Yearly Archives: 2017
Get A Room
at
You need a place to live.
Let Broadsheet help you find it.
The first Decent Gaffs listings will appear HERE on Monday at Midday.
If you are looking for a room or a houseshare place your free ad before 11am on Monday (examples at link below).
And if you are looking for a tenant to houseshare or take a whole apartment just send us details with pics.
Free ads to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Decent Gaffs’.
Previously: Let’s Go Proper Rental
Behan There
at
This afternoon
Royal Canal, Dorset Lane, Drumcondra, Dublin
Damien Dempsey at the Brendan Behan statue for the launch of the inaugural I.NY cultural festival taking place in Limerick, October 5-15.
The festival “explores and celebrates the relationship between Ireland and New York through a programme of cultural, arts, diaspora and education events” and will feature Damien, Glen Hansard and guitarist Gerry Leonard.
Sasko Lazarov/Photocall
Previously: Johnny Keenan reviews Damien Dempsey at the Iveagh Gardens
Andrew Morton
On Saturday Night with Miriam…
Sinead Harrington writes:
Princess Diana’s biographer, Andrew Morton will join Miriam to talk about her life and legacy ahead of the anniversary of her death.
The designer of Diana’s wedding dress, Elizabeth Emmanuel, will be in studio with the original toile wedding dress and other paraphernalia from the royal wedding. The dress forms part of the latest exhibition in the Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge Silverware.
Thirty years on from his Tour de France win Stephen Roche joins Miriam to reflect on his historic win and talk about his latest cycling challenge. This time he’ll take on the Tour de Leinster which he’ll be cycling in aid of Down Syndrome Ireland.
G.A.A. superstar and pundit turned Rural Ambassador, Pat Spillane, will talk about an the decline of Irish towns and villages and how we can unlock rural Ireland’s potential.
And we have music from Cork native Lyra.
Saturday Night with Miriam at 9:25pm on RTÉ One.
Pic: EPA
Centenarian
at
From top: Fr Peter McVerry; Eamonn Kelly
Eamonn Kelly writes:
In today’s Irish Times Fr Peter McVerry takes the Taoiseach to task for implying that homelessness does not exist, that what we call homelessness is really only a kind of aspiration for better homes. That those who complain of homelessness are really saying that they’d like nicer places to live.
Here’s the quote from the Taoiseach that Peter McVerry angrily takes issue with:
“There are 90,000 people on the housing list but very many, if not most, have houses and apartments. However, these are houses and apartments that are being provided to them through rent supplement or the private rental sector and they want different houses or apartments that are more appropriate to their needs.
It is important to recall that, of those 90,000 on the housing list, the majority are in houses or apartments, just not the permanent homes they would like to have and which we would like them to have.” [Leader’s Questions, July 12, 2017]
So, according to the Taoiseach, the homeless have houses and apartments, but they are simply being fussy and want better ones.
And since he is the Taoiseach, and leader of the free world as we understand it here in this soggy corner of Europe, the Homeless Crisis has now been officially downgraded to the much more manageable Fussiness Crisis.
A crisis where taste is not, unfortunately, being matched by reality. Something a good bucket of paint and a joss-stick might solve. A problem that a simple shift in mental attitude might dispel.
Fr Peter McVerry’s article produces enough hard evidence and figures to show, just in case anyone was in any doubt, that we really do have a homeless crisis and not just a “Fussiness Crisis” as the Taoiseach appears to be suggesting.
The article includes a graphic incorporating figures from the central statistics office that clearly show there are 6,906 homeless people in Ireland, 73% of them in Dublin. According to the Taoiseach, and this now exists in the Dail records, “very many of these, if not most, have houses and apartments.”
Where I come from, this is called a bare-faced lie. But I come from a relatively humble working-class background and I’m maybe not sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a bare-faced lie and some complex housing/social policy thingy that someone like me might not be fully capable of grasping.
The Taoiseach’s suggestion that there is no homelessness also implies that rough-sleepers and kids living on fast food and crisps in hotel accommodations, as reported in the Irish Times yesterday, are only figments of the collective imagination, like some kind of mass delusionary experience.
The idea also appears to suggest that the work Fr Peter McVerry and people of his ilk have been doing all these years, against increasingly ambivalent odds, is also delusional in its assessment of the problems they are addressing every working day of their lives, and the political policies that appear to be creating these problems.
There was an old joke in working class Dublin to describe tough neighbourhoods. You’d say “They ate their young in that place!” This came to mind when I noticed yesterday’s census reports that 1 in 4 homeless people are under the age of 18, and that the largest homeless age group was children under 4 years of age.
People may soon be saying of Ireland. “Sure, they ate their young in that place.”
Eamonn Kelly is a freelance writer.
Rollingnews
From top: a Magdalene Laundry, 1950s; UN Committee Against Torture
The United Nations Committee Against Torture has urged the Government to investigate allegations of ill treatment of women in Magdalene Laundries.
The committee, in a report report published today, said its repeated requests to investigate “allegations of ill-treatment of women at the Magdalen Laundries, prosecute perpetrators and ensure that victims obtain redress and have an enforceable right to compensation, have not been implemented”.
The report states:
Magdalene Laundries:
Undertake a thorough, impartial investigation into allegations of ill- treatment of women at the Magdalen Laundries that has the power to compel the production of all relevant facts and evidence, and if appropriate, ensure the prosecution and punishment of perpetrators.
Strengthen the State party’s efforts to ensure all victims of ill-treatment who worked in the Magdalen Laundries obtain redress and to this end ensure that all victims have the right to bring civil actions even if they participated in the redress scheme and ensure that such claims concerning historical abuses can continue to be brought “in the interests of justice.
