Is there a Connection between Jobless Households and Homelessness?

Ireland has an unusually high percentage of households that are “jobless” — where either none of the occupants are working or where they have very limited access to work.

Earlier this year, the Department of Social Protection reported that there are 253,000 such households in Ireland, out of a total of 1,440,600, some 17.6%. This is admittedly an improvement from 2014, when it was reported that 23% of Irish households were jobless.  It is nevertheless extraordinarily high.

Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty, in explaining why there was a big difference between the figure of 17.6% and the (then) unemployment rate of 6.4%, stated that “Relevant groups, not normally considered to be unemployed, include economically inactive lone parents, people with disabilities, and the adult dependants of unemployed people, all of whom might benefit from closer attachment to employment and the labour market,”

So while many of these households are jobless due to single-parent circumstances or to disability, or to poor education or lack of skills, there can be no doubt that a significant proportion contain adults that are capable of work but find it unnecessary or undesirable to exert themselves in this direction.

There are a huge number of vacancies in Ireland for people with even modest skills, in areas such as hospitality, agriculture and construction. To fill these vacancies, employers are increasingly turning to migrant workers.  This in itself is not problematic, as these new arrivals tend to be hard-working and generally contribute a lot to society (and to the State’s tax revenues).

But immigrant workers need housing.

Consider a hypothetical situation where an incremental number of persons (say 100) who are currently in employment decide that it doesn’t suit their requirements and will instead draw unemployment/jobseekers benefit. This will lead to the creation of a similar number of job vacancies, which will inevitably be filled to a large extent by inward migrant workers.  These migrant workers need housing, but since the people whose jobs they are now doing will generally still be in the same housing they occupied before becoming “unemployed”, the net demand for housing will increase, I suspect by something like 60 or 70 units.

If say one in ten of the 125,000 currently unemployed, plus one adult (dependant or otherwise) from say 15% of jobless households, were to enter or re-enter the jobs market, this would supply 50,000 workers to fill the currently available vacancies. This would lead to a large fall in inward migration and an equivalent reduction in the need for additional housing – about 2 years’ worth of required home construction.

I am not suggesting that all or even most people who draw the dole are doing so as a matter of choice – I have no doubt that genuine unemployment is still a real problem for many in Ireland.  But our system, through its looseness and relative generosity (compare our Jobseekers Benefit rates with the UK for instance), and the high rates of marginal tax on even modest earned income, has an inbuilt disincentive for all but the most assiduous persons to fall into unemployed status.

It’s not as simple as saying that homelessness is caused by immigration.  But immigration is a necessary (and welcome) result of the fact that too many people who are already in housing do not (for whatever reason) take up the available jobs that need to be filled.  By focusing on immigration in the context of homelessness, we would be looking to a symptom rather than the disease itself.

Sinn Féin, Brexit and the Oath of Allegiance

The abstentionist policy of Sinn Féin in respect of their seats in the Westminster parliament has been thrown into the spotlight by the narrow majority held there by Theresa May’s Government, particularly as that majority depends for its existence on her deal with the Democratic Unionist Party. It’s not too fanciful to suggest that the (self-inflicted) inability of the seven Sinn Féin MPs to argue and vote against Brexit in Westminster could have a long-lasting and damaging effect on all Irish people, north and south.

The Sinn Féin MPs refuse to take their seats as they will not swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Queen.  They are accordingly not allowed to draw an MP’s salary or pension, but they do claim substantial allowances for the costs of staff, offices and travel.  Although they will not enter the House of Commons chamber (and thus cannot vote on any issue being dealt with therein), in almost every other respect they act as normal MPs do, representing their constituents, holding clinics, and lobbying UK Government Ministers on relevant matters.

Given the high stakes involved in the Brexit issue, surely Sinn Féin should re-assess their abstentionist policy. They only need to look to Eamon de Valera’s pragmatic response in 1927 to a similar problem:  up until then, Fianna Fáil refused to take their seats in Dáil Eireann because that would have involved their taking an Oath of Allegiance (albeit a dilute and arguably ambiguous one) to the British Monarch.

However, the assassination of the Vice-President of the Executive Council, Kevin O’Higgins, led the Free State government under W. T. Cosgrave to (among other things) introduce the Electoral (Amendment) (No 2) Act .  This required every candidate to sign an affidavit stating that he or she would take their seat in the Dáil and sign the Oath if elected, or else face disqualification. Backed into a corner, de Valera and his fellow TDs overcame their supposedly inviolable principles by simply signing a book containing the oath, which they famously declared an “Empty Formula”, and were promptly admitted to the Dáil.

It would be in their constituents’, and Ireland’s, interests if Sinn Féin could adopt such a practical stance now; if they followed de Valera’s 1927 precedent, and took the historic step of overlooking this other “Empty Formula”, maybe the chances of overturning Brexit in Westminster would be materially improved.   How ironic if it were to be Sinn Féin which saved Britain from itself.

If Sinn Féin fail to act sensibly and take their seats, then surely it’s time for the UK Parliament to “do a W T Cosgrave” – that is to say, make it a requirement for all those standing for election to undertake to sign the Oath of Allegiance and take their seats, failing which they will be barred from standing at subsequent elections.

Sinn Féin, Dublin and Stormont

There was an interesting article recently by Noel Whelan in the Irish Times.  The article was about Sinn Féin and how it really isn’t a normal democratic political party.  It included mention of a topic, the significance of which had largely passed me by until now but which, to me at least, goes some way to explaining why there hasn’t been any progress in restoring the Stormont assembly. 

