Jennifer O'Connell
@jenoconnell
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Opinion Editor @IrishTimes @IrishTimesOped .
Waterford and Dublin
Joined May 2009
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Last Seen Profiles
What’s most striking about this
#PrinceAndrew
interview is the complete lack of any hint of revulsion at the idea of middle aged men having sex with trafficked teenagers. He’s more repulsed by the idea that he was once in Pizza Express in Woking
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So she’s 42, started running 9 years ago, since had two kids - the eldest of whom is 9 by the way - works in IT and just qualified for the Olympics after finishing 7th in the London Marathon. Bloody hell Sinead Diver could you be any more inspiring? 🙌🏻
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If you see someone shopping with a child/children & are tempted to vent your disapproval, please consider they may not have a choice. They might be a lone parent. They might be the partner of a healthcare worker on shift. The other parent may be sick. So hold off on the huffing.
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As Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn head home for tea, a reminder that Séamus Mallon slept on a table during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, Bertie Ahern came back the day after his mother’s funeral and Clinton pulled an all-nighter in the White House
#Brexit
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The reality is that whatever Taoiseach, Tainaiste, Tony Holohan or NPHET say it’s on us now. It actually doesn’t matter what level your county is on. You need to do the same things. Limit your contacts, wear a mask, don’t congregate in crowded spaces inside.
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My column: Like Enoch Burke, JK Rowling sees herself as a victim of a witch hunt. But she gets to put her phone down and walk away
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After the level of vitriol I’ve experienced here for suggesting that maybe we should start a conversation about reopening schools before the holidays, I REALLY feel for politicians. I remember a time when it was possible to debate an idea without nasty personal attacks.
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When you get a Facebook message 30 years on from the first boy you ever kissed... and he's getting in touch to suggest you write a column about how Covid-19 is actually caused by 5G. Thanks, Normal People.
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Adding "mad for riding" to my Twitter bio
@jenoconnell
You chose to take the pill cause you were mad for riding, a large number of people are being coerced into taking this vaccine on the basis they are being promised getting their basic freedoms back which has been stolen from them for the past 13 months.
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So according to Maria Bailey, the hotel, the media, her advisors, Michael McDowell, whoever leaked the legal documents, keyboard warriors are all to blame for the mess in which she finds herself. Did I miss anyone?
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Enjoying how these young Ukrainian women schooled Kay Burley for her "You can build a new life in Dublin safe in the knowledge British people are behind you". "We want to send IRISH people...we are so grateful to Irish people."
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Getting off Twitter now before anyone else explains to me why they don't really need news, why journalists are all liars pushing our own agenda, or why the news industry model is broken. To everyone who is supportive of the news industry, thank you.
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Depressing to hear teenager girls afraid to ride bikes to school because of harassment and catcalling from boys and men. The solution shouldn’t be getting girls to moderate their behaviour by not wearing skirts etc. The behaviour that needs to moderate is the boys’ and men’s
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If everyone staying home put too much demand on our water supply, and now some people going back to work puts too much demand on our water supply, maybe the problem isn’t our demand for water, but the way it’s being supplied. Just fix the pipes
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It's depressing how many people saw the photos of homeless children sleeping in a garda station last night and decided to attack the mother because she's a lone parent. I thought we left that Ireland behind when the last of the Magdalenes closed down.
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The idea of primary children doing 'blended learning' 4 days a week is a complete fantasy. Parents supervising children doing homework while they also work is NOT blended learning. The state cannot just abdicate its responsibility to educate children based on an unknown risk.
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Seeing a bit of “it’s terrible what happened to Stephen Donnelly, but” stuff. There’s no but. Politicians’ families and family homes should be completely off limits.
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Should the GAA Championships be going ahead if families are to be kept apart and small businesses that haven't been responsible for any clusters are forced to shut? I would love to understand the rationale for this.
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Proud of this small, damp, cynical, passionate, big hearted outpost on the edge of Europe that we call home. We absorbed the fake news, foreign interests, emotional manipulation, grim posters, hectoring priests, we nodded away and then we made up our own minds
#Together4yes
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About time somebody put her in her place. Take a bow,
@DublinAirport
We’d like to correct some errors in this tweet. Fact 1: We had fewer than 900 arriving & departing passengers yesterday. On a normal Easter Mon we’d have more that 100,000 pax. That’s not business as usual. The T1 baggage hall, arrivals area & the exit road all look v unusual.
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Tired of hearing the phrases “pearl clutching” and “what about the homeless” and “distraction” about David Cullinane’s Up the Ra chant. No party, particularly the one that won the popular vote, gets to avoid scrutiny in a democracy.
