Here's How: Recent Episodes
William Campbell
Professor Colin O’Gara is Head of Addiction Services at St. John of God Hospital and author of the book Gambling Addiction In Ireland: Causes Consequences and Recovery. * There is a pattern, I suppose it’s so well-known that it’s a cliché, of people mellowing their view as they get older. One version is the famous […]
Cormac Lucey is an economics columnist at Sunday Times (Ireland), and lecturer in finance, at the Irish Management Institute, Chartered Accountants Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. *** And we’re back! Sorry about the unannounced little hiatus for the podcast. I’ll tell you a bit more about it, but first just to say I’m lining up […]
Mathew Creighton is associate professor of sociology at UCD. * I’ve been on a low-information diet. I suppose I’m someone who is generally pretty well-informed but sometimes that can get a bit too much, so a few months ago I just tuned out, deleted all my news apps, Twitter – while it still had the […]
Andrew Wright is a fourth generation dairy farmer near Omagh in Co Tyrone, with a big following on Tiktok. We talked about this video he published. * In the world of what used to be called PR, these days they call themselves other things, information management or whatever. PR has PR’d itself. In the world […]
David Maddox is the political editor of Express Online. * Kevin and myself always appreciate feedback from listeners, we try to reply when we can, but Aengus Ryan send in a sound file, which is great cos I can include it in the podcast. I think this is an important question, and I think that […]
Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. Statistics of the sharp rise in the number of referrals to the Tavistock clinic, and their age distribution are here, and here. False claims that puberty blockers, given to children to delay typical-age puberty are 'completely reversable' are incredibly common, and have been made by the taxpayer-funded […]
Freda Wallace is the cohost of the Gender Nebulous podcast. * I want to comment on a rant that was previously posted on this podcast. The rant in question was posted with episode 120 Levelling the Field and the topic was Minimum Unit Pricing for Alcohol or MUP. MUP, long-time listeners may recall, prohibits the […]
Graham Linehan, now back on twitter, is the creator of numerous famous TV shows including Father Ted. *
Annabel Fenwick Elliott is a British freelance journalist who previously worked for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. * It might have been Tomorrow’s World, that science programme from the BBC from my dim and distant childhood, where they demonstrated an early chatbot, although I think it wasn’t called that. You typed in some […]
Dan McClellan is a public scholar of the Bible and religion and author of the book YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. * I don’t much talk about Jordan Peterson, I don’t think that he is as interesting a character as the internet makes out, certainly not as interesting as he thinks he is himself. […]
Graham Neary is a financial commentator who has been a fund manager and analyst in the London financial markets. * The transport minister, Eamon Ryan who is also leader of the Green Party, it has been announced will set up an inter-departmental group to make sure the transport sector meets its emissions reduction targets.Related to […]
Dafydd Iwan is the former president of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. * Bertie Ahern, we are told, had been readmitted, to Fianna Fáil. It might be better to use the term rehabilitated. Fianna Fáil activists gave him a standing ovation at an event recently, it was to mark the 25th anniversary of the […]
John Rentoul is the chief political commentator for the Independent. * I’m pessimistic. I'm not naturally a pessimistic person, but I'm pessimistic. Maybe I'm getting older, maybe I’m entering the ‘the whole world is going to hell’ phase of my life, maybe I'm right to be pessimistic, maybe I'm not paying attention to the right […]
Jesse Spafford is a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin working on the project REAL - Rights and Egalitarianism. His research is focused on ethics and political philosophy with particular attention paid to debates between libertarians, socialists, and anarchists over the moral status of the market and the state. * I was talking to someone […]
Brooks Newmark was a British Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Braintree and is now a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford. * I’ve got a proposal for tax reform. The idea is to make tax easier and simpler to understand, simpler for the government to collect, thereby lower costs which would lower […]
Brendan is the Labour Party TD for Wexford, and former party leader. * So, we’re talking about a war. We’re talking about a war where a huge, nuclear-armed superpower, attacks a territory to its south that this formerly-communist superpower views not as a real country, it views but as an integral part of its own […]
Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author.
Aoife Gallagher is a research analyst for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and author. *
Kellie Armstrong an Alliance party MLA for the Strangford constituency. * I saw a load of comments from commentators online, from talking heads on radio and TV, from people on Twitter, that the mobilisation ordered by Putin last week to try to shore up his invasion of Ukraine was stupid. It was stupid to try […]
Joel Keys is a Belfast Loyalist activist and prolific tweeter. * I discovered a big discrepancy. Well, I didn’t so much discover it as notice it. And it isn't really isn't a big discrepancy, it is an enormous discrepancy. A gigantic discrepancy. A sort of a so-big-you-could-see-it-from-space. discrepancy This is the discrepancy. Have a look […]
Michael Doherty is the PRO of the Mica Action Group. * I was talking to Billy Kelleher in the last podcast about Ukraine, and the west’s reaction, and in particular the attitude of MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Naomi O’Leary started and epic Twitter discussion over Easter about the contrasting attitude of Wallace and […]
The post Here's How 133 – Broken Homes appeared first on Here's How.
