Berne

"I find absolutely no grounds for optimism, and I have every reason for hope."

[Berne @Coimin22]

The last photo of Mikaeil Mirdoraghi, a third-grade student killed in the reported U.S./Israeli strike on a primary school in Minab, Iran.

He is waving goodbye to his mother.

[Berne @Coimin22]

@MacLughaidh With an IUD in one hand and a 'let's celebrate your abortion' pamphlet in the other.

[Jeffrey Peel @JeffreyPeel]

The suggestion that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was allowed to operate at the most senior levels of the political establishment for 3 decades while the authorities knew all about his sexual perversions can only mean one thing: he was a state-handled asset. He was Enoch Powell's protégé (a former Military Intelligence officer), he was a knight of the realm and a member of the Privy Council. These were rewards for his being a safe pair of hands, regardless of his tendency towards sexual abuse. When his job was done, he was exited. But the authorities - in fact everyone in politics and media in Northern Ireland - did precisely nothing. They obeyed the numerous super injunctions. Only now do they squeal.
https://t.co/ooGjtTcj2l

[Rebecca Cobb @Rebecca_did_it]

I understand this. For me, those are not empty words.

I lost my daughter from my life because I would not support a lie. Deputy Head teachers called me a bigot. Police came to my door and told me I had a son.

That is what parents are up against - not just a child in distress, but an authoritative system determined to protect the delusion.

I chose losing her over helping that system deliver her to medicalisation.

I would make the same choice again, even if it meant jail. Because today, while she hates me, she is whole.

@AllianceLGB @DPUK26 @BevJacksonAuth @its_all_atoms

[Jonathan Brown @Broonjunior]

There is the clearest imaginable conflict between the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children (which absolutely includes the right to tell their children that non-binary identity is nonsense) and this legislative encroachment pre-supposing the opposite.

[Seán Ako 🇮🇪 @TheAkoFiles]

One bad winter and I’m finished.

[Mary Creedon @MaryCreedon4]

@paddyjogorman @NewstalkFM @TheHardShoulder I was silenced I tried to get onto that programme I got through to one of the reporters but they would not put me on .I emailed in a statement to read out to state that everything I said in that interview was an accurate representation of the course . No statement was read out

[Annie McGinley @annie_mcginley]

Why have the British government sealed the files on Kincora House for 66yrs ?

If after watching this your stomach isn't churning, then you missed the statue over his shoulder!

[🍀Louie Kerr 🇮🇪💚 @LouieKerr8]

Meanwhile up in stormont , yeah I know 🤣

[conor macauley @TVconormac]

Oíche Fhéile Eoin Oileán Thóraigh

[Isabel Vaughan-Spruce @IsabelVSpruce]

On the feast of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, we remember that no government or legal authority has the right to usurp the spiritual jurisdiction that belongs to God alone.

And that silent prayer is never a crime.

St Thomas More and St John Fisher - pray for England 🙏

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

NEVER let your printer know you’ve waited until the last minute and you’re in a hurry, because it can sense fear.

[Fiona goddard @fionagoddarduk]

Hi Michael. Im actually the girl in this trial. Adam had to follow anomininity rules that apply in the UK for victims of sexual abuse but what you may not know is i actually wavered my anomininity, because I have nothing to be ashamed about, despite your attempts.
I see you picked the one part out of the trial that I actually gave evidence in defence of because I believe he was actually coerced by the main men into doing this type of thing.
What you failed to mention was the rest of what was said in court, how grown men would target childrens homes because they knew there were vulnerable children inside that had already been exposed to extreme abuse. How they would lure children in the cars, get them to open up about their trauma while grooming the kids and making them feel "safe". How they would then pressure drugs and alcohol on that child and manipulate them into sex amd when that no longer worked the prosess of dehumanising and breaking that child would start, followed by extreme violence.
They parts you failed to post that were also covered in these transcripts were being pinned to the bed and forced to watch beastiality porn while a man attempted to rape a child, being threatened that I would have my eyes stabbed out with vodka bottles before being raped. Spiked and raped while unconscious infRont of a room full of pEople and it filmed and used as humiliation, being raped that violently I had blood streaming down my legs and abandoned in some back alley way. Or the trafficking up and down the country or the 100s of men they brought to the party house to rape me after forcing that much drugs on me I was unconscious. Or just the plain simple fact i was a child and these were grown arse men?

[Cllr. Emer Tóibín @UnityakaAontu]

Marie O'Shea proposed abolishing the 3-day reflection period despite admitting she had not spoken to one mother who changed her mind because of it

How can a recommendation to remove a safeguard be evidence-based when no attempt was made to hear from those who benefited from it?

[Lawyers For Justice Ireland @LFJIreland]

It seems incredible that any creche would hire this man calling himself "Aleena Starshine" to care for children, but the Craoibhin Community Enterprise Centre in Currin, Termon, County Donegal did just that in November of 2024.

