Donie's Irish daily news BLOG

G20 Ministers meet as OECD has tax loopholes in its sights

 

The OECD has proposed a rethink of the rules on taxing multi-nationals, taking aim at loopholes used by Apple and Google, as G20 finance ministers stress the need to create jobs.

Discussed in Moscow yesterday, the plan comes amid growing unease about the sort of tax avoidance measures that are part of the tax codes of countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands and common in other western countries.

Finance ministers and central bankers gathering in the Russian capital were otherwise focused on charting a course towards global economic recovery, and seeking to calm financial markets worried about the impact of stimulus programmes.

The G20, a forum that took the lead in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, now faces a multi-speed global economy in which only the US appears to be nearing a self-sustaining recovery.

China is suffering a slowdown amid doubts over the stability of its financial system; Japan has only recently embarked on a radical fiscal and monetary experiment; and Europe’s economy is more stop than go.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke‘s guidance in May that the Fed may start to wind down its $85bn in monthly bond purchases – intended to ease the flow of credit to the economy – triggered a steep sell-off in stocks and bonds and a flight to the dollar.

Investors were calmed by dovish testimony to Congress this week by Mr Bernanke, who is not coming to Moscow. Yet emerging markets – especially those that depend on commodities or have external deficits – have under-performed.

G20 labour ministers, who met on Thursday, held a joint session yesterday with finance ministers, putting the jobs crisis in Europe at the centre of the debate.

“Getting people back to work must be top of the agenda,” US TreasurySecretary Jack Lew wrote in an article for the ‘Financial Times’. “In many parts of the world, such as Europe, growth is too weak to drive job creation.”

Mr Lew also urged China to speed reforms towards demand-led growth. Other G20 nations, led by Japan, are seeking greater clarity from China on how strains in its ‘shadow’ banking system will play out.

EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor shared Mr Lew’s prescription for recovery, saying investment in jobs was vital for maintaining social peace and emerging from years of austerity.

Russia, the first big emerging nation to host the annual presidency of the G20, is in an awkward spot following the flight of former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to Moscow.

G20 delegates arriving at Sheremetyevo airport may not have bumped into Snowden, but they ran into a protest over the jailing on Thursday of a Russian opposition politician.

Go-Safe Ireland's speed-van firm makes profits of €50,000 per week

 

The Go-Safe Irish company that operates the army of speed-camera vans across the country made profits of almost €50,000 a week last year after detecting a speeding motorist every hour.

The so-called Go Safe consortium secured the €80m Garda Siochana contract to operate the speed-camera vans in 2009 and the latest accounts show that the firm recorded operating profits of €3.12m in the 15 months to the end of March 31, or an average of €48,001 per week.

While Go Safe is now making big money, it has still to repay significant start-up costs. It can also point to a fall in road deaths. The number of road deaths dropped to record lows with 186 deaths in 2011 and 162 deaths in 2012.

The consortium is led by Kerry-born businessman Xavier McAuliffe who made his first fortune in the Spectra group, which developed camera films, before he branched out into hotels in Kilkenny.

On average, the Go Safe vans detect one speeding motorist an hour, working out at 72,000 detections every year.

The consortium is contracted to provide 6,000 hours per month.

The Go Safe cameras operate on sections of road that have a history of collisions and where speed was a contributory factor in those incidents.

The areas where they operate are available on the garda website.

The operating profit followed an operating loss of €2.5m in 2011 thanks to high start-up costs. The firm’s accumulated loss last year stood at €836,769.

A spokesman for the firm said yesterday: “We are cautiously optimistic. While some costs have increased, the financial performance of the company is generally in line with expectation.”

Go Safe has a five-year contract. “As there is still over two years to run on the contract, we continue to meet our financial targets and expect to eliminate retained losses within the next 12 months,” the spokesman added.

The company has debts of €10.6m linked to the start-up, which must also be paid.

The firm’s staff costs during the period increased to €3.65m, which meets salaries for 93 employees. Management services totalled €5.3m.

IMPROVEMENT

The accounts disclose that €586,281 was charged relating to the secondment of directors Ivor Browne McAuliffe and Donal Lucey from McAuliffe Investments, a firm controlled by Xavier McAuliffe.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter recently praised the cameras in the Dail, telling TDs that they led to better driving.

“The results of speed surveys carried out in the two years from January 2011 to January 2013 show there has been a sustained improvement in driver behaviour and increased compliance with the limits in most speed enforcement zones, which is very welcome.”

The cameras also free up Gardai to do other work, Mr Shatter added.

“I am, of course, determined that the resources of An Garda Siochana are used in the most efficient and effective way possible,” he added.

Taoiseach Kenny predicts upcoming Irish budget will be “last difficult budget”

 

The IMF “entitled to their viewpoint” on budgetary approach, says Kenny
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the upcoming budget should be “the last of the difficult budgets” and expressed hope that the economic situation would improve next year.

“This is not going to be an easy budget…we would hope that this will be the last difficult budget. Whatever way you approach it, it’s not going to be easy after the difficult decisions that have been taken in the previous two budgets.

“Hopefully, if we can keep our economy on track here, this should be the last of the difficult budgets. Hopefully things will improve after that.”

Mr Kenny said IMF spokespeople were “entitled to their viewpoint” when he was asked about their comments this week that the Government should stick with its plan for a €3.1 billion adjustment in the October budget.

Craig Beaumont, head of the IMF’s mission here, said on Thursday the organisation “would attach priority to the amount of adjustment” rather than percentage deficit target that Ireland is aiming to hit.

