Brianna Parkins, Irish Times columnist

There are a lot of insufferable columnists out there. What is it about this particular young female columnist that irks you so much?

No point linking to a paywall Kermit. She was a Rose of Tralee, then on Ireland AM. She moved to Australia. It's just an Opinion Piece. You're not bound by her opinions and can even drop a letter to the editor refuting her stance if you wish. People do it about different articles every day.

She is realtively harmless, easy to read and pretty forgettable. Which isn't exactly an insult, sometimes you want to read something akin to chewing gum for the eyes in a TV programme. A Tipping Point of the newspaper world so to speak.

Brianna is a former Rose or Tralee contestant, from Aussie settled here for a while, did a bit of whimsical writing and some telly cos she's a decent looking doll.

And of course, like her millenial professional woman opposite number in the Indo, Stefanie Preissner, she just had to come out as 'neuro-divergent', which of course just means she's a woman.

And now she's taken her quirky Irish boyfriend and they've moved (back) to Sydney, but she seems to still be writing Irish Times columns from there, telling us why everything in Australia is epic and everything in Ireland is hellish. Seems to me you'd get away with that for ONE column piece, but not week in and out, not to the Irish Times audience. So, I expect she'll be taken off the roster there soon enough. And that'll be the story of her.

She works on some Australian channel iirc but keeping an existing column when possible is most likely preferable to any writer these days.

Parkins : ” I’m leaving Ireland, I don’t have the energy for life here “….. that’s fair enough ok,

So what happens, she does leave Ireland but she’s making a living by writing for an Irish newspaper ( Irish Times ) whose main target audience is Irish people living in Ireland. So she hasn’t the energy for Ireland or life in Ireland unless Ireland is writing her a pay cheque .

I’ve read two of her columns and it looks like the IT are basically paying her for writing a diary / brain fart guff article for them… absolutely nothing impressive, imaginative, interesting or original…

Hardly journalism, most of us could do that…. Give me a page in x publication and hey I’ll offer my opinions and experiences…..

Because I don’t have the interest and they couldn’t afford me 🤷‍♂️

Got you thinking all the same.

Even exercised enough to go online to complain about it.

Job done.

I was in Australia last year the people I know who have lived there 20years don't think it's so great, cost of living house prices etc etc.

I too, irrationally hate people that I hate, irrationally.

Don't like it, don't read it. Seems simple enough.

It's probably worth noting that two other articles about life in Australia were published in the main paper on Saturday.

https://www.irishtimes.com/abroad/2024/08/31/i-think-i-would-have-had-a-very-fixed-life-in-ireland-i-feel-very-light-in-australia/?

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/09/01/in-australia-rents-are-high-costs-are-rising-can-it-remain-a-mecca-for-irish-emigrants/