Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

One in five People killed on Irish roads as Pedestrian’s

  

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY IS THEME FOR UN GLOBAL ROAD SAFETY WEEK (MAY 6TH TO 12TH), AS FIGURES REVEAL THAT 37 PEDESTRIANS DIED ON ROADS IN NORTH AND SOUTH IN 2012.

More than 5,000 pedestrians are killed on the world’s roads each week. To date this year 15 pedestrians have died on roads in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar said: “People have really embraced outdoor activities like walking and cycling. It’s healthy, it’s enjoyable and it’s a great alternative to the car. However, pedestrians also need to take great care on the roads, as they are among the most vulnerable road users.

Mr Noel Brett, Chief Executive, Road Safety Authority added: “Last year, 28 people or one in five of all people killed on our roads was a pedestrian. While this is a reduction of 40% on the previous year, it is a reminder to us all that we cannot become complacent. Tragically 11 pedestrians have died on the south’s roads in 2013. Therefore, I would like to ask all road users to redouble their efforts to make our roads safer and to help ensure we have a fatality free week to mark UN Global Road Safety Week.”

The RSA is supporting UN Global Road Safety Week through a series of radio ads which will be aired on local and national radio stations. Visit facebook.com/RSAIreland for more details.

‘Big Brother Josephine Feehily‘ our software will find tax cheats, she says

  

The taxman is cracking down on tax cheats thanks to new ‘Big Brother’ computer software, Revenue Commissioners boss Josephine Feehily has revealed.

Ms Feehily told a Dail committee that tax officials can now trawl through reams of data, including bank accounts and mobile phone numbers, to spot cheats.

The trawl is currently focused on VAT but will be widened to income tax and other taxes next year.

Results could also be shared with the Department of Social Protection in 2014 to prevent welfare fraud.

Ms Feehily said a probe into specific sectors such as the the car industry to tackle EU-wide VAT abuses found 18 car traders here needed to be investigated more deeply. Two have already been prosecuted and one jailed.

Welfare: Turning to the property tax, Ms Feehily said Revenue planned to force PAYE workers evading the property tax to cough up within weeks of next month’s payment deadline. Revenue will begin deducting the property tax from PAYE workers’ pay cheques in July, she added.

People receiving occupational pensions will be next in the firing line followed by social welfare recipients.

The self-employed will be hit once they file annual returns in October and a surcharge could be applied. She said the tax office would make efforts to communicate with people before the tax is deducted.

About 80pc of all taxes are paid but Revenue says it expects compliance with the property tax to be higher.

Around 638,000 returns had been filed by yesterday morning or 40pc of the total figure. The deadline is three weeks away.

“We’re very pleased with this,” Ms Feehily told the Public Accounts Committee yesterday.

The fact that local authorities can raise or lower the property tax by as much as 15pc also got a lot of attention at the meeting. Local authorities can change the tax rate as early as 2015.

To collect the property tax, Revenue has been allocated a budget of €26m for 2013. Normally it is only allowed to spend 1pc of the overall value of a tax.

Since the Government estimates the property tax should generate around €500m a year, Revenue’s normal budget for this would be €5m a year.

However, it is permitted to bump this up to €10m for the first two years of the tax for start-up costs. It has already spent €9m this year, with postage a huge cost.

The HSE under the microscope for its expenditure and search for savings

   

PAUL MULHOLLAND REPORTS ON THE HSE’S RECENT APPEARANCE BEFORE THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

The HSE was recently before the Public Accounts Committee to discuss the Controller and Auditor General’s report into the Executive’s 2011 financial statements, and also provide an update on its current financial situation.

The HSE’s gross expenditure in 2011 amounted to €13.9 billion. The outturn was approximately four per cent below the 2010 gross expenditure level and eight per cent below peak expenditure in 2009.

An additional €148 million through a Supplementary Estimate was required at the end of the year to balance its budget.

A total of €58 million was required due to a shortfall in funding in 2011 arising from a lower than anticipated uptake in the early retirement and voluntary redundancy schemes.

