Ireland’s defence of children ‘not adequate’
THE COURT SYSTEM WAS EXPENSIVE & NOT FIT TO MEET THE NEEDS OF CHILDREN
Ireland’s needs to move its childcare proceedings away from a courts system and towards an inquiry system, according to Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan.
She said the adversarial court system was expensive and was not meeting the needs of children.
Ms Logan was responding to the report of the Child Death Review group into the deaths of 196 children either in State care or known to the HSE.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week radio programme, she said it was clear from this report and a multiplicity of other reports that there was an “absence of listening to children’s views”.
She pointed to the inquiry system that operates in Scotland as a way forward for childcare proceedings. She said the inquiry system operated around the needs of the child and family.
A system that operated in this way would be much more effective at meeting the needs of children and their families.
Ms Logan also highlighted the difficulties in accessing information. She said she had been unable to progress an investigation in 2008 about one of the children in the report because of resistance from the HSE. “The excuse that was proferred to me at the time was the restrictions on the in camera rule,” she said.
She was currently facing four legal challenges to investigations, not all at court level, which indicated “the operation of the in camera rule remains problematic, and as long as we allow that to continue the childcare system will remain as invisible as it has done until now”.
She said early school-leaving was one of the indicators, and there was a great possibility for teachers to play a role in child protection. “We should look to the integration of health and education” in the child care area, she said.
Taoiseach wants to back the creation of a Europe-wide banking union
A move towards the creation of an EU banking union and plans for a stimulus package to promote job creation will be backed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny at this week’s EU summit in Brussels, according to Government sources.
However, there is no expectation that a new deal on Ireland’s banking debt will emerge from the summit.
The Taoiseach will tomorrow inform the Dáil of his priorities going into the meeting that takes place against the background of the continuing euro zone crisis.
In a letter to other EU heads of government after the Irish people approved the fiscal treaty, Mr Kenny emphasised the need to address the crisis in the banking sector, which he said had become the major source of the loss of confidence in Europe’s banks.
“The solution is, in Ireland’s view, to accelerate moves to develop a joint response to the banking crisis in Europe,” he told his fellow EU leaders.
Mr Kenny is expected to press this view at the Brussels meeting on Thursday and Friday as he believes a banking union can be achieved very quickly if the political will exists in the 17 member states of the euro zone.
The Taoiseach has already told the Dáil he does not expect that progress towards fiscal union can take place at the same pace and he does not believe it can be achieved in the shorter term. His other priority at the meeting will be to back moves towards a stimulus package for the EU economy.
One of the difficulties he faces is that emerging proposals for a stimulus appear to be focused on transnational projects that would not have much impact on Ireland. The proposals relate to project bonds that will be financed by the European Investment Bank.
Up to €60 billion will be injected into investment projects, with the aim of getting spending of three times that amount through partnership with the private sector.
A focus on the high-tech sector and the green energy sector in draft proposals is welcome news for Ireland, but the Taoiseach will be seeking the maximum amount of flexibility in their application.
He is expected to stress the need to focus project bond investment in countries such as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain that are in EU programmes.
On the issue of the promissory note on banking debt, Mr Kenny has told the Dáil that it remains a priority, but he does not expect answers to emerge at the summit.
Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar said Ireland had to bring its budget into balance, irrespective of what happened in Europe. “That is nothing to do with Europe . . . It is something we have to do with ourselves,” he said.
Top World & European bankers got annual pay hikes of 12% despite financial crisis
Top World and European Bankers, including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, have enjoyed annual pay rises averaging almost 12 per cent,
Despite the widespread falls in profits and share prices, Financial Times research shows recently.
The news comes as concern on both sides of the Atlantic over chief executive pay levels has led to several high-profile investor revolts, including at Citi and Barclays, and as Europe’s leaders debate a cap on bank bonuses.
The analysis by Equilar, a US research group, of pay awarded to 15 bank chiefs shows they received an average 11.9 per cent pay rise last year to an average $12.8 million (€10.2 million), the second rise in a row. But the pace of growth has slowed.
Bankers such as Brian Moynihan at Bank of America, Mr Pandit and Mr Dimon enjoyed the largest gains. Mr Dimon, whose reputation as one of the best managers in banking has been hit by a $2 billion trading loss in a supposedly safe division of JP Morgan, topped the list for the second year in succession with a $23.1 million pay package that was 11 per cent higher.
The Equilar analysis added up base salaries, cash bonuses and certain other benefits. It also included option and stock awards granted in 2011, some of which rewarded performance in previous years. It shows that fixed salaries continue to rise while variable cash payments are sinking as regulators clamp down on bonuses. But average stock and option awards rose 22 per cent.
“Regulators try to prevent banks from taking the outsize risks that led to the financial crisis. But the problem is that shareholders still like outsize returns,” said Albert Laverge, Egon Zehnder’s global investment banking practice head.
