Neil Leslie

2 weeks ago | irishmirror.ie | Neil Leslie

If somehow Conor McGregor ever manages to get his name near a ballot paper, we may look back on it as his “they’re eating the dogs” moment. In his desperate bid for populist political power, the ludicrous one had to identify an enemy of the people. Pick that one thing that is repressing the masses and keeping us all from enjoying the good life. And this time it’s not the economy; it’s Ireland’s traffic laws stupid.

3 weeks ago | irishmirror.ie | Neil Leslie

It has been a long running and heated debate among scientists. Has human evolution peaked and stopped? Or does our species continue to adapt and change? Some say the story came to a halt between 10 and 50 thousand years ago, give or take a few millennia. That we replaced biological change with the ability to adapt culturally to whatever we encountered in our environment. Others believe it continues to speed ahead.

1 month ago | irishmirror.ie | Neil Leslie

Wer're gonna need a bigger list. That was the first thought as I surveyed the assembled items. Like a good citizen I had just followed the advice of the previously little-known ‘EU Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management’, Hadja Lahbib. Last week Commissioner Lahbib went viral when she urged 450 million Europeans to stockpile vital supplies in case of an imminent disaster. How imminent and which disaster is anyone’s guess these days.

1 month ago | irishmirror.ie | Neil Leslie

It is an institution once beloved of pranksters, newspaper editors and marketing executives everywhere. But it has been dying on its feet for some time now. In a world where idiocy and lies rule for 365 days a year, just what is the point of dedicating a special day to foolishness? This week we were prepared to finally call it. To declare that the April First joke just isn’t funny anymore.

1 month ago | irishmirror.ie | Neil Leslie

It seems strange from this vantage point of global political Armageddon. But this time seven years ago one of the most pressing issues in the European Union was: should we keep winding the clocks backwards and forwards? It was such a dilemma that the powers-that-be in Brussels embarked on the quaint notion of consulting ordinary people in a Europe-wide plebiscite. Grassroots democracy in action. Everyone was invited to have their say. Around five million did.