Billy Kelleher was Fianna Fáíl’s only MEP from being elected in 2019 for the South constituency until he was joined from the subs bench by Barry Andrews. He previously he served as a senator since 1993, and as a TD since 1997, including as and served as a minister of state from 2007 to 2011. […]
The post Here's How 132 – Ireland and War appeared first on Here's How.
Ewan Mackenna is a sports journalist who was written five books on sports. Recently, he has been blogging and tweeting about the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. *
The post Here's How 131 – Who Decides appeared first on Here's How.
John McGuirk is the editor of Gript.ie There is no doubt about the extent of the housing problem in Ireland, certainly not if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I’ve been banging on about it for longer than I, probably longer than you, care for. And if you’ve been listening, you’ll know that I'm a […]
The post Here's How 130 – An Injection of Sanity appeared first on Here's How.
Moore Holmes is a Loyalist and a member of the advocacy group Let's talk Loyalism. * You probably think that you’ve never heard of the WSM, the Workers Solidarity Movement, but you probably have heard of them, even though you don’t remember it; most people don’t pay much attention when they are offered a leaflet […]
The post Here's How 129 – Protocol Problems appeared first on Here's How.
Inspector Peter Woods is an inspector at the Dublin Roads Policing Division of An Garda Síochana and Seán O'Kelly is the cofounder of Access for All Ireland. * In the last podcast I talked to Professor Norman Fenton the professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London; he takes a position that […]
The post Here's How 128 – Access Denied appeared first on Here's How.
Professor Norman Fenton is a professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London. I want to clarify a couple of things that Norman said there. First off, Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum, this is basically an annual event where the captains of politics and business get together […]
The post Here's How 127 – Build Back Better appeared first on Here's How.
Dr Geraldine Simmie Mooney is a senior lecturer in education at the University of Limerick and director of EPI STEM, the National Centre for STEM Education. * One thing that, I thought, the Green Party had that left wing parties didn’t, was an understanding of how taxes could be used to modify behaviour. The Greens […]
The post Here's How 126 – Educational Values appeared first on Here's How.
Dr Karen Keaveney is Head of Subject for Rural Development, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin. * A short update on the last podcast about the conflicts of interest and poor academic and ethical standards at the Active Consent Unit in NUI Galway - we will […]
The post Here's How 125 – We Need to Talk About Rural Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
Dr David Ellis is Associate Professor of Information systems at Bath University and a member of that university's Academic Ethics and integrity committee. The Active Consent Unit has its own section on the NUIG website, and its media page posts inaccurate media coverage of its work without comment. (Update: They appear to have now hidden […]
The post Here's How 124 – Sex, Stats and Audio Tape appeared first on Here's How.
So then this happened. And with no notice at all, in the space of a single day, AA Roadwatch disappeared off our airwaves. According to their own announcement, this was a decision made by the AA, which “decided to move away from this service and instead focus on growing other areas of [their] business”. That’s […]
The post Here's How 123 – Password Protection appeared first on Here's How.
John Lyons is the Independent Left councillor on Dublin City Council for Artane–Whitehall. * I want to talk about a scandal. Actually, it’s not so much a scandal, it’s not even a scandal about a scandal, it’s a scandal about a scandal about a scandal. A third order scandal, if you like. The first order […]
The post Here's How 122 – Property Values appeared first on Here's How.
Dr. Roslyn Fuller is an author and founder of the Solonian Democracy Institute * We have an expectation of a rules-based system of international order. Some of these rules are very famous, they show up in popular media, thing like diplomatic immunity, basically if you send an ambassador to another country, they can’t be arrested, […]
The post Here's How 121 – Vox Populi appeared first on Here's How.
Holly Cairns is the Social Democrats spokesperson on agriculture, food and the marine, and further and higher education and disability. In the interview, Holly questioned the source of figures that indicated that the difference in earnings between men and women was concentrated in the over-40s, with no statistically-significant difference in earnings for those under 40. […]
The post Here's How 120 – Levelling the Field appeared first on Here's How.
Nicolas Šustr is the city development and transport editor for the German newspaper formerly known as Neues Deutschland now known as ND. * We’re going to have a new leader of the DUP. Leaders of the DUP are generally not anyone’s favourite person, unless that anyone happens to be a DUP supporter. As an aside […]
The post Here's How 119 – Concrete Gold appeared first on Here's How.