If Sinn Féin is to be believed its current leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, holds that position at the pleasure of the current party leader. When many of us queried the lack of internal party democracy involved in her appointment to the post by Adams a year ago, we were told the role is akin to any front bench appointment which any party leader would make.

But this is very strange. There is a power-sharing assembly at Stormont (or at least there is meant to be), and one of the main principles underpinning it is that the largest Unionist party in terms of parliamentary seats won and the largest Nationalist party in terms of parliamentary seats won are joined together in a complex mechanism whereby power is shared and decisions are taken jointly.  But the largest Nationalist party is led by a person who is not elected by their Stormont representatives, or even by their party members in Northern Ireland, or by some combination of these methods.

Instead he/she is appointed in some opaque manner by whoever happens to be leader of Sinn Féin, the 32-county party based in Dublin (currently Gerry Adams). And there is certainly no transparency as regards how Sinn Féin appoints its overall leader.  Indeed I suggest that it would be a brave TD who decided, without getting the nod from the “powers that be”, to stand against Mary-Lou McDonald for election as leader of Sinn Féin– and I mean physically brave.

But should the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland be appointed by the 32-county organisation? This means that Northern Ireland is governed in large part by an entity that is controlled by people outside Northern Ireland.   It seems fair to me to question whether, partly as a result of this anomaly, Sinn Féin has less than a total commitment to restoration of the Stormont executive.  If the leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland leader didn’t hold office at the whim of Gerry Adams (soon to be replaced as overall party leader Dubliner Mary-Lou McDonald), would it negotiate more sensibly?  If that leader were solely answerable to its Northern Ireland MLAs and their constituents, would the power-sharing Assembly be back in business?

This set-up is akin to having a situation where the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party was appointed by, and removable by, Theresa May.  I can’t see that going down well with anybody on this island.

As ever, where Sinn Féin is involved, anomalies and contortions are the order of the day. At some time in the future, Sinn Féin may come to behave like a normal democratic political party. We certainly aren’t there yet.

 

Frances Fitzgerald, Tusla, whistleblowers and the Fine Gael Leadership race

It’s interesting to see that Frances Fitzgerald is still talked about as a potential new leader of Fine Gael, although most commentators continue to have Leo Varadkar or Simon Coveney as favourite.

No doubt the Irish Times and its cohort of battle-hardened female journalists will do all in their power to keep her name in the frame. They must feel that this is the least they owe to somebody who was Chair of the Council for the Status of Women from 1988 to 1992.  You may recall the embarrassingly obsequious profile that the IT’s Kathy Sheridan produced in November 2014 and on which I commented less than favourably in this piece.

Now Frances Fitzgerald is certainly not the least capable of the Government frontbenchers, and I don’t think we need to feel unsafe in our beds at night just because she’s Minister for Justice and Equality. But she doesn’t strike me as having the energy or drive which a real reforming Minister would need for tackling (for example) the corruption and dysfunction that currently seems to infect An Garda Síochána.  She certainly doesn’t seem to have done much about it in the 3 years for which she has been responsible for them.

Incidentally, a wicked friend of mine went so far as to suggest that if either our Minister for Justice or our Garda Commissioner were a man, then the latter would have been pushed aside ages ago as a result of the whistle-blower controversy, but (his outrageous theory goes) the sisterhood values loyalty so highly that Frances Fitzgerald will give Noirín O’Sullivan whatever space she needs.

Her 3-year tenure as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, from 2011 to 2014, didn’t seem to be a resounding success either, although in fairness it did coincide with the depths of the recession. At the time of the aforementioned flattering Irish Times article I wrote: “… she, as Minister for Children for the past 3 years, might have been slightly embarrassed by the proximity in the Weekend Review of another article, this one about child poverty, which starts with the words ‘Before the recession, Unicef ranked the State as one of the 10 best places to be a child.  Now it is one of the worst, ranked 37 out of 41 countries.’”

Now that I think of it, she was Minister for Children and Youth Affairs when Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, was established with much fanfare in 2014. Yes, that’s the same Tusla that has been so much in the news recently as a result of their “administrative error” which led to spurious child-abuse allegations being created against whistle-blower Garda Maurice McCabe.  Small world, isn’t it?

This is the same Tusla which, on its launch 3 years ago, asserted boldly that “This Agency will tell it as it is”.  A bit unfortunate, that claim.

That’s also the same Tusla which, like all State agencies, believes it needs more resources if it is to do its job properly. Now I don’t know enough about the details of their work to know if 4,000 employees and an annual budget of €600 million is skeleton-level funding or otherwise.  But it seems like a lot of resources in a country having a total population of 4.8 million, of whom maybe 1.2 million are aged under 18.

The promotional brochure for its launch has further hostages to fortune, all sounding hollow in the light of the Garda McCabe embarrassment:

Respect – We will always treat everyone — children, families and colleagues — with dignity and consideration.

Integrity – We will be reliable and trustworthy in the way we carry out our work by: Adhering to the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and personal responsibility. Placing a high value on the importance of confidentiality. Acting with conviction and taking responsibility for our decisions.

