03.31.08
Posted in Irish Politics at 3:08 pm by Sarah
I turn down a lot of radio and tv stuff these days: I am just too busy and distracted. But there are some programmes I’m always happy to do including Spirit Moves on RTE Radio 1. This one hour long show gives contributors a chance to discuss issues in a reasonable fashion and without pigeon holing the guests.
Yesterday’s show was about religious involvement in primary schools and there was a great panel – David Quinn, the Indo columnist and Iona Institute director, Bishop Leo O’Reilly, John Carr, head of the INTO and Paul Roe, head of Educate Together.
We agreed that RC domination of primary education will begin to ease as new State Primary VEC/Community schools will be built. We also agreed that this will see the emergence of a two-tier system – the “good” catholic national primary schools and the lesser state VEC schools – just as the “tech’s” were seen as the poor relation (and therefore had to take the poorer student at secondary level).
We also agreed that the church won’t walk away from their existing schools. There’ll be no question of a handover.
Finally we agreed (there was a lot of agreement!) that the teaching of religion in the new community “multi-faith” schools is practically very difficult since all the teacher training colleges are denominational! We speculated that the system might operate along the line envisaged by the then Chief Secretary Stanley, who in 1831 set up the Board of Education. He planned that the schools would be secular and that religious teaching would be done at specified times by local clergy so that students could be separated at that stage. By the 1880’s the clergy on both sides had defeated him and set up their own denominational schools.
However, towards the end of the show I asked Bishop O’Reilly why he put up with parents who clearly had no interest in religion but showed up for the first communion just for the day out. “Would you not run them?” I asked.
He replied “Well I wouldn’t be as judgmental as that”.
Driving home later I was laughing to myself: ‘Gee, a bishop not being judgmental! Now there’s a turnaround. Sure, what’s religion without a bit of judgement? Isn’t that the whole point?”
But by this morning I had turned around. Here’s the thing: he genuinely meant it. He didn’t judge people. And our local priest who has every right to run me when I show up needing things signed or being a tourist at mass, despite my publicly proclaimed atheism honestly doesn’t judge either. I think they really believe in keeping the door open. Let everyone come in on their own terms and take whatever they want home. The most malevolent interpretation you could make is that they are arrogant because they have the kids so they don’t have to worry about the adults (the McDonalds approach). You could also claim that they know adults are like teenagers, they know we’ll have our little rebellions but we’ll all go through their doors at the end.
With the monopoly on schools and funerals, they hold all the aces.
But my real feeling is that O’Reilly, and our local men here, honestly don’t see it in those terms. I think they are happy to make themselves, and their services, available to anyone that wants them however selectively. I also know that if someone in this house dropped dead tomorrow I could call our local PP and he’d be up here straight away to offer practical help and words of comfort. No questions asked. Like Cromwell said, God will sort us out in the end 
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03.29.08
Posted in Feminism at 8:59 pm by Sarah
Well, well, well, how interesting.
From the IT today.
Story 1
” A DONEGAL woman who travelled to New York for the St Patrick’s holiday was detained and deported when US authorities discovered she had worked there for four years without a valid visa.
Catherine Greene (28) from Rannafast said she was kept in a holding room for 12 hours and not allowed water or food before being escorted onto a flight to London on March 17th, her birthday.
She had spent four years in New York as an undocumented bar worker and was returning for a nine-day holiday to visit friends.
She said that, after consulting computer files, an immigration official at JFK airport asked her to confirm her previous dates of arrival and departure before placing her passport in a clear plastic bag.
“He said ‘come with me’ and sent me into this room and I had to sit there for a few hours – they didn’t tell me nothing,” Ms Greene told The Irish Times . “I was in an awful way. I was crying. They didn’t actually handcuff me but they told me they weren’t going to because of the state I was in. They said they usually would.”
Ms Greene said she was then brought by van to another holding room, where she spent the night with three others who had been refused entry to the US, and was allowed to make one phone call.
