02.01.08
Posted in Feminism at 8:01 pm by Sarah
After some initial confusion at Busarus when the 1545 services didn’t show up, I interviewed the driver of the 1600 to Portumna. He was a calm, friendly type and I opted to go on his almost empty bus rather than negotiate the crazy queues for the other western bound services. I sat up the front and the driver, another lady and myself exchanged pleasantries and remarked on the queue chaos. We cruised off calmly down the Quays, not letting the building Friday afternoon rush hour traffic bother us.
Proceeding down the N4 at the Lucan section we exchanged disapproving looks as a red VW Golf whizzed down the hard shoulder past the tailback. Then we saw a garda motorbike whizzing after him and laughed smugly to ourselves and wondered to each other what the penalty might be. With his light on he waved the VW in, parked his bike, alighted confidently, removed his notebook and we practically cheered at the prospect of a bollox getting his comeuppance.
Then we got confused. Suddenly it was all chats and waves and the garda hopped back on his motorbike and zoomed off. At this stage we passed the VW (still on the hard shoulder) and peered into the car wondering what story had been spun to extricate the driver so simply from his predicament. Two men. The passenger wearing a blue t-shirt. The driver wearing a fleece and HANGONASECOND – a Garda shirt underneath!!!!! No WONDER he got away. More bonding from the outraged bus passengers and driver with “huh, two laws in this country” and “no wonder people don’t bother obeying the law” etc.
The car did move into the tailback for a short time and then lost patience and went off down the hardshoulder again.
I have the number plate. I should complain. But I never wanted to turn into a person who complained about such things. Well, to the proper channels. Obviously I can complain on blogs and over lunch. Which has no effect other than to confirm all our prejudices about Guards.
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01.07.08
Posted in Domestic/Relationships, Feminism at 3:49 pm by Sarah
IT puzzles me how Fianna Fail has acquired its reputation for sound management and efficient administration. Every week that passes all I see is a combination of old-fashioned stroke pulling and bumbling idiocy.
The fiasco over schools paying water charges is a perfect example of how the government’s bad planning, devotion to empty rhetoric and instinctive cute hoorism is prone to blow up in their faces. It’s such a mess that even the self-righteous assurance of technocrat education minister Mary Hanafin has been pierced.
The story begins in 1978 when Fianna Fail honoured an election promise and abolished domestic rates. Honourable mention is due to Brendan Howlin, who as environment minister in the rainbow coalition of the mid-1990s, prevented local authorities from introducing water charges.
The current debacle, however, began in 2000 when the government pulled off what it imagined to be a triumph – negotiating a get-out clause in the EU’s water framework directive. This wasn’t just another boring directive from the bureaucratic EU. It actually had the potential to solve Ireland’s water supply problems.
Remember cryptospiridium? All those people last summer and in previous years being warned by local authorities to boil their water? This poisoning of the supply happens because Ireland’s water-management system is such a mess. Our inland waterways are polluted – killing fish and making people sick. We’re running out of water in Dublin – either clean or dirty. Local authorities are spending a fortune trying (and failing) to provide clean water for everyone.
Other EU states face similar problems, so their governments came up with a joint water policy. Its aim was to protect supplies, eliminate dirty water, and convince citizens to become players in the day-to-day battle to provide everyone with sufficient amounts of safe water. If you weren’t in one of those areas on boil notices last year, just try and imagine how you’d have managed washing and cooking with contaminated water. The Water Framework Directive tried to save us from that.
Key to this was the introduction of water charges. As we’ve learned from plastic bags and rubbish-collection charges, no-one gets serious about environmental issues until money is involved. Clean water is scarce and expensive, but until people are charged for what they use, householders will continue to wash the car with hosepipes, ignore leaky pipes, leave taps running, flush the loo every five minutes, and generally waste thousands of gallons of valuable water each year.
Recognising this, the directive proposed that water users pay a charge which reflected the cost of getting the water from the lake and into their home or business. Send them the bills, watch their water usage plummet, and use the money you raise to clean up water supplies. Pricing worked for plastic bags and rubbish collection, and it would work for water.
The Irish public would go nuts, naturally. “This is a wet country,” they would moan. “Why should we have to pay for water?” Think of the phone calls to LiveLine, the mileage Joe Higgins would get out of it. Well, let him. Charging for water is the right thing to do, morally and practically. We gave a lead to Europe on the plastic-bag charge and the abolition of smoking in public places. People moaned, but with a modicum of leadership and political resolve the changes were made and now everyone is delighted. Even the smokers who get to flirt with each other outside pubs seem happy.