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Gosh, if only we had a judicial system
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmaid Martin says church has to find way to sanction bishops who gravely fail victims of child sexual abuse
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This is exactly the dining room you always imagined Dobbo in. And as sharply dressed as ever
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Yet, despite the hardship, cost, stress and inconvenience, I haven’t come across anyone in the Republic who agrees with her. Everyone I’ve spoken to would rather we overreacted than the alternative. I don’t recall such unity and solidarity on anything ever.
#coronavirusireland
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I’ve yet to hear one good reason why a 13 year old ‘must’ have the unfettered access to the internet that a smartphone brings. You can just say no. I have a 13 year old and an 11 year old who don’t have smartphones. Their world hasn’t caved in
#marian
@MarianRTE
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This is a dreadful time in the news industry. If you value getting your news somewhere other than someone's auntie's brother-in-law's boss on WhatsApp, please buy a newspaper or take out a digital subscription today.
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It isn’t a fair fight. On one side are people like Rowling, talking with authority, in largely academic terms, about things like the importance of biological sex. On the other are a tiny and vulnerable minority whose right to go about their lives with dignity is at stake.
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The 21-year-old complainant is giving evidence for the FIFTH day. You could be mistaken for being confused about who's on trial here. via
@IrishTimes
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Men need to step up to the plate. Women need to stop infantilising their partners, and falling over themselves to say how “
#blessed
” they are because he gave them a lie-in, or picked a sick child up from creche, or – my pet hate – “babysat” his own kids.
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"Young people" are too easy a target. Young people have paid a high price in terms of the impact on their education, futures, job prospects, freedom, social lives. The vast majority have not been partying in the street. There are young idiots, but there are old idiots too
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This is a long shot, but a brave little girl I know needs help. She lost her teddy Baby at Fota Island, Fota Wildlife Park or Market Lane on August 19. My little pal is in hospital tomorrow and misses Baby’s company. Her mum has tried everything she can think of. DMs open. Pls RT
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Cheers to the parents against schools reopening because their kids are doing great out of school. You're free to keep homeschooling until there's a vaccine/forever. It's the kids who aren't doing great- lonely kids; vulnerable kids; kids with additional needs- I'm worried about
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In this morning's mailbag, someone has written to say that he used to love my column, but he hasn't been able to feel the same about it since I wrote that I had hairy legs, and he wishes I hadn't told him. I bet
@fotoole
never gets fan mail like that.
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I’ve had more abuse over this article ON HOUSEWORK than anything I’ve written in a long while. I’ve been told my husband should shut me up if he was “any kind of man”. I’ve been accused of lying and contributing to male suicide rates. And people wonder why we still need feminism
Men need to step up to the plate. Women need to stop infantilising their partners, and falling over themselves to say how “
#blessed
” they are because he gave them a lie-in, or picked a sick child up from creche, or – my pet hate – “babysat” his own kids.
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The way news reports are so prominently saying “a woman with an underlying health condition” or “an elderly woman” was the State’s first victim of
#coronavirus
feels cold to me. She was much more than that to her family and friends. RIP
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My daughters wrote letters to a few of our over 70 neighbours yesterday offering supermarket runs etc. Nobody needed anything yet, but we had three lovely calls back and an envelope through the letterbox with money for sweets. Heart bursting.
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I never share my Wordle result but honestly what just happened Wordle 242 1/6
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Column: We don’t call men with paid jobs “career men” or give them pats on the head for being “working dads” or “male CEOs” or – the horror – “dadpreneurs”. Men are only ever men, yet women are defined according to whether they’ve gestated a human
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New bio. I’m absolutely honoured to be starting a new role as Opinion Editor of
@IrishTimes
, and to have the chance to work with some of the very best writers and thinkers around. Looking forward to expanding our pool of brilliant contributors too.
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Gang of about 16-20 teenagers playing basketball on the court near Activate and UHW in
#Waterford
. I feel bad for them, but I feel worse for all the people they are possibly going home to infect. Without being all get off my lawn about it, parents really need to get on this.
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Honestly, why do you care what Sinéad is wearing? A culture that taunts and judges women who choose to cover up isn’t much better than a culture that forces them to cover up
#latelateshow
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“Suspended sentence.”
“A hardworking man.”
