Car use is not simply the prerogative of the middle class
There seems to be a vogue for condemning everyone who doesn’t share your opinions as being morally reprehensible, selfish, ignorant, or a class enemy. Violent language is regularly used online against anyone who questions the validity of transgender ideology. Owners of rented property are condemned as exploiters of their lessees. And now Irish Times readers […]
State is now turning its guns on private landlords
I wrote here some time ago about the issue of private landlords exiting the market. I raised the question as to whether this really mattered, in so far as every house being sold by a private landlord would either end up in the hands of an owner-occupier or in the hands of another private […]
Judicial Appointments Commission Bill is unconstitutional
The Government hopes before Easter to pass legislation that amounts, in my view, to a gross subversion of the architecture of Bunreacht na h-Éireann and a massive breach of the constitutional separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary that has existed in Ireland for 100 years. That legislation is the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, […]
A caring consensus on gender issues requires broad national discussion
The HSE now proposes to develop a new policy in relation to gender dysphoria, transgender issues and the availability and access to gender transitional counselling and medical treatment. This raises the immediate question as to who or what the HSE is at present. It is an executive agency of the State with wide responsibilities in […]
What is the DUP up to now? The simple answer is: saving face
There was a good deal of stage management in the presentation of the Windsor Framework on Monday. Sunak and Von Der Leyen and everyone on the inside of the negotiations maintained the pretence that the deal was not finalised over the previous weekend in order to keep its detail tight and to control its publication. […]
We are having another “Munich moment”
History does not repeat itself that often but there are many parallels and analogies available to those who need them to make rhetorical points for political purposes. Some of them are valid; others are monstrously invalid such as the claim by Vladimir Putin that the West or NATO started the Ukraine war, and that Russia […]