That’s what we needed on water charges, but we didn’t get it. Instead the government negotiated a derogation for domestic supplies on the basis that existing practice was to exempt ordinary users from water charges.
Had there been a poll in Galway last summer, I’m sure people would have voted for clean water over free water. But now the deed is done. We may have to hold our breaths so we don’t get sick while enjoying a power shower but hey, it’s free, so let’s keep some perspective.
Schools, like businesses, had never stopped paying local authority charges including water bills, and therefore couldn’t avail of the exemption allowed in the directive. But since these bills were a flat fee, they were manageable.
The introduction of metering changed that. Once the bills arrived, school managers realised how much water they were wasting through ignorance and leaky pipes. Some decided to cut down on their usage. But of course they needed money to pay the bills in the meantime, and to repair the plumbing. And so another Fianna Fail policy chicken came home to roost. The funding of Irish schools, in particular primary schools, is one of the greatest outrages of this country. Primaries receive only two-thirds of their funding from the state and have to raise the rest themselves. If you’re a middle-class parent in a leafy suburb, this isn’t a problem. The school has jumble sales and sponsored walks, and there’s enough to pay the ESB bill and buy a few computers.
If you live in a poor area where a request to parents for a “voluntary contribution” is a significant and unpayable burden, then your school can forget about the extras and will struggle to pay the basics. This suits the well-off to a T: their money pays for their school and they don’t even have to pay any nasty taxes to keep the poorer places going. Is it any wonder that Hanafin topped the poll in cushy Dun Laoghaire? The current funding system suits them just fine in Blackrock and Dalkey.
Some schools are well managed and paid their water bills. Others couldn’t, and as their arrears mounted the proverbial hit the fan. As the negotiations got under way last week, politics and ideology clashed. Hanafin would probably have preferred to exempt schools altogether but can’t under the terms of the directive. Her other preferred option was to give schools a “water allowance” and effectively pay the bills for them. The Department of the Environment wouldn’t agree to that, since it would undermine the whole purpose of the EU directive by removing the schools’ incentive to reduce bills.
If Fianna Fail ministers had thought about this in 2000 when they signed up to the directive, they might have installed water meters in schools straight away. This would have given principals a chance to see how much water they were using, and to make the repairs needed in good time. Instead, no-one did anything and now there are piles of unpaid bills and no money to meet them.
An unsatisfactory compromise has now been reached. Since the directive doesn’t have to be enforced until 2010, the schools will pay the old flat rate until then, a fine reward for those who paid their metered bills on time. In the meantime, Irish people will remain oblivious to both the cost of the water they merrily flush away, and the price that children in poor schools pay for low taxes.
Update: hey just read PO’Neill over at Irish Election. We are in perfect agreement 
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12.19.07
Posted in Feminism at 10:12 am by Sarah
Sunday’s column – posted a little late due to onset of vomiting bug..uuuugh. Anyways, I am taking a little blog break and going to go cold turkey by getting a trusted friend to change the password so I can’t get into it! This addict needs a week or two of cold turkey! Happy Christmas all and hopefully the new year will find ye a little less antagonistic! xxx
THE sister rang last week wondering how to deal with complaints she’d received about the magnificent crib the staff had constructed in their office. I got all excited. It sounded like the secularist conspiracy to rid Christmas of cribs had reached our quiet midlands village.
Not quite. The cribbing about the crib in my sister’s office related to the premature arrival of baby Jesus in the manger (he’s not supposed to turn up until December 25), and the heresy of placing a Wise Man in adoration when he and his perceptive pals are not due until January 6.
The complainers are like most people in Ireland; when religion is done, they want it done right. I advised my sister to hand around some application forms for the Association of Pedants. Afterwards I wondered why, when cribs are so popular in Ireland, did Veritas roll over so easily?
The revelation that an ad for cribs placed by Veritas, suppliers of Catholic books and artefacts, had been banned from RTE Radio stirred up a good bout of moral outrage. An Irish Christmas without cribs is clearly a ludicrous exercise. I’m all for them myself, and in my wide and varied circle of acquaintances I can’t track down anyone against them. So I would have expected Catholic bishops to fight such ridiculous censorship by petty bureaucrats all the way to the Supreme Court.
The problem is that the “crib” ad wasn’t banned at all. Veritas submitted a script to RTE which included a list of items available for sale at its shop in Abbey Street. Someone fretted that the inclusion of “cribs” might be a problem and suggested that Veritas seek clearance or a “determination” from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI), which regulates ads.
The BCI duly received a phone call from Veritas during which there was a general chat about the intention behind the Broadcasting Act. It’s possible that the Veritas people read between the lines or interpreted the conversation to mean that “crib” might be a problem. The BCI is adamant that it was never asked for a determination and never expressed an opinion on the inclusion of the word “crib” in the list.