Daniel Long farming activist and running for president of Macra na Feirme. * Things that seem good aren’t always good, things that seem bad aren’t always bad, and things that really are good or bad can sometimes have the confounding outcomes. If you get three education spokespersons in a studio, they’ll usually come out with […]
The post Here's How 118 – A Stalwart of the Land appeared first on Here's How.
Eoin Ó Broin is Sinn Féin TD for Dublin Midwest and his party's housing spokesperson. * A topic which I am interested in is ageing and demographic shift. Ireland was, until quite recently, the youngest country demographically in Europe. However, as Ireland’s baby boomers, the generation that David McWilliams calls the pope’s children, push onwards […]
The post Here's How 117 – Do Thinteán Féin appeared first on Here's How.
Brenda Power is a journalist for the Sunday Times and Irish Daily Mail, and whose work has appeared in many other publications, and is frequently heard on broadcast media. * Maybe I'm giving away my age if I mention my nostalgia for the pirate radio stations of the 1980s. I'm just about old enough to […]
The post Here's How 116 – Sinners or Sinned Against appeared first on Here's How.
Jim O'Callaghan is a senior council and Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin Bay South. * I want to talk about a coup. A coup attempt. A failed coup attempt. It was a ridiculous affair, viewed by some people as little short of comical, despite the fact that several people were killed. The coup attempt was […]
The post Here's How 115 – Ambition to Lead appeared first on Here's How.
Kate McGrew is the main spokesperson for the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland. In our interview, I referred to my interview with Sarah Benson, then of Ruhama. * I have a big project on at the moment, so this, I'm sorry to say, will be the last Here’s How podcast of 2020. I hope to […]
The post Here's How 114 – Sex and Work appeared first on Here's How.
John Hamill is a long-time secular campaigner and participates in the Free Thought Prophet. We talked about his epic Freedom of Information request. * You can see there that John’s story tells a pretty damning tale about the attitude of the Department of Education and Skills, as it’s now called, towards the Freedom of Information […]
The post Here's How 113 – Unfree Information appeared first on Here's How.
Peadar Tóibín is the leader, and only TD of Aontú, having previously been elected for Sinn Féin. * I don’t normally do pre-buttals on a podcast interview, but I think that in this case it’s important, because in the context of the coronavirus, and Covid 19, it’s just not acceptable to allow incorrect scientific claims […]
The post Here's How 112 – Explaining Aontú appeared first on Here's How.
Dermot Lacey is a Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for the Pembroke ward. * That’s what he said He, by the way is Brandon Lewis, the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, basically their minister for Northern Ireland. What he’s announcing there is the UK government’s shirking from the treaty that they signed last December […]
The post Here's How 111 – Local Misgovernment appeared first on Here's How.
Linda Ervine is a Unionist and Irish language rights activist from East Belfast, and is the president of the recently-formed East Belfast GAA. I talked to her about last year's Ashcroft polling indicating that support for a United Ireland is increasing towards a tipping point in Northern Ireland. **** I was sitting down to do […]
The post Here's How 110 – Briotanach agus Aontachtaithe appeared first on Here's How.
Larry Donnelly is a native of Boston, He teaches law in NUIG. He has published law journal articles in Ireland and internationally, as well as being a regular media commentator. I talked him about an article he wrote for TheJournal.ie. * Two minds are better than one. That’s a fairly obviously true saying in most […]
The post Here's How 109 – Trumping the Media appeared first on Here's How.
Phil Hogan’s spokesperson, in their defence of his shifting story of how he drove laps around Ireland, in and out of Covid hot-spot Kildare, said that the reason for him visiting his apartment in the K Club was that: “He stopped briefly at his apartment to collect personal belongings and essential documents relating to the […]
The post Phil Hogan May have Broken EC Document Security Rules appeared first on Here's How.
Alyn Smith is the SNP member of the Westminster parliament for the Scottish constituency of Stirling. Since we spoke, two opinion polls have been published showing the pro-independence side stretching their lead, excluding undecideds, by up to 10 clear percentage points ahead, 55 to 45. * You should be paying attention to Belarus. Well, that’s […]
The post Here's How 108 – Scottish Independence appeared first on Here's How.
Niall Keenan founder and chairperson of the Shared Ireland. * Sinn Féin are calling for a complete ban on co-living. Their housing spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin, a very talented politician who’s been on this podcast before, not sure if those two are connected, said announcing this that the new housing minister Darragh O’Brien of Fianna […]
The post Here's How 107 – Sharing Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
Last Saturday there was a demonstration outside the Dáil that was hastily organised to try to capitalise on a controversy that you may or may not have noticed, depending on what corners of Twitter you inhabit, if any. The genesis of this was an article on the website Gript, a clone of far-right American opinion […]
The post Here's How 106 – Twitter Wars appeared first on Here's How.
