The feminist movement must include all women - not just the white middle class ones

 My article in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/the-struggle-for-equality-must-include-all-women-not-just-white-middle-class-ones-40187011.html

Exerpt: A few years ago, I was disinvited from speaking at an International Women’s Day (IWD) corporate event when the organiser belatedly realised an article I wrote (which led to the booking) was satirical. It was called, ‘Women should embrace inequality, not fight it’.

Organiser: “So… you didn’t mean it when you wrote that we should prepare our daughters for working life by giving them less pocket money than our sons…?”

Me: “WTF?”

Another time, I was invited to talk about female empowerment at a women-only event. I suggested tackling female disempowerment at source instead by having a men-only workshop for the 21-member entirely male board.

Me: “Women don’t need assertiveness workshops, we need equal pay, equal rights and equal representation at the top table.”

Organiser: “Sorry, wrong number.”

More recently, I declined an invitation to speak at an IWD event because all six panel members were privileged white women. I suggested they give my place to a friend who fled persecution in Sudan and is now a kick-ass (very cool) doctor. I was replaced by... a privileged white woman.

Perusing the week-long IWD events, I couldn’t help noticing the glaringly absent voices. One panel had 16 women – all of whom were white. ‘Choose to challenge’ was this year’s IWD theme and some marginalised women chose to challenge the women’s movement itself.

When Mincéir Beoir Rosemarie Maughan called out the exclusion of Traveller women from IWD panels, she was offered a last-minute slot resulting from a settled woman cancelling. She declined, instead joining other Traveller women on the Sligo Traveller Group forum where she expressed frustration at being excluded by female allies, adding: “We deserve more than crumbs from other people’s plates.”

Catherine Coffey O’Brien talked about her mother being picked up by the “cruelty man” (agents of the State that took Traveller children from their families and put them into institutions). Three other families were seized the same day, all of whom were first cousins, and all were split up and “thrown like leaves in the wind”. They never came back together as a family and “our clan system”, Catherine said, “was destroyed”.

Catherine, a Bessborough survivor, also expressed irritation that Traveller and other marginalised women’s voices were ignored by the Mother and Baby Home Commission. “They never listened. We were not heard.”

If I could only challenge one act of state-sponsored misogyny this year it would be the egregious Mother and Baby Homes Report. An official document containing evidence of human rights abuses perpetrated against women and babies, yet describing them as “lobbyists” while dismissing, distorting and deleting their testimonies, cannot be accepted as a legitimate historical record.

Bereft of moral and legal integrity, the process exposed survivors to retraumatisation, was underpinned by misogynistic preconceptions and enabled by silence – past and present.

Annette McKay, whose testimony documenting her mother’s ordeal in Tuam was returned to her in tick-box form, vowed to continue the fight after lockdown. “Bring a shovel,” she tweeted, “we are burying their report and digging up the truth.” I've got my shovel.

It references an earlier article, "Women should embrace equality, not fight it". Health warning: contains satire👇

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/women-need-to-embrace-inequality-not-fight-it-8655655.html

By failing to implement mandatory quarantine, our government has put airline profits before the protection of its people

My article in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/cabinets-contradictory-quarantine-briefs-are-taking-their-toll-and-prolonging-purgatory-40054292.html

Main points:

..."On Wednesday, Micheál Martin invoked three reasons for not implementing mandatory hotel quarantine, none of which made any sense. Firstly, airline litigation. Ryanair did challenge the government’s advice for people returning from countries not on the designated green list to self-isolate for 14 days and objected to advice against non-essential travel. Ryanair lost the case but was gifted the concession anyway. In September, Leo Varadkar removed the deterrent of “non-essential” travel relating to the risible “green list” and self-isolation remains unenforced. Why did Martin cite defeated litigation as an impediment to quarantine?

 Secondly, the Taoiseach claimed “compelling legal reasons” against hotel quarantine which directly contradicts Stephen Donnelly’s announcement in July that the Attorney General deemed it wasn’t illegal. Yet Donnelly still resisted, claiming the WHO gave him permission not to implement quarantine, which was surprising because that contradicted the WHO’s official advice which states: "Quarantine is included within the legal framework of the international health regulations (2005)." Further: "Member states have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuit of their health policies, even if this involves the restriction of movement of individuals".