I don’t particularly want to knock Tusla, as it is doing a lot of fine work, and any failings it has are probably replicated in most other State agencies. I cite all the above merely to suggest that actions, or lack of action, by Ministers should have consequences in the real world.  And anybody who wishes to be considered as a potential Taoiseach should expect that their past record and achievements will be held up to the light for the public to judge their ability fairly.

That goes for women, too.

 

How not to Design a Tax Conference

 

So you’re a Chief Financial Officer or a tax advisor and you see That The Irish Times is trying to sell you tickets to a conference entitled “Corporate Tax. Are we Predator or Prey?”.    I reckon that two things will put you off right from the start.

Firstly, the conference title is provocative, and is very much in line with The Irish Times’ house view (which mirrors ICTU’s view) that a business-oriented low-tax system is in itself suspect.  So if you make your living by advising companies on how to reduce their tax bills, you would have to be prepared, while attending this conference, to be treated as if you were a smear of dog poo on somebody’s shoe.

Secondly, somebody with a sense of humour has lined up Fintan O’Toole as a speaker.  This strikes me as akin to having Donald Trump speak at a feminist conference, or The Iona Institute inviting Richard Dawkins to address their annual conference.  For O’Toole is your typical left-wing bubble-dwelling artsy social warrior, who regards all profit as either undistributed wages or a mortal sin.  That doesn’t prevent him being an excellent writer, by the way; it just means that when he writes about business or economics or taxation, he is completely out of his depth and the result is risible.

This is hardly surprising, as FO’T is literary editor of The Irish Times. Not the business editor, not the economics editor, not a taxation specialist, in fact not anybody with any expertise on these important subjects.  I can think of dozens of left-wingers who know more about economics and taxation that Fintan, any of whom would be capable of offering a useful contribution to this Corporate Tax Summit.  But The Irish Times insider gets the gig.

As I have said previously, The Irish Times wouldn’t habitually commission an economist or an accountant to write controversial articles on, say, literary novels or the theatre, where these are outside their sphere of competence.  So why does it regularly publish economically illiterate articles on finance, economics and taxation matters, written by a social and arts commentator?

Recent typical pronouncements by FO’T on Corporation Tax can be seen here and here. So if you pay good money to attend this conference, don’t say you weren’t warned.

 

Genderised Book Reviewing

When I mentioned my favourite writers some years ago, I was taken to task because I didn’t include any female authors. I confess I hadn’t even considered gender when assessing whose works I liked to read, but you could say that the criticism “raised my consciousness” about the issue.

Recently I did a survey of the last 100 books I read and found that only 19 were authored or edited by a woman. I was a bit surprised at this low number.  My guess is that this may be partly because I tend to read multiple books by favourite male authors such as Anthony Burgess and Paul Theroux, while female authors (for some as yet unanalysed reason) are generally represented on my reading list by single examples, and the results are thus somewhat skewed.

However, it seems that I shouldn’t have been surprised, as a survey by Goodreads found that, of books published in 2014, male authors accounted for no fewer than 90% of men’s 50 most-read titles.  Before everybody jumps up and down about men being sexist, be aware that female authors accounted for 92% of the 50 titles most read by women!  (I have included Robert Galbraith as a female writer, as it’s in fact J. K. Rowling writing under a pseudonym).

Historically, men have been published much more than women and so, unsurprisingly, we find that in “100 best books of all time” lists, women feature far less than men – the Guardian’s list, published in 2002, for example, has only 14. The 2010 Time magazine list  (which includes only books published after 1923) has 22.   Esquire Magazine’s “The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read” includes just one book written by a women (Flannery O’Connor – maybe the name fooled them…).

So it was with the aforementioned heightened awareness that I approached last weekend’s Irish Times annual review of favourite books, chosen by selected luminaries.   As might be expected from such a feminist organ, the “paper of record” was scrupulously gender-balanced, with 17 male and 17 female reviewers asked to contribute.  I analysed the gender of the authors of the books mentioned, excluding a few that were compendia of works by both genders, to test the extent to which males favoured male authors and female favoured female authors.

Overall, there were 142 recommendations, with some books being represented more than once within this number. There was a respectable gender balance, with a 60/40 split in favour of male authors.  No need for quotas then (or was this outcome itself the result of a quota being imposed?!)  In fact, I suspect that this outcome probably reflects the gender balance of the authors of all books published in the English language these days, with males outnumbering females, rather than any bias or quality issues.

But when recommendations were further analysed by gender of the reviewer, the position is a bit different. In the case of male reviewers, 73% of the books recommended were written by men.  The women were a bit more balanced, but still favoured books written by women, by 58% to 42%.

So the Irish Times interviewees were still favouring their own gender when it comes to book selections. I’m not surprised that the extent of this bias (if that is the appropriate word) is far less marked than that shown by the Goodreads survey mentioned above – after all, those who write for (and read) The Irish Times are an educated and sophisticated lot, and are less likely to favour crime novels (written largely by men for men), science fiction (ditto), or chick-lit (written largely by women for women).  Biography, history and literary fiction are much more gender-blind.

I insist women get quotas for these jobs.

The attached graphic suggests that I should amend slightly the third of my Rules for Proper Feminists:

“You should accept that job quotas apply both ways.  So if you want fair representation in politics, business, the arts, the professions, and in other such desirable occupations, then you should accept that women should shoulder their fair share of lousy or demanding OR DANGEROUS jobs – in the army, as road sweepers, bike couriers, potato pickers, mine workers and so on.”

It’s not going to happen, of course.

