From top: Interior of Cork’s Washington Street courthouse; John Carmody on Cork’s 96fm Opinion Line.
Dee writes:
Animal rights activist John Carmody spoke on the Opinion Line today to condemn the shooting dead of a pigeon that was “out of control” at the courthouse on Washington Street, Cork…
Meanwhile…
“Last week a pigeon entered Washington Street Courthouse and positioned itself around the dome of the building for the entirety of the day.The pigeon was suffering from being trapped indoors, and was not. responding to any attempt to lure it down and out of the building.As the courthouse dome is approximately 60 feet from the ground floor, it was impossible to catch the bird. The bird became distressed and an animal control specialist team were sent for.They had no option but to humanely use an air pellet to put the bird out of its misery.”
An ongoing dispute between LA-based illustrator Tuesday Bassen and Spanish clothing company Zara, which initially peremptorily rejected claims that its stores had blatantly plagiarised four of Bassen’s designs.
Zara has since removed the items from sale and are ‘ in contact with Bassen’s lawyers to clarify and resolve the situation as quickly as possible’
A HIQA inspection of Child Protection and Welfare Services in the midlands has found that one duty team which regularly dealt with unassessed risk was predominantly made up of inexperienced social workers.
One in five of the cases reviewed by inspectors from the Health Information and Quality Authority had to be escalated for the attention of the area manager of the Child and Family Agency, Tusla.
Last January’s nine-day announced inspection of the Child and Family Agency’s Midlands Services followed notifications to the watchdog in April 2015 by the Agency.
These included that around 700 unallocated child protection case files pertaining to Laois and Offaly had been discovered in a Portlaoise office and that 822 unacknowledged Garda notifications of alleged abuse had also been found.
The midlands services also cover counties Westmeath and Longford.
Pictograms scrawled on walls by homeless wanderers and migrant workers for the benefit (and wellbeing) of fellow travellers during the Great Depression in the US.
The queue to get into Ireland at Dublin Airport on the eve of the same sex marriage referendum in May 2015
Brian Boyd makes some interesting observations on what is referred to as “Generation Snowflake”.
As he points out, it is the prerogative of every generation to look at the generation that succeeds it with an often unjustified sneer of pity and disdain. It was the meat that was dished out to us as teens by the generations that preceded us; and we took in so much of it that we want to impose the feast of our moral superiority on a generation whose only obligation, like the generations that preceded them, is to embrace knowledge and to take delight in their own youth and in the marvellous gift of life.
However, a major social experiment has occurred over the past 20 years that has elicited very little debate. The children coming into adulthood now are the first generation to be shaped by the internet.
Once upon a time our parents were charmed when we invented an imaginary friend; now children can have a thousand imaginary friends and we call it Facebook. Rather than interacting with the rough and tumble of real children, it is easier for children to sit in their rooms and morosely compare the amount of “likes” their picture receives in relation to others whom they can so easily perceive to be more attractive, affluent and intelligent than they.
A teenager won’t burn many calories staring at a screen, nor do they acquire much in the way of life skills. Depression and self-harm are a growing issue among the young. Rather than dealing with the individual when they have the courage to present themselves, or castigating a whole generation as “snowflakes”, we should perhaps ask ourselves how smart is it for adults to hand children smartphones and unrestricted access to the internet.
It is an issue that we need to take seriously, otherwise we may find that these “snowflakes” rapidly accumulate into a blizzard and change, not for the better, the fabric and culture of society.
Further to the announcement from Finance Minister Michael Noonan that Ireland must pay an additional €280million to the EU next year – because of the recent GDP growth of 26.3%, as recorded by the Central Statistics Office…
Sinn Féin TD and finance spokesman Pearse Doherty and Stephen Collins, political editor of The Irish Times, spoke on Today with Seán O’Rourke about the development.
Seán O’Rourke: “Pearse Doherty, are you assured by a comment from the Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Paschal Donohoe on Morning Ireland, saying that bill has to be met, as a result of our EU membership, it will not influence the spending plan for Budget 2017.”
Pearse Doherty: “Well, Minister Noonan actually provided me with this figure on Tuesday, €280million additional and made that point that it doesn’t affect our fiscal space. And this is about just how the rules are applied and the fiscal space has been agreed in April and therefore it’s set. It will have an impact next year and that’s where we need to actually tease out how we calculate the fiscal space for next year. But I think there’s a deeper issue here and me in Sinn Féin and myself, in particular, have been challenging the previous government on this, since 2013. Our economic, the way we calculate our economy is absolutely broken, it’s bust in this country. It’s been a way out for quite a long number of years. We all agree that the 26% isn’t real, but neither was the 7% that we were suggesting was happening last year as well because the same type of factors were at play. At a lesser extent.”
