Author Archives: Bodger

Dr Anthony O’Connor at an Oireachtas Special Covid response committee hearing last June

This afternoon.

Anthony O’Connor, Consultant Gastroenterologist at Tallaght Hospital, covid response critic and Labour Party member, departs Twitter after a ‘quiet’ DM from someone ‘close’ to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.

That’ll learn him.

Blimey.

Last Sunday.

Swords, County Dublin.

Andy Pipkin writes:

Doing the rounds on social media, it shows CCTV coverage of the Garda operation in shutting down of the sheeben in Swords. Some amount of Garda cars for a bunch of lads? I’m in no way agreeing with the action of the illegal pub, but, Christ On A Bike, did they really new that many Garda?

Anyone?/FIGHT!

This afternoon.

Asked if the State exams will take place, [Green Party leader and Transport Minister] Eamon Ryan said: “The first priority is getting special needs students back but the second priority is getting Leaving Cert students back in school, and we will be able, in my mind, to do a written Leaving Cert.”

He said the Leaving Cert is “the fairest system” and it would be good for the mental health of students to hold it.

Meanwhile…

Eamon Ryan believes Leaving Cert exam will go ahead (Irish Examiner)

RollingNews

Dublin Airport at the weekend

This morning.

“Travellers are coming down very significantly. It’s down to quite low levels now in the last weekend.

“The majority would appear to be Irish people who went to went on holidays during the Christmas period … we need to clamp down on that.

“That is in itself a violation of the Level 5 regulations that we have in place.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin announcing Level 5 will continue to March 5…

So there.

Taoiseach confirms extension of restrictions to 5 March (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Rotterdam last night

Last night.

The Netherlands.

Police arrested at least 70 people after rioting broke out for a third night around the Netherlands on Monday, after weekend protests that were initially linked to dissent over a government decision to implement a nighttime curfew.

But the motivation behind vandalism and other incidents Monday in cities ranging from Rotterdam and Amsterdam to smaller centres of Haarlem, Geleen and Den Bosch was no longer clear, with rioters overwhelmingly in their teens.

…The curfew, the first in the country since World War Two, was imposed after the National Institute for Health (RIVM) warned a new wave of infections is on its way due to the “British variant” of COVID-19, though numbers of new infections in the Netherlands have been declining for weeks. Some 4,129 new cases were reported on Monday, the lowest number since Dec. 1.

Netherlands shaken by third night of riots over Covid curfew (The Guardian)

Another night of riots in Netherlands over Covid-19 curfew (France 24)

AP

This morning.

Via The Irish Times:

More than 360 people were served eviction notices in the two months after the Government lifted a blanket ban on removing tenants last August, figures from the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) show.

The number of eviction notices served increased significantly in the second half of last year after emergency protections for renters introduced due to the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic were lifted. Some 787 people were issued eviction notices by landlords between March and the end of September.

The board, which adjudicates on disputes between tenants and landlords, also saw a small increase in reports of illegal evictions from July onwards.

Over 360 people served eviction notices after ban lifted (Irish Times)

Via The Guardian:

Sometimes, Stuart Ritchie feels like he’s being pursued by an army of smiley faces. The lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, is not delusional: instead, and somewhat to his surprise, he is on the frontline of a coronavirus information war.

The emojis often decorate the Twitter profiles of the self-proclaimed “lockdown sceptics”, a subset of social media users who remain unconvinced that coronavirus restrictions are necessary, even as the number of deaths in the UK approaches 100,000.

Often they are indignant at the efforts of Ritchie and others to refute the claims of a small but thoroughly amplified cadre of columnists, academics and enthusiastic amateurs, ranging from the free speech advocate Toby Young to the engineer and diet guru Ivor Cummins, who provide dubious but densely argued justifications for their stance.

At some point they settled on the smiley as their membership badge. If it is meant to be friendly, it doesn’t necessarily come across that way….

😂.

The information warriors fighting ‘robot zombie army’ of coronavirus sceptics (The Guardian)

Previously: Ivor Cummins on Broadsheet