Tax-free Capital Gains for Mary?

Adrian Bourke, the brother of ex-president Mary Robinson, will presumably make a nice capital gain from the sale of his Ballina premises to Mayo County Council.  It’s supposed to be bought for €665,000 and be used as Ireland’s first presidential library, housing his sister’s papers.  However  recent reports suggest that the sale has stalled for reasons unknown.

In fact the whole project has come under fire recently, with RTE’s Prime Time last week raising various questions about whether this is a good use of public money, and historian Diarmuid Ferriter writing “If Robinson wants to encourage research into her career, or assessments of her legacy, she should follow the practice of her predecessors and donate her papers to the National Library, the National Archives or one of the national universities, without any need for tax credits or valuations by auctioneers and with no excessively expensive, publicly funded vanity centre.”  Ouch.

And Michael McDowell has raised similar concerns in his most recent Sunday Business Post contribution:  “Are all former office-holders to benefit by tax holidays based on donating their papers, documents and memorabilia to publicly funded ‘libraries’ in future? Or is this to be a one-off?   In my judgment, the Ballina scheme should be called off before it does further damage to Irish public life. And before it needlessly damages the presidency – not to mention damage to her own place in our history.”  Double ouch.

I’m tempted to ask why it has taken so long for these worthies to train their gaze on this project, which is being funded by the public purse to the tune of about €5 million.  Yours truly was a lot quicker into the fray, asking a few pertinent questions 11 months ago.

Mrs Robinson has also been in the news recently as she is selling her home in Mayo. The plug for the house in the Irish Times reveals that “Former president Mary Robinson and husband Nick are selling their Co Mayo home for €2.75 million. Massbrook, a 113 acre estate on the shores of Lough Conn, is located about 20 minutes from Mrs Robinson’s childhood home of Ballina, and has served as the couple’s primary Irish base since they purchased it in 1994.”

Those of you who (unlike me) are familiar with tax matters will be aware that the sale of one’s principal private residence is exempt from Capital Gains Tax (CGT).  However, the relevant legislation, section 604 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, provides that the exemption only applies to the residence plus its “garden or grounds up to an area (exclusive of the site of the dwelling house) not exceeding one acre“, so Mrs Robinson is presumably looking at a CGT bill, calculated at 33% of any gain she and her husband make on 112 of the 113 acres.  Based on an apportionment of the sale price being asked, I’m guessing that the gain might be in excess of €1 million, since the 1994 purchase price allowed as an offset would have been quite small.

However as the State has given her a tax credit of €2 million for “donating” her archive, she will not have to worry about handing over any of the sale proceeds to the Revenue Commissioners.  She will also presumably have plenty of tax credit left over to cover other tax liabilities – such as her Presidential pension, for instance?  On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if she could let her brother share in the tax credit, so as to cover the profit he will make on the sale of his premises in Ballina?

 

 

 

Enda, you’re the Taoiseach, aren’t you?

Here’s yet another example of an Irish politician “calling for” something to happen, as if somebody else is actually in charge of running the country.

From yesterday’s Irish Times:

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called for a national conversation on the exposure of young people to pornography.

Mr Kenny said he has serious concerns young people were being tainted and corrupted by an avalanche of pornography.

“It’s always important that we should have a national conversation about what is important for our children – what is, and should be, a priority for our children when they’re growing up, and when they grow up.

Last time I checked, Enda was the Taoiseach. Has he no views on the matter?  If he doesn’t like the way the country deals with pornography, then do something about it. Irish politicians are ridiculously scared of being seen to have an actual policy on something, in case a few votes are lost back in the constituency. Other commentators have picked up on this.

Contrast this waffle with the way things are done in the UK. You may agree or disagree with the policy, but at least the politicians in power have particular views on things, and are not afraid of taking action.

This from July 2015:

Mr Cameron launched an opt-in system for pornography in 2013, meaning users had to tell their internet providers that they wanted access to adult material. The filter also blocks websites advocating self-harm and anorexia.

After concerted pressure from Downing Street, this year, Sky, BT and TalkTalk imposed automatic filters unless customers asked them to be turned off. 

This is but a single example of this infuriating tendency.  Enda should lead from the front, or get off the stage.

 

 

The Hijab as a Symbol

This makes a lot of sense.

 

 

Michael D and Gerry A would love it if Ireland followed Chavez’s policies

These comments from March 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez:

President Michael D Higgins:

“President Chavez achieved a great deal during his term in office, particularly in the area of social development and poverty reduction”

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams:

“President Chávez worked tirelessly to improve the lives of Venezuelan citizens. He dedicated himself to building a new and radical society in Venezuela.  His progressive social and economic changes took millions out of poverty.”

And this from yesterday’s Washington Post:

“Venezuela is stuck in a doom loop that’s become a death spiral.    Its stores are empty, its people are starving, and its government is to blame. It has tried to repeal the law of supply and demand, and, in the process, eliminated any incentive for businesses to actually sell things. The result is that the country with the largest oil reserves in the world now has to resort to forced labor just to try to feed itself.”

Just sayin’.

 

Why you should read “Letters to the Editor” backwards

In August 1922 a newspaper publisher named Robert W. Sawyer attempted to define what constitutes “news”.   The nearest he could come, he said, is: “If the paper wants it worse than the person handing it in, it’s news….if the person handing it in wants it published worse than the newspaper, it’s advertising.”

