(Original and really interesting article on the new found love of the arts from the Political classes and business tycoons here. )

]]> http://www.mamanpoulet.com/dermot-desmonds-cultural-odyssey/feed/ 2 http://www.mamanpoulet.com/senator-dearey-and-the-poor-paying/ http://www.mamanpoulet.com/senator-dearey-and-the-poor-paying/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:01:33 +0000 Maman Poulet http://www.mamanpoulet.com/?p=4460 The Order of Business in the Seanad brings up all sorts of kites to be flown by Senators checking in for their part time job which attracts the payment of an amount many times over the national minimum wage.

Today Green Party appointed Senator Mark Dearey joined some of his kin in the SME sector calling for new employees to be able to negotiate their salaries below the minimum wage for the period of a year.

I call for a debate on the national minimum wage. I do not refer to the amount per se but to the fact that it is acting as a barrier to employment creation for a cohort of those seeking jobs.

The last increase in the minimum wage was on 1 July 2007 when it went from €8.30 to €8.65, a 35 cent increase. While that may not seem much, for every 100 hours of employment an employer provides, it is a €35 increase, and many small employers are providing 200 to 300 hours a week. One can do the sums to round that up to approximately €5,000 per year which this 35 cent will cost an average retailer, small business, pub or otherwise.

It is a competitiveness issue but it is also a case where employers are deciding not to employ and to run their businesses on the basis of providing a minimal service level to customers because they simply cannot afford to provide a full service. If employers were free to negotiate with prospective employees around rates below the national minimum wage, it could bring a very large number of new people into the workforce.

Obviously, in these negotiations such people would need to be protected by employment regulation orders and registered employment agreements if it is within a sector that is recognised by the sectoral agreements currently in place. With some consideration and sufficient protection given to those seeking employment, an arrangement could be entered into whereby, for a limited period of perhaps a year, people could be brought into the workforce at a rate below the national minimum wage, obviously with a view to their being on the minimum wage of €8.65 an hour within a given period. This would remove a significant barrier, act as an employment generator and give a huge boost to competitiveness for many employers who currently provide a sub-optimal level of service to their customers.

I wonder how many people would do Mark Dearey’s job for an initial period of a year for less than his salary, if the cap fits Senator?

Yesterday The Poor Can’t Pay launched two video’s concerning the effects of cuts on the low paid, older people and people with disabilities.

In Mark Dearey’s world it seems that the poor will not only pay they will be expected to undercut each 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.

Well Jim was back today to tell Matt Cooper he was right and the world is imploding – and we’ll end up with a world government, world currency and some sort of global domination and control freakery. You can listen to it here.

Now this interview was only one part of my audio feast today because as I slumbered this morning I happened to wake up to the Northside tones of one Royston Brady on Newstalk with Ger and Claire. (No sign of Ivan yet thank goddess, Ger Gilroy is bravely battling on – more about eh, Ivan, eh soon!)

Now if you think a Corr Brother is a bit off the wall well a Brady Brother is not too far behind if you listen to this assessment (file embedded below). McCreevy is wanted back for a start, and Royston likes New Labour (whoever they were) if Fianna Fáil won’t have him back. (I noted that Ger or Claire tweeted that Royston was being very indiscreet off air – he continued on air in such a manner also. Actually I wonder if Royston is looking to be the tabloid Noel Whelan!)

On Saturday night’s TV show during a cooking piece with St. Nevin Maguire of all people, Ryan picked up two bags of icing, one white and one brown and laddishly squeezed them going ‘Barack Obama – John McCain wahay….’ Wtf was that all about?

Yes Ryan we know that Obama is black and McCain is white – do you need to make a joke (and a really crass one at that!) about it?

You can watch it all here - (Click on the Saturday 25th October piece featuring Nevin Maguire) the piece starts about 8:10 in if you don’t want to hear all about Nevin’s marriage proposal and his fawning over Mary McAleese.