Kerry-Anne Mendoza editor-at-large of the Canary and the author of Austerity: Demolition of the Welfare state and the rise of the zombie economy, published in 2015. We discussed this Twitter thread of hers: * It really is good to get feedback from listeners, and to know that there is a growing number of listeners out […]
The post Here's How 105 – Polemic and the Left appeared first on Here's How.
Malcolm Noonan newly elected Green Party TD for Carlow Kilkenny, having spent 16 years as a local councillor in Kilkenny. * It was announced last week that Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin won’t be reopening, the operators said that the lockdown, coupled with high rents, have pushed their business over the edge, and […]
The post Here's How 104 – Shades of Government appeared first on Here's How.
Malcolm Byrne won the 2019 bye-election for Fianna Fáil, but did not retain the seat at the general election. He was then elected to Seanad Éireann. Robin Cafolla is chairperson of the Green Party's Climate Forum. His questions, which informed my interview were first published on Twitter. The Green Party has asked a slightly less-focussed […]
The post Here's How 103 – Shades of Green appeared first on Here's How.
Thanks to Cathal Mac Coille, former Morning Ireland presenter for taking the chair in this special podcast. This is the complaint that I sent to RTÉ. RTÉ gave it short shrift. This is the totality of their response. There was some back-and-forth between me and RTÉ, and RTÉ eventually they made it clear that they […]
The post Here's How 102 – AA Roadwatch and the BAI appeared first on Here's How.
Alison Gilliland is Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for Artane/Whitehall. She is also chairperson of Dublin City Council’s Strategic Policy Committee on Housing. In our discussion I mentioned the article in the Irish Times by billionaire financier Dermot Desmond about solutions for the housing crisis. Desmond was found by various investigations to have […]
The post Here's How 101 – Housing Solutions appeared first on Here's How.
Peter Boland, as well as running Cases.ie is the director of the Alliance for Insurance Reform. * There’s a lot of people talking about the other thing, but I'm sure you’ve heard enough about it by now, and there’s nothing extra that I can say that hasn’t already been said, so let’s talk about something […]
The post Here's How 100 – Insurance Costs appeared first on Here's How.
Michael O'Regan is journalist and former parliamentary correspondent of The Irish Times. He says he doesn’t have a book for me to plug, ‘yet’. * I managed to grab an interview with Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh at the election count in the RDS. To put this in context, Aengus Ó Snodaigh got one of […]
The post Here's How 99 – After the Deluge appeared first on Here's How.
Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. In November, his group, Ireland's Future sent a letter to An Taoiseach calling for […]
The post Here's How 98 – Northern Trends appeared first on Here's How.
Seán Fleming, currently Fianna Fáil TD for Laois, if the gods of the ballot box smile on him he might become the Fianna Fáil TD for the reconstituted constituency of Laois Offaly. He's been a TD since 1997 and for 15 years before that he was Financial Director of Fianna Fáil at national level. Gavin […]
The post Here's How 97 – Voting Rights and Wrongs appeared first on Here's How.
Steve Garner is a researcher at the department of Social Science at Cardiff University. The BBC Analysis programme that he appeared in is available here. * You're used to me spouting on here based on not much more than my own prejudice, but here’s a topic that I am actually qualified to talk about. I […]
The post Here's How 96 – Whiteness appeared first on Here's How.
John McGuirk is the founder and editor of Gript. John referred to the cost of building passive homeshere. In our discussion I mentioned an article falsely claiming that hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed scientists 'plotting to manipulate data, ... suppress evidence ... and boycott ... divergent […]
The post Here's How 95 – Conservative Comment appeared first on Here's How.
Paul Murphy was an MEP for the Socialist party, since then he’s been elected and 2014 and 2016 as a TD for what became the Solidarity party. He has now founded the party Rise. In our discussion he mentioned the book The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation […]
The post Here's How 94 – Let us Rise appeared first on Here's How.
Paul Cullen is the Health Editor of the Irish Times. His article headlined Almost 70% of cyclists without helmet at time of head trauma, appeared on the front page of IT last month. The article was sharply criticised in online discussion, including in this article by Cian Ginty. In our discussion, I mentioned a number […]
The post Here's How 93 – Bike Heads appeared first on Here's How.
The Social Fabric podcast is created by Andrea Splendori, and I'm sharing it in the Here's How feed to give you a chance to hear a sample episode. If you like it, you can subscribe on his website here.
