Maman Poulet

Nowt says you. Well I would have said nowt also until I read Vaughan’s entry on the wonderful BBC Ouch blog today. The trust established to own Northern Rock’s assets lists a small (and I mean very small) charity in Newcastle in the UK as a beneficiary. Now nobody told Down Syndrome North East that they were in such a lofty position! A cut of £71bn (before the crisis/crash like!) would go a long way to supporting families. Granite (the trust) and Northern Rock are now in more trouble (could it get any worse for them!!)

Ian Cobain and Ian Griffiths in the Guardian have done all the digging, Vaughan does the disability spin on Ouch.

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Green Ink thinks this is what cancer looks like. Sorry GI I have to disagree. I saw what cancer looks like on RTE news this evening. Joan Kennedy, one of the nine women who was misdiagnosed in Port Laoise Hospital was interviewed by Ciaran Mullooly. (Interview link can be found on this page.)

Joan is 78 and two weeks ago she had her breast removed 6 months after receiving the all clear. She was angry and so were the members of her family. There is huge anger in the Midlands about the treatment of these women, the neglect during the misdiagnosis and the neglect during the treatment that they are now receiving and hearing her daughter wonder what they in Dublin’ are doing, I have to wonder myself. What are the HSE doing? Complete incompetence by a major organisation – where is the crisis management? All those consultants surrounding Brendan Drumm? Their communications strategy is chaos, many of the women who had their mammogram’s reviewed went through enough already and now they have to wait to see if they are one of the women to have a surgical review of ultrasounds etc. I can’t blame Mary Harney – yet. But I don’t know if I was one of the women involved would I feel so charitable. And the only way things are going to get done on this is if politics is played with it…because at the moment silence is leading to that shower of useless feckers playing with women’s lives and emotions. Harney needs to get in there – stop saying it’s the HSE managing it and get tough – she has the support of the public in dealing with the consultants – many non PD voters think she is on the right track there. Now she needs to shout stop before she is.

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Received in the inbox today – if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and living in Ireland please read on and click on the link below and complete the survey.

www.LGBTlives.ie

Having completed the survey myself today I can only recommend it in terms of the data it will collect to help develop services for the lgbt community in Ireland.

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All new and Shiny…. Irishelection.com gets more than a facelift. I bags an IE hoodie – when that bit is ready. But go enjoy the rest of it!!

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The report of Conall Devine, commissioned by the HSE, into the circumstances surrounding the handling of information on the conviction of Dr. Niall McElwee will be completed before the end of the year. (Terms of Reference here.)

Enquiries by this blog last week indicated that the publication of the report was not imminent. Today’s Athlone Advertiser reports that the HSE has denied that there is any delay and that completion is on time. Dr. McElwee (amongst others) continues to be in contact with this blogger highlighting issues of concern and interest. Readers may remember that Dr. McElwee has promised to submit a post for publication on Maman Poulet following completion of the report.

I’m looking forward to both the publication of the report and the commentary of Dr. McElwee and others on it’s contents.

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Oh about one hour and 25 minutes too late for the Thursday competition but as I said I’m not in the competition.

Anyway I know a few people I could give this to for Christmas. But I might be getting myself one of these.

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So bloggers all over Ireland are going doolally over a science week competition to win a Wii (that yoke you see on the telly with Ian Wright and his son and other celebrities standing up with a white stick device in their hand).

I’ve decided I don’t want to win a Wii – the titles we’ve been asked to blog about aren’t to my liking…

Hence I bring you my most hated invention from my childhood.

It drove me fucking mental. I have dyspraxia – I couldn’t do drawing, lego, meccano, shapes, jigsaws, sewing, and make and do kits brought me to tears within seconds. But I did like machines – and of course I’m a gadget addict now…But being able to use a machine when I was a child…sigh…

Anyway the Simon machine was huge at the time – but when I got one I couldn’t keep up with it and always lost when I managed to get anyone to play with. Simon could go shove himself….And it ate batteries… Actually there is a title for science week posts – tell us all the things you did to keep batteries going for the various toys you had.

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..You can’t get married in a tent but now other places that are accessible, open the public and have a fire safety certificate are ok. Ah yeah special thing this marriage lark.  Have to keep the gays away from it.

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Richard Delevan, business editor at the Sunday Tribune, sometime blogger and a bit of a general social media/tech evangelical type lost his job yesterday. He and I were never going to agree politically but he ‘got’ blogging and told other people about it and was a very entertaining speaker at last years Blogging the Election conference. I began reading his column shortly after his appointment and of course his recruitment of Mulley as a columnist actually had me and many others buying/reading the paper.

(Probably part of Tribune getting with the yoof or something – we keep being told about the Trib’s move to alternative parts of the Sunday reading market…though how they were meant to be doing that with such a crap website is the 4th Secret of Fatima! They do write a lot about blogs though including Maman Poulet – yesterday I got a mention - explains why all those green party members are reading me and beating their hearts or something.)

Anyway I hadn’t even got to fully digesting his column on gay marriage yesterday (and getting ready to send him the odd pink ribbon wrapped torpedo!) when I heard about the news.

On Sunday Richard wrote a story (republished on Dan’s blog as the Tribune site is down) pointing to some bloggers who had raised the issue of the auctioneer who could not sell his own house despite him telling all and sundry that was not a property crisis. Auctioneer is heavy advertiser with newspaper group who own Tribune. Do you smell anything yet??

Ken McDonald, the man who seems to be having difficulty in selling his house has spent a lot of time telling people to stop crying wolf about the Irish economy…Telling the Sunday Indo last March..

