Ireland

When Conor McGregor stood in the dock for his civil rape trial last week, the controversial MMA fighter was receiving the kind of global media attention he had always craved. Just not for the reasons he would have wanted. In court, the 12-person jury found him liable for the rape and sexual assault of Nikita Hand, and awarded her £208,000 in damages. This was the latest nail hammered into a career which has been marred by sporting controversies, sexual misbehaviour and appallingly thuggish behaviour. The circumstances which brought McGregor before the civil court were as tawdry as people had come to expect from the Dublin brawler. One Friday night in

Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working out, after its general election, what sort of a coalition government will be entailed by its system of proportional representation. And the Germans are fretting already about whether and how a new coalition might be put together, the last one having disintegrated. A new election looms, held according to Germany’s ‘personalised proportional representation’ voting system. Voters may not have agreed on much but they did share a longing for bold and decisive government Joe, meanwhile, is a first cousin twice removed whom I didn’t even know. He’s 16, and has

‘Where are my empty plastic bottles?’ I ran around the house screaming, after discovering my stash had disappeared. The government in Ireland has done something with the recycling laws that has made people into wild-eyed scavengers. It has introduced a scheme whereby you can feed all your empty bottles and cans into a machine in the supermarket that crushes them down and spits out a voucher – by which I mean about 20 small plastic water bottles, for example, makes you two or three euros, which is enough for a coffee, a sandwich or some money off your shopping bill. The government has done something with the recycling laws that

‘My name is Love,’ typed the help assistant, ‘and I’m a member of the Airbnb community support team.’ I was using one of those chat boxes, where someone from the company you’re grappling with, embodied in a flashing cursor, interacts with you in print on a live chat screen. I am kind and polite, I thought. No one has ever really given me credit for that before Now, I’m a big fan of the chat box. The chat box works when all other forms of customer service fail. Chances are you will get much better service if you stop expecting companies to speak to you on the phone, and start

My passport and driving licence sat on the counter but the girl stared back at me, repeating her demand. ‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said. I told her I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was on about. ‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said again, doing her best ‘computer says no’ stare. The Sixt rental office was in the atrium of the Hilton Hotel Gatwick, which for some reason had been heated to something like sauna temperature. I had walked what felt like a mile, pulling my wheelie suitcase, because Sixt wasn’t in the main car-hire area near the terminal exit, and hadn’t warned me

Craic down Sir: If Ireland had been investing in infrastructure as Ross Clark writes (‘Bog down’, 21 September), Dublin would have a metro, Galway a ring road, and primary school parents wouldn’t be forced to pay for basic necessities. And when the only local hotel cancels wedding and birthday parties because government has block-booked it for migrants and refugees, no wonder people beyond the Dublin bubble are mutinous. Rural areas often lack broadband or even piped water (just ask Melissa Kite) and where the blue pipe does reach, ‘boil water’ orders are common. Corporation tax is 27 per cent of government revenue (per head of population, more than four times

My neighbour had a surgical procedure and keeps telling me about it. Every time she starts, I shout ‘No! Please stop!’, because I’m squeamish. At the risk of distressing anyone else who is squeamish, I do need to say that she had her eyeball injected, because of what followed. Three people in four days – so having your eyeball injected must be no more unusual than having your hair cut A day after visiting my neighbour and having to cover my ears as she explained her eye op, I bumped into a lady I know outside church and when I asked after her husband she said he was going into

‘Zip my head in,’ he said, after climbing into a white jumpsuit with a mesh helmet. It was a beekeeper’s outfit, but the effect was less apicultural and more like the scene in E.T. where the special agents in biohazard suits come for the alien. The builder boyfriend was struggling with the zip around his neck so I made sure it was shut. He then fussed with the arms and legs so much, worrying about gaps, that in the end I used gaffer tape to tape his wrists and ankles. ‘Now you look like a Teletubby,’ I said. ‘Foot the ladder, will you?’ he asked. The BB had come home