Maman Poulet

Sniffle… Peninsula Ireland have appeared on Maman Poulet’s hall of shame before. Invariably they are described in the media as an employment law firm, one with a penchant for tabloidesque press releases, they never fail to get their guff covered in some paper or other.

‘Peninsula offers a full range of services covering health and safety, tax and employment law. These services provide bespoke assistance to you and are designed to allow you to concentrate on the day to day needs and priorities of your business.’

So every so often they do a few phone calls, release a press statement, and get air time spouting ‘rubbish’ from their ‘research’, while they try not to hawk their ’services’. The actual research statistics are never published for sociological analysis – just a press release full of noises to make bosses worry and fill pages of Metro and a column inch or two in the Irish Times.  (Journalists are not free from my ire here – stop fecking printing press releases and do some research of your own!)

This weeks press release is about Swine Flu. Seemingly 7 out of 10 employers think that employees are going to fake swine flu. Alan Price, Managing Director has given us the phrase Pandemic Panic and said

“The problem many employers face is that some members of their workforce will see Swine flu as a good excuse to take some time off, and this is where employers need to take action and be fair but firm.”

He advised investigating the matter thoroughly if you suspect employee sickness to be fraudulent and conducting back-to-work interviews, pointing out the impact the individual’s absence has had on the business in order to discourage further offending.

“There have been cases where an employee has stated they wouldn’t be coming in because someone in the office may be showing symptoms. This is unacceptable and employers are well within their rights to record this absence as unauthorised and take appropriate action. As much as employers should be understanding and careful, they do need to ensure they protect their bottom line.”

Can you imagine the team meetings in Peninsula HQ about the next PR/Panic initiative? – Next week they’ll be publishing research on the amount of time spent by employees skiving off to visit Ikea! They could of course publish research on the amount of time Peninsula’s own employees spend visiting blogs and leaving comments pretending to be ordinary punters but failing.

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It is the best way one could react to that departure speech on Sunday night. I watched it live and laughed my way through it reliving the memories of Campaign 08 and it’s delights.

Conan O’Brien asked William Shatner to do the honours in a re-enactment. (By the way I’m awaiting confirmation that Ex Governor Palin revisited Shannon Airport last month on her way to visit the Alaskan National Guard (and her son) in Kosovo – next time she’s en route to further her foreign policy experience she might let us know so we can really roll out the welcome mat!)

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It’s been nearly two months since he said he was going. Someone in Ballina wants him back! (I’ve been away and swamped workwise and this is very old news forgive me.)

Yes Bring Ganley Back is the first highlight of Maman Poulet’s Silly Season.  No comment from the (Ex) Chairman on the site and it’s campaign.  Maybe he’ll turn up shortly at a summer school near you!

(The post headline comes from The Jackson Five…It’s going to be that type of silly season)

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I’m on holiday at the moment so have not been able to follow the release of the Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes but have done a search of the impact of the proposed cuts on people with disabilities.

A quick comment…

Cuts to 2000 Special Needs Assistants means that many children with disabilities will either stay outside of mainstream education and return to segregated schools – which are very few in number (and remember that segregated classes in mainstream schools were scrapped in the last budget).

You could almost feel the glee with which reference was made to the postponement in the roll out of the Disability Act and needs assessment of people with disabilities and how costs could be made by rediverting resources elsewhere.

Cutting social welfare allowances was to be expected and we could see people with disabilities disappear even further from the workforce including community employment schemes as the report recommends that people with disabilities and others are not able to keep part of their social welfare allowances when taking jobs.  There is a cost to disability that is not included in social welfare or salaries, there is also the fact that many disabled people cannot work full time – that is all topped by not being able to get work in the first place due to discrimination. Those are the reasons additional allowances and retention of some social welfare allowances was developed. But we cant afford disabled people in this society according to An Bord Snip.

The current review of services provided to people with disabilities by the voluntary sector is already underway and if the same mindset is in place then the rights of people with disabilities will not be to the fore in the examination. It would be great if this review actually asked people with disabilities what they felt about the quality of the service they received and whether they were actually doing what they wanted to do rather than endless pottery and yoga and personal development courses, travelling in minibuses marked out as ambulances donated by local businesses and labelling us as other.