Mr Pandit’s pay rose to $14.9 million after the $1 salary he took in the previous two years. He had pledged restraint until the bank returned to profitability, which it did in 2010.
His pay package, which ranks in the middle of the FT survey, sparked an investor revolt at Citigroup’s annual meeting in April which, in turn, triggered a shareholder uprising against executive pay levels in Europe and the US.
In Britain, Bob Diamond at Barclays came second in the survey with a $20.1 million pay package that was inflated by a £5.75 million (€7.13 million) tax bill that was paid by the bank.
Science Film ‘A girl thing’ video is branded as sexist & offensive
A film using images of lipstick, killer heels and a handsome male laboratory worker to encourage women to pursue science careers has been condemned as sexist and demeaning.
The film, published by the European Commission, describes science as a “Girl thing”, and combines generic pictures of beakers and words like “hydrogen” with pictures of skinny models wearing designer sunglasses.
But its pink background, lipstick-style logo and techno music soundtrack appeared to have missed the mark with viewers who branded it as “offensive” and “insulting”.
Web users viewing the minute-long video online were so shocked by its content that an EC spokesman was forced to deny it was a joke, insisting that the commission “doesn’t really do irony”.
Others observed that the “dream jobs” section of the campaign’s websitedid not venture a single suggestion, instead inviting readers to “come back soon”.
The video went viral on Friday after being released on Thursday as part of a series of films listed under the “Science: it’s a girl thing!”
While the campaign’s other films had drawn praise for featuring interesting and intelligent women discussing their careers in scientific research, the video took a different approach featuring three models giggling and blowing kisses against a bright neon backdrop.
Viewers said it contained no scientific content whatsoever, save for a handful of images of beakers, test tubes and formulas interspersed with pictures of lipstick and nail varnish.
At the time of writing the video was “liked” by 51 people and “disliked” by 1,779 people on YouTube.
Victoria Herridge, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, said the video undermined the good work of the other films released by the campaign.
She told the Telegraph: “I find it offensive on two levels, not just the lack of proper representation of what it means to be a scientist but also the single, generic message that it seems to put across.
“It is almost beyond parody. [It includes] all the things we worry about with gender stereotyping and body image these days. You could not make it up.”
Using the Twitter hashtag #sciencegirlthing, male and female scientists and other web users took to the website to register their disgust.
Dr Petra Boynton, a social psychologist at University College London, wrote: “For the love of all things holy what is this crap?
“The whole ‘we need more women in science’ argument needs a critical lens, but this nonsense is really not helping.”
Lisa-Marie Mayne, a postgraduate student, added: “As a woman of science and working in a lab where women outnumber men I find this garish, insulting and incredibly demeaning.”
Michael Jennings, the EC’s science spokesman, wrote on Twitter: “[The] Commission doesn’t really do irony. Hope was to get young people onto [the] site. That seems to be happening!”
He later added: “Lots of comments on science-girl-thing video. 45 seconds of fun for launch to grab attention. Not central to main campaign.”
The “do not touch” Microsoft Surface touch tablets
The Microsoft Surface tablets look impressive, but only the touch experience counts.
The recent Microsoft Surface event where the folks from Redmond unveiled the first PC hardware to be produced directly by the firm impressed a lot of people. I count myself in that group, and I quickly realized I am the perfect target for the new Windows RT tablet.
Some of the reaction to the press event has been pretty negative given that Microsoft would not let attendees actually touch the tablets. Oh sure, some got to physically touch the demo units, but no one was allowed to actually use the things. Not the fancy keyboard covers either, which makes all impressions given of them useless.
It’s understandable that Microsoft is being careful with the impressions these early version tablets give the public. The approach is standard for not-yet-released hardware for some companies. The problem with that approach is it doesn’t speak very highly of what Microsoft feels about this new ground-breaking hardware.
The iPad proved to me that you have to use one to fully appreciate the fluid touch experience. Sexy hardware design aside, there have been too many touch tablets that have failed the user experience test in my book. The Microsoft Surface looks nice, but until folks get up close and personal that isn’t an indicator of how good they will be as tablets.
I can’t help but draw parallels between the refusal of Microsoft to let any press actually use the Surface at the big event to the HP TouchPad soiree held last year in San Francisco. I attended that event and like Microsoft more recently, HP would not let anybody hold a TouchPad and use it.
We now know that HP was trying to keep folks from discovering how unready for prime time the webOS system was at that time. The subsequent cold launch of the TouchPad led HP to cancel the entire webOS product line in just 45 days. HP knew something that attendees of the press event earlier that year didn’t, that the product wasn’t ready for the real world.
Let’s hope that’s not the case with Windows 8/RT and the Surface Tablets. They look so nice and have tremendous potential, but until I can use one that doesn’t mean much. After all, the only person at the Microsoft Surface event who tried to use one had it crash during the demo.
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