The post Showcase: the Social Fabric podcast appeared first on Here's How.
Dr Katherine O'Keefe is an author, and the director of training and a management consultant with Castlebridge, a data privacy and information governance consultancy. Our discussion referred to a twitter thread by Katherine and another by solicitor Simon McGarr. * It’s probably just dumb luck, but I made two pretty accurate predictions about the byzantine […]
The post Here's How 92 – the DEASP and the PSC appeared first on Here's How.
Brigid Laffan is currently Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Director of the Global Governance Programme and of the European Governance and Politics Programme at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She was previously Professor of European Politics at University College Dublin. While she was there she was Vice-President of […]
The post Here's How 91 – Defending Europe appeared first on Here's How.
Harry Todd is senior research executive at Get Britain Out, previously worked as campaign manager for Conservative Party. He was also the national ground campaign manager for Leave means Leave. I fact-checked some of the things that Harry said in the interview including that the EU required member states to maintain a VAT rate of […]
The post Here's How 90 – Brexit Implications appeared first on Here's How.
I talked to Cormac Halpin, chief statistician with the CSO about the upcoming census. * Let’s do a bit of science. Maybe, like me, you have had various social media invaded by people making all sorts of complaints about something called 5G. That’s the newest mobile data standard. Unless you are really special, that doesn’t […]
The post Here's How 89 – the Census appeared first on Here's How.
Denis Duff, author of the website Better Environment with Nuclear Energy. He's also a mechanical engineer with 30 years experience in ESB power generation, and is now an independent engineering consultant in Ireland and abroad. I mentioned projections of how long global uranium deposits - known and unknown - are likely to last, at the […]
The post Here's How 88 – Nuclear Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
Fergal Mulligan is the Programme Director at National Broadband Plan at the Department of Communications. * That’s audio from an Egyptian news channel called Extra news, it’s in Arabic of course. That clip is 17 seconds long, and it’s a news item that, in Arabic, contained 42 words. As I understand it, it was broadcast […]
The post Here's How 87 – the National Broadband Plan appeared first on Here's How.
Declan McLoughlin is a senior manager and the head of communications at the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. The Times - but not RTÉ - reported on the disgraced cardinal, Seán Brady, who covered up the crimes of the rapist priest Brendan Smith, meeting Pope Francis at Dublin Airport. Communicorp, owned by Dennis O'Brien owns: Dublin's […]
The post Here's How 86 – Broadcasting in Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
Graham Doyle Deputy Commissioner, and Head of Communications with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. * This is audio from one of the count centres in the local elections. The people ah singing are from People Before Profit who lost most of their council seats, but they’ve come across housing minister Eoghan Murphy and […]
The post Here's How 85 – Data Protection appeared first on Here's How.
Dani McCabe is a member of the steering group of Standing 4 Women. We discussed several court cases surrounding the Cervical Check controversy. * I wrote a piece on the website last December about Brexit, with the title that might have sounded a little pessimistic. It was called It’s Over. Brace for Catastrophe. There’s No […]
The post Here's How 84 – Cervical Check appeared first on Here's How.
Rowan Croft runs the YouTube political channel Grand Torino. He says that he's politically centre-right, not extreme right or alt-right, though his channel heavily features figures such as Justin Barrett of the National Party and formerly of Youth Defence, Herrmann Kelly of Irexit, Jim Dowson, the former BNP and Orange Order member who has been […]
The post Here's How 83 – Right-wing Positions appeared first on Here's How.
Dr Michael Foley is professor emeritus at the school of media at TU Dublin – formerly DIT – also a member of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, and has been invited by the International federation of Journalists and UNESCO to write a syllabus on journalism safety and ethics. * Because of the detailed nature of the […]
The post Here's How 82 – RTÉ and the AA appeared first on Here's How.
Jamie Bryson is the editor of Unionist Voice and a prominent Loyalist activist. * Homelessness has been in the news a lot recently, as it deserves to be. In most normal societies, even though it’s not really polite to say so, homelessness, in the sense of people living on the streets, or very marginal accommodation, […]
The post Here's How 81 – Unionists and a United Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
May’s deal with the EU will go down in flames in the House of Commons on Tuesday. To say her situation is hopeless is an understatement. More than 100 of her own Tory MPs have publicly committed to vote against her, as have the DUP. She could have hoped to get a few Labour Brexiteers […]
The post It’s Over. Brace for Catastrophe. There’s No Hope. appeared first on Here's How.
Richard Tice is a British businessman, heavily involved in property management and development, and is best known as founder of the pro Brexit organisation Leave Means Leave and former co-chair of the referendum campaign group Leave.EU. He wrote recently that May’s deal is the worst deal in history. Richard queried my quote from David Davis […]
The post Here's How 80 – Brexit Common Sense or Unicorns? appeared first on Here's How.
