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Iran had got Iraq written all over it. In 2003, we had the spectacle of George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein allegedly had weapons of mass destruction or was developing such weapons which could be targeted against western countries such as the USA. 6 months after that invasion, it was confirmed that Iraq had no such programs of developing weapons of mass destruction, be they chemical, biological or nuclear. But, we all felt good about gettting rid of the tinpot dictator despite the fact that he posed no threat to us or even to the immediate region, despite the fact that by invading, George W Bush was breaking international law and was violating the core Nuremberg principles that US lawyers had set down to try Nazi officials including the ultimate war crime of initiating a war of aggression. But, we all wanted to get rid of that dark swarthy tinpot dictator so we, in the west, didn’t care. Fast forward to 2012, and the drumbeat of war is rolling against Iran. Why don’t those swarthy Islamics learn their lesson and live in permanant poverty and stupidity like we in the west want them to linger? Meanwhile, the 1% elite of the USA live a life of luxury whilst the plebs go to the colosseum to see the Ayatollah of Iran and his President be thrown to the lions. When will the 99% finally cotton on?
Fine Gael TD Olwyn Enright took at 130,000 euro lump sum and takes an annual pension of 22,000 euro a year after she retired from the Dail in her mid-30s. That is just plain WRONG.
I read thousands of Irish people are being put in prison for non payment of fines. The bankers, developers, the politicians, the privileged are above all that.
We must ask ourselves. Who are we as Irish people? What does it mean to be Irish? Don’t give me this guff that we don’t get an answer. We’re getting an answer. To be Irish means to reward the rich and to punish the poor.
We are all entitled to redefine ourselves as Irish. Bankers, developers, politicians and the privileged, you dare stand in our way, we’ll roll right over you.
All Ex-Taoisigh deserve to keep all expenses. They deserve rich rewards for looking after those feckless and potentially troublesome gobshites called the Irish. Some of them are so lazy, they even emigrate. It must be tremendous burden running such a country. Surely some rewards after the years of selfless service need to be dangled in front of them in order to incentivize them to step forward and apply their talents in order to save the feckless Irish from themselves. Think of all the jobs they could have taken in the financial services sector where they would easily rake in millions a year with which to buy a decent palace and a stately car. We live in the real world. In the real world, we are the financial world’s poor cousin. Live with it. In the real world, people want more and more money. A decent wooden table costs 10,000 euros these days. It’s dog-eat-dog. The airport can be murder. Is it not too much to ask that room be made available in the parking lot on a permanent basis? Be reasonable people!
Been loitering in Shenzhen for the past month. Was getting root canal on one of my second pre-molar maxillary teeth. Took 4 appointments. One a week. First two was cleaning out the pulp from inside the tooth as well as drilling away a lot of what remained of the tooth that hadn’t decayed. Third appointment was drilling and inserting the stick. Final one yesterday was the fitting of the bleedin’ crown, an enamel one which cost a fortune.
The lesson here is always look after your teeth. Brush at least twice a day. I would do three times but I’m too lazy. Do the flossing every night and use the mouthwash to flush your mouth after it’s all done. Get an electric toothbrush. Look after it.
Yeah, up to about 6 weeks ago, I was sadly neglecting my teeth. I’m not going to go into that horror show here but what I did was I went to a dentist in Hong Kong about 6 weeks ago to get a status report and also because I was suffering from some tooth pain and what she told me was that I needed 2 fillings and one root canal.
That came as a genuine surprise to me. I honestly thought more work would need to be done. I hadn’t been to a dentist for about 2 years and I was neglecting my teeth badly in that time. As I say, I am not going to go into that horror story.
The kindly and professional dentist did the two fillings for me in Hong Kong but I decided to have the root canal done in Shenzhen where I figured it would be cheaper. Well, it wasn’t really, so that’s another fiasco. It’s done and dusted now.
But, I am hopeful that my teeth are in better shape now. No more tooth pain like I had before. I postponed a trip to Kunming in China a few months ago because of the toothache. I have been taking care of my teeth for the past 6 weeks or so and I intend to keep that up. Dentists make a fortune from people like me, but hopefully “me” has changed.
Dear Enda Kenny, Taoiseach; Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, and Government Party Colleagues.
I propose the following Constitutional amendment to Article 15, section 10.
Add the following 4 subsections.
Subsection 2. Members of the Oireachtas shall be representatives of the whole people and shall not bound by orders or instructions and shall be responsible only to their conscience.
Subsection 3. Dail Eireann shall have the power, on a motion of one quarter of its members, and Seanad Eireann shall have the power, on a motion of one half of its members, to inquire into any matter of general public importance.
Subsection 4. In the course of such inquiry the Houses may investigate any individual and make findings in relation to their conduct.
Subsection 5. The conduct of such inquiries shall be regulated by law. Such law shall balance the rights of the individual with the public interest in the effective investigation of matters of general public importance.
We need investigative committees with full investigative powers, Mr Kenny, including the power to compel attendance by affected persons as well as make findings of fact against both institutions and individuals. This was part of your mandate. You must take a risk. You must move. The greatest enemy of the Irish people has historically been stasis.