 "Thirdly, Micheál Martin cited the curtailment of personal liberties. The European Convention on Human Rights provides lawful exception to this right (Article 5) to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Equally, under Article 2 (the right to life), the government has a duty to implement measures to safeguard lives. Where there is a known risk to life, the state must take protective steps to preserve life. Allowing the few to undertake non-essential travel without mandatory quarantine, I would argue, poses a disproportionate risk, endangering the lives of the whole population.

Whether Martin’s contradictory quarantine messaging is down to deliberate ambiguity or incompetence, it’s costing lives".

"Stephen Donnelly’s current proposal to allow returning passengers to isolate in households with non-travellers, thus defeating the point of quarantine falls miserably short of the mark. By the way, as minister for Transport, why isn’t Eamon Ryan dealing with quarantine?

It’ll be weeks before the woefully inadequate quarantine legislation is passed, exposing us to the importation of mutating variants which risk compromising the efficacy of some vaccines.

Nick Cammack, who leads the Covid-19 therapeutics accelerator at Wellcome warned that with the coronavirus mutating rapidly, he doesn’t expect any of the current drugs to be effective for long. “I think it’s pretty clear, we’ve seen South Africa, UK and Brazil variants, there will be others.

 Nicola Sturgeon recognises the danger posed by new variants and indicated her intention to  deviate from UK policy and introduce 'managed quarantine' for all arrivals to safeguard her citizens. Germany has banned travel from 5 “high risk” countries, including Ireland in order to “protect the German population.”

With vaccination rollout already stymied by Stephen Donnelly’s ineptitude, whether Michael O’Leary likes it or not, we’ll be staycationing again this summer. If we close our borders to all but essential travel now and aim for zero-covid, we can open everything else up and party like it’s 2019. Polls consistently show that 90% of people want mandatory hotel quarantine so it’s time our government put the protection of its people before the airline industry’s profits.

The woman on the beach didn’t mind holidaying in Ireland. She just needed to feel safe, we all do. It’s time to put an end to this purgatory".

Enough avoidable deaths. Mandatory Quarantine is 10 months overdue:.."Rather than quarantining incomers in a hotel for two weeks, our Government opted to quarantine five million Irish citizens in our homes, indefinitely, instead"

 Today's Indo article on Mandatory quarantine:

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/mandating-quarantine-and-border-checks-has-got-to-be-top-of-martins-covid-agenda-39993589.html

Highlights:

Micheál Martin claims that he had followed NPHET’s advice all along. Not so. He has persistently diluted their advice. The most important, yet under reported aspect of that advice which hasn’t changed since the outset, is that of mandatory quarantine. Instead, Ireland opted for a “careful now” approach which saw 140,000 people enter the country between 11 December and 3 January, half of whom refused to tell officials where they were staying.

On 14 January, as reports emerged of two new Brazilian variants, the WHO’s Mike Ryan warned that some countries could be ‘in serious trouble’ if new variants change the rules of the game. Having already imported the South-African and UK variants (which are significantly more transmissible), it’s crucial that the coalition heeds this warning. According to Science Magazine, new evolving variants risk undermining the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes mandatory quarantine and the swift roll out of the vaccine absolutely vital.

Transport minister Eamon Ryan’s response has been characteristically lacklustre. Last week, he introduced PCR testing for international travellers (something most countries did months ago), despite NPHET warning that they’re not suitable for use in screening asymptomatic people, such as arriving passengers, and that they should therefore be used in conjunction with mandatory quarantine. On Friday, RTE reported that, since travel restrictions from South-Africa and the UK came into effect on January 9th, some 80 passengers refused to produce a PCR test, yet were still permitted entry.

Human rights are interdependent. Therefore, the right to freedom of movement is not absolute. Article 12(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights allows restrictions on the right to freedom of movement for reasons of public health and national emergency where quarantine is required to limit the spread of a deadly disease.

Rather than quarantining incomers in a hotel for 2 weeks, our government opted to quarantine 5 million Irish citizens in our homes – indefinitely - instead.

When the government finally admitted that mandatory quarantine wasn’t illegal, they still refused to implement it. In July, Simon Coveney said that the government had considered NPHET’s advice on mandatory quarantine but that “we don’t regard it as an approach that makes sense from an Irish perspective”. I defy Mr Coveney to explain how 176,839 Covid-19 cases and 2,708 deaths makes sense from any perspective?

Contrast our losses with countries that enforced strict mandatory quarantine early on. New Zealand: population 5m, 25 deaths. Thailand: population 63m, 71 deaths. Taiwan: population 23m, 7 deaths.