David Robert Grimes is a physicist, cancer researcher and frequent writer and commentator on scientific topics. * I was talking in the last couple of podcasts about water charges, and the resistance to them, particularly in the light of the summer droughts, and there was quite a bit of feedback about those pieces. One of […]
The post Here's How 79 – Cervical Fact Check appeared first on Here's How.
Brendan Ogle is the spokesperson for Right2Water, and is Unite the Union's Senior Officer in the Republic of Ireland. * In the last podcast I had an interview with presidential candidate Gemma O’Doherty, and I have to say that I found the reactions to it pretty depressing. There was a twitterstorm in a teacup with a series […]
The post Here's How 78 – Water Charges appeared first on Here's How.
Gemma O'Doherty worked for the Irish Independent for 17 years before being dismissed following her investigation of the penalty points scandal. Since then she has worked as an independent journalist on a number of high-profile scandals and particularly on failed murder investigations. On 19 August, she announced her intention to seek nominations to be a […]
The post Here's How 77 – Running for President appeared first on Here's How.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is a Labour Party senator and former TD. * I wanted to comment a bit about the controversy that blew up in the UK last week about Boris Johnson’s comment about Muslim women who wear burkas. Boris Johnson, in case you don’t know, is the Tory Brexiteer who resigned in protest that […]
The post Here's How 76 – the Future of Labour appeared first on Here's How.
John Leahy became leader of Renua Ireland in September 2016. I spoke to him about aspects of his policies set out on the Renua website, including the proposal to Introduce 90-day detention orders for those Gardai suspect of being actively involved in preparations to murder another or of being responsible for directing the activities of […]
The post Here's How 75 – the Future of Renua appeared first on Here's How.
Graham Gudgin is a founder of Briefings for Brexit, and a research associate at the Centre For Business Research at the University of Cambridge and the Senior Economic Advisor with Oxford Economics. He was a special adviser to the Northern Ireland First Minister on economic policy from 1998 to 2002. **** You’ll remember that in […]
The post Here's How 74 – The Case for Brexit appeared first on Here's How.
Steve Hinks speaks for the UK Association of HPV Vaccine Injured Daughters, and he attended a conference in Dublin in April organised by the the International Federation for Injured Children and Adults. The conference was also attended by Anna Cannon of REGRET and Dr Jesper Mehlsen. The conference program claimed a speaker from the HSE […]
The post Here's How 73 – Antivax Claims appeared first on Here's How.
Natalie Parrott produces the YouTube channel ContraPoints. I highly recommend her videos. I mentioned the interview I did Linda Bellos in February. In our discussion, I mentioned the soaring referrals to the UK's Tavistock clinic (which specialises in gender reassignment) of children. I also mentioned James Caspian, the doctoral candidate at Bath Spa University who […]
The post Here's How 72 – Feminism and Trans Issues appeared first on Here's How.
David Quinn is a founder of the Iona Institute, a newspaper columnist and a regular media commentator. During the marriage equality referendum campaign, David said that Should the referendum pass, a same-sex couple could demand a right to marry in a church ... In Denmark, we have already seen that the Lutheran Church, a State […]
The post Here's How 71 – Referendum Campaigning appeared first on Here's How.
Sandra Khadhouri is one of the founders of Renew Britain, a new political party set up to resist Brexit. James Cousins, a former Conservative party member of Wandsworth Council has recently joined their party but they have not yet had a chance to test their electoral strength. In our conversation, I mentioned The Road to […]
The post Here's How 70 – The Exit from Brexit appeared first on Here's How.
Linda Bellos is a businesswoman, radical feminist and gay-rights activist. She was a member of the collective that produced Spare Rib, a British feminist magazine, and was a member of Lambeth Borough Council in London and was the leader of the council from 1986 to 1988. The term 'TERF' is widely used as a term of […]
The post Here's How 69 – Battles within Feminism appeared first on Here's How.
I talked to Director of Retail and Consumer Services at Comreg, Barbara Delaney. Yourtel appear to still be advertising to the Irish market, despite being convicted on 88 sample charges (out of 880) of ripping off their customers. They were fined just €750 of a maximum fine of €5,000 in each case - a total of €66,000. […]
The post Here's How 68 - Comreg and Protecting Customers appeared first on Here's How.
Ken Foxe is a lecturer in DIT and a freelance journalist. On June 27 last, the Irish-American academic and blogger Catherine Kelly was leaving Ireland through Dublin airport when she was detained by two plain clothes gardaí, and questioned about online reporting that she had done on the finances of Fine Gael minister for Social […]
The post Here's How 67 - Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Videos appeared first on Here's How.
