YebHe’s the Filipino climate commissioner, above, who announced he was going on hunger strike nine days ago, at the UN negotiations in Warsaw, saying he wouldn’t eat “until a meaningful outcome is in sight”.

Well.

Maeve McLynn writes:

“He’s still fasting and the international support for him has really taken off. Yeb started a petition with Avaaz calling for all countries to face up to climate change and really work to tackle it. He will personally hand the petition over to the COP Presidency before the end of the negotiations (tomorrow).”

You can sign the petition here.

At the time of posting, it’s just over 289,000 short of one million.

Previously: Climate Change Hunger Striker

Thanks Maeve

unemployed

They were characterised as unkempt scroungers with no ideas.

But this week, among other things, Canadian-born, Dublin-based vlogger Katie Varvos tells us how the Occupy Movement has defied critics through their Rolling Jubilee project, that has helped almost 3,000 people across America abolish more than $14million of debt.

Stay for the cat and prize of dinner for two in Bóbós on Dame Street, Dublin.

Previously: The Unemployed Graduate on broadsheet.

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ShorttFrosted highlights and ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ by Shakira?

Bring it on.

Prime Time’s Robert Short is going to look at property prices in Dublin which have risen by 12% in the last year, while outside the capital have risen 2.5%.

He’s also going to look at the disparity between prices in south Dublin versus north Dublin.

Ahead of tonight’s show on RTE 1 at 9.35pm, he writes:

“I turned up at a recent viewing of a standard, three bed semi in Booterstown in south county Dublin. It’s been on the market for three weeks with a price tag of €550,000. And in property-speak, it would ‘benefit from modernisation’. According to the estate agent, there are already three bidders and the bidding is up to €535,000.”

“There were about a dozen parties at the viewing. All had stories of being outbid. There was a certain nervousness about what seemed to be happening in the south county Dublin property market; a sense that bargains from a depressed market were fast slipping away.”

“Is south county Dublin caught in a 2006 time warp? Well not really, if you consider the outer constellation of craziness that was 2006. Prices are still half, or just under half of what they were then.”

“Here’s what the statistics say: The annual increase in Dublin property prices in the year to September was just over 12%, according to the CSO. Prices in the rest of Ireland are still falling, albeit at a slower rate of 2.5%. It’s clear that prices in Dublin have taken off and left the rest of the country behind.”

“And within Dublin, it’s even more striking that asking prices in south county Dublin were up 12.7% while in North County Dublin they were up just 1.4%. According to the Daft.ie House Price Report, the average asking price in the north of the county was €210,765 while the average asking price in the south of the county was €370,650. It’s a remarkable disparity.”

“TCD economist Ronan Lyons, who analyses the Daft.ie data believes the spike in prices is a once-off phenomenon. He thinks it’s principally based on the pent up demand from a generation which through luck or circumstance did not purchase during the boom. They’re forming their own households now, starting families.”

“They are also getting squeezed in the rental market, which has gone up an average 8% in the capital.”

“And there’s not a sufficient supply of houses in the areas in which they want to live. Negative equity has restricted the supply of family-sized homes to estate sales and, to a lesser extent, bank sales.”

“Few new homes are being built.”

Prime Time

clare daly

“This is a Bill to allow for a termination of a pregnancy in Ireland, where the foetus has a condition which is incompatible with life. This is an issue which I think has probably affected every Deputy in the House – it’s one which the Minister For Justice himself has described as an intolerable cruelty and I think it is motivated really by my desire to see something done in relation to this matter.

We’re talking about women and families, who in the main are dealing with much-wanted pregnancies who experience a diagnosis which is clearly devastating – that the foetus is not going to survive – and having to deal with that grief is compounded by the body-blow that they are then forced to leave this country – they are not given adequate information.

The information they are given is given in a climate of secrecy and then they are not allowed bring the remains of the foetus back – it can sometimes get posted back. We’ve heard stories of some people bringing it back in the boot of a car.

Now this is something that has been correctly taken, in my opinion to the United Nations as a human rights violation and as inhuman and degrading treatment. And I think that what we have to say is that this is happening now. There are large numbers of people who experience this in Ireland every year.

One Liverpool hospital has made a special arrangement, such are the numbers involved – and over 90% of Irish people say that they believe a pregnancy should be terminated in these circumstances.

And the only argument put up against that is the unpublished opinion of the present Attorney General who we are told said that it won’t be constitutional.

Now I have to respond to that by saying that it’s a fact that there are other opinions by eminent legal people and by a former Attorney General which disagrees with that view – and the only way we resolve the conflict is if we bring in legislation and have the Supreme Court adjudicate on it.

The State’s previous Attorney General made the argument that I’m making now that in the case of ‘D’ versus Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights – where the Court found that there was at least a tenable argument which could seriously be considered by the domestic courts to the effect that the foetus was not an unborn for the purposes of ‘Article 43.3’, or that even if it was an unborn, it’s right to life was not actually engaged as it had no prospect of life outside the womb – so in actual fact the State has previously argued that it would be constitutional to legislate in this circumstance.

Now I’m aware that Minister [Alex] White and Minister [Alan] Shatter and other ministers have stated publicly that they believe that this issue should be addressed.

What I’m saying to the Government is that in your lifetime, this won’t be addressed unless we move legislation on it, bring it to the Supreme Court, have them adjudicate and end the misery for these families so they can deal with it as a normal tragedy, without the added burden of having to travel out of the country in secrecy.”

Independent TD Clare Daly in the Dail today.

Previously: A Vital Amendment

Thanks Shayna

Broadsheet.ie