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“48 per cent of females and 33 per cent of males report wearing a face covering in public places.” I must be shopping in the wrong places. This does not remotely tally with what I’ve seen, whatever the research says
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When
@JohnKingCNN
said “our viewers in other parts of the world”, pretty sure he was talking about his cult following in Ireland
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Don't want to be grouchy, but I don't love the term 'working mum' even when it's said in admiration. Don't all mums work, whether or not they get paid? My husband, who's just as hands on, is never described as a working dad. Also: people with no kids are busy too. Micro rant over
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Funny how he has denied drinking, sweating, having his photo taken, but he hasn’t said “I didn’t have sex with her because I don’t have sex with teenagers”
#PrinceAndrew
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While Enoch Burke indulges in performative outrage over what they called “transgenderism” (as though it is a newfangled theory as opposed to real people who have always existed), a child and their family are trying to figure out complex, deeply private matters among themselves👆🏻
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Why is every help to buy scheme restricted to first time buyers? What about all the people who bought houses in 2006 to 2008, suffered salary cuts or job losses, and spent the subsequent decade in negative equity? Or lost their homes? We are the forgotten generation
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Lyra McKee wrote these haunting, prescient words in a piece for .
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Superb, devastating tribute to the extraordinary Keelin Shanley on
#rtept
. I remember so many of those stories. That must have been very hard
@MiriamOCal
and team, but a stunning reminder of what she achieved in her too short life, and what we have lost.
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Beach in Dunmore East this lunchtime, not exactly overrun with marauding gangs of second home owners.
Thank you for staying away.
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I'd read
@PatrickFreyne1
if he wrote the text on the back of a cereal box (actually, get on that, Kellogg's), but this week's offering is particularly brilliant. I won't even quote from it. Just read it. You're in for a treat.
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My piece on
#GretaThunberg
: They can’t admit it even to themselves, so they ridicule her instead. But the truth is that they’re afraid of her. The poor dears are terrified of her as an individual, and of what she stands for –youth, determination, change.
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Nothing gets the Christmas spirit going like a 10pm notification of a negative PCR 😮💨 🎄
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Glad the windsurfer was found safe and well. But mostly glad no one died trying to rescue the eejit
#stormlorenzo
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The dire mutterings about a return to school for younger teenagers maybe-not-now-going-ahead-because-we-don't-have-a-clue-where-cases-are-coming-from-and-panic-is-the-only-weapon-in-our-armoury are filling me with rage. Young teenagers are the limbo generation
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This is a shocking abdication of the state’s responsibility to children. There’s no such thing as ‘remote learning’ for primary school kids whose parents are remote working. This is going to force people -let’s face it, mostly women -out of the workforce
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Lost count of how often it was mentioned on Morning Ireland that, at last, We'll Have a Cork Taoiseach again. It's not the All-Ireland, lads.
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I remember coming out of school in 1983 and being confused by the scary images on the posters and somehow ashamed to be a girl. I just went back to that school and voted to put an end to all that, to decades of shame and fear as weapons of control.
#repealthe8th
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Thinking of
@Harryslaststand
who, at 95, has spent the last few years of his life travelling, speaking, writing, raging against injustice in the world, and reminding us that we are better than this. Now he is raging against the dying of the light.
#IstandwithHarry
With concentrated oxygen being pumped through a tube to him in the ICU, Harry asks me about the
#migrantcaravan
#istandwithharry
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My parents gave me the best Christmas present ever this weekend: a photo album full of photos of every generation from my great grandparents up to my own children. This is one of my favourites, my granny trying out the bike I got for my 10th birthday. God, I miss proper photos
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“A mixed-race Co Meath couple who appeared in an ad campaign for supermarket chain
@lidl_ireland
has decided to leave Ireland.” Meanwhile, Gemma O’Doherty is happily availing of the platform
@twitter
gives her to spew hatred. I’ve had enough.
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Germany advising people to reduce contacts for 7 days beforehand if they plan to celebrate Christmas with another household seems sensible and not a big ask.
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This was the dinner the maternity hospital in Sydney put on for me and my husband before they sent us home with our newborn five years ago today. They also provided babysitting. Best date night we've had since.
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Almost one third of
#coronavirus
cases in Ireland are under-35s; two thirds are under-55s. What we really need now is a Greta Thunberg type figure mobilising young people to get behind social distancing
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My column: “Women were left out of clinical trials until the 1990s, because of our deeply inconvenient insistence on having ovaries and uteruses. So we don’t actually know if many modern drugs are as safe and effective for women as they are for men.”