She said: “It was horrible. It was cold, they were bringing people in and out, and we were sitting there, not allowed to move. I wasn’t allowed have water or food or nothing. I went to my suitcase to get some chocolate and your man told me I wasn’t allowed to go near my suitcase . . . Every time you got up you were told to sit down again.
“It was bad treatment. I didn’t know what was going on – they weren’t telling you anything . . . You’re treated like a criminal. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
Deary me. Treated LIKE a criminal. Overnight in a holding cell and back on BA. Not like these Brazillians chaps who came to Dublin for the weekend and were treated AS criminals – flung into Mountjoy for TWO days! But the Brazillians aren’t a a bit happy about it. Good for them.
Story 2
“A DIPLOMATIC row has broken out between Ireland and Brazil over the detention in Mountjoy Prison of three students who were trying to enter the Republic, The Irish Times has learned.
The students were refused permission to enter via Dublin airport last weekend.
Since then the case has become a national news story back in Brazil.
It has led to the police there being called to investigate a bomb threat at the Irish Embassy in the capital Brasilia. The embassy has received threats by telephone and via the postal service.
A delegation from the Brazilian embassy in Dublin yesterday met with senior officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Brazilian officials registered the concerns of their government relating to the treatment of the three students, particularly their detention in Mountjoy Prison.
The episode began last weekend when three Brazilian students in their early 20s decided to travel from their base in Portugal to Ireland.
It was their intention to stay in Dublin for the weekend and return to Portugal, where they are attending university…..
The gardaà were not satisfied with the students’ claims that they were residing in Portugal, attending university there and were simply visiting Dublin for a short holiday……
It is suspected that a large number of Brazilians admitted to the State in recent years have used the freedom of travel between Ireland and the UK to enter the UK illegally and stay on there.
When the students were stopped at the airport, they were questioned for a short period before being taken to Mountjoy Prison. They were held there for two days.
The Irish Times understands they have since been returned to Portugal.”
My only question is why Ms Greene’s experience is even news. She, by her own admission, stayed and worked illegally in the US and attempted, despite clear rules, to regain entry within 10 years. She’s kept overnight and put on the next flight home. The Brazillians, perfectly legally attempt entry and are kept in jail for two days! That’s a story. Ms Greene has no cause for complaint.
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03.25.08
Posted in Domestic/Relationships, Irish Politics at 9:40 am by Sarah
(Sunday’s column: this is the unedited copy – so a teency bit more ranty than that which appeared in de paper).
There are 33 million refugees across the planet. To hear some people talk, you’d think every last one of them would arrive in Dublin Airport tomorrow unless those two gardai at passport control keep their wits about them. We can relax. When people flee war, famine and systematic rape they usually run to another neighbouring poor country. If they are just hungry, as opposed to victims of violence, they’ll seek work in, yes, another neighbouring poor country. The world’s 80 million South to South migrants, as they are called, take the lowest, dirtiest jobs going in developing countries with a contiguous border to their own and send home whatever money they can to keep their family from starvation. They’d probably like to move to Ireland, but they there’s no way they can afford to. They’ve probably never even heard of Ireland.
So, yippee, we’re safe from the hordes of black “so-called” asylum seekers who in reality are “only” economic migrants. To be specific: last year the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner received around 4,300 applications for asylum status, 400 of which were granted. Can we handle 400 refugees? Apparently not. Apparently we’ve made it far too cushy for asylum seekers who are running around the country living it up with their social welfare and free flats. Don’t worry. The government has proposed tough new legislation to sort out the process and soon we’ll be able to ship those lying, free loading Africans back to where they came from in double quick time.
Chad on the other hand has taken, so far, 200,00 refugees from Darfur. I wonder can they handle them? With Sudanese militias attacking Chadaians on bordering towns, it must get a bit tricky at times. Oh well, that’s their problem. Give John O’Shea €50 and he’ll get them some clean water. Or something.