Jacinda Ardern shut New Zealand’s borders in March before any deaths were recorded to prevent the virus taking hold. She said she would not countenance herd immunity because it risked killing thousands of New Zealanders saying, “I’m not willing to tolerate that”. With Ireland drowning in chaos and grief, how many more deaths is Micheál Martin prepared to tolerate before mandating quarantine?

Whether by accident or design, Ireland’s handling of covid-19 unnervingly resembles a herd immunity policy and criminal negligence.

 

Northern Ireland has much been cited as an excuse for not restricting movement on the island or between the UK. Yet, at various times in the pandemic, Wales and Scotland banned visitors from England and Northern Ireland on public health grounds. Plus, if border checks could be deployed to stop the spread of foot and mouth in 2001, why can’t it be done to protect lives in a pandemic?

Asked by the Irish Mirror who would be responsible for increased deaths after the government rejected NPHET’s advice in October, Stephen Donnelly responded, “The virus is responsible”. If you accept power you don’t get to evade responsibility.

If Micheál martin and his ministers are not ashamed of Ireland’s death toll, it’s not because they’re blameless: it’s because they’re shameless.

173 years after Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol "Ignorance" & "Want" Remain the Greatest Threat to Society

 My first article of 2021👇 in today's Irish Independent. It's dedicated to all the homeless people who died on Ireland's streets this year. Suaimhneas síorai dóibh uile💔

This time last year I took my son to watch A Christmas Carol at the Gate Theatre. We see it every year either on stage or in the cinema, followed by volunteering at a soup run. As someone who grew up in a neighbourhood where Dobermann pinschers doubled up as a fashion accessory and personal security, this tradition has been my way of keeping Christmas real for my son who is fortunate enough never to have known hunger.

This year we switched the lights off, curled up with a bowl of popcorn on the sofa and watched the black-and-white version of the Dickens classic on DVD.

The impact of the scene where the charity collectors attempt to extract money from Scrooge never diminishes however many times I watch it. Affronted that the poor would shun workhouses, for which he paid his taxes, Scrooge admonished them – if they would rather die, they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

Charles Dickens’s words never felt so real, echoes of which prevail in political discourse that depicts poverty, homelessness and asylum as life choices. Equally, the Government’s Living with Covid-19 strategy feels uncomfortably reminiscent of the free-market mantra “survival of the fittest”, compounded by the fact that it is our most vulnerable who have been hardest hit by Covid-19.

It’s our elderly, Travellers, disabled, black and ethnic minorities, people in direct provision and those on the lowest wages, or no income – especially women – who are bearing the biggest burden of this pandemic. It’s a fact that the WHO’s Mike Ryan passionately flagged this week when he said Covid had “ripped the bandages from an old wound” exposing “a deeply unfair, inequitable world”.

Choices about allocation of resources, particularly during a time of crisis, are an indicator of Government priorities and serve to either deepen or alleviate social inequalities.

Some children thrown into poverty during the previous recession remain destitute and are struggling to cope with another crisis. One of them is Aisling, who my son and I met at last year’s soup run.

Having been mistreated for years, she left home at 16 and after a few failed foster-home placements ended up on the streets. That was 10 years ago. The last time she slept in a homeless hostel she was attacked and her only pair of shoes was stolen. A warm bed in a safe place is all Aisling wants. We couldn’t give her that so we gave her a hot meal and a hug instead. There were no hugs this year.

Children like Aisling didn’t cause the recession but over a decade later, they’re still paying the price for it whilst its architects, such as former politicians and bank regulators, had their pensions reinstated before Christmas.

This is a time when some parents had to choose between cold and hunger and around 2,642 children woke up homeless on Christmas day.

The taxpayer bailed out banks to the tune of €42bn (Micheál Martin didn’t get that memo) for self-inflicted bankruptcy, but many show no mercy when customers face bankruptcy through no fault of their own. Family homes were, and continue to be, sold to vulture funds with no protections for distressed mortgage-holders. It was a choice to sink taxpayer’s money into the €1.7bn (and counting) children’s hospital and to fight Apple not to hand over €13bn in tax.

Yet in the middle of a health crisis, the choice was made to deny student nurses €14 an hour, not to adequately resource our public health doctors who are now so overwhelmed that they’re planning to strike. Instead of paying the living wage to the essential workers who keep our shelves stacked and our hospitals clean, our Government chose to award judges and themselves a pay increase of 2pc.