Add to this a completely pointless piece on Today with Pat Kenny yesterday morning regarding what would happen if a presidential nominee died before the inauguration. I kid you not… RTE seem to be on death threat execution watch.

To recap briefly – Commuters and pedestrians have noted the dangers presented by the signage and many others have commented on the deal that was done, the cityscape that was sold and the execution of the project by the advertising company and their agents.

I realise I’m late to the party but I had noted the arrival of the signs when I came back from holiday and had the phone all geared up to take a pic/video or two when I came across one that would cause me and the mothership a problem or 20. (Rumours that I was planning to ram raid them in Henry St. are greatly exaggerated… well maybe!)

I was wondering how long it would take blind and visually impaired people to speak up – and now they have – cane users in particular face huge problems as their canes will go under the signs as the bases are not solid and they will walk straight into them.

Dublin City Council are again assessing things. At this stage in the whole debacle Cllr Daithi Doolan should be hanging his head in shame as chairperson of the committee responsible as should his colleagues!

All those signs for a few hundred bikes that only able bodied people (including the muppets who nick them) are going to be able to use and oh Cllr. Doolan was spouting some rubbish about controlling the presence of advertising in the city on Liveline last week like some sort of born again urban connoiseur. Tiocfaidh ár Gaudi .

(Hat/tip to my sister for the latest ska! She thought I might have an opinion! Cough…)

Why when responding to the announcement of a campaign to encourage people (of all genders) to campaign for women’s health care and in particular access to better breast care services do some of the lads pop up with the oh so funny
‘So….. www.twoballsandavote.com, anyone? or how about www.oneballandtheremovalofvotingrights.com ?’

Maybe because nobody has yet got off his hairy arse to do it. (I don’t have much experience of men’s arses to know if they are hairy or not…forgive me…)

Or perhaps if it were prostrate cancer screenings that were being misread, delayed, mismanaged and ignored then we would see more immediate action. Or infact those screenings aren’t mismanaged and indeed most of men’s health issues are managed well because those at the highest levels of medical management in this country are wait for it …. men. (I do try not to believe that last point – but it’s very difficult to be dissuaded when you experience the health service on a regular basis!) By the way the blood test for prostrate cancer has been available for years…the one for some forms of breast cancer is only now being developed.

Someone else posted a comment elsewhere about men’s fatality from cancer being higher – if this is true then yes we should all be doing something about it – like making sure men go to the doctor and do something proactive about their health. Women trying to be proactive about their health are getting fucked over in this country – that’s a scandal. (Other scandals involving women’s health in recent memory, Hepatitis C, Neary in Drogheda.)

But actually lads you don’t seem to see the fact that by campaigning for better cancer services for women that everybody would benefit by making sure that the roll out of the National Cancer Strategy was properly done.

And of course not all men are like the fine specimens I mention above – Squid gets it, as does Conor, Cian, Damien, Rick, etc.

Get your mouses clicking, sign the petition, send emails to your friends, facebook it, tell your mothers, fathers, brothers, best friends. Tell the Government and the HSE to stop stuffing it up for everybody.

For those of you who are not light sensitive or allergic to UVA rays may not know that CFL bulbs and other forms on non-incandescent lighting cause extreme difficulties for those with lupus, forms of eczema, sjorgens disease, dermatitis, epilepsy etc.

Personally I have no low energy bulbs in my home, I have also avoided a lot of other forms of lighting because I can’t cope in brightly lit or luminous conditions. I have had problems with this since my teens and the lights in the classroom used to cause me huge difficulties. Teaching also brought it’s problems with me sitting in the dark if I wanted to retain my concentration – the students probably thought I was a vampire.

As it is with incandescent bulbs I sit in the dark in my office a lot and only use lamps or candles at home. Low energy bulbs and the banning of the ‘old sort’ is going to cause me a lot of discomfort in terms of my sight and concentration but it’s minor in comparison to the skin rashes and other painful blistering and outbreaks that other will contend with from the UV rays emitted. I fear that lightbulbs are going to be added onto the prescription list along with the pills and potions.