Why do we allow scaremongers and doomsayers with unfounded pessimism and unbridled negativity dictate our thinking and blunt consumer confidence? The Irish economy is the envy of the world. Job creation is phenomenal with more than 7,000 new jobs being created each month – despite the gloomy attention given to periodic job losses in some sectors.

Unemployment stands at 4.1%, the lowest in Europe; there are 750,000 more people in the workplace than a decade ago. We have revitalised cities and towns, a conveyor belt of entrepreneurial business people operating successfully on a world stage, a rich cultural and artistic heritage, a vibrant talented young population, rising by almost 100,000 per year, confident in their own and their country’s destiny. We should be celebrating our success on a daily basis. In any event, the Irish love affair with property will continue undaunted despite the knockers.

Well it took all of a few minutes for people to smell things when news emerged about the firing at the Turbine. Read all about it here, here, here and here. There is a lot of digging and speculating going on and whilst it’s alleged that it is not this story alone that has Richard without employment this morning, it would seem that there may have been difficulties present for some time from management with Richard’s analysis, the pointing of fingers at the great thing we should not speak about (ie. property bubble bursting and the shoot the naysayer crew) provided the management with their chance…Watch all those spaces, it could get interesting! The big shovels are out for a bit of digging!

Coincidentally on Sunday Gavin O’Reilly, group chief operating officer, Independent News & Media (part owner of the Tribune) was speaking at the Society of Editors conference in Manchester. Gavin (Sir Tony Junior) is also current president of the World Association of Newspapers and spends a lot of time going round the world saying that the sky is not falling in.

“I want to suggest that the future health of the newspaper industry has little to do with online per se. “In fact, our biggest challenge isn’t the latest new fangled technological application, it is consumer apathy.”

And how exactly would consumers become apathetic Mr. O’Reilly?

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The matter of same-sex partnerships came up for discussion in Seanad Eireann yesterday. David Norris was hurting like lots of other lesbians and gay men and he wasn’t afraid to let people know.

Senator David Norris: The principal point I wish to raise is the question of what occurred in the Dáil yesterday and its impact on our legislative programme. The Labour Party put forward its Civil Unions Bill. I experienced a sense of déjà vu and great sadness. It is now four years since I put on the Order Paper of this House the Civil Partnership Bill. Had the Government acted then to support what is a reasonable measure which does not claim marriage, we would now have this law enacted.

The spectre of unconstitutionality has been raised, which is rubbish. Nobody really believes it. That is a creation of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, or as I prefer to call it, the Department of discrimination. The discrimination is emanating from that Department and, unfortunately, we have a decent man, who is well on the way to becoming the Minister for discrimination, in violation of the position adopted in this House by a former Fianna Fáil Minister and Deputy, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. I recall her saying that she, as a Cabinet Minister, would require clear, cogent and factual reasons to introduce discrimination against a citizen.

I have listened to people in this House and in the other one compare the degree of recognition which I would get to somebody with a pet, to a couple of nuns and to a couple of elderly sisters. I repeat what I said yesterday that I am not prepared to accept a dog licence. I am not a second-class citizen, nor will I remain so.

An Cathaoirleach:Is the Senator calling for the introduction of the Bill?

Senator David Norris:I hold up a heavy weight of five folders each with individual sheets and each sheet containing an agonised plea to me about certain aspects of this Bill, especially about Irish citizens in relationships with non-EU citizens. I call on the Government to get off its backside and do something about it. I am not prepared to wait.

Will the Leader give Government time before Christmas to take the Civil Partnership Bill 2004 in my name? If we had done this in 2004, it could easily have been tested. There is a mechanism. We can refer a Bill to the Supreme Court. We are not concerned about constitutionality or protecting the family.

I greatly resent what the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said in the Dáil yesterday that the constitutional aspect involved a possible attack on the family. I say very clearly to all my colleagues in this House that granting me a minimum amount of decency, which almost every other country in Europe has granted, cannot be constituted as an attack on the family. How dare anyone say that to a decent upright citizen such as me and the many thousands of gay people who have lived in servitude for the past 60 years, of which the republican party should be thoroughly ashamed.

and later… Senator John Hanafin from Fianna Fáil made his views known (what’s rare is not wonderful!) – and the repartee began. (One can see what Norris has to endure from time to time from the other side of the house.)

Senator John Hanafin: I support the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Brian Lenihan, in his decision to rule out gay marriage because it is in conflict with the Constitution and I look forward to the civil partnership Bill. I am reminded of a story told about Sir Thomas More, whose son constantly asked him to do something about a man with whom he had a problem. Sir Thomas More asked his son whether his problem was to do with something against the law of man or the law of God. His son replied it was against the law of God and Sir Thomas More advised him to let God deal with it. However, Sir Thomas More was subsequently asked to recognise the marriage of Henry VIII and therein lies the difference. We are being asked to recognise gay marriage, something I am not prepared to do. What people do in their own homes is one thing; I may not agree with it but that is their own business—-

Senator David Norris: How very generous of Senator Hanafin.

An Cathaoirleach: Senator Hanafin without interruption.

Senator John Hanafin: However, when I am asked to call it a marriage, that is something I am not prepared to do.

Senator David Norris: Nobody cares what Senator Hanafin calls it.

An Cathaoirleach: I ask Senator Norris to respect other speakers. He has already made his contributio

Senator David Norris: I am tired of being insulted in this House and having the tissue of religion used hypocritically to put me in a second class place and I am not a second class citizen in this country and I will not be a second class citizen. That is rubbish from Senator Hanafin. On the few occasions he speaks it is to blackguard people like me.

There were other expressions of support for civil unions during the order of business including one from Eoghan Harris which spoke in favour or marriage and marriage rights being given to same-sex couples.

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