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens contrasts the greed and indifference of the rich with the powerlessness and deprivation of the poor. The emergence of the ragged emaciated children from beneath the ghost of Christmas Present’s robe is an arresting scene. Called Ignorance and Want, Dickens’s wrath was directed at the politicians and affluent of the day for wilfully ignoring the abject poverty in their midst.

Despite being the 14th richest country in the world and having the world’s fifth-highest concentration of super-wealthy residents, more than 689,000 people are living in poverty in Ireland, of whom more than 200,000 are children. On Christmas day, the charity Muslim Sisters of Éire served 350 hot meals and handed out “survival kits” in Dublin. They, like many more volunteers throughout the country, are there every week providing a safety net that the State has failed to deliver.

Charity, though vital, is not a sustainable solution to systemic inequalities caused by bad political choices. In 2020, almost 60 homeless people died in Dublin.

Dickens believed ignorance and want were the two social evils that posed the biggest threat to society and 173 years later, the fact that soup runs, survival kits and homelessness exist in Ireland suggests that we’re still haunted by their presence.

CETA is a toxic trade deal. It's bad for the environment, workers, farming, food standards and sovereignty & must not be ratified

My article in todays Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/eu-canada-trade-deal-plays-into-the-hands-of-big-business-it-must-not-be-ratified-39864514.html 

Some highlights:

....."The move to deregulate financial markets was one of the main causal factors of the global financial crash. Regulation, however inconvenient to big businesses, has a crucial role in democracy and economic stability. It provides safeguards against exploitation and protects hard earned rights of the most vulnerable in society....."

Here’s why TDs should vote against CETA on Tuesday.

Climate Change:  The most dangerous aspect of CETA is the Investment Court System (ICS) which allows foreign investors to sue governments for enacting policies that interfere with their profits. For example, signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement in Europe are required to change laws in favour of renewable energy. However, under ICS foreign investors could legally challenge that legislation. Unlike CETA, the Paris Agreement is not legally binding. Efforts to reduce fossil fuel extraction and use could be undermined by industry investors being afforded protections not extended to the environment and public health.  

​Farming: Canada has lower production standards and allows carcasses to be cleaned using chemicals such as chlorine. As a result, Canada produces meat 60% cheaper than the EU. Increasing Canadian imports could therefore significantly impact European farmers, particularly already beleaguered Irish Beef farmers, who would struggle to compete on price and scale with Canadian counterparts. Which is probably why The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association rejected CETA in 2017.

Sovereignty and democracy: Article 30.9 of CETA states. “In the event that this Agreement is terminated, the provisions of Chapter Eight (Investment) shall continue to be effective for a period of 20 years after the date of termination of this Agreement in respect of investments made before that date”. Our planet can’t wait 20 years and our children won’t forgive us for locking them into this disastrous deal.

It’s no wonder former UN expert on human rights, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas referred to “corporate courts” as “an attack on the very essence of sovereignty and self-determination”. He warned that some 608 arbitration awards overrode national law and hindered States in the sovereign determination of fiscal and budgetary policy, labour, health and environmental regulation, and have had adverse human rights impacts..."

"Food safety: The EU’s “precautionary principle”, whereby the onus is on food producers to prove that chemicals used are safe, will be deemed a “barrier to trade”, permitting a common regulatory mechanism, where any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. Canada has weaker food safety and labelling standards than the EU, and industrial agriculture more heavily dependent on pesticides and GM crops. CETA also allows Canadian and US multinationals to undermine rules concerning cloning, GM crops and growth hormones.

 The government has no mandate to ratify this disastrous deal. In July 2017, Over 80 Irish civil society groups, including unions, farmers, environmentalists and business owners, called for the rejection of the deal by the Irish Government. The coalition united in opposition to CETA as a “bad trade deal” that will compromise laws to protect health, food standards, farmers’ interests, the environment, worker’s rights, and the rule of law.

 Rushing through ratification now, under the cover of coronavirus chaos, without proper debate and public engagement debases democracy.

 In 2017, Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan warned that the ICS would give big business power over governments and courts and that the deal offered no environmental protections. He said, “The way it was centred around lobbying by big corporate interests rather than the public interest is wrong”.

Thus far, the Green Party has done the bidding of its neo-liberal coalition partners on matters of social justice, ostensibly keeping its powder dry for climate justice. Notwithstanding the fact that the two are inextricably linked, if the Greens vote to ratify CETA, it begs the question: what is the point of the Green Party if it’s just propping up a government that continuously puts multinational interests before those of our planet and country?"