Some two-thirds of the additional provision was for increased spending on medical card schemes and community services. The outturn for these services was €2.58 billion, which was 6.8 per cent above the original Estimate for the year. The provisional outturn for 2012 indicates that spending in these areas continued to run ahead of the Estimate provision year, ending approximately nine per cent on the Estimate provision, which was one of the main reasons a Supplementary Estimate, amounting to a net €360 million, was also required.

Director General Designate of the HSE, Mr Tony O’Brien, told the PAC that developing a robust and fit-for-purpose financial system is a priority for both the HSE and the Department of Health. The Ogden review was commissioned by the Department of Health in May 2012 and was completed in July 2012. On the basis of the review and predicted continued financial deficits, further work was commissioned last year, and a report was completed in September 2012.

“The report highlighted the need to take immediate action to improve the financial management systems in health,” according to Mr O’Brien.

“A key priority for me on my appointment in August 2012 was to stabilise HSE finances and to implement the actions outlined in the second review, the PA review, commissioned by the Department. The engagement of PA by the HSE is one of the first steps in the financial reform of the health service which is a central element of the overall reform programme.

This work is well under way and is due to be completed in the coming weeks and will lay the foundations for further financial reform. The appointment of a new chief financial officer to the HSE is also central to driving forward the changes needed to develop the finance function in the context of the wider health reform programme including: Money-follows-the-patient and universal health insurance. The selection process to fill this post is currently underway and is due to be completed shortly.”

Sinn Féin Deputy Mary Lou McDonald questioned Mr O’Brien about how the HSE will achieve the €721 million in savings earmarked for this year in light of the fact that the Executive already had a deficit of €13 million at the end of February.

“A big proportion of these savings is attributable to changes in the cost of providing service by way of workforce-related matters,” Mr O’Brien said.

“The substantial other component relates to changes in the cost of providing schemes, which are the product of changes in eligibility and co-payment issues with some reductions in costs, particularly under the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association, IPHA, agreement, and a number of changes that we are pushing forward, for example, in the medicines management programme, which is designed to increase the number of lower-cost drugs that are prescribed as a proportion of the total.”

Mr O’Brien added that the HSE, in fact, had an €18 million surplus at the end of March. The figure takes account of a €25 million underspend on the capital side and an overspend of €7 million on the revenue side. Mr O’Brien said that the improvement in the financial position is due to a number of measures related to the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS), which is earmarked to deliver €323 million  savings this year.

“In this regard, however, I must caution that many of the challenges which relate to the saving targets … by their nature are timed to have their impact in the latter stages of the year,” he said.

“Some of those are already having a positive impact but the great proportion of them are not scheduled to have had an impact in the first quarter.”

Mr O’Brien expressed some concern about the impasse on Croke 2, through which €150 million in savings are due to be made. A further €106 million has also been specified as being related to pay and flexibility arrangements under Croke Park 1.

“Clearly, while the health service has proved to be an effective environment in which to extract flexibility issues in recent years under Croke Park 1, obviously I have some concern that, in the current environment, we would need to be certain of the industrial relations environment and the Croke Park 2 environment in order to be absolutely certain of delivery in that regard. However, for the present time, as the Deputy is aware, at a central Government level a process is now in place by central Government, which is designed to address the result of the Croke Park 2 ballots and until we know the outcome of that, it is difficult to be certain what will be the outturn in respect of those two issues.”

Deputy McDonald asked Mr O’Brien if the HSE had made contingency arrangements should these anticipated savings not arise. Mr O’Brien replied that the Government intends to deliver pay-related savings of that order and, therefore, it would be inappropriate for the HSE to begin examining other ways of reducing expenditure at that level because that would involve cuts in services.

“For the time being, it is not appropriate for the HSE to begin to consider alternative ways to leverage that kind of cost reduction,” according to Mr O’Brien.