A variant of this has been attributed variously to Lord Northcliffe, William Randolph Hearst and others: “News is what people do not want you to print. All the rest is advertising.”

It helps to keep this principle in mind when reading the “Letters to the Editor” section of one’s newspaper.

The letters page with which I am most familiar is that of the Irish Times, which newspaper I still consume daily — albeit sometimes with gritted teeth, thanks to its over-concentration and preachiness on gender issues, an approach exemplified by (but not limited to) Una Mullally.

If you think that the “Paper of Record” would have the sense to shield its readers from too much propaganda and special pleading in its letters page, think again. Most days, the letters originate from people who have a vested interest in the matter on which they are commentating, and the writers appear to be given free range by the editor to bang their own drum.  Maybe the editor reckons that the readers of the Irish Times are a sophisticated lot who can see through such obviously self-serving contributions.  Or maybe he is fixated with the concept of “balance” and is afraid to close off his columns to all and any hired guns – sorry, lobbyists – sorry, I mean spokespersons.

Today’s letter page is not untypical. A mere 6 letters, so a bit smaller than usual.  But they include letters from:

• three “masters” of Dublin maternity hospitals, explaining why the mastership system needs to be retained;
• a senior executive with the International Energy Research Centre, advocating greater stimulation by the government of low-carbon technologies;
• a representative of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation LGBT Group, voicing concern about how teachers are expected to deal with the recent papal document Amoris Laetitia;
• a resident of one of Dublin’s most expensive neighbourhoods arguing that the local property tax is unjust and should be the subject of greater agitation (as in water-tax-protests).

Insofar as I can tell, the remaining two letter-writers have no vested interest in the matter about which they are writing.

So two-thirds of the letters appear to be from people expressing views which they are paid to propagate or which are in their own personal interest. This is not to say that the views being expressed are wrong, or that they are not genuinely held; however it is helpful (nay, vital) to understand the context in which the letter-writers operate, and how that context might be influencing or accentuating their views, or making it much more likely that they will feel the need to publicly advocate them in the letters pages of our newspapers.

So I have adopted an invariable practice when reading these letters: start at the end of the letter, and take note of what role the writer performs or is representing. Not only will this help to put the content of the letter in its proper context (as Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”), but it also allows me to forego reading the letter completely on some occasions, on the grounds that my store of objective truth will not be thereby enhanced, and life is too short to waste on mere propaganda.

​My Rules for Proper Feminists

I notice a tendency for some self-proclaimed feminists to behave not as true, objectively fair, feminists, but as one-sided gender warriors in what they see as a never-ending battle to cut men down to size and to avenge perceived historic injustices.  They seem to think that current day men should be punished in some way for the behaviour of their fathers, grandfathers and other male antecedents, even if that behaviour was the cultural and societal norm in its day.  In the process, they are running the risk that their cause will be discredited.

…

As a true feminist, I like to be helpful to the sisters in these matters.  So here are a few guidelines, rules (commandments even), adherence to which will allow feminists to be taken seriously by society at large.

…

There is no charge for this service.  Pass them on.

• All men are not rapists or idiots. Have respect for both genders in your utterances. Stop portraying men as universally stupid or primitive e.g. in advertising.
• Please recognise that there remain significant differences between how the sexes behave – due partly (or even mainly?) to inescapable and unconscious evolutionary forces. In a dangerous world the survival of the human race once depended on the specialisation that these differences facilitated. We can’t expunge these traits from our DNA overnight, even if we all wanted to do so (and many people of both sexes wouldn’t want to).  In other words, men are more aggressive because they are built that way, not because they want to be.  Cut us some slack.
• You should accept that job quotas apply both ways.  So if you want fair representation in politics, business, the arts, the professions, and in other such desirable occupations, then you should accept that women should shoulder their fair share of lousy or demanding jobs – in the army, as road sweepers, bike couriers, potato pickers, mine workers and so on.  I just don’t see this happening.  And while we are at it, should men not have quotas too? Where are all the male nurses, primary school teachers, chick lit writers?
• Judge other women objectively: stop biting your tongue or giving them free passes when they deserve criticism or generally screw up.  Irish Times journalists, please note.
• Stop focusing on soft targets (e.g. men-only golf clubs) and ever-smaller issues (e.g. so-called micro-aggressions) when large ones have been achieved or appear just too tricky to deal with (e.g. the attitude of many refugees/immigrants to women). And avoid mission creep.
• Islam should be your number one enemy. Not Muslim people, but their religion and how it subjugates women.  If you turn a blind eye to this issue, then you don’t deserve to be taken seriously as a feminist.  If you don’t wish to speak out against it, then please shut up about other alleged sources of gender discrimination.
• The Roman Catholic Church isn’t far behind.  So have a go at them instead of attacking (for instance) Portmarnock Golf Club.  Yes I know it isn’t as much fun, and your Mammy probably won’t like it, but then you want to seen as a serious feminist, don’t you?
• Please recognise that most women, relative to their male counterparts, spend huge amounts of time and money trying to appear or remain sexually alluring.  This is a fact of life.  Men should be allowed show appreciation for such efforts.  Or are women only doing it to enhance their own self-esteem, or even to show up their less attractive sisters?  I don’t think so.
• Take on board the fact that, when you control for relevant variables (occupations, qualifications, length of time in workplace), the alleged wage gap narrows to effectively nothing.  So stop going on about it as if it’s a wicked plot to subjugate women, and stop using its alleged existence to justify your misandry.
• And so on…..