Pitting "lives vs livelihoods" is a false dichotomy & will cost us far more than Christmas

My article in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-could-be-having-a-holly-jolly-christmas-if-we-had-only-closed-the-borders-39824390.html

Extract:

"It’s a damning indictment that, in the midst of a public health crisis, there are more spin doctors in Leinster House (64) than there are public health doctors in the country (60). With the former briefing against the latter in the media, our jaded public health heroes have been forced into taking strike action.

Thanks to Leo Varadkar’s Trumpian style trashing of NPHET, the country went into lockdown 2 too late, allowing infections to spread exponentially resulting in a longer lockdown. And, even though cases are still too high to safely re-open restaurants and gastro-pubs, we’re opening them anyway.

For the avoidance of doubt, our government is not only going against NPHET’s advice but that of the EY auditors they employed to undermine NPHET. A University of Warwick study found that the “Eat out to help out” policy accelerated the UK’s resurgence and was lambasted as “a policy failure based on short-termism”.

So, in whose interest is the government acting? Not the SMEs stuck in a purgatorial cycle of lockdowns, not our beleaguered health professionals, not the workers coerced by unscrupulous employers to return to the office, not essential low paid workers exposed to greater risk, not the 82% of people who, according to last week’s CSO poll, said Level 5 restrictions are “appropriate or should be stronger”.

That just leaves the lobbyists, who have been allowed to frame the government’s narrative. Such as, pitting lives vs livelihoods, which is a false dichotomy. It’s a manipulation tactic invoked by lobbyists and politicians in order to achieve their vested interests. The pandemic is both a public health and economic crisis so public health strategies that reduce the spread of coronavirus also safeguard livelihoods. The economy cannot function if a substantial proportion of infected workers are off sick, sometimes indefinitely with long-Covid (self-isolating nurses are being asked to return to work due to staffing shortages).

The OECD’s Secretary General said, “The first thing we’ve got to do is beat the enemy: the virus. It’s a false dilemma to say you have to choose between lives and livelihoods because the sooner you deal with the question of lives the better you will do on livelihoods”

Our World in Data have Compared the COVID-19 death rate with the latest GDP data indicating that countries that have managed to protect their population’s health in the pandemic have also protected their economy.

SMEs have been poorly served by ISME. In March, their Australian counterpart lobbied their government to follow scientific advice and pursue a zero-Covid approach in order to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It worked. Being Covid free, everything is open domestically - at full capacity- and small business are thriving. In contrast, ISME is attacking NPHET, oblivious to the fact that its members’ businesses are being sacrificed at the altar of the aviation lobby in particular. It’s like turkey’s voting for Christmas.

---

The “personal responsibility” chestnut is also straight out of the lobbyist’s handbook, Chapter 1: “Blame shifting”. It ignores the absence of power and choice of our vulnerable and abdicates the state’s duty to protect its citizens. For example, our government’s lack of mandatory quarantine meant that one person returning from holiday abroad was free to circulate, infecting 56 other people, including 10 households and a sports team.

No amount of personal responsibility can mitigate the ineptitude and indolence of a dysfunctional government. The vaccine can prevent people getting sick but we don’t yet know if it can prevent infection. Without a mitigation strategy, we’re facing several more months of restrictions.

Choosing to put their cronies’ interests before those of everyone else, Messrs Martin, Varadkar and Ryan have hastened an inevitable third wave in which far more than Christmas will be lost."

"What was it like to be an evacuee Grandma"?

RIP Grandma Edythe 💓

I was Peter Sutcliffe's therapist. The misogyny that killed so many women then still exists today

My article in todays Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/i-was-peter-sutcliffes-therapist-his-case-file-made-me-sick-i-owed-it-to-his-victims-to-understand-what-he-did-to-them-39753437.html

The women of colour that got Biden over the line have earned their rightful seats at his top table

 My article in today's Irish Independent 👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/why-women-of-colour-need-to-take-a-bow-centre-stage-before-curtain-comes-down-on-joe-bidens-presidency-39741703.html

Donald Trump conceding defeat is like Hannibal Lecter agreeing to be sectioned. He will not go peacefully. It seems fitting that the final scene of the Trump horror show was set in a seedy parking lot where a press conference was held between a crematorium and a sex shop called “Fantasy Island” (I’m not kidding). It would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic.