Finally I note that the report recommends that the disability ‘bits’ of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform are moved to the Department of Health and Children. The medical model returns and Dermot Ahern would only be delighted to be getting rid of anything to do with human rights in his Department.

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or something…

I have been wondering about how I’m going to write about Lisbon II.  Well while I continue wonder Lucinda Creighton has started the ball rolling on the spurious/less than obvious or sane reasons to vote yes or no to Lisbon. I’m sure between now and October 2 we’ll have many more.

“Deputy Lucinda Creighton, Fine Gael spokesperson on European Affairs, today called for a Yes vote on the Lisbon referendum to enable Ireland to work with our EU partners in the flight against gangland crime.

“Crime is a cross-border issue, and we need to pass the Lisbon Treaty to give EU governments the power to work together to fight crime. I have welcomed much of the Government’s recent legislation to deal with gangland crime but it can only work as part of a wider strategy, and as part of a European strategy. The Government can pass as many laws as it likes, but national legislation is limited by national borders.

Crime is now globalised. Money-laundering, arms-dealing and drug-smuggling don’t recognise borders. The Criminal Assets Bureau has done Trojan work but it can’t touch Spanish bank accounts. The Government has passed legislation to seriously curtail access to handguns within the State, but gangland criminals are free to fly over to practise their shooting in Central European firing ranges without a bother. Much of the cocaine and heroin trade in this country is controlled by Irish gangland criminals operating with impunity from Spain. We cannot tackle these problems alone.

“But because of the current voting arrangements, we cannot tackle these issues at EU level either. We have failed to implement the EU-US extradition and mutual legal assistance agreements. The European evidence warrant has also been stalled. We have failed in our task to step up cross-border co-operation and, in particular, combat terrorism and cross-border crime.

Is Lucinda going to propose sending Dermot Ahern to Brussels to be a commissioner to bring in the directives needed to protest us from non existent blasphemy, spying on emails and take away juries because more juries aren’t being intimidated but he says they are?

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I hear Today with Pat Kenny may be covering the views of lesbians and gay men on Bruno during tomorrow’s show.

I’ve not seen it and it would not be on my list of films to see this year. Milk and indeed the films shown during GAZE would be more my thing. I never even thought of Bruno as a film of gay interest despite the constant ads and features on the television recently – so have you seen it and what do you think? (Maman Poulet is a pop culture following failure obviously – Go read Glitzfrau for some more interesting pre-seeing the movie thoughts!)

CNN covered the issue of the gay community and Bruno over the weekend.

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A complaint is not a complaint if the complainer is shown not to be disadvantaged by it? Even if the issue is proven as being valid?

That’s what RTE have said in reply to a complaint to the Broadcasting Complaints Commissionmade by Councillor Kevin Humphreys about Gabriel Byrne’s promotion of Mannix Flynn’s candidacy for Dublin City Council on the Late Late Show in May.

Both Humphrey’s and Flynn were elected and so RTE believe that Cllr. Humphreys should drop his complaint. But they have said it was wrong that Gabriel Byrne was allowed to endorse his fellow actor’s campaign on the show.

Cllr. Humphreys says he is not dropping the complaint.

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The Swedish Social Democratic Party invited two leading bloggers from the USA to give a seminar on blogging at the Almedal political conference.

John Aravosis from Americablog and Jane Hamsher from the excellent FireDogLake were brought over to speak and the seminar was captured for Youtube. There is a lovely potted history of blogging in the USA from Jane near the start of it. The whole thing is about 90 minutes long and John gives a breakdown of where to find the highlights.

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• Video of Jane Hamsher’s and my blog seminar in Sweden last week (americablog.com)

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She writes to antagonise. Many of you are going to be extremely angry at reading her latest bit of rubbish. I could suggest that you not to bother with her. Or you could make her some Irish Stew. Or tell her something about children’s rights because she claims to be something of an expert.

She’ knows absolutely nothing about lesbian and gay life in this country or any country. Or indeed about ensuring that children’s rights are protected in same sex couple headed families.

And Rory. you’ve just got a whole new show out of this. I’ll be in the front row.

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