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey

So our ex-President Mrs Mary Robinson is to open the State’s first presidential archive and research centre in 2017.  Good for her.

In a touching piece in the Irish Times, Robinson-biographer and acolyte Lorna Siggins tells us that “A quarter of a century after her promise to keep a symbolic candle in the window of Áras an Uachtaráin, former president Mary Robinson has outlined plans to brighten her north Mayo birthplace with the State’s first presidential archive and research centre.  The €8.35 million centre in her former family home – the 19th-century Victoria House, overlooking the river Moy in Ballina – will open in the second quarter of 2017, Mrs Robinson said in Ballina at the weekend.”

€8.35 million!  Wow, that’s very generous of her, isn’t it?  Why, I’m almost ready to forgive her for quitting her pathetic little job as President of Ireland in 1997 two months early so she could nail down a real job with the United Nations as their High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Oh but wait a minute, Mary isn’t paying for the house – you and I are footing most of the bill it seems.  Here’s what Lorna tells us:

• €1.5 million has been provided by Mayo County Council to buy the house and to provide an adjoining site for construction of an annexe, along with architectural and design services;
• The State has committed just over €2 million through the Department of the Taoiseach;
• Mrs Robinson has donated her archive, valued at €2.5 million, to the State, under section 1003 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, which provides that people who donate heritage items can credit the value against certain tax liabilities.

So this vanity project for Mrs Robinson will cost the Irish citizens up to €5.5 million, depending on what is the net effect on the State coffers of the tax foregone as a result of the big fat tax credit she will get.  She may not have thought enough of us to serve her full term as President, but obviously our money is as good as anybody else’s.

It seems that the archive “will house files relating to Mrs Robinson’s legal work, her presidential engagements from December 1990 to September 1997 and her term as UN high commissioner for human rights from 1997 to 2002.”

I am impressed with the prescience she showed in keeping safe all those boxes of files spanning some five decades.  She must have been confident from an early date that history was being created.

However, in my self-appointed role as intrepid defender of the hard-pressed Irish taxpayer, I have to ask two questions: (a) How come the archive is worth €2.5 million and who decided this?  And (b) how come the papers in the archive are Mrs Robinson’s to donate in the first place?

The latter question is interesting.  Mrs Robinson, both as President of Ireland and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was effectively employed by and paid for by Ireland and the United Nations respectively.  Under most legal systems and contractual arrangements with which I am familiar, any materials produced in the course of the execution of the paid-for role belong to the employer organisation, not the individual involved.

Why are the files relating to her presidential engagements from December 1990 to September 1997 not already the property of the State?  Why are we effectively paying for them twice – the first time through her salary when she was President and was generating the relevant papers, and now in giving her an 80% tax credit for handing them over to us?   Maybe we need to take a look at the terms of our Presidential “employment contract”.

If Mrs Robinson is anything, she is ethical and law-abiding.  So I’m sure everything is above board.  But somebody has to ask the right questions.  If you are waiting for the Irish Times to ask any challenging questions of her, don’t hold your breath.

PS…. I note that for our money we also will get a research centre that will have “a particular emphasis on the ‘critical area of women’s leadership’, unleashing ‘energy for change’ through women’s empowerment”.   I can’t wait.

We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files
We’d like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home…..

 

Moriarty, the DPP and the Gardaí

Sherlock Holmes famously spotted the significance of the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time“: the fact that it didn’t bark was of great importance.  But this has nothing on the biggest non-barking dog in Ireland: the absence of any follow-up to the 4-year-old Moriarty Report.

In October 2015, Lucinda Creighton told the Dáil:

It is almost five years since Mr. Justice Moriarty, in his tribunal report on payments to politicians, found that it is beyond doubt that Deputy Michael Lowry imparted substantive information to Denis O’Brien which was of “significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence”. It has since emerged that there has been, for over three years, a Garda investigation following the Moriarty tribunal’s findings of suspected criminality in payments to politicians. Extraordinarily, this has not yet led to an investigation file being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP. No one has yet been charged and there have been zero consequences for two of the key individuals against whom adverse findings were made…….

But it seems that Lucinda may not be completely accurate here: the delay might not be with the Gardaí, but in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.  According to TheJournal.ie,

“Gardaí have not begun a full investigation into the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal over four years after its findings were published, it has emerged.  Though Gardaí carried out an initial examination of the report they are still waiting for guidance from the Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether a full Garda investigation should be carried out.  This has been the same position that the government has been outlining in responses to Dáil questions about the tribunal since May 2012….Identical or almost identical responses have been issued on at least eight occasions to TDs who have submitted queries.”

So what’s going on in the DPP’s office?  Why hasn’t she supplied the requested guidance?  Is her office working overtime on this, as they should be, or is there some deliberate foot-dragging going on?

Three years ago, in a different context, I wrote:

 …the current DPP, James Hamilton, takes early retirement this month, and the Government have appointed Claire Loftus as his successor.  She has been promoted from her role as the Head of the Directing Division in the DPP’s office, and before that she was the DPP’s chief prosecution solicitor from 2001 to 2009.  I hope she can move things forward at a faster rate than her predecessor, but unfortunately I can find no reason to believe that a long and successful career in our DPP’s office is an indicator of a dynamic and energetic character.  Maybe I will be proved wrong.  For the sake of the morale of the general populace, I hope so.

