DayMaker

I fully intended to post a typically grumpy rant about some begrudging fecker from the Indo letters page.

BUT then I heard this – Nina Simone singing ‘Here Comes The Sun’.

And now I don’t really feel like grumpy is an option.

Beautiful.

Same rant, same reason…

This story about a woman being awarded compensation for the frankly shameful treatment of her for the sin of ‘getting pregnant while employed’ is at the same time heartening and stunningly awful.

On the one hand, it is of course good to see a bit of justice being done.

Two things really scare me, though.

The first is that this is news : it shouldn’t be news. It should happen every time an employer decides the propagation of our species is grounds for discrimination.

But the bigger issue I have here is that a company as big and well-known as MBNA thought this was okay. Thought they’d get away with it. Thought their treatment of the woman in question was reasonable. Not that it would be better in a smaller company, but surely a company big enough to have a PR and a HR department should have nice american-style policies on this kind of thing. It’s called covering your ass.

The worst part of all is that there are still plenty of people who will read that story today and think she shouldn’t be complaining, and sure wasn’t she grand with her baby and her kitchen sink.

I know the argument is that men who don’t take maternity leave should be rewarded accordingly for the extra days they may have worked by, for instance, being promoted – or in this case avoiding demotion. But that argument is founded on the assumption that women have the equal ability to choose not to go on that maternity leave, or in other words the equal ability to choose not to have the baby. And as I’m sure I’ve said a thousand times, that simply is not the case. If women stop having babies, the human race ends. It really is that simple.

I wonder if, at any point in my lifetime, the proverbial ‘establishment’ will take genuine steps towards acknowledging that fact.

What century are we living in?

Today is World Contraception Day.

And 56% of Irish people have sex with a new partner for the first time without contraception.

…

On a totally unrelated note, STIs in Ireland increased threefold between 1995 and 2006, and the number keeps increasing.

…

If only there was some simple solution. Some way of educating the population about the importance of contraception and the right way to use it. Some avenue for getting that kind of basic information to every Irish citizen before they become sexually active.

If only, eh?

Follow up…

Two stories in today’s times are a little bit relevant to the last post -

One on the relationship between bloggers and (real?) journalists.

The other on the Sony e(VIL)Reader.

When old media and new media clash… horribly…

This morning has to be one of the best examples I’ve seen in a while of “what happens when the papers have to press print and the story changes before the ink is dry”.

The talks (or is it a debate?) about a potential bailout of the US economy that took place yesterday seemed to be going pretty well. So much so that we got the following headlines

Irish Times: White House and Congress move closer to rescue package

Irish Independent: Relief as $700bn rescue package hammered out

International Herald Tribune: Deal reached on U.S. rescue plan

A few hours later, and on the websites of those very papers, we now have:

Irish Times: Bailout talks ‘deadlocked’ after day of lengthy talks

Irish Indepenent: US politicians fail to agree on $700 bn bailout

International Herald Tribune: U.S. bailout plan stalls after day of talks

It’s particularly interesting that the Herald Tribune’s front and centre headline article from the print edition is no longer available online. Is this because they had more time to deal with it, or because of the different way they use their web presence?

We’ve become so used to news being both instant and constant that on days like today it’s harder than ever to be patient with the papers. Morning radio slots reviewing the papers (like today’s slot on Morning Ireland) can’t help but draw attention to the disparity between the news as they are reporting it, and the headlines they are then reading out which is no longer ‘new’.

There’s no doubt but that newspapers – in the literal, ‘paper’ sense – are in danger for this very reason. The more access we have to online (and other) news sources, the less able they are to keep up. It reminds me a bit of a sci-fi movie (I think it was Minority Report? but am open to correction) where the paper was changing every two minutes because the news was. And the ‘paper’ was actually some crazy e-Ink style contraption.

The only solution, at least for the time being, would seem to be moving physical newspapers away from any sense of immediacy and instead have them focus on comment and opinion – reflect the day’s news instead of trying to keep up with it.

[In this context, this (disheartening?) story from April seems particularly relevant.]

So what does that mean for the morning paper? The logical conclusion is that ultimately this kind of ‘reflective news’ would only work at the end of the day. So we pick up the paper on the way home from work to read on our 2 hour commute. The news has comfortably broken and washed over us, so now we have a bit of time to think about what it all means.

