schools in Northern Ireland will close for two weeks from Friday under a new “circuit breaker” lockdown to be announced by First Minister Arlene Foster today. The closure of schools is part of a range of new restrictions that the Northern Irish Government is introducing: Here it is: I've obtained a copy of the new […]
An interesting aspect of the Budget was that it once again illustrated the minimal differences that exist across the entire range of political parties in Leinster House. Apart from the outlier of the People Before Profit demand for a wealth tax which they claim would deliver €3.5 billion, all of the arguing was over different […]
The British Prime Minister has warned that the speedy development of a covid-19 vaccine cannot be taken for granted. Boris Johnson told the British parliament on Monday that while there were “hopeful signs” that a vaccine would be developed, he warned that it could not be taken for granted. “There are some very hopeful signs not least […]
A person is defined to be living in extreme poverty if they are living on less than $1.90 a day. A new report from the World Bank, which provides funding and training to developing countries, has said that they estimate that the economic contractions caused by COVID-19 will cause the number of people living in […]
To listen to the Government, one might think that the latest surge in Coronavirus cases was coming from just about everywhere except for schools. Talk to teachers, however, and you’ll find that there is great concern that many of the cases are connected to education, and are not being reported. Gript spoke to four teachers […]
What was to be a few weeks of removal of all of our civil liberties to “flatten the curve” and “protect the NHS” has now eight months later morphed into a dystopian police state. Humans, that most social of species, seem isolated in a laboratory which used to be their lives, in terror of an […]
Constitutional questions are unlikely to be uppermost in our minds now, when we feel concerned both about those most vulnerable to Covid-19 and about those most severely affected by past and present measures responding to it. In terms of the collateral damage caused by those measures, we think of things like physical and mental health, […]
The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) hosted a four day conference at Great Barrington, Massachusetts between October 1 and 4 which concluded with the launch of a statement regarding what the proper response to the Covid crisis ought to be. The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) was co-authored by Professor Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at […]
There’s been some sustained criticism of the Archbishops in recent days for their seeming passivity on the question of whether people should be allowed to go to mass during the lockdown, including from Gript columnists like Professor Ray Kinsella, writing here. And don’t the critics have a point? What’s the point in having Archbishops in […]
Another day, another one of these: A Dublin GP says he has decided to close his practice after being threatened with suspension by the Medical Council over his anti-lockdown and anti-mask views on Covid-19. Dr Marcus de Brun said he decided to end his HSE contract and to step back from public speaking “under duress”, […]
To many people’s shock, Ireland has narrowly avoided a second level 5 lockdown. But what have the authorities been doing – or not been doing – for the last 7 months to get us here? Ben Scallan reacts.