The Hard Conversation

Politicians lie in the same way that birds sing. It’s an uncontrollable urge that becomes second nature to them once they have participated in the democratic process of being elected. Human beings have enormous potential as individuals and yet collectively we can be incredibly stupid and naive.   Governments have become shameless in their lies and manipulation of the masses. Dr Fauci has contradicted himself so many times at this stage that I’m sure he’ll meet himself coming around the next corner. His decision to fund the lab in Wuhan and then his attempts to deflect attention away from them have now been fully exposed, yet he is still secure in his government-appointed position. Why? I would suggest that had this happened even 25 years ago the outcry would have been such that his resignation would have been inevitable. Not so in today’s world of keeping your mouth shut and don’t step out of line or you’ll get a high tech modern version of a knock on the door. His email communicat...

I always knew that Michael Martin was limited. I just never realised to what degree. His comment that COVID had exposed income inequality and then to suggest that some employers had actually been quite good is to imply that many have not. If his key takeaway from the COVID crisis is that employers have not been acting in a manner that meets with his approval is very tough to take. SME businesses across Ireland have been and are fighting for their survival. Many won’t make it. They have been crushed under the weight of these lockdowns and now our Taoiseach is going to turn the screw even further by addressing what he perceives as a key priority coming out of the pandemic. After all it’s good vote getting rhetoric. It’s no secret that in the corridors of power nobody cares about the business people or ordinary SME’s. Despite being the sector which creates the largest number of jobs and generates the largest slice of the tax take that funds government they are seen as almost a nuisance va...

  “Imagine if you are as free now as you will ever be for the rest of your life” Most people are not even considering this and refuse to countenance that it could actually happen. Governments have a pretty good track record in making a bad situation worse, the financial crisis of 2008 being a recent example. There are those amongst us who would like to control our every move and this pandemic has presented them with a golden opportunity. In the 1950’s under the threat of an atomic bomb children were taught Duck and Cover Techniques to protect themselves. This typically meant hiding under their desks as if that would protect them from an atomic bomb landing nearby. Nevertheless teachers and pupils alike did it religiously. This was a fear based response which made people feel they were doing something to protect themselves when clearly they weren’t.   The measures being adopted by society today in terms of the lockdown are similar in nature. The mask has become the ultimate sym...

It was refreshing to read the views of Dr Ivor Browne in today’s Irish independent. At 93 years of age he has a terrific attitude about death, personal responsibility and living life which we could all learn from. He is a retired psychiatrist with a history of not being afraid to challenge the convention of the day. As a spritely 93 year old with vast experience in mental health our newly formed government would do worse than entertain his views. So far this year 29M people have died worldwide. 500,000 of those have died from COVID-19. On may 20 th this year there had been 320,000 deaths worldwide from COVID-19. Within the same period 3.1M people died of cancer, 5M from all communicable diseases and 1.9M from the effects of smoking. Suicide and mental health issues will only fully manifest themselves over time but nevertheless will be a consequence of the lockdown. Governments across the western world addressed the Pandemic by doing two things. They handed the running of their...

We must lift the lockdown with immediate effect which means we should aim for June the 1 st . Meanwhile we should allow people to move around freely from a social perspective. Over the next 2 weeks businesses and other organisations should prepare themselves to open. This requires leadership and courage. Our leaders must balance the risks and the  implications of all options. Any sensible scrutiny will establish two things. Firstly that we can’t afford to keep the economy locked down and that it must be opened up fully, not partially. Secondly that the people will not agree with you initially because of the level of hysteria that has been generated in the past two months. We must all dig deep and have courage but the leaders must lead. They don’t have the luxury as has become common practice to check if the people will agree with them before doing anything. The initial reaction by governments was understandable. People wanted action and they needed to do something to sat...

I am writing this from a remote part of Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island. There is nobody within 100 miles of here that has been identified as having contracted the Virus. Everything locally is shut bar the Food Store and the Drug Store. People are frightened and understandably so. They are at home on a constant diet of COVED – 19 threats, statistics and press briefings. Isn’t it great that we have so many experts. All you need is a microphone to be an expert these days. It’s a pity the expert leaders of the WHO didn’t recognise what was happening until it had gathered pace. Communism/socialism is based on total centralized control of the people. If they don’t conform they will either be taught the error of their ways by physical and emotional torture, confined to some kind of a hard labour camp or they will be removed without trace. In essence brutal and unrelenting bullying which in the last century led to such regimes killing tens of millions of their own people. ...