Powers of state are exercised with little or no democratic accountability
Every year in Ireland about 30,000 of us die. That is about 2,500 people every month. Of those people, approximately 30% (770 monthly) are attributed to cancer and another 30% (about 750 per month) are attributed to heart disease. In the last month for which official data is available, there were 25 Covid-related deaths. The […]
Public is getting the mushroom treatment on Covid regulations
It is fair to say that we are living in an emergency where hugely important decisions for the economy, public health and social conditions are being made by Cabinet decree through the medium of statutory instruments under the Health Act 1947 immediately effective unless and until cancelled by the Houses of the Oireachtas. You might […]
HSE is gambling with ICU capacity
Tempting though it might be to add here to the condemnations concerning Boris Johnson’s perfidious Internal Market Bill, I will repose my hope (if not my trust) in the House of Lords to prevent “Britannia Waives The Rules” from becoming the finale sung at next year’s BBC Proms. We have more immediate problems on hand […]
Trump is a moral monster and a danger to humanity
When Jamal Khassoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2nd October 2018, he was attacked, suffocated and dismembered by a security team of handpicked assassins and medical staff sent from Saudi Arabia in two official aircraft dispatched from Riyadh. All the evidence suggests that this was done on the direction of the Saudi Crown […]
Government must communicate and act as a team during indefinite pandemic
It is now clear that we are going to have to live with COVID-19 in our midst for the indefinite future. The consensus is that we simply cannot succeed in a strategy of killing off completely the virus on the island of Ireland by a re-imposed total lockdown. We are not geographically isolated like New […]
The public will not endure a second lockdown
There was something very unreal, in political terms, in recent commentary on the subject of another general lockdown. It seems to me to be a political impossibility. The public endured the March lockdown with patriotism, fortitude and a clear belief that it was a once-off event designed to prevent a Covid tsunami from collapsing our […]