“This is because first, this is not profiled until 1 July onwards or in other words is a second-half issue. Second, in the absence of measures that reduce our costs, it would be extremely challenging to begin to extract that level of saving from the direct provision of services. As it would have a highly negative effect on the provision of healthcare, for the time being it is appropriate for us to await the outcome of the process the Government has initiated.”

Connacht Gold to change brand name to Aurivo Co-operative

 

Chairman says time is right to invest in ‘new brand architecture’

Padraig Gibbons: “Today’s decision provides a new platform for innovation and growth

Connacht Gold will be renamed the Aurivo Co-operative Society after shareholders unanimously endorsed the change at a special general meeting in Claremorris yesterday.

Chairman Padraig Gibbons said the proposal followed discussions and market research over the past two years.

“With the growth in depth and breadth of our business in recent years, the board felt the time is now right to invest in new brand architecture. Today’s decision provides a new platform for innovation and growth which will benefit our businesses and the communities we serve,” said Mr Gibbons.

The co-operative’s 39 retail stores will be rebranded Homeland and Homeland Agri depending on the products available in the store. Animal feed will also be marketed under a new brand, Nutrias.

The rebranding will not affect the Connacht Gold dairy brands Donegal Creameries and the recently acquired Organic For Us brand.

Phone app tracks ladybird invasion

  

A NEW MOBILE PHONE APP WILL HELP PEOPLE MONITOR HARLEQUIN LADYBIRD NUMBERS

Scientists have launched a mobile phone app to monitor the impact of the invasive harlequin ladybird on the UK’s native species.

The free app, irecord ladybirds, was produced by scientists at the centre for ecology and hydrology working with the nature locator team at the University of Bristol.

it allows users to connect to the UK ladybird survey and input their own records of species across the country, which are used to track ladybird populations.

Data submitted to the survey, which launched in 1968, has already shown a decline in native species such as the two-spot ladybird in response to the arrival of the harlequin, which was first seen in England in 2003.

Conservationists hope the app will show whether native ladybird species will bounce back in 2013 and provide insight into the invasion process in the future.

Dr Helen Roy, from the UK ladybird survey, said: “i have been inspired by the number of people getting involved with the UK ladybird survey via email, online recording, twitter and traditional pen and paper – the observations they submit are invaluable.

“With the new app we now have a further opportunity to continue monitoring the harlequin ladybird alongside other species to further our understanding of the invasion process.”

More than 50,000 records, which are published online, have been submitted by members of the public since the survey’s launch in 1968. lower numbers of harlequin and native ladybirds were reported in 2012, though the number of records remained stable for the mildew-feeding orange ladybird.

Dave Kilbey, nature locator project manager at the university of Bristol, said: “smartphone apps like this one have the potential to transform the way we record and monitor wildlife populations owing to a combination of useful features such as GPS location fixing, help with making a correct identification and the ability to take and submit images with records.”

Each species has a distribution map and habitat information within the app, with photographs and a simple identification key also provided. information gathered by the survey is used by scientists to ascertain how wildlife is changing due to factors such as climate chance and the arrival of new species.

International Space Station is leaking ammonia but crew is safe

  

The International Space Station is leaking ammonia from its P6 truss structure but the crew is “in no danger,” NASA reported this week.

The Expedition 35 crew reported seeing “white flakes floating away from an area of the International Space Station’s P6 truss structure” on Thursday at around 11:30 a.m. Eastern, according to the space agency.

As of Thursday, NASA said that “the rate of the ammonia leaking from this section of the coolingsystem  has increased” but maintained that the “station continues to operate normally otherwise and the crew is in no danger.”

The leaking ammonia was coming from the same solar array cooling loop that sprung a leak last year. The ISS crew “attempted to troubleshoot” that leak on Nov. 1, 2012, according to NASA, which didn’t specify whether they had been successful.

“It is not yet known whether this increased ammonia flow is from the same leak, which at the time, was not visible,” the space agency said.

Mission Control and the ISS crew have apparently narrowed down the location of the leak but have not isolated its exact location. NASA said “[p]lans are being developed to reroute other power channels to maintain full operation of those and other systems normally controlled by the solar array that is cooled by this loop.”