Jonathan Irwin, the founder of Jack & Jill Children's Foundation, is an active campaigner against the HPV vaccine Gardasil. He regularly tweets and appears in the media to highlight the supposed danger of the vaccine. His latest tweet shows how motivated reasoning works, and how in the antivax echo-chamber, scare stories can be built from […]
The post Tweet Scares from Jonathan Irwin appeared first on Here's How.
Keith Redmond is an independent member of Fingal County Council, having been elected on the Fine Gael ticket in 2014 previously run for the Progressive Democrats and briefly been a member of Renua Ireland. He's also a founder member of the Hibernia Forum. The Libertarian Party in the US is known for its anti-government stance […]
The post Here's How 66 - A Libertarian in Ireland appeared first on Here's How.
I normally wouldn’t do a podcast about a blog post, but this is a blog post that has been signed by almost 500 people, so it’s not an ordinary blog post. You might have heard about Dean Scurry, he’s one of the activists who organised Home Sweet Home, the occupation of Apollo House by the […]
The post Here's How 65 - Cop on Comrades appeared first on Here's How.
In the main interview, I talked to Gino Kenny of the People Before Profit party. Gino's Facebook page shared the Facebook group Medical Cannabis Testimonials Ireland & UK, and encouraged people to share supposed 'testimony' of people benefiting from medical marijuana. The page promotes the most manipulative and misleading quackery; most of its posts claim that […]
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I interviewed Dr Mariano García de Palau of the Kalapa Clinic about his claims to treat a wide range of ailments with cannabis. As he mentioned, there are no clinical trials to validate most of these cures. I also interviewed Dr Robert O'Connor, Head of Research for the Irish Cancer Society.
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This podcast is the first part of a major investigation into people selling unlicensed substances that they claim will treat or cure serious conditions. This first part of the investigation, focussing on the Dublin-based Hemp Company. The Hemp Company's page selling the Charlotte’s Web product for up to €5,500 per litre is here, That page contains […]
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Derek Mooney is a public affairs and communications adviser as well as a former adviser to the Irish government. He's a columnist on Broadsheet.ie and Slugger O'Toole. *** In the last podcast, I was talking to Tom Geraghty of the PSEU, that’s the union that represents higher level public sector workers. The interview was in the […]
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Tom Geraghty is the General Secretary of the Public Service Executive Union. Tom disputed a couple of the references that I made during the interview. The report of MABS staff dealing with an average of two new cases per week here. The minister for justice has confirmed that there are gardaí suspended on pay for […]
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Opposition parties have called for the Disclosures Tribunal to be expanded. The MacLochlainn Tribunal does exist, but the Boyle Tribunal does not. Yet. Honest. Village magazine summarised the Morris Tribunal report in 2005 saying “the gardaí are in a state of disarray, with low morale, poor discipline, lack of oversight, and a culture of silence…” The […]
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Tony Groves writes the blog Trickstersworld, and we discussed this article which he wrote for Broadsheet.ie.
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Lughan Deane is the Communications Executive for the IMPACT trade union, who are currently running the #ClockedOut campaign. In the discussion I slightly overstated the dominance of women in Iran's technical and engineering facilities, but the point stands. By contrast, women in Norway are remarkably reluctant to enter many male professions. In Ireland it is […]
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Bill Donoghue is the President and CEO of the Catholic League. The article that he wrote claiming that the Tuam babies story is a hoax is here. The report by the Mother And Baby Homes Commission Of Investigation which detailed the forensic findings is here. The text of the letter by Terry Prone, pouring scorn on Catherine Corless's […]
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Brendan O'Neill is the editor of Spiked Online. His 2014 article that we discussed is here, and the interim report of the Mother And Baby Homes Commission Of Investigations is here. The second part of my coverage of this topic will be published next week. The global infant mortality statistics that I mentioned are here, […]
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This is the link to Episode 41 where I originally interviewed RTÉ's news planner, Donal Byrne, and this is the original of the set-up interview with Paul Reynolds where he gave what he said were details of the contents of the O'Higgins report, which was published two days later. That report, and the possibility that […]
The post Here's How 54 - Media Independence; RTÉ, the Gardaí and EU Web Controls appeared first on Here's How.
John McGuinness is 61 years of age. He was first elected to the Dáil 20 years ago. He’s been a minister for state and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). He’s a strong media performer and he’s no fool. He was summonsed to a meeting by the now-disgraced then-garda commissioner Martin Callinan in the […]
The post Callinan was not Smearing McCabe in that Car Park; He was Threatening McGuinness appeared first on Here's How.