 

Trump’s four year tyrannical reign inflicted wounds that will linger long after the stench of his rhetoric has dissipated into the choke damp ether. His list of ignominies is longer than an Al Capone charge sheet but the fact that 240,000 coronavirus deaths and the separation (and caging) of 666 migrant children from their families did not result in a landslide victory for Joe Biden, should ring alarm bells for the Democrats.

 

During the agonising count, I tuned into RTE’s Drivetime which appeared to have been temporarily hijacked by Fox News to promulgate far right, white supremacist conspiracy theories on an unsuspecting Irish audience. Platforming Steve Bannon was not RTE’s finest hour. This is a man charged with fraud and whose podcast was removed from YouTube and permanently banned by twitter after he appeared to call for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci. His sycophantic RTE interview is still available online but it really shouldn’t be.

 

Fast forward, a few more days of waiting and counting before Joe Biden emerges triumphant. Relief was my over-riding feeling. He won, but by the skin of his teeth and he couldn’t have done it without the army of women of colour that lent him their backing when progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders, exited the Democratic presidential race.

 

Kamala Harris, who made history as not just the first female, but the first black female, Vice-President elect, acknowledged these women in her victory speech. She praised the “black women who are too often overlooked but who have proved to be the backbone of our democracy”.  Women like Stacey Abrams, who was instrumental in making Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years. Abrams mobilised a coalition of grassroots organisers in predominately minority communities, registering 800,000 new voters in Georgia alone. Fair Fight, the organisation Abrams created to combat voter suppression also helped Biden win in Wisconsin and other key swing states.

 

Black women like Cori Bush, a nurse and single mother whose own experience of homelessness spurred her to mobilise her community to feed and shelter those abandoned by the state. Her people-powered campaign resulted in Bush becoming Missouri’s first black congresswoman. 

 

And there’s the self-styled “Squad” of four congresswomen of colour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Shunned by the Democratic Party machine, they all secured their second terms campaigning on Medicare for all, a Green New Deal and racial justice. They   were chosen by communities to represent their interests, not those of corporate sponsors. Their tireless advocacy was rewarded at the ballot box.

How did the President of the United States, Donald Trump, greet these inspirational young congresswomen of colour (two of whom are Muslim) to the house when first elected in 2018? By tweeting they should, “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”, despite all but one being born in the US. Omar, a Somalian refugee, has been a US citizen for two decades. 

 

Ocasio-Cortez, who has 10 million twitter followers, used her social media savvy to mobilise and energise the grassroots activism that produced large turnouts in Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia for Biden’s win. She acknowledged the uphill battle to convince non-voters in disaffected communities to register and then vote having felt betrayed by previous Democratic administrations.

Many had not forgotten nor forgiven Barack Obama who, in return for gifting him their votes, bailed out banks that then repossessed their homes. At the end of his presidency, unemployment figures for Black Americans remained double that of their white counterparts (8 per cent) and it was during the Obama-era that the Black Lives Matter movement was born in protest against the killing of black people by police officers.

By 2016, Obama, with the help of Hilary Clinton, had crushed the most crucial weapon in the Democratic electoral armoury: Hope. Paving the way for Trump’s politics of hate to fill the void.

The US far right are not going anywhere. If Biden fails to harness the hope that an army of working class women of colour awoke to secure his victory, another, more malignant, polished incarnation of Trump will be waiting in the wings, ready to detonate a dirty bomb of bigotry. It will make the last four years seem like a sepia tinted Shirley Temple movie.

Teachers' unions are right to insist on WHO Covid-19 safeguards in schools

My article in today's Independent👇 

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-have-committed-to-wrong-course-of-action-on-schools-its-time-for-a-rethink-39684402.html

Biggest ever budget did little to close the gaping chasm between rich and poor

My article in todays Irish Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/biggest-ever-budget-did-little-to-close-the-gaping-chasm-between-rich-and-poor-39639499.html

Internal lockdowns are futile if we leave the back door of foreign travel wide open

My article in today's Irish Independent

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/our-lockdowns-efforts-seem-futile-while-back-door-of-foreign-travel-is-wide-open-39587737.html

When we cancelled our trip to the UK this summer, my child took it on the chin. He pined for his British grandma, but travelling to the country with the highest coronavirus death rate in the world at the time, would have jeopardised the hard won gains of lockdown.