For whatever reason, Veritas chose not to seek a formal decision from the BCI and ran the ad without mentioning “crib”. Then Catholic bishops issued a statement claiming they were “concerned and disappointed” that the word “had to be omitted from the script of the advertisement before the station would broadcast it”. But it was only omitted because an informal and very general telephone conversation with a BCI official put them off. The Penal Laws would have finished off Catholicism if the hierarchy had been this lily-livered in the 19th century.
Veritas could easily have stood its ground and argued the toss – because it has an excellent case. Instead someone decided to cry “censorship” and must have known the outrage that would ensue. There’d be loads of free publicity and a debate heavily weighted against the secularist cabal at the BCI. Sure enough, the rest of us spent the next 24 hours aghast that such outrageously anti-religious elements exist within the establishment. In an overwhelming Christian society, how could anyone object to references at the heart of the Christmas story? Throw in rumours of a crèche cancelling a nativity play and before long we’re on the alert for anyone wishing us a Happy Holiday or a Merry Winterval.
It looks like an unnecessarily sneaky way to make a point. A similar outbreak of moral outrage happens in America every year when right-wing broadcasters such as Bill O’Reilly on Fox News hype up claims of cancelled nativity plays and other evidence of a war on Christmas. Some time in January it’s quietly discovered that the stories are either completely wrong or wildly exaggerated. By that stage it’s too late and Christian people have been radicalised over a slight which never existed.
The pity is this: there is a cabal at the BCI who have completely lost the run of themselves and should be taken in hand. Their decisions on religious and political advertising are consistently over the top and take no account of the spirit of the original legislation. We actually do need someone to challenge their strict interpretations in court, rather than settle for some cheap-shot publicity. A ban on religious advertising was included in the 1960 Broadcasting Act, and a look back at the parliamentary debate which led up to this is instructive. Legislators feared that evangelical Christian churches, or cults such as Scientology, would spend millions in Ireland on recruiting souls and would then relieve Irish people of their savings and force them all to live in compounds.
Michael Hilliard, the then minister for Post and Telegraphs, said he favoured banning religious advertising since otherwise RTE “would have to accept advertisements from any religious group, including advertisements which the majority of viewers might consider very objectionable and offensive”. By religious group he obviously didn’t mean the Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland, and by “offensive” he most certainly did not mean a mention of a crib. (Although keep in mind that not one Irish person has ever said that the term “crib” is offensive to them.) Hilliard also made clear that the ban on political advertising strictly related to political parties, because he didn’t want to place new parties or those with lesser means at a disadvantage.
For some years, the BCI and some elements in RTE have deliberately thwarted this clear and reasonable intention of the legislators by enforcing a blanket ban. The Irish Cancer Society was even prevented from urging the government to organise a free, nationwide cervical-screening service – that was too “political”.
The Dail has attempted to restrict this tendency by making clear that the religious ban refers only to proselytising and not benign announcements. A 2001 amendment stated that advertisements for religious events or publications are allowed provided they “do not address the issue of the merits or otherwise of adhering to any religious faith or belief or of becoming a member of any religion or religious organisation”.
Regardless of how fundamentalist the BCI has been, it is inconceivable that even it could argue successfully that an ad for cribs could be construed as conferring merit on religious faith. The bishops must have taken the same view and decided it would be safer not to ask the question at all. After all if the BCI had approved the ad they’d have lost the opportunity for some cheap publicity.
Some day, someone should challenge the BCI, but we can only condemn a stupid decision when it’s actually made.
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12.13.07
Posted in Domestic/Relationships, Feminism at 2:24 pm by Sarah
Because there are loads of things I should be doing but am not, I ended up reading the Seanad debates on the 1960 Broadcasting Act. This argument by Professor Patrick Quinlan, NUI Senator, for the control of advertising on RTE is hilarious:
“Let me take as an example Aer Lingus advertising. It is a body which has to pay its way. It advertises wonderful holidays abroad and, as it were, tries to attract us all to take our holidays in foregin parts. Of course, if too many followed that advice it would be very detrimental to the country’s economy. In the same way, but on a much graver scale, we can relate this to the question of agricultural advertising. It is well known that our farmers are impressionable in the matter of advertising and demonstration. One needs only to go to the Spring Show and walk around the machinery exhibits to see young farmers looking at all the wonderful gadgets, like young boys in a toyshop, and if they had sufficient money or credit, they would have all those wonderful gadgets home with them.