NASA reported Thursday that its thermal control systems team was projecting a shutdown of the affected cooling loop in “about 48 hours” due to the leak.

“The team is looking at whether any additional imagery is needed to isolate the leak’s location,” the space agency said.

Donie's news Ireland daily BLOG

Irish householders could be liable for leaking pipes

  

Irish householders could be liable and have to pay for leaking or damaged water pipes found on their property by the new utility company that the Government is set to establish next year, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

John Mullins, chief executive of Bord Gáis, which has taken responsibility for setting up Irish Water, said yesterday that once supplies to households are metered, it would be possible to identify the source of “serious” leaks.

He explained to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, Transport, Culture and the Gaeltacht that it would be normal industry practice to regard anything “downstream” of the stopcock – where supplies to individual customers intersect with the mains – as the property of the householder. He indicated that this could result in householders having to pay for the repair of any serious leaks in water supply pipes regarded as their property.

 However, Mr Mullins pointed out that the State already provides grants to householders who want to insulate their homes and take other steps to cut energy use. He suggested that the Government could introduce a similar scheme for domestic water supplies.

The Government is due to introduce the founding legislation for Irish Water next year. The company will be established as a subsidiary of Bord Gáis. It will begin to charge for domestic water supplies from 2014. Initially, it will install meters for 1.05 million homes.

‘Super storm Sandy victim mother’ doors slammed out while looking for help as her sons drown

   

A priest has condemned New York neighbours and residents who refused to open their doors to a mother in distress of two Irish boys who were swept away by Superstorm Sandy in the US.

Glenda Moore banged on doors in Staten Island seconds after losing her grip on sons Connor, 4, and Brandon, 2, during heavy floods and high winds on Oct 29.

Glenda, who is married to Donegal man Damien Moore, 39, was refused help and told ‘to go away we don’t know you’ after her truck was flipped upside down by the storm. Just seconds later, as she scrambled to get to higher ground, her sons were ripped from her grasp and washed away by rising waters.

She rushed to nearby homes but one person told her to go away and another turned out the lights.

Last night, Fr Philip Daly, in Damien’s home parish of Portnoo, said he couldn’t come to terms with the reaction of people to her desperate pleas for help.

“You can’t put into words what she must have been going through,” said Fr Daly. “That awfulness wasn’t helped by the actions of these so-called neighbours who refused to give support to the poor woman.

“When she went to the first house she was told to clear off and leave them alone… despite her pleas for help. She then went to the next house and got no reaction there. She was all own her own.

“She was hysterical and I’m sure she got her message across but they weren’t interested.

“Whether it was fear or not I don’t know but it was a rather strange reaction to someone in need of support.”

Damien was at work with the city council, battling the storm, when the tragedy occurred.

Glenda decided to take the boys to her mother’s home in the couple’s Ford pick-up truck after the storm hit and the power failed in her own house.

But, during the hour-long journey, her truck was hit by a gust of wind and thrown 30 metres backwards.

She got out of the truck, found herself waist-deep in water and decided to get to higher ground.

Just seconds later, Glenda and her boys were struck by a second gust, which blew the boys away into the rising water.

The boys were discovered just 20 metres apart on Thursday, days after they became separated from their mother.

Fr Daly has been comforting Damien’s parents, Paddy and Fay, who are in their 80s, who retired to live in Loughfad, Co Donegal, after spending a large part of their life in the US.

He said they cannot bring themselves to speak about what has happened to their grandchildren.

But, he said, the entire community rallied behind them once the tragedy of last week’s events came to light.

Since Friday, a steady stream of people have been calling to the couple’s home with Mass cards and other gifts for the family.

A person at their home said yesterday that the retired couple would not give interviews to the media.

One local said: “Pat and Fay are back living here many years now. Pat was in construction in America but took early retirement and they came back here.

“The whole area is just stunned by what has happened, and the manner in which it happened.

“Damien was here a few years back with his wife, but the kids have never been back to Donegal.