I wonder how much consultation John ‘lights out’ Gormley will being doing with all the groups effected? More here on the British campaign to raise awareness of how environmental concerns harms those with long term medical conditions. I see Joanna Tuffy from Labour has thought about those with various medical conditions who will be affected. Today she called the Minister ‘Google Gormley‘ (I prefer ‘Lights Out’ myself) – but when he tells people to look up the internet for advice on how to dispose of the dam things he sounds so like the junior minister who talked about the emergency plans and the iodine tablets on Marian Finucane show and didn’t have a breeze about what he was talking about.

For the moment I cannot but agree with Philip Scott in his thoughts on the Great Green Gaff…(his wife has migraines, another condition affected by these so called green saviours)

stock up on as many incandescent bulbs as you can before these dimwits cast yet further gloom across the world.

And, at least incandescent light bulbs have the unusual property of actually illuminating a room.

]]> http://www.mamanpoulet.com/john-lights-out-gormley-is-planning-on-making-me-ill/feed/ 9 http://www.mamanpoulet.com/the-dublin-waterford-train-and-people-who-think-they-have-a-right-to-a-seat-because-they-paid-for-it/ http://www.mamanpoulet.com/the-dublin-waterford-train-and-people-who-think-they-have-a-right-to-a-seat-because-they-paid-for-it/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:31:24 +0000 Maman Poulet http://www.mamanpoulet.com/?p=249 I get more than a few visits to the blog – Google is kind to me – lots of google searches for Steve Staunton, Niall McElwee, more recently People in Need land here. This morning a commuter from yesterdays Dublin-Waterford 4.25pm train searched visited and went to the post on signage for people with disabilities on trains. I felt her comment deserves a post of its own to remind us of some of the issues (and absolute wankers) facing those who need a seat on a train.

Thanks for visiting Fionnuala, and thanks for doing what you did on the train yesterday – pity you had to!

I have witnessed something obscenely rude and ignorant on the train yesterday evening.

The 4.25pm train from Dublin to Waterford.
It was very busy (as usual) and there were many people standing, beside me were a very elderly couple, the gentleman had a walking stick and the lady with him was quite frail looking (I later found out that they were both in their nineties!!!) and they were standing while young people all around them could see them and were sitting in seats.

I felt very strongly about this (I had no seat either but I am only 27 years of age and able-bodied so I was well able to stand – not very comfortable but it wasnt going to be a problem for me)
I went to the top of the carriage and in a polite manner asked if there was anyone who was willing to give their seats to this needy couple.

I was met with silence – until a young man said that he would put his seven year old son on his lap and give his son’s seat willingly, I thanked him for this and the elderly gentleman was told by his wife to take the seat (as he had a walking stick)
The train continued on and the elderly lady was still standing, eventually a person was getting off the train and a seat became vacant, I brought the old lady down to the seat and she was delighted as she said that she had been feeling rather unwell and faint due to the long time she had spent standing.
I asked a gentleman in the seat next to it if he could move into the vacant window seat as I didnt think that the elderly lady was going to be able to manouvere herself in past him.

I was met with a glare and then a torrent of the following:

“I have paid for this seat (not reserved)and I think that you have victimised the people in this carriage�
I said to the man (in his thirties and able-bodied) that I thought he was a disgrace, he could see how frail and ill the lady was and he should be ashamed of himself!
He did not agree however and continued to argue his point that I should have done nothing and left it as it was!!!!

To be honest I felt like giving him an absolute torrent of abuse but I held my tongue as the lady was going to get what she needed albeit grudgingly.

The man got off at the next stop and while passing me by (I am still standing at this stage and called me a dogooder!)

I mean for god’s sake this couples need was obvious, glaringly obvious!
What is wrong with people? This couple could easily have been his parents or grandparents!!!

Seriously disheartened by this.

Fionnuala.