The DPP’s information booklet, available on their website, assures us that “the DPP is independent when making her decisions. This means that no-one – including the Government or the Gardaí – can make the DPP prosecute a particular case or stop her from doing so.”  And the Code of Ethics for Prosecutors is equally reassuring: “Prosecutors shall carry out their functions in accordance with section 2(5) of the Prosecution of Offences Act, 1974 which provides that the Director of Public Prosecutions shall be independent in the performance of his functions. They shall exercise their functions free of any extraneous influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interference, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.”

So it would surely be very wrong for anybody to suggest that the DPP is succumbing to political or other pressure to sit on the file until after the election, or maybe forever?  Hmmmm.

As for the boys in blue, we know that, because any evidence presented to a Tribunal of Inquiry cannot be used to secure a criminal conviction, the Gardaí need to start from scratch and produce criminal-conviction-standard evidence through a new investigation.  But why aren’t they getting on with this task instead of using the DPP’s delay as an excuse?  What is it that they want guidance about from the DPP before pulling their finger out?  Are they under pressure to slow things down?  It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the resources being applied to this case within the Gardaí are less than adequate, and that there isn’t any real desire to get cracking.

It stinks.

And meanwhile, poor Denis O’Brien, and poor Michael Lowry, have to suffer the indignity of not being able properly to clear their names after Mr Justice Moriarty accused them of corruption.  I’m sure they are itching to have things brought to a head, and are despairing of the sloth being displayed in the Gardaí and the DPP’s office.

So what can they do about it?  Well, how about Denis or Michael making a complaint to the DPP’s office about their delay in the case?  The DPP’s Information Booklet helpfully tells us:  “9. Can I complain to the Office of the DPP?    Yes. If you have a complaint about how we work, you can contact us at our Office – see contact details on page 16.”

So there you have it.  And if Denis or Michael are too busy to lodge a complaint about the DPP’s tardiness, maybe a helpful member of the public would do so instead?  I’m sure they would be grateful.

 

 

 

 

Dumb Graphics from Sunday Business Post

I think there should be mandatory jail sentences for those who publish bar charts and other graphs that show a misleading position as a result of selecting an incorrect base line or y-axis (usually, but not always, this should be zero).

Here’s a particularly egregious example from a publication that should know better, the Sunday Business Post.  It appeared in its 11th October 2015 edition.  Visually, the current minimum wage appears to be less than 20% of the living wage.  However it is in fact about 75% of it, and setting the y-axis to start at zero would have given the correct visual impression.

 So why didn’t they do this?  Careless journalism, careless editing, lack of numeracy, or a deliberate wish to create a striking image where there was no justification for it?

The Sunday Business Post is in dishonourable company in this practice.  Here are two choice examples from Fox News in the United States, which of course has a political agenda to promote.

       

Rather than using a nonsensical bar chart, it would have been better had the Sunday Business Post not published it at all, and instead allowed the reader to draw the necessary information from published text.  However that would probably have gone against another apparent Sunday Business Post policy – that of using up lots of space with unnecessary (or unnecessarily large) photos and graphics.  Cheaper than actual journalism, I suppose.

 

El Salvador’s draconian abortion laws are at least consistent

Last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry received a letter from 55 members of the US Congress asking him to address what they see as the human rights violations of women in El Salvador.

Amnesty International explains the background:

El Salvador banned abortion in all circumstances in 1998….. Women and girls found guilty of having an abortion face a prison sentence of two to eight years. Health care providers who assist them face up to 12 years in prison….. Women who have had miscarriages have been charged with aggravated homicide, a charge which can bring a sentence of up to 50 years in prison. Amnesty International has documented the cases of many women who have been sentenced to decades in prison after having a miscarriage.

According to the BBC:

El Salvador is not the only country in Latin America to have such strict laws, but it is particularly strict in enforcing it. Doctors have to inform the authorities if they think a woman has tried to end her pregnancy. If they fail to report such cases, they, too, could face long sentences in jail. The result is what human rights groups are calling a criminalisation of miscarriages and medical emergencies.

San Salvador’s auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez was quoted as saying: “Every human life is sacred. To get rid of that is committing murder. If there are two lives in danger, you have to save the one that’s most fragile and that’s the child”.

So El Salvador is being entirely logical in how it enshrines Roman Catholic theology (can that be the right word in to describe such a cruel policy?) in its civil law.

If I may repeat myself, even in Ireland we implicitly, and necessarily, recognise that the death of a foetus does not warrant the same legal protection as the death of a child or adult.  For otherwise our law would require that, every time a woman becomes pregnant but fails to deliver a live baby in due course, there would be a full and formal legal Inquest into the “death” of the “person” .   Under Irish law, an Inquest must be held if a coroner has reasonable cause to believe that a death occurred suddenly and/or from unknown causes.  That we don’t subject women to such a ridiculous process every time there is a miscarriage during a pregnancy demonstrates that even in Ireland we are prepared to accept that in practice a foetus does not warrant the same legal due process and protection as a fully formed human being.

I suspect that if we did follow the anti-abortionists’ logic and launch a full Inquest every time a woman suffered a miscarriage, just in case there had been some intent on her part to induce the miscarriage, or negligence in this regard, then we would see an uproar from all sane people, and Amnesty International and US politicians would be on our case with a vengeance.