Now back to our problems, and in particular how to handle those cases of photogenic African women with cute children and sob stories about female genital mutilation. Or as Michael McDowell once called them “cock and bull” stories. Pamela Izevbekhai has two daughters, Naoimi (7) and Jemima (5). She had another daughter Elizabeth, but she died aged just 17 months from blood loss after she was mutilated in the brutal procedure that is common in certain areas of Africa including Nigeria.
In case you’re not familiar with FGM it involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. That can mean “just” cutting off the clitoris or labia minora. In Nigeria the version of FGM practicised is called infibulation. That’s where they stitch the labia majora together to seal the vagina, leaving just a small hole for urine and menstrual blood. The girls legs are bound together for several weeks so that it heals into a barrier. When she gets married the husband is then assured he has married a virgin. He’ll break the barrier either forcibly with his penis or cut her open. Whichever. I think its safe to say I’d get myself and my daughters to the other side of the world to escape that if I could. Especially if I’d seen one daughter die from the procedure.
It’s a terrible story and Pamela has won friends and supporters in Sligo where she has lived for the past few years. The story has been backed up although witnesses in Nigeria have been intimidated and are reluctant to talk about it anymore. But, as Amnesty International have pointed out, the facts are not disputed by the Irish state. They officially know. They just don’t care. Even if my daughters weren’t at risk of FGM, if I had the chance to get them out of a poor nation where they had few prospects to a rich one where they had some, I’d take it. After all, its what Irish people have done for 200 years.
Pamela has had a lot of sympathy and support though none from Justice Minister Brian Lenihan, who at the time of writing, wasn’t on for giving her a safe home in Ireland. You can see his point : if you let one in, they’ll all be over on the next flight.
Though there are many cases like Pamela’s, hers has received a lot of attention possibly due to both the prettiness of the daughters and the strength of her friends in Sligo. It has exposed something I have long observed about Irish people and our capacity to hold completely contradictory and indeed, hypocritical positions simultaenously.
Position 1. We can’t allow those Nigerians to come in here, living off the State with their made up stories. If we let some in, they’ll all want to come. The government should do something.
Position 2. That poor women. It’s so sad. She should be let stay. The government should do something.
Position 3. Sure, half of them aren’t asylum seekers at all, they’re only here after money.
Position 4. It’s not fair. My cousin in America couldn’t come home for her father’s funeral cos she’s illegal. The government should do something.
Give us a name, let us meet the woman and hear her story and we will literally march in the street to demand that she be rescued. But this year the government will push through the Immigration, Residence & Protection Bill which will cut out cumbersome appeals procedures, broaden the basis under which foreigners can be deported and insist that a foreigner who wants to marry either another foreigner or an Irish citizen can only do so with the permission of the Minister for Justice. The opposition will make a little noise about it but I’d bet the price of storing unwanted electronic voting machines that the bill will go through without too much fuss. Irish people can find compassion for individual cases but get panic stricken at the thought of “them all” coming over here and so support draconian legislation to keep them, and their stories, out of the country.
Whenever I’ve challenged someone on their desire to protect the illegal cousin in America and their complaints about refugees in Ireland, they’ll usually claim that the cousin pays his own way while the refugee gets services that are being denied to more deserving Irish people. Refugees aren’t allowed work and personally I find it morally reprehensible to let the people at the bottom of the pile fight it out for rent allowance for disgusting flats. We could put the electronic voting machines on a bonfire and free up a few quid for something more worthy.
Still that fear and resentment can’t be shifted. Why are we so afraid of helping these people as we sought help in our millions, in the past? What can they possibly do to us or take away from us? Money? We have plenty of money, just no idea how to spend it fairly.
Jimmy Devins and Eamon Scanlon are the Fianna Fail TDs for Sligo-North Leitrim. If the Minister for Justice thought one of them could lose a seat over Pamela Izevbekhai she’d have some chance of staying here. Their seats are safe but her daughters are not.