“Pat and Fay are in their twilight years and they are finding it difficult to cope with this. It’s just awful for them and people are trying to do as much for them as they can.”

Fr Daly added: “The parishioners here are a very Christian community. People started to talk about it last weekend. Up until that, they felt restrained in the hope that the boys would be found alive.

“People then started to call to the house of Paddy and Fay and the house has been full until 12.30am each morning and they have found that very supportive.
“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this tragic time.”

Fr Daly said Damien regularly visited Donegal, where he has many cousins and other relations.

He left Donegal in his 20s after working in a number of jobs in the fishing and forestry sectors.

It is understood his only sibling, brother Patrick, who lives in England, has flown to the US to support him.

“Damien was born here in Portnoo but emigrated young in life and married Glenda,” said Fr Daly.

“He works for the city council in New York, but over the years always kept up contact with the area and visited his parents here at Loughfad. The news has come as a huge shock to locals in this area.

“The Moores are a long-established family in the Portnoo-Kilclooney area. They have many cousins who reside here, and relations are comforting Paddy and Fay at this difficult time.

“Damien would have attended the local national school at Ballykillduff before he went to make his way in the world.”

Fr Daly revealed that Damien was at work when the hurricane hit.

“Glenda was concerned because there was no electricity in the house and she had two young boys. However, she said to Damien she would stay at home until he got back,” Fr Daly said.

Despite her ordeal, Glenda joined the search for her boys until their bodies were found by officers using heat-seeking equipment to search marshes.

Fr Daly confirmed that the family hope to arrange a remembrance in St Conal’s Church, Kilclooney, on the day of the boys’ funeral in New York, which is still being arranged.

“For various reasons, Paddy and Fay cannot travel to the funeral so the community felt it was important to show our support for them.

“We think the funeral could be Friday but we are not certain at this stage.”

Heart health breakthrough ‘Patients tissues repaired using strangers’ stem cells

  Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients’ own cells for helping restore heart tissue.

The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone’s cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now.

Results were discussed Monday at an American Heart Association conference in California and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study used a specific type of stem cells from bone marrow that researchers believed would not be rejected by recipients.

Unlike other cells, these lack a key feature on their surface that makes the immune system see them as foreign tissue and attack them, explained the study’s leader, Dr. Joshua Hare of the University of Miami.

The patients in the study had suffered heart attacks years earlier, some as long as 30 years ago. All had developed heart failure because the scar tissue from the heart attack had weakened their hearts so much that they grew large and flabby, unable to pump blood effectively.

Researchers advertised for people to supply marrow, which is removed using a needle into a hip bone. The cells were taken from the marrow and amplified for about a month in a lab at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Miami to be used for treatment, which did not involve surgery.

The cells were delivered through a tube pushed through a groin artery into the heart near the scarred area. Fifteen patients were given cells from their own marrow and 15 others, cells from strangers.

About a year later, scar tissue had been reduced by about one-third. Both groups had improvements in how far they could walk and in quality of life. There was no significant difference in one measure of how well their hearts were able to pump blood, but doctors hope these patients will continue to improve over time, or that refinements in treatment will lead to better results.

The big attraction is being able to use cells supplied by others, with no blood or tissue matching needed.

“You could have the cells ready to go in the blood bank so when the patient comes in for a therapy — there’s no delay,” Hare said. “It’s also cheaper to make the donor cells,” and a single marrow donor can supply enough cells to treat as many as 10 people.

Dr. Elliott Antman of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who heads the heart conference, praised the work.

“That opens up an entire new avenue for stem cell therapy, like a sophisticated version of a blood bank,” he said. There’s an advantage in not having to create a cell therapy for each patient, and it could spare them the pain and wait of having their own marrow harvested, he said.

The study was sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Hare owns stock in a biotech company working on a treatment using a mixture of cells.

Juan Lopez received his own cells in the study, and said it improved his symptoms so much that at age 70, he was able to return to his job as an engineer and sales manager for a roofing manufacturer and ride an exercise bike.

