This letter in today’s Irish Times is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read in the pages of the newspaper. Life can be unspeakably cruel. The letter also makes me feel infinitely privileged for all that I have.
Conor Pope
30K posts
Conor Pope
@conor_pope
I dropped out of the Cubs because it clashed with The Incredible Hulk on the telly. I work for The Irish Times. DMs were open until the X man made me close them
- There aren’t many news stories that will stop almost every Irish person in their tracks. This very sad news is one of them. RIP to one of the finest singers of this - or any - generation.
- Tesco to give staff a backdated 10% bonus on their hourly rate, “in recognition of their incredible effort” during the coronavirus outbreak. What we - as citizens - can do is give them (and all frontline retail staff) all the respect and the kindness we can muster.
- Right now there are three houses within 50m of my front door in breach of the current Covid restrictions. We can go to level 1000 but it won’t make a bit of difference unless people cop the f**k on.
- Dear UK, Please take a breath. The EU really isn’t that bad. It’s quite good actually - what with all the peace and prosperity and rights and stuff. You should stay with us. We’d be delighted to have you back even at this late stage. All the best, Everyone Else in Europe. #brexit
- And on Wednesday we will be debating whether or not we actually need to put babies in car seats. If you think they're grand rolling around on the back seat, get in touch, we'd love to hear from you.
- Bono's doing a lot to ease the PPE shortage here and paying millions to do it. Here are 2 tweets in response. "Does this ars€hole ever stop?" and "I hope they turn down the offer if not he will be wrighting songs about it for the rest of his life". People are just ridiculous.
- If everyone in Dublin who reads this could, in the days ahead, find and order from a restaurant that normally doesn’t do takeaway but is doing so now it might make things just a little bit better for a whole lot of people. That is what I am going to do. Who’s with me?
- So Irish soccer - which is played by tens of thousands, young and old, gets around €3m a year from the Irish taxpayer while greyhound racing gets €16.5m. Can someone explain that to me, please?
- Those seeking to give the Lidl Looters a pass on the basis that the people in suits who wrecked our country didn’t go to jail are ridiculous. Bottom line is 30 local jobs are at risk and access to cheap groceries is gone for an entire community. Shameful. No other word for it.
- I don’t know from where this man could have found the strength to deliver this eulogy for his lost children. I can’t think of a more powerful way to share the message that, ultimately, love is the most important thing we have.
- The next few weeks are going to be hard for us all but do you know what? If we can collectively save more than 3,000 lives between now and the end of May by just staying at home for a little bit longer, it’s probably worth it, don’t you think?
- All credit to Circle K which has just announced it is to offer free hot drinks to all front line HSE staff and all emergency services in the coming week across its network of service stations.
- I hope that kid in Navan who was attacked this week knows that every single decent person in this country is on his side.
