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…
The number of coronavirus deaths suddenly jumped by 10 people yesterday bringing Ireland’s overall total to 19. May they all rest in peace. If yesterday marks anything, it marks the end of the beginning. For people out there growing increasingly anxious, I would point out that it is a trend consistent with other countries 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…
I have started a new habit. Once a day Dr. Tony Holohan somberly reveals the daily Irish coronavirus statistics and unless your living on Mars you know today (Mar 20th) brought 126 new cases. Then I wait for an hour to see how the 4 main news sources in the country headline the news. The…
COVID-19 cases properly broke onto the shores of the United States on March 18th. Testing is starting to ramp up and what testing is revealing is that the coronavirus is already rampant in the United States. It is quite unbelievable that capability to test and process quickly, in the thousands per day, is only really…
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…
In essence we are at war in Ireland now. We will all need to start thinking in that mind-frame. No doubt, it is an unusual war and against an invisible enemy. To fight this war we must ask ourselves – What it is our enemy wants. What are our enemy’s goals. At this stage of…
“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…
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have released their latest figures for the coronavirus and the European countries affected. France, Germany and Spain are beginning to see big rises in the numbers of people being infected. These three countries are roughly where Italy was 5 or 6 days ago. The numbers in the…
The Department of Education issued 3 circulars on March 9th (yesterday) to the different education bodies in the country, including higher education authorities, Training boards and to Secondary & Primary schools.A copy of each circular is at the bottom of this article. Each one states the following to each of it’s addressees: “The Minister for…
Historic – day by day – look at the daily coronavirus reporting since the beginning of the outbreak. Reporting started on December 31st 2019. All statistics are referenced from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Statistics are accurate as per 09:00 GMT on March 09th 2020. UK and Irish Statistics are followed by…
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…
Sinn Fein Head Office is on Parnell Square in Dublin 1. Earlier today I spoke to a new, young recruit manning the phones to gather some Sinn Fein membership information. Last weekend a Sunday Times opinion poll put Sinn Fein support at 35%. This is an almost 11% bounce from election day. The Sinn Fein…
Miriam O’Callaghan had the Chinese ambassador to Ireland on Prime Time last night. The questions were pretty softball as the ambassador laid out the extreme measures China utilised to contain the virus in Wuhan and the rest of the Chinese provinces. Then O’Callaghan asked a question, the phrasing of which annoyed me intensely. She was…