But requiring an inquest in these circumstances would be the logical (but crazy) outcome of the call for the “unborn” to have the same legal rights as a child or adult. Sometimes those guilty of folly and cruelty need to be shown a reductio as absurdum to help change their mindset.

We are, one might surmise, less savage in our laws (or their implementation) than El Salvador is; but we are undoubtedly less consistent too. If we are to enshrine the doctrine of a particular religion in our laws, then why don’t we go the whole hog, just as Iran or Saudi Arabia do?

Why Michael Flatley’s “art” reminds me of Tony Hancock’s in “The Rebel”

Michael Flatley, of Riverdance fame, has a new career as an artist, and it is giving me considerable entertainment. According to the Irish Times, Mr Flatley “creates his paintings by dancing on canvases (strips of marley – a type of linoleum floor covering used on stage by dancers)”.  We learn that “At least 12 of the paintings sold, for an average price of £52,000 (€74,000). Negotiations are continuing regarding further sales”.

You couldn’t make it up.  Truly, life is imitating art – in this case the amusing 1960 film “The Rebel”, starring the late comedian Tony Hancock.  To quote from Wikipedia:

Hancock plays a downtrodden London office clerk who gives up his office job to pursue full-time his vocation as an artist. Single mindedly, and with an enthusiasm far exceeding any artistic talent (his ‘art’ has a ‘childlike’ quality – to put it mildly), he sets to work on his masterpiece Aphrodite at the Waterhole, moving to  Paris where he expects his genius will be appreciated….. The film explores existentialist themes by mocking Parisian intellectual society and portraying the pretensions of the English middle class…. The film also includes scenes parodying modern art. The scene showing Hancock splashing paint onto a canvas and riding a bike over it is a lampoon of the work of Action Painter, William Green while the childlike paintings of Hancock, referred to as the ‘infantile school’ or the ‘shapeist school’ parody the naïve style.

Alternatively, I hope Mr Flatley, with his “art”,  is having a good old-fashioned piss-take – otherwise known as “mocking … intellectual society and portraying the pretensions of the … middle class”.  Good for him if that is the case.

Surely he doesn’t actually believe his offerings are worth €50-100,000? No, it is no doubt a wonderful leg-pull on his part, at the expense of those blinded by fame into laying out large sums of money on unattractive and random smears of paint.  This must be the case, as Mr Flatley is a clever fellow.  Maybe he has even seen “the Rebel” and is carrying out his own experiment, testing the limits of art buyers’ gullibility!

Or perhaps he has seen the wonderful recent Italian film The Great Beauty (La Grande Belleza), in which a young child creates highly-prized “art” by having a temper tantrum and flinging paint at a large canvas (YouTube link here). Yes, that must be the case……

[More on the madness of modern/conceptual art here, here, here and here].

Jonathan Meades on Religion

I recently finished reading Jonathan Meades’ memoir of his early life An Encyclopaedia of Myself.  Some may find his style and vocabulary challenging, but he is always fascinating and often hilarious.  I felt I should share his views on religion, of which the following passage is a useful example.

The majority of Anglican clergy, certainly of Salisbury Cathedral’s clergy, were not susceptible to dilute modernism. The Close was a bastion of unchallenged dogma, ritual, philistinism, unquestioning belief. The manipulator of millions of minds Joseph Goebbels wrote: ‘It is almost immaterial what we believe in so long as we believe in something.’  Time and again, those with this promiscuous capacity for credulousness are shown to be those with the equal capacity to promote and sanction atrocities. We repeatedly witness the migration of believers — ‘spiritual persons’ — from one cult to the next; a religion is merely a heavily armed cult. Believing in something all too evidently means believing in anything. Why should Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims — especially Muslims — be treated with anything other than the contemptuous toleration that is visited on flat-earthers and ufologists? Believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of garden and you are deemed fit for the bin, for the Old Manor. Believe in parthenogenesis and ascension and you are deemed fit to govern the country, run the BBC, command UK Landforces etc.  The notion that these people might be mentally ill is quite overlooked: quis custodiet and all that.

Austria is right to fight back against foreign funding of Islam

I see that the Austrian parliament has passed reforms to the country’s century-old ‘Law on Islam’.  Amongst other provisions, the new law bans foreign funding for Islamic organisations.  Muslim groups say the ban on foreign funding is unfair as international support is still permitted for the Christian and Jewish faiths.  They are right, but only up to a point.

I find it unacceptable that any religion should be allowed to accept funding from external sources, just as most countries prohibit political funding from outside the jurisdiction.  If such funding is going to be allowed, then at least it should be excluded from the general tax exemption from which most religions benefit.

But where I would absolutely draw the line is where religions or religious lobby groups obtain direct or indirect funding from foreign governments, or foreign-government-sponsored entities.  Clearly in these situations the line between religion and politics has been crossed.  And this is where the Austrians have got it right: Islam is noteworthy for the fact that states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar give generous financial support to Islam (or particular strains of Islam) across the globe.  And unfortunately the type of Islam they are promoting is one where there is no separation between Church and State, and where the dictates of the Koran and the hadiths are considered to be justification for horrific crimes.

I would like to see a law in Ireland which (a) prohibits religions and religious organisations from receiving funding from foreign governments and (b) removes tax-exempt status from funding received from all non-residents, private or governmental.  This would incidentally stop any funding of the Catholic Church or Catholic organisations by the Vatican, as the latter claims to be a State, but this is something with which I could live …..