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1 week ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
Ah the straight, white male: the last group you can insult with impunity, based purely on race and gender. You could even throw in a ‘cis’ there and really wave your right-on credentials. Quite recently in The Irish Times there was an article with the headline ‘Sorry if my heart doesn’t bleed for straight white men at work’. The article was reacting to comments made by an Ibec representative about men feeling that they can’t take paternity leave without damaging their careers.
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2 weeks ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
Ciara Kelly: How are children supposed to face down societal fat shaming when famous men like Robbie Williams decide to reach for weight loss meds? Singer Robbie Williams has said he developed scurvy — 'A 1700s pirate disease' as he described it — from taking an Ozempic-type medication when trying to lose weight.
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3 weeks ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
American singer Chappell Roan got kicked around on the internet recently for saying that all her pals with children “are in hell” and she “actually doesn’t know anyone who is happy and has kids at this age”. She’s 27. And to be honest, I kind of agree with her. Firstly, and slightly tangentially, I’m sick of people thinking they have some kind of weird veto on other people’s opinions. Roan is entitled to think this if she pleases.
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1 month ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
Smartphone bans on kids are failing to equip children for healthy use of technology, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, but are being applied “despite a lack of evidence on their effects”. This only goes to show that experts and evidence are still entirely capable of missing the big picture when it comes to how they assess things.
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1 month ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
Greetings from your foreign correspondent. I’m writing to you this week from the Camino in northern Spain where I’m inching my way one step at a time towards Santiago de Compostela. I love walking, as many of you know, and this year I’ll hopefully enter the gorgeous medieval city, triumphant on day 100 of 100 days of walking — my pet campaign to get people moving to whatever extent they can. There’s something special about a walking holiday.
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1 month ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
Is your child doing their Leaving Cert in June? Probably a bit stressed working towards the endgame? The whole house on tenterhooks? It’s a very tough exam, lots of us still have dreams about it. On the upside, at least it’s fair in ways that continuous assessment in the era of AI isn’t. At least that blank sheet of exam paper — that is the route to college for most kids — is a level playing field. Except this year, it’s not.
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1 month ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
No one can be ‘stolen’ from anyone else unless they want to be. So why are we still viewing men who have affairs as blameless while labelling thewomen they cheat with as homewreckers? Homewrecker. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that term applied to a man. If certain nouns are gendered like slut or b**ch, homewrecker is definitely female. Although, you don’t hear it too much any more, thankfully.
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2 months ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
You may have seen the ‘I Met My Younger Self for Coffee’ trend on social media of late. Basically, it features people talking about what they’d say to their younger, generally messier selves, if they met them today with the benefit of age and hindsight — what reassurance or advice they wish they could have given. It’s a fascinating idea. I’d absolutely love to meet young Ciara — maybe in her late teens or twenties.
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2 months ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
So Amazon MGM has taken over the James Bond franchise causing some consternation about where the quintessential British spy might go from here. There are fears there could be some rubbishy TV spin-off along the Disney Star Wars line or, horror of horrors, he might even be played by an American!Now I have no issue with that, not least because I’m not British — but also look at Renée Zellweger and how well she plays Bridget Jones! You would have no idea she wasn’t English, if you didn’t know.
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2 months ago | 
independent.ie | Ciara Kelly
New Education Minister Helen McEntee says she’s worried about the stark rise in primary and post primary children not attending school regularly. Twenty-five percent of primary school kids are now missing more than 20 days of school a year and that rises shockingly to nearly half — 42pc — when you look at children in disadvantaged areas. These absentee rates have essentially doubled since pre-pandemic times.
