Author Archives: Bodger

A Brazilian TV reporter was hospitalised after suffering a cardiac arrest on a live news broadcast on Monday one week after he took his booster shot.

Via Italy24:

Brazilian journalist of TV Alterosa, Rafael Silva, suffered cardiac arrest during a live broadcast. After the heart attack he was taken to Humanitas Hospital, in Varginha, in southern Minas Gerais.

Silva is 36 years old and on December 28 received the third dose of the Covid vaccine. He had posted it on Instagram, writing: “Long live the third dose. I’m sorry for the people who haven’t had this opportunity. Vaccines save lives.”

For the doctors interviewed by the television network for which Rafael Silva works, there would be no correlation between the journalist’s illness and the vaccination.

“According to the specialists – explained the spokesperson for Tv Alterosa – the relationship with the vaccine has already been discarded. The suspicion, according to the doctor who is treating him, is that Rafael has congenital heart disease. In other words, it is genetic ”.

Italy24

Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe (left) with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath at government buildings this afternoon

This afternoon.

We’re back, baby.

Via RTÉ News:

The Department of Finance has recorded the highest ever tax take of €68.4 billion, pushing the Exchequer deficit down to €7.3 billion.

According to the latest Exchequer figures, tax receipts were up by €11.2 billion (19.7%) on 2020. This was the highest ever tax yield, over €9 billion ahead of the previous highest yield reached in 2019.

Growth was robust across virtually all tax heads, with particularly strong performances in income tax, VAT and corporation tax.

Cumulative income tax receipts of €26.6 billion for the year were up by €3.9 billion (17.4%) on 2020. This reflects the ongoing recovery in the labour market along with growth in wages in the sectors insulated from the pandemic.

Anyone?

Highest ever tax take of €68.4bn – Exchequer returns (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Ah here.

Poland-packed, pacific pollock pretending to be paddies?

i-Fish writes:

Called into local Tesco on Monday evening and lifted a box of fish branded “Donegal Catch”. What a misrepresentation – Alaska pollock caught in the Pacific and packaged in Poland! Hasn’t ever came close to anywhere in Ireland. Needless to say I put it down and bought chicken instead.

i-Fish (Facebook)

Thanks Bebe

Senator Michael McDowell

Who doesn’t love a crafty gasper?

The state for one.

Via Michael McDowell in the Irish Times:

…Cigarettes may even be restricted to sales in pharmacies, we are told. This is absurd. If a highly profitable State monopoly on tobacco sales is to be conferred on anyone, it should not be pharmacies. And it is even possible, according to the HSE, that filters will be banned on cigarettes – making them more harmful as a deterrent is a new idea.

Another idea under consideration is printing cancer warnings on each cigarette.

I don’t smoke and I totally supported Micheál Martin’s ban on smoking in indoor premises to which the public have access. But while I really pity nicotine addicts, I do not think that tobacco should be the subject of American-style 1920s Prohibition-era laws.

This is a case of the nanny state going a step too far. If people want to smoke, the State has no business preventing them from doing so. If people want to drink, you can’t bring in prohibition in the interests of cancer prevention, public health or the HSE’s budget.

It is noteworthy that we are considering legalising the smoking of cannabis while the HSE is planning the banning of smoking altogether – or nearly altogether.

Does the HSE want us all to live until we are 100? Who will pay the HSE for the consequences of that?

Public health policy does not warrant such coercion in a free society…

Ratlicker!

*sparks up afternoon fattie*

Michael McDowell: Anti-alcohol law contains some utterly ridiculous legal provisions (irish Times)

RollingNews

This afternoon.

Via RTÉ News:

The Cabinet has agreed new travel rules which would see the requirement for vaccinated passengers to have a negative Covid-19 test dropped.

However, unvaccinated travellers would be required to show a negative PCR test taken 72 hours before arrival.

The Government moved to require all passengers to have a negative test for the virus when the Omicron variant of Covid-19 first emerged.

However, now that it is the dominant variant in Ireland, the Government has dropped that requirement for vaccinated passengers, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said today.

Requirement for vaccinated passengers to have negative Covid test to be dropped (RTE)

RollingNews

Minister for Education Norma Foley

This morning.

Meanwhile…

The General Secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) has estimated that around 15% of members will be absent when schools reopen tomorrow.

John Boyle said that around seven or eight thousand teachers will be absent because of Covid-19.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Boyle said that the term ahead, up to mid-term, is going to be an extremely difficult one and there will be situations whereby children will have to have classes at home…

…He said that he was deeply concerned about finding enough teachers to keep the system running and added “there isn’t a hope” that there would be enough replacement teachers.

Thousands of teachers ‘will be absent’ due to Covid (RTE)

“I lived through this period in Ireland when there was fear of an island-wide civil war – which never actually happened – at the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the fear of civil war didn’t stop people from stepping back..[and saying] ‘oh we’d better be careful here (laughs) and not go there’. It went in the other direction, which is that for people inclined to violence…it gives the excuse then to say that we’d better start moving first. We better take the violent action before they get us and you get this kind of horrific circular logic where people who are in fact aggressors can see themselves as defenders. They can say that ‘we’re just taking action now to prevent the annihilation that’s coming from the other side’.

“We need to be very careful about talking about civil war and I think for America we need to be talking about what’s happening right now which is the issue of impunity. If you want to tackle the threats…you really have to start with the fact that there’s been an attempted coup, that there are a lot of court cases, a lot of minor people  perhaps being prosecuted but so far no real sense that it’s being called out for what it is, being seen as a crisis, an insurrection, which demands a response which actually criminalises that behaviour.”

Fintan O’Toole on the US January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot.

Anyone?

Previously: We Don’t Know Ourselves