Mr Kenny said: “Our objective is to have our deficit below 3 per cent by 2015 and that obviously depends upon how you adjust budgets. Clearly the IMF are entitled to their viewpoint, but we are set on achieving the target of a deficit below 3 per cent by 2015.”

Mr Kenny was speaking after the launch of a progress report on the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs . The report conceded that 20 of the planned measures had not been delivered on schedule.

Mr Kenny said a “pretty hefty” legislative period and the timing of the EU presidency had been factors.

Suicide in Ireland still bears a sadly lethal stigma despite our more openness talking about it

 

CARL O’BRIEN’S SERIES, “AFTER THE ASYLUM”, RAISES IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW BEST TO SUPPORT INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE MENTAL HEALTH DIFFICULTIES, BUT IT ALSO HIGHLIGHTS HOW MUCH STIGMA STILL EXISTS.

That stigma is in no small part responsible for the under-funding of mental health services even during our so-called Celtic Tiger era, and now they are in an even worse state.

During the week, consultant psychiatrist and clinical director of Cluain Mhuire Community services Dr Siobhán Barry likened our community mental health services to Jenga – the game where players pull blocks from a wooden tower. She said that so many blocks had been pulled from community mental health that it seemed likely the next one would cause the system to collapse completely.

It is likely that suicide-prevention services will be one of the casualties of cutbacks, at a time when people are experiencing significant new stresses that contribute to the complex factors that sometimes trigger suicide.

Naive notion of openness
However, seeking to remove stigma must be carefully handled. For example, we have the naive idea that by talking about suicide we have somehow reduced the stigma surrounding mental illness. If only.

It seems to me that instead of normalising help-seeking behaviour, suicide has become part of a repertoire of possible responses in a way that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago.

Furthermore, See Change, a partnership of 74 Irish organisations working to change attitudes to mental health problems, published research that indicates Irish people are becoming more fearful, not less, about revealing a mental health difficulty.

In 2010, half of those surveyed by See Change would not want others to know about their mental health problem, but in 2012, it had risen to 56 per cent.

Similarly, the figures for those who would delay seeking treatment for fear of someone else knowing, rose from 18 per cent to 28 per cent, while those who would hide a mental health issue from friends rose from 32 per cent to 41 per cent.

Erving Goffman wrote a classic work in 1963, Stigma: Notes on Management of Spoiled Identity. It talks about stigma in terms of a “discredited person facing an unaccepting world”.

Sadly, despite more enlightened times, it is still too often true today. For example, take medication. It is only a part, yet for some people a vital part, of the treatment of mental illness.

However, needing to take medication to control a condition is perfectly acceptable if you have diabetes or asthma, but often stigmatised if you “only” suffer from mental health difficulties .

Similarly, a chronic condition like a bad back is likely to receive support and interest, whereas admitting to depression often provokes embarrassment and avoidance.

Eating walnuts every day may protect against prostate cancer

  

Men, if you’re worried about getting prostate cancer; consider eating a modest amount of walnuts every day.

New research from the School of Medicine at the University of Texas, indicates that walnuts may be good for men who wish to protect themselves from prostate cancer.

Researchers injected immune-deficient mice with human prostate cancer cells. Within three to four weeks, tumours typically started to grow in a large number of these mice. The study asked whether a walnut-enriched diet versus a walnut- free diet could be associated with reduced cancer formation.

Three out of sixteen mice (18%) eating the walnut-enriched diet developed prostate tumours, compared with fourteen out of thirty-two mice (44%) on the non-walnut controlled diet.

Also of note, the final average tumour size in the walnut-fed animals was roughly one-fourth the average size of the prostate tumours, that developed in the mice eating the controlled diet.

“We found the results to be stunning – because there were so few tumours in the animals consuming the walnuts, and these tumours grew much more slowly than in the other animals,” said the study’s senior author Russel Reiter, Ph.D., Professor of Cellular and Structural Biology at the University. “We were absolutely surprised by how highly effective the walnut diet was in terms of inhibition of human prostate cancer.”

The mice consumed a diet typically used in animal studies, except with the addition of a small amount of walnuts pulverised into a fine powder to prevent the rodents from only eating the walnuts. “The walnut portion was not a large percentage of the diet,” Dr. Reiter said. “It was the equivalent to a human eating about two ounces, or two handfuls, a day, which is not a lot of walnuts.”

Study co-author W. Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University, published a study in 2011 that showed fewer and smaller tumours among walnut-fed mice injected with human breast cancer cells.

“The data, to date, suggests that using walnuts on a regular basis in the diet may be beneficial to defer, prevent or delay some types of cancer, including breast and prostate,” Dr. Reiter said.

NASA urges first inter-planetary science research photobomb

     

Two NASA spacecraft are about to take pictures of the Earth for planetary science research, and the US space agency is encouraging people worldwide to jump into the shot.

“Consider it the first interplanetary photobomb,” NASA said.

The first chance is on Friday, July 19, from 21:27 to 21:47 GMT, when the Cassini spacecraft takes a picture of Saturn as it is backlit by the sun.

The Cassini Earth portrait is part of a wider effort to see patterns in Saturn’s dusty rings.

But no need to fix your hair or makeup too much.

Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away when it takes the pictures. And only North America will be in daylight for the shoot.

“While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini’s vantage point…the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“We hope you’ll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity.”

The second photo op will include all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia as another spacecraft captures glimpses of Earth in its mission to search for natural satellites around Mercury.

Images will be taken by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft on July 19 and 20 at 11:49, 12:38 and 13:41 GMT both days.

NASA said it will release pictures the two spacecraft take next week, possibly as early as Monday.

In the meantime, space enthusiasts are invited to share their shots on Facebook or on Twitter using the hashtag #waveatsaturn.