Gerard

I find it ironic that in this day research showing that boys run and swim faster than girls before the onset of puberty is so noteworthy. But these articles received enough views to be Top Viewed Articles in EJSS. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… #TopViewedArticle @wileyinresearch

Usually in these kinds of coming out situations, the media completely ignore spouse and children as though they were utterly irrlevant - Flemming talking about ' living a lie' is terribly callous and selfish..he enjoyed all the benefits of marriage to a decent woman

I have run through wind turbine farms in Munster,, Ireland on boggy wind swept Irish hills and can confirm the scenario James is projecting here is fictitious..

This is, as many people have said, a tremendous speech. I'm neither surprised nor too worried that the vote was lost - that many students voted against women's and LGB rights. As a student, I was passionate and a bit dogmatic, confident that I was on the right side of history. But when I heard counter arguments, even if they didn't persuade me straight away, they went round and round in my head for months and years. They bugged me. There will be plenty of cambridge students today who are unsettled, reflective, moving towards their own 'hang on a minute' moment. It's difficult to overestimate the importance of what @MaeveHalligan and her colleagues have done, and the effects will filter out over the decades to come. Just having the arguments is tremendously important. To present them as intelligently and articulately as they have done is a magnificent bonus.

Today in 1945, Éamon de Valera took to the airwaves to defend Irish neutrality and held the mirror of Imperial hypocrisy up to Winston Churchill. Three days earlier, Churchill basking in the glow of Allied victory couldn't resist a dig at Ireland. He talked about Irish ports whose approaches could so easily have guarded the Atlantic convoys, closed instead to the Royal Navy while U-boats picked off British ships. He said without the loyalty of Northern Ireland, Britain would have been forced to come to close quarters with de Valera or perish from the earth. He implied Britain showed restraint against the Dublin government. His bitterness was heightened because 2 weeks before VE Day, de Valera had called on the German legation in Dublin to express condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, having offered no such courtesy upon the death of President Roosevelt three weeks earlier. What Churchill chose to omit was behind the scenes, Ireland had been cooperating quietly with the Allies throughout the war. Allied airmen who came down in Ireland were returned whilst German ones were interned. Irish intelligence shared information with British counterparts. The Treaty Ports, ceded to Ireland in 1938, were Irish sovereign territory from hard-won independence. So today in 1945, De Valera took to Radio Éireann and spoke some truth to the Empire. "Certain newspapers have been very persistent in looking for my answer to Mr Churchill's recent broadcast. I know the kind of answer I am expected to make...Suppose Germany had won the war, had invaded and occupied England, and that after a long lapse of time and many bitter struggles, she was finally brought to acquiesce in admitting England's right to freedom, and let England go, but not the whole of England, all but, let us say, the six southern counties. Would he think the people of partitioned England an object of shame if they stood neutral in such circumstances? I do not think Mr. Churchill would." This analogy elegantly explained Ireland's pragmatic neutrality was not cowardice. It was the stance of a small country still healing from occupation, partition, and civil war, with six of its counties still held by the power now lecturing it about moral obligation. De Valera acknowledged that allowances could be made for Churchill in the first flush of victory. Then, he made his central point that by Churchill's own admission he would have violated Irish neutrality if Britain's survival had demanded it. "Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone, not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression, a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?" Britain's top diplomat in Dublin, Sir John Maffey, recorded that it was de Valera's reply, not Churchill's attack, that bore the stamp of the elder statesman. The historian Joseph Lee called it a magisterial performance, exquisitely tuned to the emotional needs of his flock. Dev did us proud that day and tore Churchill a new one. Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book ko-fi.com/buchanandublin…

@MaryKenny4 Thanks - Joan Burton as Lab' Min' for Socal Welfare published a Report on these ' bogus selfemployed' pensions in 2013 whch would have largely resolved these contracts & given access to employee status but she buried the report & the Dail Social Protection Committee ignored it

@downgerd You’re right, Gerard. (I was being sarcastic - I can’t even access a pension I contributed to while working for the Irish Press. If I’d be more MM, I’d have been smarter.)

A growing perception, it seems.

