Last week the Community Relations Council in Northern Ireland published its latest Peace Monitoring Report. This is designed to measure the extent to which Northern Ireland is progressing socially in what the report describes as a ‘post-conflict situation’. The report covers many aspects of society, but one in particular is relevant to the ongoing debate on the future of education in...
A new survey of birth ratios has been launched by the British government recently, “amid fears that sex-selective abortions are taking place in Britain.” Earl Howe, a UK health minister, “wants to ‘monitor the situation’ and ‘remain vigilant’ following evidence that some doctors in the UK are carrying out selective abortions.” This is old news....
On Wednesday the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice heard from groups interested in Alan Shatter’s ‘Brave New World’ family law reform. With the exception of Family and Life every group broadly supports his extremely radical and far-reaching law. Also on Wednesday I came across this blog by Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist. She puts some very...
Slate magazine is famous for publishing contrarian writing, and the piece they recently published by Reihan Salam certainly fits the bill. What, after all, is more contrarian than saying “me, and people like me, should pay far more tax?” The category Salam belongs to, and the one which he believes should be taxed more heavily,...
Our wise ideologues are never short on assurances that every last one of their society-changing initiatives are brimming with “guarantees” and “safeguards.” The obvious one is abortion. In 1996, Bill Clinton said “abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.” In New York in 2012, more African-American babies were aborted than...
Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald’s recent proposal to give adopted people greater access to information about their biological parents is a genuinely good idea. If they don’t run afoul of the constitutional right to privacy, Minister Fitzgerald’s proposals could end up So I’m curious as to why the same government currently advocating common-sense reforms helping many adoptees to trace...
David Quinn was on the Sean O’Rourke programme yesterday discussing childcare with Roisin O’Hara, who juggles work with having four small children; Evanna Boyle, also a mum of four who gave up work as a solicitor to mind her kids at home; Independent Senator Jillian Van Turnhout and Theresa Heaney, Chairperson of the Mothers’ Alliance...
The first same-sex marriages took place in the UK over the weekend. Brendan O’Neill, the editor of the online magazine, Spiked, has an article today asking a very pertinent question: how did support for gay marriage become the conventional wisdom so quickly? It hasn’t been all that long since same-sex marriage was barely thought of...
There’s a great guest post over at the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog from Prof. Michael McConnell of Stanford university, taking an in-depth look at the Hobby Lobby religious freedom case currently before the US Supreme Court. Some of it’s written in pretty detailed legal language, but it’s well worth a read if you want...
Alan Shatter has other things on his mind these days to be sure, but the other day he still managed to provide a written answer to a question from Mattie McGrath on whether religious schools will still be allowed to teach that marriage is between a man and a woman in the event of same-sex...
