I thought I knew about cyberbullying until I interviewed Joni O'Sullivan on the show last week. She told me about the 14 month ordeal her daughter Zoe has been put through at the hands of hundreds, maybe even thousands of other teenagers after kissing the 'wrong' boy at a disco. It's harrowing stuff. Joni is doing [...]
At the News of the World phone hacking trial in London’s Old Bailey yesterday, Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC, read out some of the hacked voicemails. The ones that sparked the interest of the masses yesterday sound pretty dull. "Hi baby, it's me". Right then, I suppose. But when “me” is the future king of England, and [...]
We’ve all been there. Steve Carson (husband of Miriam O’Callaghan) reportedly said last week – joking, I’m sure – that there are three of them in the marriage. Steve, Miriam, and Miriam’s iPhone. Apart from the obvious – how she has time to even breathe, never mind tweet – it begs the question; how many of [...]
On Sunday I had the honour of chairing Cork Association for Autism's conference on autism from adolescence to adulthood. My favourite speaker was Dr Stuart Neilson, a statistician who was diagnosed in his 40s after struggling with mental health issues for years. It was only when he finally met a mental health professional who knew about [...]
Gail as she appeared in 1978. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I had a chat with Dave Fanning and Declan Cashin on Saturday about watching TV while Tweeting; my friends came up with various words for this including Tveeting, Twatching, and a range of other rude words that I couldn't possibly write here. Whatever you want [...]
During Tuesday night's Prime Time programme about how carers and their loved ones are suffering under cutbacks, I watched Twitter for commentary on the show. It's a great way of monitoring how people are reacting to a TV programme or an ongoing debate, and the huge amount of comments on the subject showed that [...]
Students often get bad press, and with exams currently going on or in prospect in most colleges, they are having a tough enough time at the moment without doing it to themselves. But the utter stupidity of a Facebook page I came across this week proves that college culture creates an astounding ignorance of [...]
This is the speech I gave last night at a great event run by Cork Feminista to celebrate the 100th International Women's Day Introduction Good evening everyone, and happy 100th International Women’s Day! When I was sitting down to write this speech, I began to think about the recent election; the role of women in Irish [...]
And that's just the election candidates and their teams; I'm on another level entirely after a crazy weekend spent in Cork City Hall. Between us, Peter and I uploaded 52 blogposts and countless (I tried, and failed to count them) tweets as we liveblogged and tweeted the count. It was a phenomenal experience and [...]
I'm really looking forward to the election count tomorrow and Sunday. I've covered counts before, but as a purely print reporter. This will be the first one I am tweeting and live blogging and I'm looking forward to the utter confusion of it all! You can follow my tweets on @deshocks (I'll be mainly [...]
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