That is a very real problem. It is so real that the first committee set up by the Agricultural Institute was a committee for the evaluation of machinery, so as to be able to advise the farming community what machinery was suited to our conditions and to mark them preferentially, because machines which work well elsewhere under far different conditions are not always suited to conditions here.
463
I feel then that if we take that paragraph alone, there should be some type of a veto on the machinery that is advertised. For instance, it could carry the stamp of approval of the machinery evaluation section of the Agricultural Institute which would mean that what is advertised is a genuine product. How can we achieve that? Certainly we do not want to foist on our farming community £1,000,000, or maybe £2,000,000 worth of machinery that is not suited to our purposes, merely for the sake of getting [463] in another £20,000 or £30,000 worth of advertising. In this matter, we must look at our economy as a whole.
The other feature is that of consumer advertising. I expect one could include in that kitchen equipment, and one can visualise the impact on the Irish housewife of wonderful gadgets being advertised in her own home, especially when she is told that no self-respecting housewife would be without these aids and that all she has to do is put down half-a-crown and get them on the “never-never” system. Therefore, the impact of these two things, together with the all too free availability of hire purchase, presents a very grave national threat.”
My emphasis. Wonderful, isn’t it?
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12.06.07
Posted in Feminism at 10:31 pm by Sarah
I’m not sure what to do or say about this. The news was sad. She seemed like a nice girl, but she made mistakes and has paid, and her family has paid, an enormous price for them. Let’s not be too hard.
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12.04.07
Posted in Feminism at 9:51 pm by Sarah
I’ve criticised families before when the dead sons are coyly described as being “the life and soul of the party” and no reference made to the circumstances of the death.
So I have to commend Doyle’s family for issuing a truly brave and honest statement tonight. These are good people. We need more like them.
“The family of Mr Doyle said they were devastated by the death and urged people not to take potentially deadly substances.
“Kevin will always have a special place in our hearts, our thoughts and our prayers – not only because of his untimely death but also because of the heroic manner in which he overcame life-threatening cancer,” they said in a statement.
“He was a dearly loved son, brother and grandson and he will be sorely missed.”
The family said Mr Doyle had a wonderful life ahead of him which he had only just had the opportunity to pursue after his brave battle with cancer.
“We sincerely hope that no family has to suffer the pain and anguish that we are going through,” they said.
“We would earnestly ask all those – both young and old – who may be tempted to dabble in potentially lethal substances to simply say no. No amount of so-called fun is worth the loss of life that so often befalls young people in Ireland today.”
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12.03.07
Posted in Feminism at 3:38 pm by Sarah
Rob asked a question but my reply was so long I decided to write a post. This is a bit jumbled…apologies..
I did read Waters column. He comments on a book by a chap who worked at the Rape Crisis Centre for years and said that he was shocked at the attitude of the women he worked with who appeared to confine their work to investigating and condemning sexual crimes against both women and men, provided the assault was carried out by a man. If it was a woman, they weren’t so interested. By coincidence I think it was Matt Cooper who a few weeks ago interviewed a woman who argued that male paedophiles were jailed where female paedophiles were offered counselling.
Waters also commented on the piles of ads, outdoor and radio, about domestic violence and “Women’s Aid”.
So what do I think? Well, a few things. I am guilty of believing that most domestic violence and sexual crimes are carried about by men, and I don’t think that’s wrong. Female paedophilia IS extremely rare, but I wouldn’t support the principle that female criminals should be treated differently. In fact the woman Cooper interviewed said that the victims of the female paedophiles are often made to feel like they co-operated with the sexual activity which is most unfair. As for a grown woman raping a grown man…putting aside non-reporting, I think any fair minded person would agree this has got to be pretty rare and one would have thought, technically unfeasible…
On the issue of domestic violence, I know Waters was giving numbers some years ago that claimed that men and women were equally violent at home, but I could just never quite buy into that. Intuitively, and I know that’s no evidence, I just find that hard to believe. I’d really have to look into the figures more before I’d be convinced of that. If the figures did back it up, then obviously, I’d change my mind.
HOWEVER having said that, I was uncomfortable for the last few weeks seeing those ads of women with “end the silence” on them. There ARE men whose wives are violent. They should’ve done an ad with a man on it. But then its the Women’s Aid campaign and let’s face it, a lot of women have had need to flee to shelters because they had the crap beaten out of them. And many women had to go back to those same husbands because they had nowhere else to go. So organisations like Women’s Aid arose out of an actual historical need and not a manifestation of feminist’s imagination. They should probably change the name and start including men.