@JamesMelville You are scare mongering - turbine blades can be fully recylced and 40 million metric tims is but a fraction of the waste produced by the coal industry alone - whole mountains have been removed by open cast coal mining in US alone

By 2050, there could be more than 40 million metric tonnes of wind turbine blade waste piling up worldwide. How is that environmentally sustainable? How is that ‘saving the planet”?

I support Rashida Tlaib's resolution to officially recognize the Nakba on the condition that we say the truth about what the Nakba was: Palestinians led the charge, murdering 1% of Israel's population, in a war they started. Palestinians rejected a peaceful UN two-state solution and chose war and ethnic cleansing instead. They ethnically cleansed THE ENTIRE East Jerusalem and the West Bank of every Jew. NOT ONE Jew remained there. Let's recognize the truth of the Nakba.

@MaryKenny4 irishexaminer.com/news/arid-3049… Irish politicians holding on to permanent teaching positions in order to get teaching pensions for jobs they are not working at is in my view political corruption & is part of the history of corruption in Irish politics

@downgerd Smart move! Wish I had his savvy!

@MaryKenny4 Mary I and many other unemplyed people were not even allowed register as unemployed with the Department of Social Welfare and I personally met Michael Martin at his constituency clinic about this and he & his part did nothing about this - Martin is quite ruthless

Western society is currently divided between people who know this is a man and are prepared to say so and those who know this is a man but lie out of obedience to an ideology. There is no third option. Literally nobody on earth thinks "Roxanne Tickle" is actually a woman.

A Palestinian man from Gaza has made a formal submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, demanding that 14 Hamas leaders be investigated for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. This is the first such filing by a Palestinian against Hamas. The man lost his wife, children, and other family members in the war in Gaza. Should the ICC move forward with this case, I hope the world takes it as seriously as the one filed against Israel by South Africa.

🚨 CONFIRMED: Hamas chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, has been eliminated.

Just found out that they lost the debate. The speeches that won it must have been so powerful that trans activists are forgetting to share them.

@Roisin_Garden And for the record, he is clearly bisexual and not gay....funny how the media cannot tell the difference between gay and bisexual...it is almost as if that would spoil the brave gay man narrative

A Gay Man who marries a Woman in 2004 is not some down trodden hero with a coming out hero journey . . . 2004 was not the middle ages He is a Liar that stole over 2 decades from a Woman who deserved better.

@NewstalkFM Will Newstalk giving the opportunity to Flemings wife to speak on air if she wishes to ?

Tommy Fleming has spoken out about the breakdown of his marriage, revealing publicly for the first time that he is gay. newstalk.com/news/tom-flemi…

@PaddyDubli39323 @stellaomalley3 Well Paddy a self proclaimed who chose to make money by evicting people from their homes is capable of many hypiocritical things

@stellaomalley3 Frankly, I'm against the idea that the President of Ireland would be a patron of any organisation. The president's sole purpose is to represent the country and its citizens, not sectional interest, not matter how worthy, or not.

Incredibly disappointing to see this. It is galactically inappropriate for the President of Ireland to act as a patron to Belong To, a very well funded lobby group for the medicalisation of children’s identities. We know these procedures cause harm. Children can’t consent to the loss of sexual functioning and infertility because they don’t understand the consequences of this. This is an unfolding medical scandal. Mo náire thú, a Uachtaráin

@TalksWild @danobrien20 @TaxFoundation ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

@downgerd @danobrien20 @TaxFoundation What?

A globalised, FDI-dependant economy with the second most punitive personal taxes in the OECD (@TaxFoundation) and a far-left head of state. If a mobster is elected it will be proof that we have a collective death wish.

@courtsnewsIRL In the US he would now be starting a very long prison sentence - the same US that is so despised by Liberal Ireland

A Ryanair passenger who sexually assaulted a cabin crew member after consuming a "mind boggling" amount of drink has been given a fully suspended sentence. The worker had told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court how her sense of safety and peace has been “completely shattered” and how she had to resign from the job she loved after the assault. courtsnewsireland.ie/no-jail-for-pa…