Like most people, we heeded Dr Tony Holohan’s warning that the reintroduction of foreign travel was a "major threat," increasing the risk of a second-wave of Covid-19. With the front door of domestic lockdown largely secured however, the back door of foreign travel was left wide open. Tourism into Dublin Port trebled from just 7,165 in May to 23,972 in August, unabated even after a resurgence of new infections was attributed to foreign travel from countries, including Britain.  

 Whilst the EU banned flights from the worst coronavirus hotspots including the US, they enjoy unfettered access to our beleaguered shores. Even as warnings grew of American tourists openly flouting quarantine, rather than tightening restrictions, our government weakened them further. Cases increased, contact tracers became overwhelmed but, rather than stemming the flow of imported infections by closing external borders, our government shut internal borders instead.

 On the day three counties were put into lockdown, I spoke to a demoralised Garda friend at a checkpoint. “I’m policing the movements of Irish citizens while tourists can roam freely - no questions asked”. The next day, my son counted 12 UK campervans on a short stretch of road and said, “How can you restrict your movements for 14 days with 3 kids and a dog in a campervan”? Bottom lip wobbling (missing grandma) he added, “It’s not fair”.

Countries, such as New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea, that have pursued a zero-Covid approach by closing their borders have opened up everything else, resuming normal lives, mitigating damage to their economies and preventing avoidable deaths. This is not only a legitimate, but necessary, biosecurity response to protect citizens against a deadly disease.

 As Tomas Pueyo wrote in the New York Times, countries that opened their arms to neighbours too soon “got infected in the hug”.

For months, Leo Varadkar warned that mandatory quarantine might be illegal, despite the WHO’s guidance stating, “Quarantine is included within the legal framework of the International Health Regulations (2005)”. Having wasted two vital months, Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, admitted that mandatory quarantine wasn’t illegal after all but declined to enforce it anyway. On 9 august, when 3 counties were placed in lockdown, Donnelly asked our elderly to go back into quarantine essentially (some never left) promising that his Department would prepare a plan to restrict non-essential travel from countries with high rates of coronavirus. Almost two months later, no plan has emerged. Our vulnerable remain in hiding.

 So why does our government persist with this purgatorial cycle of political paralysis? Incompetence is the obvious front runner, but the elephant in the room is undoubtedly the behemothic aviation lobby. Ubiquitous in the media, irrespective of the question, respondents invariably deploy the old “2%” decoy.

On 2 July, Stephen Donnelly announced that new cases from international travel had gone up from 2% to 17% in the previous week. On 20 July it went up to 21%, yet ministers continue to claim that “only 2%” of infections are related to foreign travel. The government dashboard shows a flat-line trajectory, indicating that it hasn’t been updated since April. Given this dubious data is injudiciously invoked by the aviation lobby as a proverbial “dead cat”, I asked the HSE for a breakdown on how it was established? No explanation has been forthcoming.

Given resource stricken contact tracers only go back two days, it’s highly likely that foreign travel goes undetected, captured later under “community transmission”, which basically means “unknown”. A statistician acquaintance argues that, since coronavirus was originally imported from overseas in February, foreign travel actually accounts for 100% of cases in Ireland.

NPHET has repeatedly warned that the importation of cases from people travelling to Ireland from other countries would cause a second wave. Dr Ronan Glynn advised that mandatory quarantine should be put in place for all people travelling into Ireland from abroad — regardless of whether the country is on the green list. If that’s “unworkable”, he said, Ireland should introduce a ban on all non-essential travel to countries where the virus is highly prevalent, such as the US.

 Instead, in a sop to Ryanair, Leo Varadkar removed the deterrent of “non-essential” travel relating to the risible “green list” in September. This was a key contention in Ryanair’s legal action against the government’s pandemic travel advice and despite losing the case on Friday, Ryanair was gifted this concession anyway. Encouraging overseas holidays in the midst of a global pandemic smacks of state sponsored hedonism, underwritten by our jaded health and essential workers.

 

Coronavirus, unlike fawning governments, cannot be bullied, bribed or blackmailed into submission. As long as borders remain open, the rest of society faces a relentless, excruciating, futile cycle of persecutory lockdowns only to “open” again - at 50% capacity. All the while looking over our shoulder as the virus circulates within our communities like a silent assassin.

Last week, I sat with my sobbing son watching his beloved grandma’s funeral streamed from the UK and I felt his agonising loss and his sacrifice, made all the harder for knowing that it was squandered.