08.18.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:21 pm by
Motor accident victims pay
For the first time, I perused the motoring section of the Irish Times today. Many interesting stories. Firstly, ‘blue light’ drivers in Ireland (i.e. guards, ambulance drivers, fire brigade etc) get little or no training in emergency driving. V. dangerous. More interesting however was the revelation that if you are in a car accident and have to stay overnight in hospital you have to pay up to €800 per night – all other patients are treated for free. Apparently the Dep of Health takes the view (endorsed by a Supreme Court decision) that its your own fault for being in hospital and you should cover the State’s costs. Of course in reality what happens is that the insurance companies pay up, thus accounting for some of the costs in compensation hearings. I had no idea this was the case. It sounds like a crafty idea except of course that many people injured in RTA’s are not at fault and additionally that many people can end up in hospital after other types of accidents that are their own fault. Bit unfair to single out the RTA’s. I suppose the Dep. of Health in the hungry 80′s (the measure was introduced in 1986) thought it was a great scam at the time. I can’t figure out whether I am appalled or impressed…..
Permalink
08.17.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:50 pm by
Funding of private education in Ireland
In 1966 Donagh O’Malley (uncle to Dessie) created Irish ‘free’ post-primary education. The state would pay the salaries of teachers, capitation fees for every student and fund the construction of schools. For fee paying schools, it was agreed that they would pay the salaries of those teachers but nothing else except in the case of minority religions (i.e. protestant) who would get the salaries and the grants. So far so reasonably fair. Occasionally and this week by the Labour party, the idea is floated that the government should reduce the money given to fee paying schools and direct the resources into poorer schools. Seems fair. The argument against this and articulated by Noel Dempsey only yesterday, is that if the teachers’ salaries were not paid, the fee paying schools would simply become free schools and the government would end up paying the salaries and the grants, thus costing them more money, not less. Possible maybe.
However, one hole in this argument is the issue of the grants paid to the protestant fee paying schools. The truth is that these schools are swamped by the catholic middle classes and the minority religion is in a minority in its own schools – but they still get the money as if they were all ‘minority’. I say, pay their salaries, but they should only get capitation grants for the protestant students. This will probably mean catholic parents with children at protestant schools would have to pay higher fees than the protestant parents with children at the same school. Tough. Haven’t they enough schools of their own (the catholics that is) both fee paying and non-fee paying.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:36 am by
Chavez victory
Chavez has won an emphatic victory in Venezuela endorsed by independent electoral monitors led by Jimmy Carter. Yet today’s IT headlines the news report with “Chavez claims victory in vote on his rule” (my italics). Claiming a victory seems to me to be quite different from actually winning a victory. Dictionary.com’s definitions are listed:
1. To demand, ask for, or take as one’s own or one’s due: claim a reward; claim one’s luggage at the airport carousel.
2. To take in a violent manner as if by right: a hurricane that claimed two lives.
3. To state to be true, especially when open to question; assert or maintain: claimed he had won the race; a candidate claiming many supporters.
4. To deserve or call for; require: problems that claim her attention.
Definition 3 is clearly the one that fits the context of the headline. Why didn’t the IT simply headline with “Chavez wins vote on his rule” or even “Emphatic win for Chavez in vote on his rule”. Seems to me to be more accurate than simply claiming a win which implies doubt.
Permalink
08.11.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:59 pm by
Clinton blooper
Am reading Clinton’s biography. So far nothing exciting except that I began by checking all the references for Ireland. There’s a photograph of himself and Hillary on their 1994 trip to Ireland. The caption says they’re addressing a crowd at Market Square, Dundalk, Northern Ireland. Oops. Fire the copy editor.
Permalink
08.09.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:52 am by
Germaine Greer
Here’s what seems like a critical, but probably fair biographical note.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:27 am by
Church on feminism
Issued just as Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” breaks all best selling records, the “LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD” is hilariously apt. There are some great chestnuts like its emphasis that men rule over women because that was Eve’s punishment for tempting him in the Garden of Eden and that women who seek equality with men deliberately cause antagonism and homosexuality. Th whole documents seethes with arrogance and the most extraordinary assumptions. Still, it’s hardly news that the church is down on feminism.
Nevertheless it does contain a basic thesis with which I agree; altho the conclusions I would draw from it are quite different than those Ratzinger does. He argues that it is wrong to suggest that the differences between men and women are simply a matter of gender conditioning but are in fact inherent to one’s sex. That the ability of women to give birth, whether fulfilled or remaining potential, gives women a “capacity for the other” which makes them particularly reverent of human life, humble, faithful etc.
“It allows her to acquire maturity very quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its responsibilities. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society. It is women, in the end, who even in very desperate situations, as attested by history past and present, possess a singular capacity to persevere in adversity, to keep life going even in extreme situations, to hold tenaciously to the future, and finally to remember with tears the value of every human life.”
Germaine Greer, a hero of mine, in typically withering fashion, criticises the document in Thursday’s Guardian. (In fact, her remarks on South America are more interesting than those on feminism). Greer, not always consistent, has however, a similiar thesis. That women are fundamentally different to men and this is connected with their ability to give and sustain life. I heard her interviewed some years ago in which she said something to the effect of:
“when the men are finished destroying the world, through violence and pollution, and the last few people are left, and in order for the human race to carry on, the carrot has to be got out of the ground and into the child’s mouth: it will be a woman that does it”.
That doesn’t seem hugely different from what Ratzinger is saying. I pointed this out in a piece I did on Radio 1 on Friday. If you want to listen , fast forward into about 1h30s.
Permalink
« Previous Page « Previous Page Next entries »