Take further efforts to publicize the existence of the ex gratia scheme to survivors of the Magdalene Laundries living outside Ireland; fully implement the outstanding recommendations on redress made by Justice Quirke.
Promote greater access of victims and their representatives to relevant information concerning the Magdalene Laundries held in private and public archives; and provide information on these additional measures in the State party’s next report to the Committee.
The Committe also criticised inaction in other areas of human rights in Ireland:
Mother and Baby Homes
‘The State party should ensure that it carries out an independent, thorough, and effective investigation into any allegations of ill-treatment, including cases of forced adoption, amounting to violations of the Convention at all of the Mother and Baby Homes and analogous institutions.
That perpetrators of any such acts are prosecuted and punished and that all victims of violations of the Convention obtain redress.
The State party should ensure that information concerning abuses in these institutions should be made accessible to the public to the greatest extent possible.
Symphysiotomy:
The State party should initiate an impartial, thorough investigation into the cases of women who have been subjected to symphysiotomy, ensure that criminal proceedings are initiated with respect to any perpetrators of violations of the Convention.
Ensure that survivors of symphysiotomy obtain redress, including compensation and rehabilitation, determined on an individual basis.
Domestic violence:
Amend the Domestic Violence Bill to include a specific criminal offence of domestic violence that encompasses physical and psychological abuse committed within a relationship and to exempt women seeking protection from domestic violence from the minimum required contribution for legal aid if they cannot afford it.
Ensure that all allegations of violence against women, including domestic and sexual violence, are registered by the police and promptly, impartially and effectively investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted and punished in accordance with the gravity of the crime;
Ensure that State funding for domestic and gender-based violence services is sufficient to ensure that all victims of these offenses, including migrants and the indigent, have access to medical and legal services, counselling, safe emergency accommodation and shelters;
Abortion:
Ensure the provision of post-abortion health care for women irrespective of whether they have undergone an illegal or legal abortion.
Direct Provision:
Enshrine in its legislation the principle that detention of asylum-seekers should be used as a measure of last resort, for as short a period as possible and in facilities appropriate for their status;
Abuse of older persons and disabled:
The Committee is concerned at reports that older persons and other vulnerable adults are being held in public and privately operated residential care settings in situations of de facto detention, and at reports of cases in which such persons were subjected to conditions that may amount to inhuman or degrading treatment, including the improper use of chemical restraints.
The Committee regrets that although the State party has enacted new legislation that will substantially alter its procedures regarding involuntary confinement in such facilities – the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 – the substantive provisions of this law have not been commenced, and as a result the Lunacy Regulations (Ireland) Act 1871 continue to be in effect.
The Committee is further concerned at reports that the authorities currently entrusted with monitoring residential care facilities are not sufficiently independent nor adequately resourced to perform this function effectively, and at reports that the Ombudsman cannot receive complaints about clinical judgments in privately operated nursing homes.
Prisons:
Sstrengthen the measures aimed at decreasing further the number of persons in the prison system and to reduce overcrowding with a view to bringing conditions of detention in line with international standards enshrined in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules);
Read full report here
Govt criticised by UN over lack of Magdalene investigation (RTÉ)
Previously: Magdalene Laundries on Broadsheet
Did you stay up?
A big, enveloping thank you to, clockwise from top left: Neil Curran & George, Olga Cronin, Vanessa Foran, Kieran Butler & Johnny Keenan and Preposterous, our panel on last night’s Broadsheet on the Telly.
You can watch the show in its entirety above.
Johnny and his pal Kieran, an Australian comedian, joined us live from Edinburgh where Kieran is performing his acclaimed show ‘Australia is Fucked‘ at the city’s festival this month.
Neil’s rescue dog George also joined us fresh if bewildered from his recent vasectomy.
And accountant Vanessa shared her shock at the parlous state of ‘middle income workers’.
Some swearing
Previously: Broadsheet on the Telly on Broadsheet
What you may need to know
1. Here comes comedy royalty Armando Iannucci, creator of (among others) The Thick of It, In the Loop, Veep, The Day Today, Time Trumpet and more, with his second big-screen outing The Death of Stalin. It appears that one of the great satirists of our time has decided that the modern world is indeed beyond satire, so there is no point anymore.
2. Instead, he has assembled a remarkable cast to throw back to Moscow in the 1950s when, upon the death of soviet dictator Stalin, various factions within the Soviet Central Committee began squabbling over who could, should and would succeed him.
3. The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Fabien Nury.
4. Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev, alongside Jeffrey Tambor, Paddy Considine, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale and more as a host of real-life figures whose names we really couldn’t be bothered spelling out here.
5. As if it wasn’t perfectly obvious, that thing about modern life being beyond satire is even more accurate than you think. At a recent talk in Sydney, Iannucci revealed an unused story for The Thick of It was for a politician to walk to Westminster in order to seem “more relatable”, only to insist on a car following behind to carry his briefcase. The idea was eventually abandoned the idea because it seemed just a little too unrealistic.
6. Some months later, it emerged David Cameron was keen on cycling to the House of Commons…with a car following behind containing shoes and a clean shirt.
7. After that you can see why the decision was taken not to drag The Thick of It out any longer than it had to. Why waste time hanging politicians out to dry when they’re perfectly capable of doing it themselves?
8. Anyway, The Death of Stalin screens at the Toronto Film Festival next month, and will arrive in cinemas in October.
9. Speaking of Stalin, any excuse. “Not a lot of people” know about this historical TV drama with just about the greatest piece of casting you’ve ever seen.
Doug’s verdict: Potempting
Release Date: October 20
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