dóchas is grá

President doesn't have the power to order or offer that. As I said, already peacekeeping troops in Lebanon, no reason why not in Gaza in the context of a UN operation.

What on earth do you mean? Ireland does contribute troops to the UN. Recently under Israeli fire in Lebanon. If you're after our neutrality however, you can fuck right off.

Yep. Age 10: a pleasure to have in class (but needs to stop doodling on books, take more care with presentation and organisation, and focus more on maths instead of reading so much). Age 50: ADHD (inattentive), dyspraxia and hyperlexia.

Grey painted toilet door. Two pictures are crudely stuck to the door. They depict the supposed pictograms for female & male - skirt & trousers wearer. Both are depicted with their legs crossed & hands in the crotch area.

This is a rural Irish petrol station. Not only is there a gender-neutral toilet, the sign depicts the exact pose you're in by the time you hobble cross-legged from your car via the counter to ask for the toilet key. The key is tied to something too large to accidentally pocket. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?

That is a major milestone, congratulations!

Listen my darling butterflies: if trans people (and POC and all other humans) don't have exactly the same rights you do, YOUR rights are under threat. Because once some people are allowed to state that those they don't approve of don't have full human rights, that never stops.

Oh my god. This book was in my 5th class classroom, I glimpsed it once and avoided it assiduously until some mean girls who knew I was a scaredy cat left it on my desk open at this page. Nightmares for years. 50 and still not over it.

📌

Thank you Patrick for this. As a middle-aged Irish cis woman with a trans son, I'm taking this a bit personally.

@hedgehogsafety.bsky.social

A well-raised man.

@hedgehogsafety.bsky.social

Irish courts not as bad as others yet. Have dealt well with eg. Enoch Burke. 🤞

One thing about the SO'M thing. If you've a therapist and they're in the IACP it wouldn't hurt to ask that they contact them and ask them to fight this frivolous vexatious claim. I'll be asking mine to do that.

Sounds scary! Hope you feel better soon and no lasting effects.

Oh no! Hope you're ok?

Oh hooray, a stereotyping bigot.

On this day, August 3rd, 1916, Roger Casement was executed at Pentonville prison in London for treason. 1/3

Yep, the towel is an essential with a Springer!

Liver and white Springer Spaniel on forest path. He is covered in grass and cleavers and is very pleased with himself. He is looking straight at camera (this is because I am holding his ball as well as my phone).

Yes. Definitely. And also bedecked himself in vegetation, so it was a good walk, all round.

Liver and white Springer Spaniel with ball in mouth and lead attached lying on his side on grass looking defiant.

He is NOT coming home. He is NOT getting into the car. He is lying here in the carpark until he is adopted by someone who is not SO CRUEL as to put limits on ball-related activity for a dog with dodgy joints. (I had to pick him up in the end). #dogs #spaniels #speirgorm

Sunny Sunday morning in the garden. Large blue ceramic pot containing a honeysuckle bush and a large tabby-and-white cat, lying down with eyes closed. Patch of catmint with blue flowers to left of pot, brown wooden fence behind.

#cats

Yes of course! Now, does a cattle raid qualify as a road trip? Lonesome Dove is in there, so cattle related travel is definitely allowed, making a strong case for the Táin...

Who were the other FF candidates? Thierry Henry? Jeffrey Donaldson? That blogger who warned people not to visit Ireland because you couldn't get a train to London? That Lovecraftian monster of indescribable horror who eats temperate islands?

Fabulous letter Bernie. (There is more of me today too).

Madam, On checking my diaries, I discover that I weighed just under ten stone in 2015, at the time the Gender Recognition Act came into law. Far from being erased, as John Boyne would have it, there appears to be considerably more of me today. I wholeheartedly support the rights of transgender people to live their best, authentic lives and, as a woman who has been a feminist since the 1970s, I know that this does not affect my rights in any way. The 10,000 people who marched at Trans and Intersex Pride in Dublin last month would seem to agree. The “greatest sin of our time” is not transphobia but, as so often in our past, the failure to believe women when we tell you who we are. Bernie Linnane Dromahair, Co. Leitrim.

Sunday Independent...

“The ‘grown women’ of Ireland remember very well what erasure and control and lack of bodily autonomy feel like and it’s for this very reason that we stand so passionately with the trans community today”

#TransRightsAreHumanRights @independent.ie

Loved that one too!

If children's books count, definitely "Flight of the Doves" as someone has already suggested, and maybe another childhood favourite of mine, Patricia Lynch's "The Grey Goose of Kilnevin".

I think being compelled to subject yourself to it is worse! (My son has similiar feelings about "Of Mice and Men".)