“But the fact that we’re actually paying more to the European Union budget as a result of this year isn’t something new. I have figures going back to 2010, as a result of redomiciled plcs – these are companies that were domiciled in Ireland but don’t pay any tax here. And the actual additional contribution that we had to pay to the EU budget every year, because of that average, between €45 and €60million per year. So this is something that’s been going on, over and over again. In 2014, when we started to, we raised our GDP figures because of the activities of illicit trades that’s, you know, prostitution, drug sales and all the rest which gives us a bump in GDP, we actually had to pay €6.5million to the European contribution.”
Meanwhile…
Yesterday.
In the Dáil…
Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett raised the €280million bill after he asked why the Government recently opposed an EU proposal to begin country-by-country reporting of corporation tax by large multinational firms.
He was speaking during a debate on corporation tax.
From the debate:
Richard Boyd Barrett: “A few weeks ago, the Government opposed an EU proposal to introduce public country-by- country reporting of corporation tax for large multinational companies on the spurious grounds of subsidiarity. Are we going to bring in public country-by-country reporting ourselves?
Mary Mitchell O’Connor: “Last April, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a directive to introduce public country-by-country reporting of corporation tax by large multinational enterprises.Since then, my Department has been considering the detail of the proposal and consulting with stakeholders. The Department also ran an open consultation in the course of last May. The task of assessing the proposal is continuing and, at EU level, the negotiations have begun. Although they are at an early stage, it is clear that the proposal raises a number of practical, legal and technical issues. These will need to be addressed over the coming months. Until we know the scope and content of any final EU measure, it is too soon to consider national measures on this type of public reporting. However, Ireland is already to the fore in introducing similar reporting obligations for large multinational companies. Under the Finance Act 2015, certain Irish-resident parent companies and subsidiaries of non-Irish companies must file a country-by-country report on tax with the Revenue Commissioners each year. The first of these reports are due to be submitted to the Revenue by the end of next year. Several countries, including the US and all EU member countries, have committed to introducing this form of country-by-country reporting and to sharing the information among their tax authorities.”
Boyd Barrett: “The Minister may have heard this week that we are already paying a big price because of aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations. We will have to pay an extra €280 million to the EU this year because of the artificial inflation of the growth figures. Already, even before that, our contribution to the EU is grossly inflated and distorted because it is, in proportion to population, double that of countries such as Portugal and others due to the tax avoidance strategies of multinationals based in this country. It is in our interests to have public country-by-country reporting of the big multinational companies to stop them engaging in aggressive tax avoidance. Yet, incredibly, when offered the opportunity to do that by the European Union, we used the spurious excuse of subsidiarity to reject that proposal. What the Minister seems to be saying is that we cannot do it on our own. I agree with that, but why the hell did we not sign up to a pan-European proposal to do it, instead saying that we could not sign up to it because it infringes our sovereignty? It does not make any sense.”
Mitchell O’Connor: I reject tax avoidance. We cannot do it on our own. If we were to publish the figures the Deputy is referring to, it would allow some companies to gain a possible commercial advantage over others because matters would be deemed to be commercially sensitive. Other jurisdictions might not share the information with us if they knew we were going to publish the reports. It would not help the tax transparency agenda and a system of country-by-country reporting. I cannot do it.
Acting Chairman (Deputy Catherine Connolly): I thank the Minister. That brings Question Time to a close, and we are moving…”
Boyd Barrett: “There are 21 seconds remaining.”
Connolly: “We are moving on. I asked for the Deputy’s co-operation. I have three different clocks here. I am going to move on to Topical Issues.”
Listen back to Today with Seán O’Rourke interview in full here
02. Following the release of the video for A Beauty Named Shannon, as well as an acapella appearance at The Hip Neck Blues Collective‘s farewell show, the trio release their second EP, Exclamation Marks!, via Limerick hip-hop cornerstone The Unscene.
03. Stream (and download) the EP in its entirety in the widget above. Production from one-man duo Deviant & Naive Ted, and guest appearances from members of trad iconoclasts Lynched and beatmaker Mankyy.
04. A compelling bonus take from the shoot for the Beauty video, a freestyle filmed in an old handball court and making the most of the acoustics there, can be found at the band’s Facebook.
Verdict: A singular, focused slab of eloquent, yet distinctively Limerick-accented hip-hop, that raises the bar that little bit higher.