“It has been a life-changing experience,” said Lopez, who lives in Miami. “I can feel day by day, week by week, month by month, my improvement. I don’t have any shortness of breath and my energy level is way up there. I don’t have any fluid in my lungs.”

And, he said happily, “My sex drive has improved!”

‘We need to talk more about suicide’ but not as a social-media conversation

 

What could have driven Erin Gallagher to take her own life? Asking this question in the aftermath of a suicide is almost always futile – the only person really qualified to answer it is, tragically, dead. But in the Facebook tribute pages that appeared online following the 13-year-old’s death at her Donegal home 10 days ago, there is little hesitation.

“Bullied by cowards, by heartless monsters,” the profile on one reads.

“RIP Erin in bully FREE heaven,” writes a commenter on another.

“There’s no bullies in heaven, sleep tight beautiful,” says another.

In many of the posts on the six different pages dedicated to her memory, her alleged tormentors are characterised as “evil”, “murderers”, “scum” and “terrorists”. Some of the media coverage of her death has also drawn a direct correlation between claims that Erin had been the victim of relentless “cyberbullying”, and her suicide.

Online bullying can do serious psychological damage. It may be a factor in suicides, and in some cases it may be a key cause.

But if all other evidence has died with the person, the media can fall into the trap of overinterpreting the role of online conversations. Because the taunts often take the form of a public message, they may be the only insight we have into a person’s mental state at the time of their death.

We rarely have a complete picture of the factors that lead to a suicide.

But there are some things we do know. It can be dangerous to oversimplify the causes. Tackling the stigma surrounding the issue is good; indulging in the blame game is not, especially when those on the receiving end are just children themselves.

Talking about suicide does not lead to more deaths, but framing it in melodramatic terms can. And romanticising suicide – any suicide, but especially one involving a young person – is dangerous.

The internet has a tendency to act as a bellows for collective outrage – instead of allowing that anger to dissipate quietly away, it fans it into a frenzy of finger-pointing and anguish. It can reduce the complexities of human suffering to a series of status updates and “likes”, distorting the fact that suicide is rarely a straightforward case of cause and effect.

Erin Gallagher’s death was the second by an Irish teenager to make headlines in the space of two months. In September, Ciara Pugsley, a 15-year-old from Dromahair in Co Leitrim, also took her own life. Like Erin, she had been bullied anonymously on the Ask.fmwebsite.

In another case that was reported around the world, 15-year-old Canadian Amanda Todd killed herself, five weeks after posting a nine-minute video on YouTube detailing the bullying and blackmail she had suffered at the hands of a man she met on the internet, and a group of girls at her school.

So far, the discussion has focused on the part social media played in their deaths. There has been very little thought given to its role in the aftermath – but it is in the wake of high-profile suicides like these that social media is arguably at its most potent.

In addition to the six Facebook pages dedicated to the memory of Erin Gallagher, there are six for Ciara Pugsley and more than 100 dedicated to Amanda Todd, with 1.5 million likes on one alone.

It’s understandable that family and friends want to commemorate a lost loved one in the forum where so much of their life was played out. The motives behind creating a Facebook tribute page are usually good, but they can have serious negative consequences.

I don’t think this kind of online eulogising of teenagers who took their own lives – and demonising of their alleged tormentors – is healthy.

For a start, there are obvious implications for the physical and mental wellbeing of those accused of bullying.

Less apparent, but no less serious, is the risk of what the Samaritans calls “social contagion” – the phenomenon whereby one highly visible suicide is seen to “give permission” to others, sometimes leading to what it terms a “clustering effect”. To combat this, the organisation has issued guidelines for the media in reporting on suicides. These include: avoid simplistic explanations; don’t give details; and don’t overstate the “positive” results of a suicide.

Journalists who write about this issue are aware they walk a tightrope. On the one hand, sensitive coverage that follows these guidelines can help tackle the stigma that surrounds suicide. On the other, a few ill-chosen words or details can have a profoundly negative impact on vulnerable readers.