It’s all a bit misery-inducing if you ask me. Just as I don’t (want to?) believe for a second that real books can ever be replaced by hideous “reading devices“, I can’t fathom the idea of there not being any papers to pick up and flick through and read. I need pages to flick through, and yes, more often than not I want them to be cumbersome oversized ones. I want to hear the pages rustle and I want to struggle with bundling it all up neatly again so I can get to my crossword. I know I’m not the only one. In fact I know there are millions upon millions of us. But are we edging ever closer to extinction?

Yurk

I am painfully, painfully aware of the need to engage in hardcore plastication surgery with regards to my poor little blog’s dishevelled appearance. It’ll happen. Soon. I promise/hope.

Pairings: What were they thinking?

The fact that FG are calling a halt to the pairings system in the Dáil for the next few days is, amongst other things, fantastic. But mainly it draws attention to the fact that the system as it stands is, in many ways, a bit ludicrous.

The Sunday Independent published a piece last weekend about the level of absence from the Dáil of those who call themselves legislators but don’t show up for the Finance Bill. Following on from that, there was a discussion on the Moncrieff show on Monday about the nature of a TD’s work and how they (are meant to) balance constituency work versus time spent in the Dáil.

On the one hand, I honestly can’t see any excuse for casually being away from the Dáil on such a regular basis. For a start, it’s a three day week, and if you can’t get your constituency work done within the other four days then something is going horribly awry anyway. More importantly, TDs are elected to represent constituents in the Dáil. That’s actually where the ‘TD’ part of their name comes from? So arguing that they have to keep the locals happy so they get re-elected, while probably true, surely flies in the face of how the system is meant to work?

Of course there is a huge difference between how the system is meant to work versus how it works in practice. Like the fact that politicians should be ethical people who work hard on behalf of those they represent and are in it for the good of their country and not for the perks, pay-offs and cult of personality. It would be lovely to believe that that statement could apply to all of our public representatives. It would also be a very particular brand of deep-rooted naivety.

I understand that there are certain reasons for being away from the Dáil on a given day. For instance, Brian Cowen going to the UN. That seems like a good reason for him not to be around, in general. In the middle of the biggest financial crisis in 20 years? Maybe not so much. But why is it considered normal for the Taoiseach to routinely miss 33% of the Dáil’s working week? And why is it considered acceptable for the former Taoiseach, who last time I checked is still being paid a TDs wage as well as his various other payments (I refer of course to the state pensions etc, not the alleged brown envelopes), to stop showing up at all despite the fancy office.

Perhaps a bigger question is the role of County Councillors. If TDs can’t be in the Dáil because they have to stay home and look after their constituency – then what are County Councillors there for? Should the role of County Councillors be expanded, or does it simply need to be explained a bit better?

I suppose the real kicker is that even if the system was strictly one whereby the local TD worked in the Dáil on behalf of the constituency, and County Councillors focussed on local issues (?), voters would still insist they wanted to see the TD down around the local area refurbishing their parish pump. Which leaves us with the question of who is meant to write and ratify legislation. Civil servants? The one group of people in Ireland who seem to be actively and universally loathed?

I’m trying to avoid a 3,000 word essay on the basic flaws in our political system but I’m conscious of not doing this topic justice if I don’t. No win situation. Not unlike the lot of the average TD? …

Reasons to maintain anonymity

The (S)Indo letters pages over the weekend always seem to be worth reading. I can’t decide if it’s because the people writing in weren’t publishable in the Times page, or because frankly the Indo is much more likely to have published an article that will get somebody somewhere deeply angry.

This letter from a particularly angry French person caught my eye this morning and has kept me giggling all day for no apparent reason. Firstly it has to be said, fair play for not publishing your name as there may well have been a lynch mob gathering otherwise. As to the content, you really have to wonder – are we in fact universally disliked? Or is the writer a particularly bitter French person who wants to get the same reaction the Irish do when we go to America? Somehow I don’t think this is a “can’t we all be right” style situation. One of us is clearly deluding themselves…

Antibioticism

Two weeks and one particularly nasty bout of flu-ish-ness later, back I am: am I?

Yikes

Whatever the intention, this is not what could be described as a ‘useful’ headline.

Too many people will read the headline and ignore the bits about immigrants being stuck in the lower-end jobs and being significantly more likely to be discriminated against.

Can’t wait to see the tabloid front pages tomorrow.

Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.