Government – Page 3

Catholic Adoption

July 5, 2018 No Comments

In the news, more adoption issues in a case that further illustrates the attitudes and social mores of catholic Ireland as detailed in The God Squad. The fudged adoption papers, un-vetted placement, obfuscation and misdirection of the supposed Sisters of Charity is sadly unsurprising yet still awful to read: His client became pregnant shortly before her […]

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Government Human Rights Society

The Chain of Destruction

October 3, 2017October 3, 2017 No Comments

I’ve just finished the excellent documentary “The House I Live In” (thanks to D for recommending). It’s a fascinating look at the consequences of the so-called ‘War on Drugs’, which is really just a proxy war against an entire class of humanity with no end in sight. It’s created a criminal problem from a public […]

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Brexit Government

Borders & Bad Old Days

March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 No Comments

Interesting article over on the New European ( “Don’t send Ireland back to division” ), exploring the implications for Ireland, particularly highlighting the impact it will have on the Good Friday agreement. The UK Government is giving all the appearances of wilfully ignoring the issues. There’s a lot of idealism amongst the ‘Brexiteers’, it seems to […]

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Freedoms Government Trumperica

Yonatan Zunger – What things going wrong can look like

March 12, 2017March 12, 2017 No Comments

In Trumpistan, Yonatan Zunger had a guess at how things might play out (https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/what-things-going-wrong-can-look-like-400f84a0cc3a#.yyni3tha1): On a recent post I made about how President Trump marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of my readers asked a good, but hard, question: Why did this regime single out some particular groups (e.g., Muslims, Latinos, Black, and Trans people) as […]

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Government Health The Inter-Department Co-Ordination Board

Actual Planning with Data

February 24, 2017 No Comments

A sensible statement about health planning for once. Imagine using actual data to plan capacity: Ireland needs to use demographic information for the provision of long-term health strategies in the same as the country plans for education, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said. Mr Harris accepted he had to deal with day to day […]

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Freedoms Government Politics Society

Autocracy Or Kleptocracy – Trump’s America

February 6, 2017 No Comments

David Frum expounds on the possible outcomes of Trump’s Presidency in the Atlantic. Fascinating and though-provoking, it’s a long but worhtwhile read. He covers something I’ve noted before: In an 1888 lecture, James Russell Lowell, a founder of this magazine, challenged the happy assumption that the Constitution was a “machine that would go of itself.” […]

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Brexit Department of Whimsical Ideas Europe Oddities Politics

Union of Craic

January 25, 2017 No Comments

Toying around with ideas of what Scotland could do to stay in the EU, while also wondering what will happen to Northern Ireland which also voted to ‘remain’, a friend and I ended up considering if the twitter favourite ‘Union of Craic’ would actually work. The idea is that Scotland goes ahead and runs a […]

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Brexit Economy Government

The Guardian at Davos 2017 WEF

January 23, 2017 No Comments

Illuminating roundup of what the Guardian heard at Davos 2017, sample: At Davos you know a speaker is a real draw if they manage to fill both the cavernous conference hall and also the overspill room. That was the case for Chinese president Xi Jinping’s opening address, seen as an attempt by Beijing to seize […]

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Government Human Rights Secret State

Chelsea Manning to be released!

January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 No Comments

Some good news in the last days of the Obama administration, President Obama has commuted the vast bulk of Chelsea Manning’s 35 year sentence and she will be released next May 17th.

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Government Politics

How Democracy Ends?

December 28, 2016 No Comments

Asks David Runciman in the LRB. Can the modern, democratic state survive the assent of someone like Trump? Some have said that the US needs someone who ‘tells it like it is’ (which is doublespeak for ‘tells it the way I think it is’), who’ll make changes, a ‘strong man’. A ‘disruptor’. The heart of […]

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Who?

Murf

Catholic Adoption

The Chain of Destruction

Borders & Bad Old Days

Yonatan Zunger – What things going wrong can look like

Actual Planning with Data

Autocracy Or Kleptocracy – Trump’s America

Union of Craic

The Guardian at Davos 2017 WEF

Chelsea Manning to be released!

How Democracy Ends?

Category: Government