But unfortunately, no such guidelines apply online. A study carried out in 2006 in New Zealand, which has the second-highest youth suicide rate in the OECD, found that Bebo and text messaging contributed to a spate of eight teen suicides in an 18-month period.

It would be wrong to imply that an otherwise healthy teenager might be compelled to suicide just by reading about it. But there is evidence to suggest that, against a backdrop of other issues, the act itself can sometimes be highly impulsive.

In the 1990s, researchers in Houston, Texas asked 153 people, aged 13 to 34, who had survived a serious suicide attempt, to estimate the amount of time between making the decision that they wanted to die, and actually attempting it. Seventy per cent of the time, the gap was less than an hour. In one in four cases, it was barely five minutes.

There is an urgent need for more openness about teenage suicide – but it needs to happen in a context that doesn’t glamorise it, or suggest that a suicide is necessarily the outcome of bullying.

It really needs to happen away from the emotionally-charged atmosphere of Facebook, where susceptible teenagers can be influenced by one another.

Soft soap treatment for Children’s Referendum

Just when you thought Irish referendum campaigns couldn’t get any more Pythonesque, a minor surge in late opposition to the Children’s Referendum has come from an unlikely quarter: Albert Square.

Hats off to the scriptwriters at EastEnders for keeping yes campaigners on their toes, with a plot about the battle between a young mother and a social worker over the forced adoption of her child. According to Fianna Fáil TD Robert Troy, the soap’s “Lola” plotline has been exercising voters, and he has been asked about it quite a few times. No doubt it beats some of the other stuff he gets asked on the doorstep.

The soap even made it on to the front page of the Catholic newspaper Alive, as a warning about what can happen when the State is given too much power. What – we’ll all be forced to sit en masse and watch EastEnders?

The Enid Blyton guide to parenting

Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books are being revived for television by a British company. I suspect it’s not just the children who are behind this renewed interest in midnight feasts with lashings of ginger beer.

We could learn a thing or two from the Enid Blyton guide to parenting. Yes, yes – I know, she was the mother from hell. And yes, the children in her books are undeniably awful: they are rude to foreigners, and insulting about gypsies. (I’d still take tomboy George as a role model for my daughter any day over Barbie, though.)

But what I love is that the books hark back to a time when parents weren’t scheduling every free second of their children’s lives with violin tuition. On the contrary, they barely seemed to notice where their children were from one end of the summer to the other.

As a parent, part of the job is to give your children the tools to cope with adversity – even toughening them up so they can cope with the disappointments life throws at them. I’m not sure the modern compulsion to wrap our children in cotton wool does them any favours – especially some of the practices espoused by schools, such as giving everyone a medal at sports day, so no one feels inadequate, or not allowing the distribution of party invitations unless the whole class is invited. Is this really the best preparation for life? By gum, I know Enid wouldn’t have had any of it.

Is It a bird, is it a plane, no it’s the NASA space station

    

You get sales alerts, Twitter alerts, sports alerts and Facebook alerts. Now you can also get an alert when the International Space Station is visible overhead thanks to NASA’s new web app Spot the Station.

The International Space Station’s orbit 200 miles (322 kilometres) above Earth makes it visible to more than 90 per cent of the Earth’s population, NASA said. The trick is knowing when to look for it.

NASA’s Johnson Space Centre already calculates the sighting information several times a week for more than 4600 locations worldwide. With its new web app, it shares that information with the space-obsessed public.

As long as you know where to look, the International Space Station is pretty easy to see, NASA said. It is the third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and the moon, and it looks like a fast moving point of light about the size and brightness of the planet Venus.

If you sign up for the newly released web app, you’ll get an alert via email a few hours before the International Space Station will be visible from your neighbourhood. NASA said it will only alert users of the app when conditions are right for good viewing — such as when the Space Station is more than 40 degrees high in the sky and when the viewing will last long enough that you’ll be sure to catch it.

The Space Station is typically visible at dawn and dusk, and you can tell the alert system to tell you about morning viewings, evening viewings, or both.

The International Space Station just celebrated 12 years of manned orbit 200 miles above the Earth.