Update : Myers makes a good point today (loaded with all the usual provocative statements, but ANYWAY)
” Two-and-half-years ago, a Nigerian idiot named Osagie Igbinidion was found not guilty of the reckless endangerment of life, after a little boy he circumcised, 29-day-old Callis Osajhae, bled to death. The trial judge, Kevin Haugh, told the jury not to bring their “white, western values” to bear upon their deliberations. Describing the case as a clash between two cultures, he added: “This is a relatively recent matter that Ireland will have to deal with now that we have a significant migrant population. You are not asked whether this form of procedure is acceptable in Ireland. If you start thinking on those lines, you are doing Mr Igbinidion a great injustice.”
Just one commentator in the media remarked upon this extraordinary case, in which a man walked free from a court having sexually mutilated and mortally wounded a little boy. Me. I wrote: ” . . . had the dead child been female, I believe that no jury would have been told not to bring their white, western values to bear on the case — or if they had been, we may equally be sure that the judge would not be dangling from the nearest lamp-post . . .”
I do not know what that fine fellow Osagie Igbinidion is doing today.
He has not, to my knowledge, and considerable regret, been deported — nor has he been issued with a court order compelling him to desist from his merry trade (he is a fourth generation circumciser; ah the joys of multiculturalism). So it is as legal to chop little boys’ penises off today as it was then, and if they die as a consequence, the judicial advice rings down the years, not to bring our “white western values” into the case.
But when the infant in question is a girl, then those white, western values are suddenly all we care about; hence the uproar over Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters.
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03.24.08
Posted in Feminism, Sunday Times Columns at 6:05 pm by Sarah
In one generation an obsession has arisen over spring lamb – supposedly a “traditional” Easter dish. Traditional for I don’t know..20 years? In these parts we look down our noses at Spring lambs. If the lambs are big enough to kill for Easter then they were born in deepest Winter and have been reared on what we call “sheep nuts” or as one consumer of “organic lamb” told me, turnips and “mountain grasses”. Further, lambs born in Winter have to be brought indoors for at least some time and are therefore more susceptible to infection. So they either die or need antibiotics.
Our lambing season really only started in the last 2-3 weeks and is in full swing now. They are born and reared outdoors and eat grass. My mother who is an expert in meat swears that these lambs are far superior to the ’spring” version that has not eaten grass – or certainly grass from the fine plains of midlands Ireland.
But here’s the other thing. From our house I can see our new lambs trotting round the fields, tails wagging as they feed from their mothers and in a little while trailing around after them grazing. Disease is extremely rare and they’ll be rounded up straight from the field and sent to the factory. Its the way most lambs in these parts are reared. But these perfectly and naturally bred animals are not labelled organic. I asked the folks why. They said they had checked it out and the regulations for “organic” are hopeless. The one they singled out was that there were severe restrictions on fertilizer management of the grass. Now, we’re in REPS (rural environmental protection scheme) and so are under regulation about these things already.
As far as I’m concerned these lambs, which end up as normal Irish lamb in your average butchers are a lot more “natural” and “organic” than lambs bred in winter, indoors and fed anything other than their natural diet (grass). They’ll hit the shops in June. They’ll cost half of your heavily marketed Spring Lamb. So consumers – forget this over priced organic thing. Your common or garden, or rather field, Irish lamb is quite acceptable.
So, what do the Carey’s, strange little cult that we are, eat on Easter Sunday? And with GREAT relish?
Turkey and Ham! Yummy. Why only have it at Christmas? Especially when you cook it PROPERLY like Betty does. None of this roasting it the day before nonsense. And none of this roasting it dry. Straight out of the oven, dripping in juice. Loads of veg, gravy and spuds. How we cheer when its presented.
Though in Monty Pythonesque mode Betty did claim that the Spring treat in Cavan in her childhood was…..
The Spring Cabbage
Sick of turnips all winter, her father would head to the fields and return triumphantly with the first cabbage.
I never acquired a taste for cabbage. Good thing I wasn’t reared in Cavan in war time.
Aw..twin lambs right outside the window now. So cute. And so delicious in a few months
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:27 am by Sarah
Still feverish but it has its upsides – laying in bed listening to glorious Radio 4. Andrew Marr’s Start The Week was a joy and featured a specialist in M theory who when asked if theoretical physicists were arrogant told the joke about the philandering string theorist. When his wife challenged him about his adultery he said “But Darling, I can explain everything”.
ho ho.