HOWEVER, the big mistake Waters makes is that while there is an argument to be made that ads about domestic violence should feature male victims, he loses potential supporters by language like this:
“This time of year it can be risky for a man to pick up a newspaper, there being a good chance that therein he will find himself defamed.
The run-up to Christmas is when women’s aid groups make their big push for funding. Thus, the candle-light vigil in memory of “women killed by men” or “women killed as a result of domestic violence” is a set-piece of what laughably passes for journalism. The number of such female victims – usually about a quarter of murders in the selected period – is underlined by way of accusing men in general of complicity in often unspeakable crimes. The other three-quarters of the statistical dead, being males, are airbrushed out. The not-so subliminal messages include: only women are murdered; only men murder women; “domestic violence” is coterminous with “violence against women”; such violence is intrinsic to “patriarchal society”: all men are guilty.”
See, the other 3/4 of male murder victims are also murdered by men. Well, the Scissors Sisters and other notable exceptions……..And no one is saying anything about all men being guilty, just that mostly, men are the ones doing the murdering. Women do it, but much more rarely. And the men aren’t airbrushed out, we hear about them in great detail..like the assassinations of the male drug barons, the beating to death of Paul Quinn by 12 other men and the fact that a woman and five children who died in a housefire in Omagh were not buried with the father for rather obvious reasons.
If I was a man who wanted to organise a campaign raising awareness of domestic violence against men by women, I wouldn’t start out by complaining about women’s aid organisations. I’d just start producing the facts to make people aware that there is a problem.
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12.02.07
Posted in Feminism at 9:03 pm by Sarah
Shane Ross has an interesting piece on overcharging by the ESB.
It reminded me that I meant to point out to all the one-off-house-begrudgers that the ESB charges more to rural householders than urban ones. I’m NOT complaining, but just wanted you to know so there’s no more moaning about how us rural folk are costing you urban ones so much money.
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11.28.07
Posted in Feminism, Sunday Times Columns at 11:24 am by Sarah
No, I AM cranky.
At first I thought the reaction to my mass column was simple concern for my lack of faith but slowly it has become apparent that I am being judged – yesterday I got a letter telling me I was a smart arse. Others closer to home are definitely not impressed. It’s like I said, instead of declaring a lack of faith in God and the fallacy of original sin, that I’m running off to India with my lover and the family can look after themselves until I’ve found myself…oh and I’m selling the house to fund my tour and they can go live with grandparents.
ALL I said was I don’t believe this stuff but for the sake of peace I’ll go along with it as far as the children are concerned. So, you don’t have me but you have my money and you can have the kids. But that wasn’t enough. If the judgment doesn’t stop, I’ll start getting more militant. What happened to the narrative that god-fearing catholics were being oppressed by the secular media? I’M the only one getting a hard time. Well I’m definitely not going back. I’m “out” now so it would be an insult to show up again. HE can bring them in future….
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11.27.07
Posted in Feminism at 8:52 pm by Sarah
The IT tells me that
“EU to publish list of payments to each farmer”
“The amounts paid annually in EU subsidies to each of Ireland’s 130,000 farmers is to become public knowledge from 2008.
The Council of Farm Ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday agreed in principle to the annual publication of the money paid to farmers. This will mean that for the first time the European taxpayer will be able to check what each individual farmer is receiving annually. Irish farmers will receive €1.6 billion in subsidies this year from Brussels and up to now it was very difficult to access this information.”
Oooh how mean! That’ll be fodder for a right old gossiping session over who’s getting how much.
We publish public salaries, but do we publish lists of payments to social welfare recipients? You know, transparency and all that? If there’s a logic that says that all public money has to be publicly accounted for well then, let’s see published lists for what everyone in receipt of public money gets. I wouldn’t mind seeing if so-and-so down the road is on family income support and for how much. Hmmmmm rent allowances, disability pay, who’s paying what rent in council housing. Could be great gas!
But the following line says:
“In Ireland the Department of Agriculture has to have the consent of each recipient before it can publish data which has to be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Eh, so that means, the list won’t be printed here or is that describing the existing situation?
The rest of the article, as far as I can tell, fails utterly to clear up my confusion, unless I’m completely thick. Which isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility….but still…I can’t figure out if our data protection laws have just been over-ridden….
“Following yesterday’s decision, the matter goes back to the European Commission which will now draw up detailed rules on how and where the information will be made available.
EU sources said last night there would be no lower limit on the amounts to be published and it was likely the list of 130,000 farmers’ names would be placed on a website.
The site will also carry details of other payments made from the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap)budget including export subsidies and development grants to meat plants.”
So is it or is it not going to be published in Ireland without farmers’ consent? I can’t see any of them giving it, can you?
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