Also, in a previous email to you all, I made mention of the necessity to restore the original 1998 Referendum Act with one exception.
Dear Enda Kenny, Taoiseach, Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, and Government party colleagues,
The original 1998 Referendum Act should be restored, with one difference. No judges or former judges can serve on the commission. It’s plainly obvious that a former judge serving as chairman of the referendum commission has a conflict of interest when it comes to the issue raised by the 30th amendment proposal.
The statutory function of the referendum commission to present the pros and cons of a proposal as well as its remit to encourage debate amongst the citizenry must be restored as provided for in the original 1998 Referendum Act.
Do you have a URL link on the Internet for the March 7th Labour party conference this year? It was decided at this conference that the Labour party would enter government with Fine Gael.
A URL link comes in the form of http://.. I feel certain that a sound or media file exists on the Internet which I can download or stream.
If one of you could forward to me such a link, I would be very grateful.
I would like to listen to, or better still, listen to and watch, the whole conference including the vote taken at the end. I would like to listen to or both see and listen to democracy in action.
Dear Enda Kenny, Taoiseach; Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, and Government Party TDs and Senators,
I am shocked to learn that the selection of criticisms contained in Appendix 2 (pages 13 to 15) of the Department of Justice/Dignity Project report into the Swedish Sex Purchase Act
actually come from two articles written by the same woman, Laura Agustin. The 23 excerpts in the report were even jumbled up in order to, I suppose, give the impression of more randomness.
Laura Agustin reports on the theft of her work here:
I believe that the EU would not have approved of these funds being used by the recipient to advocate for the criminalization of the purchase of sex (as is the case in Sweden) which is what they are doing or, indeed, to write such a shoddy and amateur report.
The Dignity Project makes it clear in the report itself that they are seeking a Sweden style Sex Purchase Act to be applied to Ireland. This is made clear in page 1 of the report.
Also on Page 1, it is written:
“The Irish partners are Ruhama, Sonas Housing, the Legal Aid Board, the HSE Women’s Health Project, the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Dublin Employment Pact. In addition, the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Department of Justice and Law Reform and the Garda National Immigration Bureau are partners with observer status.”
The Immigrant Council of Ireland and Ruhama are leading lights of the “Turn Off The Red Light” campaign that are seeking to criminalize the purchase of sex in Ireland as has already been done in Sweden since 1999. Both organizations were founded by the same religious orders that ran the Magdalene laundries.
Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, I urge you to crumple up this report and toss it in the bin.
I urge you to start afresh and dispatch a new fact-finding team to New Zealand to examine New Zealand’s progressive Prostitution Reform Act, enacted in 2003, its effects, and how it can be improved upon in the Irish context. The New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act decriminalized brothels, escort agencies and soliciting and instituted a minimal regulatory model.
Invite members of the Turn Off The Blue Light campaign and the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland to participate.
I have written more on New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act in my previous email to you all entitled “On the question of sex work, we should turn to New Zealand and not Sweden.”
I copied the content of that email to my blog here:
Dear Enda Kenny, Taoiseach; Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice; and Government Party TDs and Senators,
Last year, the Department of Justice sent representatives to Sweden to study the effects of the Sex Purchase Act, originally passed in 1999. This act criminalized the purchase of sex. Yet, during this trip, no interviews were conducted with Swedish sex workers or their representatives to get their side of the story. A report based on this trip has now been published.
According to the ideologues in Sweden, Ireland and elsewhere who support the Sex Purchase Act, sex workers have no side of the story. They are considered victims and therefore they have no voice.
I suggest, Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, that you get their side of the story too.
How about this articulate Swedish sex worker for instance, Pye Jacobsson.
She will tell you that the Sex Purchase Act has been a setback for Sweden overall. She will tell you that as a result of the Sex Purchase Act, the working conditions for street sex workers have gotten more dangerous as regular and safer clients turn to indoor sex workers instead. They have no choice but to accept business from more dangerous clients whom they would otherwise have had an opportunity to turn down.
There are many other critics in Sweden of the Sex Purchase Act including Sweden’s Discrimination Ombudsman, the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare who have rightly criticized the Swedish Government’s own evaluation on the implementation of the Sex Purchase act for its bias, its lack of research, unsupported conclusions, unclear methodology and exclusion of sex workers’ own voices.
I note that whilst critical quotations are included in the Department of Justice report on the trip to Sweden, we do not know who the criticisms are attributed to. We are informed in the report that they are not mainstream. That’s not good enough.
The Swedish Sex Purchase doesn’t work. In its own review in 2010, the Swedish government claimed that street prostitution had been cut in half. But, it is generally recognized in Sweden as elsewhere that street prostitution only constitutes a small fraction of the total number of sex workers. There are also escorts, indoor sex workers, those who work in strip clubs, porn films and so on. The Swedish government admitted in its submission to the UN that it doesn’t know how many sex workers there are in the country because of the clandestine nature of much of the industry.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_and_the_law
“In 2010 the Swedish government admitted in its Country Progress Report to the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS that it could not estimate the number of people involved in prostitution since it is largely hidden, but that street prostitution was assumed to be only a fraction of total prostitution, most of which takes place indoors.”