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03.23.08
Posted in Irish Politics at 4:25 pm by Sarah
Great material here on bloggingheads.tv for smart US political debate (as opposed to the rubbish on mainstream telly)
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Posted in Irish Politics at 1:20 pm by Sarah
We’ve seen Paddy’s photos, now read Ardmayle’s description. M and I went to Cuba on our honeymoon and stayed in the Nacional for a few days before heading out to the resorts at Vardero – where you effectively leave Cuba – but hey those beaches….. The lads and I agreed on the awfulness of the food and the tragedy that is Cuba. A wonderful people betrayed by the incompetence and egos of its own and America’s leaders.
Oh poor blogging this week due to various infections. On the mend though..
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03.19.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 12:46 pm by Sarah
has sprung. At last, sitting at the table typing this and looking out a bright sunny field with the first lambs and pairs of robins, instead of grey skies and creepy sheep.
It was M’s birthday last week and I bought him a bike, and one for me, 
with child seats on the back full of optimism about fun cycles in the countryside. Of course, he pointed out all the health and safety dangers of such an enterprise, but agreed in principle, that at some undefined point in the future, we might possibly consider cycling beyond the cul de sac. It might just happen. In the meantime I took a quick spin, though I spotted the local jack russell patrolling the road. So I did a u-turn and called into Betty’s. She was just putting on her hat and gloves for her cycle and collected a stick. With her as an escort we made it past the dog unscathed. I accompanied her part of the way to Enfield and then turned back. Well I have a sore throat – no point over doing it the first day
On the way back I stopped to chat to the daughters-in-law of a neighbour who died at the weekend. I’d say I’d only seen the woman twice in the last ten years, but deaths on the road are rare and her absence is felt and of course, she was the centre of her family’s life – four generations of whom still live here. And I remember this woman’s father in law. Our little community on the cul de sac consists of 4 core families who were all moved here by the Land Commission. Ours was the “youngest” family so the children of the other families are all much older than me – the girls would have babysat us. Many of them married and moved away, so the funeral became one of those occasions when you are really pleased and touched to see old faces.
I confessed to one that I had barely seen the old woman in many years and was surprised at how weird it felt knowing she was no longer in the house. She understood instantly and nodded “We’re all connected on this lane”. It’s a nice feeling. I like the security of being rooted to this spot. Especially when I do all this other silly stuff on radio and telly and getting wrapped up in the hassle of children and work. Knowing who you are and where you came from and the people around you – its a source of contentment in an otherwise uncertain life.
Ahem. Now where was I? Oh yes..the government are useless something should be done bla bla bla…..
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03.17.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 am by Sarah
P. sent me this. Says it all really
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03.15.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:06 pm by Sarah
Tall People Get Paid More
Height matters. Tall people get larger salaries, higher status and more respect. Furthermore, the advantage seems to be life-long.
Timothy Judge, a business professor at the University of Florida, calculated that each inch in height corresponds to $789 extra in pay each year, even when gender, weight and age are taken into account. An extra six inches, for example, results in an extra $4,734 in annual income.
In management and sales positions, the relationship between height and salary was closely related. Yet height also mattered in less social occupations such as accounting, programming, engineering and clerical work.
Judge also found that height was more important than gender in predicting income. Taller women get paid more than their shorter counterparts. The tall began their careers with bigger paychecks, and kept the fiscal advantage into their 40s and beyond.
In Judge’s analysis, height was also related to work performance. Supervisors felt that tall workers were more effective employees. By some measurements, such as sales volume, their performance actually did tend to be better.
Judge reviewed four large-scale studies—three from the U.S. and one from Great Britain—that followed participants from childhood to adulthood, taking note of their work and personal lives.
“Perhaps society is not consciously aware of the importance we place on height,” notes Judge. “If the status accorded to tall people has evolutionary origins—when height signaled strength and power—these same psychological processes may exist today; just in our subconscious.”
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