The Workplace Relations Commission has ruled that his claim against the creche, citing "gender discrimination", has been dismissed; a claim difficult to sustain, given the fact that they hired him in the first place.

After just four days of his employment, which included a six month probationary period, parental complaints had been received, including one concerning an activity he engaged in with the children, described as a “safari game”, during which he reportedly offered an eleven year old child “a free kiss from me” or a “big kiss” as a prize.

He was suspended on full pay while the matter was "fully investigated'.

The claimant accepted the allegations about the "prize of a kiss", but claimed that it was "a joke during a game and that the children had laughed and enjoyed it".

Perhaps it is time that parents have a role in selecting employees at childcare and child education facilities.
#Donegal

[Scott Smith @hf_222222]

And we don't need to act like his bullshit fig leaf is anything but that.

That he can pretend to himself its technically not lying doesn't mean we can't be honest about his slimy & deceptive behaviour.

[Rebel Ada @DearRebelAda]

Both Jamie Varley and Stephen Ireland had child safeguarding roles.
Stephen promoted adoption on his LGBTQ+radio show, suggesting “anyone” should be able to do it, before drugging a 12 year old boy with meth, raping him while unconscious, and filming it. The boy was also from state care: he had run away. Stephen’s boyfriend too was fully involved.

Perhaps the demographic which routinely has unprotected sex with multiple unknown men, and invented Grindr to find them, is absurdly risk-taking, enslaved to their pursuit of sexual excitement, and therefore not wholly compatible with the care of parent-less children.

[Paul @PabloSt981]

The obstacle course we've put in front of children:
Abortion, IVF, surrogacy, artificial wombs, the idea that you can change your sex, adoption by any combination of people, all kinds of awful messaging and imagery.
It's a wonder we have any (sane) adults after all this.

[Thrilla the Gorilla @ThrillaRilla369]

I'm launching a website called OlderFans where I post today's injury and the wildly normal thing that caused it

[Dr. Eoin Lenihan @EoinLenihan]

In my experience of Clare, as it was explained to me and as I witnessed at its tail-end, silence belonged to the social ecosystem.

Families had plenty of life in the house of course, no problem there.

But the bachelor whose house was more silent got his social contact from the night visiting of the fireside culture, trips to the mart, church, visiting friends, later playing cards in the pub and from wider family looking in on him.

Being alone in a house with a lot of silence did not automatically result in loneliness. Rather, loneliness only seemed to creep in to the scene when other social elements were removed. So a parish losing a priest would be a blow to the traditional bachelor - kicking an essential social outlet out from under him. The loss of fireside culture - that is, communal night visits - was a massive blow.

The radio and tv didn't just break the silence of the individual household when they arrived, they (especially the tv) killed the night rambling culture, the neighbours visiting culture, the stopping in for the tea culture, the bachelor's elevated status in the community through his mastery of stories or ability to play an instrument, etc. This last part in particular did much to diminish the old bachelor's status and 'usefulness' to the community allowing him to fall between the cracks.

Loneliness as much as I ever heard it explained to me was a later phenomenon. It grew rapidly in the Celtic Tiger Era. I heard many of the old lads I visited talk about the damage the major road projects did. It frightened them. Many of the old lads would take their bike to the pub to play cards on a week night but the motorways and generally heavier traffic locked a lot of them up at home and introduced them to loneliness for the first time.

Loneliness then was more attributable to a later breakdown in the traditional social and socialising system. Silence was not the issue. It was always very welcome. It was only when the old bachelor was made a prisoner at home or deprived of the social elements of his community eco-system that silence became an enemy. It wasn't 'good' silence as part of a broader social tapestry. It was enforced and overwhelming silence. A very different animal.

In many cases that I can speak for, far from staving off loneliness, the radio and tv caused a great deal of loneliness through second order impacts on community.

I am not making technology an enemy because it was not inherently the countryman's enemy. He benefitted from it in other directions - like mechanisation that allowed him to farm longer and more reliably than his father and grandfather who had to use manual tools entirely. But it is entirely clear to me that the Celtic Tiger made a prisoner of the traditional Irish bachelor in particular. It was a new world one at odds with the remnants of the social eco-system that sustained him.

Technology disrupted traditional Irish life subtly beginning with the radio and peaking with the rapid industrialisation of the Celtic Tiger. Not least by making Ireland addicted to superficial and seductive 'noise'.

Thanks for challenging me to tease this out @DamhlaicMac. 👍

[Jenny Lindsay @msjlindsay]

ANYONE who supports 'blocking puberty' is complicit in lifelong harm to a minor. I don't know precisely why or how so many people around me went completely insane, but I'd really like them to wake up out of the weird cult they're in. Immediately, and yesterday preferably.