What we do know is that street sex workers are amongst the most vulnerable and they are the ones who are most affected by this act.
Groups such as the Turn Off The Red Light campaign and Ruhama that want a Sweden style sex purchase act applied here have already had ready access to our TDs and Senators. Yet, thus far, Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, you refuse to admit the legitimate voices of both Irish and immigrant sex workers or sex worker-led representative organizations such as the Turn Off The Blue Light campaign and the Sex Worker Alliance of Ireland. In part, this is because rival groups such as Ruhama and the Immigrant council of Ireland, both founded by the same religious orders that ran the infamous Magdalene laundries, and who are the drivers of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign, consider all sex workers to be victims and therefore consider that they do not have a legitimate voice.
What the Sex Worker led organizations are calling for is for the human, labour, civil, safety and health rights of sex workers to be vindicated.
Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, no wave of the legislative wand will destroy the sex industry, contrary to what the radical feminist and religious fundamentalist advocates of the Swedish Sex Purchase Act allege. The sex industry has not been destroyed in Sweden, nay, it has gotten bigger but, in some respects, for example street sex work, more dangerous for the sex workers themselves.
In 2008, the Swedish government ordered a renewed crackdown on the sex industry, 9 years after they supposedly waved their magic wand to end sex work forever. Between 2008 and 2010, police records show that there have been significant increases in sex purchase offenses, the purchase of sex by children, pimping and procuring and also human trafficking offenses, both sex and non sex related. Non sex related human trafficking offenses increased by no less than 563% in 3 years.
Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, you need to resist the clamourings for a Sex Purchase Act coming from the Social Conservative wing of your Coalition government, that is, from the Irish Labour party.
The Irish Labour party suffers under a false consciousness of “If it comes from Sweden, it is good.”. The Swedish Institute wouldn’t need to set up here. It has the smitten Irish Labour party to do its heavy lifting for it.
So what should we do?
I propose that a new study trip be organized to New Zealand where adult sex work has been decriminalized since 2003. Invite members of the Turn Off the Blue Light Campaign and the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland to participate.
The New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act is by no means a perfect law. However it does proceed from the correct mindset, endorsed by the UN, the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS, the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, that sex workers are entitled to the same human, labour, civil, health and safety rights as all other workers. For example, a sex worker in New Zealand has an absolute right in law to refuse a service or a client. By contrast, in Sweden, sex workers reported that only 18.5% of the last clients they had sex with used a condom.
In short, sex work, brothel keeping, living off the proceeds of someone else’s prostitution and street solicitation are legal and regulated in New Zealand. Coercion of sex workers is illegal..
Voluntary adult prostitution has been removed from the criminal law and placed in the civil law. A distinction has been made between voluntary and involuntary prostitution. Child prostitution is outlawed. It remains a crime to coerce someone to provide sexual services. Contracts between provider and client are recognised, and providers have the right to refuse services. In 2009, a police officer was jailed after a sex worker complained that she was blackmailed into giving him free sex. Contested contracts can be referred to the Disputes Tribunal.
The Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004 also allows sex workers to apply for previous convictions to be removed from the record. Sex work is recognised (but not promoted) as legitimate work by Work and Income New Zealand, their version of FAS, who may not advertise vacancies in brothels or suggest people start sex work as a means of getting off a benefit. Now workplace safety and health rules, developed in consultation with the New Zealand prostitutes’ collective, apply to sex work. Employment disputes can be referred to the Labour Inspectorate and Mediation Service. There is an obligation on employers and employees to practise and promote safe sexual practices. The Ministry of Health has the responsibility for enforcement. Registration of indoor sex workers with the police was replaced by certification at an administrative law level of brothel operators. Prior records have been destroyed. Police activities changed from the registration and prosecution of sex workers to protection. The Police Manual of Best Practice was amended to include prostitution.
Local government was empowered to develop by-laws for zoning and advertising, but not prohibit sex work.
We should study the New Zealand law closely and see how we can improve upon it. But, it is important, Mr Kenny and Mr Shatter, that you take off the ideological glasses first. First, accept that the sex industry, or its many forms, cannot be destroyed. Second, accept that adult sex workers on the whole are not victims. They are human beings who make choices and, as workers in the sex industry, they should have a lot of input into Ireland’s own Prostitution Reform Act, modelled on New Zealand’s efforts.
Bar any representative organization of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign from joining the study trip to New Zealand as they are still wearing the ideological psychedelic glasses mentioned above and therefore will have nothing constructive to offer. They already took part in the Department of Justice’s study trip to Sweden last year. They had their shot.
The term ‘sex work’ is used by both the WHO and the UN.
Also your contention that the vast majority of women working in the sex industry have been trafficked in here is simply wrong. That puts you at odds even with Ruhama that put the percentage of trafficked women in prostitution at 10%. Perhaps, you are confusing human trafficking with migration.