Peter Lilley is the Conservative party MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, and the former Secretary of State for Social Security, and the former President of the Board of Trade. I mentioned George Eustace's speech at the Farmers Club, where he talked about restoring powers over farming to Westminster, not to the Northern Ireland, Scottish and […]
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Happy New Year, and a short message from the podcast host.
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Fiona O'Leary is the mother of five children, two of whom are on the autistic spectrum. She was a witness in the prosecution that led to the conviction of Patrick Merlehan for selling unlicensed and dangerous medicines. Riko Muranaka is a Japanese journalist and medical doctor. She is a specialist in infectious diseases. Her work has […]
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Smári McCarthy is a programmer, a writer and one of the founders of the Pirate Party of Iceland. This interview was recorded shortly before his recent election to the Icelandic parliament.
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This is the document that I was pointed to while searching for the source for Anna Cannon's claim that one in 30 or one in 40 people are struck with an autoimmune disease after receiving the Gardasil vaccine. In fact, what the table on page 8 shows is that 2.3 per cent (one in 43) […]
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These are R.E.G.R.E.T.'s website, Facebook page (Update: the page's content seems now to be hidden) and Twitter. This is the US Food & Drug Administration page that gives Gardasil information, which references 772 serious adverse events following administration of Gardasil, out of 23,000,000 doses administered. There is no requirement for proof that the adverse event be […]
The post Here's How 49 - Dr Brenda Corcoran of the HSE & R.E.G.R.E.T.'s Claims appeared first on Here's How.
Niamh Uí Bhriain is a founder of the Life Institute, and previously of Youth Defence. We discussed the Roe v Wade decision of the US Supreme Court and the McGee v Attorney General decision of the Irish Supreme Court, and how they led to the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign and ultimately the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution.
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Francis Duffy is a Green Party Councillor on South Dublin County Council. We talked about his proposal to ban election posters and replace them with hoardings at council-sponsored sites. The use of election posters is already highly regulated in Ireland, with the dates and locations of posters set in law; posters can be up for about […]
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AJ Noonan is the chairman of the Small Firms Association. The SFA's pre-budget submission is here. AJ queried my assertion that building land around Dublin was concentrated in a small number of hands. Business & Finance magazine reported in 2000 that the bulk of the development land in Dublin was owned by just eight speculators – […]
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Mick Fealty is the founding editor of Slugger O'Toole, Northern Ireland's foremost political blog. Voting for the Blog Awards Ireland will open soon, and I will add a link as soon as it does. Here's How has been longlisted in two categories, Best Innovation Blog and, strangely, Best Vlog.
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James Behan is a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, and a spokesperson for Men's Voices Ireland. He is also a staff writer for Trinity's University Times. In our discussion, James referred to a study by Dr Roisin O'Shea which indicates a poor quality of decision-making in custody cases in Irish Circuit Courts. James has written for the University […]
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Gavan Reilly is the political correspondent of TodayFM. You can nominate the Here's How podcast for the Blog Awards Ireland here.
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You can nominate Here's How for the Blog Awards Ireland here. Kian Griffin is the spokesperson for Ireland Underground. The motor insurance market is worth about €1.2bn per year, about half of one per cent of Ireland's GDP. The Motor Insurance Justice Action Group has in the past called for government subsidies on motor insurance, although they […]
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Donal Byrne of is a news editor at RTÉ who is responsible for news planning. The phrase 'known to gardaí" appears scores of times on the RTÉ website and, as Donal Byrne rightly pointed out, frequently occurs in other Irish media. The phrase has been sharply criticised for the meaning it carries, including by novelist Frankie Gaffney: […]
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Mick Byrne is a spokesperson on behalf of the Dublin Tenants' Association. They launched a social media campaign to highlight the condition of the tenants of private landlords in Dublin, along with 'licencees', people who pay share a house with the owner, who are not considered tenants in Irish law. You can find them on […]
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Michael Taft is the Research Officer for Unite the Union in Ireland. He is also a writer who appears frequently on Broadsheet and the Irish Left Review, and writes his own blog at Unite's Notes On The Front. This is the World Bank economic openness index that I mentioned that shows that Ireland has a […]
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Eoin Ó Broin is the newly-elected Sinn Féin TD for Dublin Mid-West. He is a former local councillor in both Dublin and Belfast. The tracking of the opinion polling for Irish political parties, including Sinn Féin, since 2007 is here. This is the text of the confidence and supply agreement between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
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Dan Mac Guill is a journalist with TheJournal.ie, and he has authored their excellent Fact Check series, including the one that we discussed about the effect of the closure of rural Garda stations. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul article that I mentioned is here. Details about the shortages of sugar, Coca Cola and […]
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