Observations. Satire. Politics. Interviews.
I shouldn’t have opened my mouth really. No sooner had I completed my last post than Leo Varadkar decided to up the social distancing ante. Alas, night time strolls require GPS like accuracy this week. 2 kilometres is the new 2 metres. Stray further at your peril! It seems the country was getting cute and…
“Distance sometimes lets you know who is worth keeping, and who is worth letting go.”― Lana Del Rey I won’t lie – I think I might be an All-Ireland champion at this whole social distancing craic. A natural. I’ve taken to going for long walks at around midnight just to absorb the quiet. Stillness has a…
On the 23rd of February 2020 the WHO recorded the first 2 deaths from coronavirus in Northern Italy. Ireland current has two coronavirus deaths. We track the track the day to day Italian statistics below. It paints a very stark picture. As we will see it was very quickly out of control. We use World…
“It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” – Winston Churchill I suppose the key to any musing about Boris Johnson is: How much do you buy into the caricature? If you’re already – all in – on this idea of him as…
Our collective reality has changed. Most of the ordinary people of Ireland seem to be ahead of the politicians and the HSE leadership on this point – to name but two slow moving elites. I know that there are still a few pockets of resistance to this idea out there. I am not here to…
My recent Coronavirus interviewing and the fever sweeping the country for the past week got me to thinking about my own brush with mortality over five years ago. In fact, it was a fever that was the first symptom. Ireland is not a country that is a natural habitat for ticks and yet somehow in…
Let’s start this article with a very simple proposition. Acting Minister for Health, Simon Harris, is a dangerous fool. Yes – Harris is a smart fool out of his depth in dealing with a crisis of the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic. One of Harris’s responses to the coronavirus this week has been to appear…
The full violence of Storm Ciara swept into Ireland overnight bringing with it heavy rain, high winds and the full force of leftist populism. The Irish electorate wake up this morning to a changed landscape. The early tallies back up last night’s RTE exit poll. Sinn Fein and the left have made huge gains across…
Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Fein have already made one mistake that Labour Leader, Dick Spring made in the moments before the General Election campaign of 1992. She still has time to avoid the other. Sinn Fein will be secretly hoping that they do not climb much higher than 25% of the national vote next Saturday….
The Sinn Fein rise in the polls has caught me by surprise a bit. Back-to-back polling sees them vying with Fianna Fail for top-spot as Ireland’s largest party. It remains to be seen if opinion percentages translate to percentage share of the Vote next Saturday. It will be no harm for the politics of this…
Conversations with yourself are not usually encouraged as part of a healthy and balanced approach to mental wellness. I must admit though I’ve always enjoyed talking to myself. Comforting might be a better word. Eckart Tolle would tut-tut at this notion and point to a chronic manifestation of an ego establishing a narrative of the…
The speculation finally ended this morning and a General Election has been called for a Scrap Saturday in February. By tomorrow morning the country will be aflame with posters and #GE2020 paraphernalia. A campaign full of promises awaits. However, before the runners and riders line up behind the tape, there is one person I would…
It’s 3:00 am and my Jack Russell is giving me the eye from the far end of the couch. Once she catches my attention, she hops down, moves up to my end of the sofa and starts an impatient little dance on the floor in the general vicinity of my head. It’s fair to say,…
Sometimes the tide turns in the most unexpected of places and in the most surprising of ways. I have spent the evening watching Ricky Gervais taking a sword to the Hollywood elite. It was his fifth and final time to host the Golden Globes and with the unerring timing of the world class comic that…
Ghost of Christmas Present: If he’s like to die, he better do it and decrease the surplus population. Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol It’s quiet on the corner of Luke and Poolbeg street on the weekday nights. That’s the main reason I like it. Not much competition or trouble. Another plus. It’s the best place to…