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What a brilliant idea (via
@HelenORahilly
). I can think of a few Irish restaurants where this could work
Dinning out cubicles in Netherlands are fast becoming popular🤷🏾♂️
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If young women are most at risk of cvst blood clots, can they not get an mRNA vaccine, while AZ / J&J vaccines are given to men & older women? 13 months into the longest harshest lockdown anywhere we need more than “abundance of caution” and “the next six weeks are critical”
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Read this tweet and remember it when the country comes to a standstill in a few weeks, and the Pope throws us the old cupla focail, and we are all expected to swoon
I was 14. Within 6 months of the visit I was raped for 1st time by a Priest who had been ordained despite the Church knowing he was a paedophile. 15 years later I sued Pope JPII to try get the Vatican to tell the truth about what they knew about the priest
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"The message for the next 6 weeks is stay at home.
....unless you're flying in from another country, in which case, carry on."
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"I am a strong female politician and some people don't like that..." And you're doing all women a disservice if you try to make this about gender Maria.
@TodaySOR
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There’s no need for playgrounds to be supervised. Parents are well capable of supervising, and we don’t need NPHET or government regulations policing every single human interaction. Just wash your hands, use sanitiser, keep your distance.
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Whether you’re more cut up about Keith Flint or Luke Perry tonight probably says a lot about what kind of teenager you were in the 90s. I’m not even going to pretend.
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“Stubbornly high” is at the very top of the pantheon of phrases I wish never to hear again. Closely followed by “hold firm” and “household mixing”. When is the vaccine against pandemicology coming?
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I got my hair done on March 12. I got my hair done on Friday night. I did this, I’m sorry. I’ll go grey gracefully now I promise.
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I just got this email from a woman in her 70s who read my column in
@IrishTimesMag
, “one of the brainwashed women of the 60s, 70s and 80s”. The fog has lifted, she says.
#RepealThe8th
, she says. 🙏🏻
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So Pope Francis dismisses heroic Marie Collins
@marielco
as “fixated” on tribunals, says he’s never heard of Magdalene Laundries despite meeting Philomena Lee & says parents often cover up abuse by priests. Can we do away with the idea that he’s much better than his predecessors?
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This is suddenly even more important than it was and has not had many shares. Please get it out there.
Gardaí investigating the fatal assault on a woman yesterday in Tullamore are appealing for info on a Falcon Storm mountain bike with straight handlebars & distinctive yellow/green front forks. Please call Tullamore GS (057 932 7600) or the Garda Confidential Line (1800 666 111).
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Anyone else notice higher levels of driver aggression as people return to the commute?
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Can we just take a moment for Lorraine McCabe’s strength and loyalty during an unimaginable time. Silent hero. Brilliant documentary
@KatieGHannon
#Whistleblower
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“At the prayers of the faithful, a boy ... was unable to contain his grief. Mr McGinley left his pew, walked forward calmly to put his arms around the young man and help him read.” Dear God, what a courageous, compassionate, loving man
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If 60 percent of us wore a mask 60 percent of the time, we could stop that second wave. Putting my rudimentary sewing skills where my mouth is
#besoundandwearamask
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I took the pill for 20+ years and don’t recall a similar panic from public health experts when it emerged that 1 in 1,000 women on the pill get a clot 🤷🏻♀️
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This is one of the hardest pieces I’ve written, about one of the untold stories of the pandemic. I hope it is respectful to the families who bravely spoke to me, and thanks to the many more who shared their stories. Thinking of little Conor Hattie today
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Speaking as neither a golfer nor a sea swimmer, this makes total sense to me. We need to allow the return of low-risk, outdoors activity for the sake of mental and physical health
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Very proud of Ireland's response to this. It's the right thing.
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Since I filed this, I’ve read a few mean spirited bits about Sarah Harding. Not into slagging other media, so I’ll just say this. Someone will check their breasts today because of her and find something worrying. That’s a better legacy than most of us
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I was kind of hoping to leave the house and go to work today
#sorrymehole
#goingaroundinyour161
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My 7 year old: “What university is she at? I’m going to the other one.”
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Small bit of news: this is my last column for
@IrishTimesMag
. I’ll still be in the paper on Saturdays & online-I’m thrilled to be moving to a new home in
@IrishTimesOpEd
pages. And I’ll still be writing features for the Magazine as long as they’ll have me
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It’s such a tragedy this is happening. We did not have to go to Level 5, if people could just have done what they were asked to do at Level 3. The promise that we’ll go back to normal in December seems wildly optimistic.
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The words in this eulogy are the most heartbreaking I have ever read.
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We can’t describe our healthcare workers as superheroes In scrubs one minute, and clamp their cars because they stayed late at work the next. The hospital where this is happening needs a swift word with car park operators.
@BugsyMc_11
Stayed on 3 hours after my shift finished and same happened me in what looks like the same hospital
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What a relentlessly sad weekend this has been
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