Ireland working with Spain and others to build support for recognition of Palestine

Hello and welcome to the Student Hub email digest. In this edition, Ireland is working with Spain and others to build support for the recognition of Palestine; Diarmaid Ferriter on the costs associated with a united Ireland; Four years ago, we were clapping health workers in the street. Now we’re reducing their benefits; Isabel Simpson, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland on the castastrophe in Gaza; How the next election could herald an age of Independents; A sense of foreboding descends on Liveline; ex-UK PM Harold Wilson’s affair with a younger aide; OJ Simpson might have got away with murder but he lost the one thing he craved the most, and more...

Ireland working with Spain and others to build support for recognition of Palestine: Ireland is working with Spain and a number of other countries to build support for the formal recognition of the state of Palestine, with Taoiseach Simon Harris saying it was “highly likely” more countries in Europe would back the move.

United Ireland: money should not be the deciding factor but nor should it be ignored: For more than 50 years, opinion polls in the South have suggested two-thirds wish to see a united Ireland, but that is qualified when money comes up.

Four years ago, we were clapping health workers in the street. Now we’re reducing their benefits: Remember when we emerged en masse from behind our front doors, flung open our windows, and stationed ourselves on our balconies and at our garden gates to applaud the heroism of frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

No healthcare system could cope with the volume and complexity of the injuries we’re treating in Gaza: Humanitarian law is effectively being buried under the rubble of Gaza alongside thousands of children, women and men, writes Isabel Simpson, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland.

OJ Simpson might have got away with murder but he lost the one thing he craved the most: Thirty years on, it is difficult to think of another event where so many themes and tensions of American life intersected – or, rather, collided.

Next election will herald an age of Independents: Flip-flops by Sinn Féin on hate speech, the Nature Restoration Law, and the recent referendums raise questions. If the bigger parties can’t speak clearly for themselves how can they speak for us?

A sense of foreboding descends on Liveline. Then Joe Duffy takes an unexpected turn: It used to an ironclad law of tabloid journalism that if a child was described as a “tot” in a headline, tragedy would follow in the accompanying story.

‘A little sunshine at sunset’: ex-UK PM Harold Wilson’s affair with a younger aide that stayed a secret for 50 years: He was the football-mad Labour leader from a working class background who made a pitch for Downing Street with a promise to modernise Britain and end “13 years of Tory misrule”.

The eight people you meet in the posh emergency department, including the minor sports-adjacent celebrity: A glorious hospital porter once allayed my fears on the way to theatre with some daring swerves of the bed and jokes about what they might do with my tonsils.