The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Climate changer… May 31, 2018

It’s getting hot in that kitchen…to judge from this piece here. The New Yorker had a good piece on the EPA under Scott Pruitt’s bizarre leadership a month or so back. It wasn’t exactly heartening (details such as his installing a ‘sound-proof booth’ in his office do not allay anxieties). This is – if possible, even worse. A Slate.com analysis of the latest events from that agency.

Because lists of Pruitt’s ongoing corruption scandals have been done to death, here is a list of Pruitt lists published by the organizations that were banned on Tuesday:
• Last month, CNN published a story listing 14 specific “controversies and allegations” about Pruitt’s tenure in office.
• Last month, the AP published a story describing and listing Pruitt’s responses to congressional investigators’ questions about his various scandals.
• Last November, E&E News uncovered and published a list of how Pruitt was remaking the Scientific Advisory Board in his industry-friendly, Earth-antagonistic image.
In its reporting on the water contaminants summit that it was barred from, the AP noted that “Pruitt has faced criticism in recent weeks over emails showing the EPA sought to intervene in a critical study on the contaminants.”

And all this delivered by the man who claimed he’d ‘drain the Washington swamp’. Perhaps he intended to do precisely that in order to made it deeper and swampier!

“Irish Citizens of Basque Origin” talk in Newbridge on the 16th of June May 31, 2018

As part of June Fest Stewart Reddin will give a talk on “Irish Citizens of Basque Origin”  in Newbridge on the 16th of June. Music by Sive.

Signs of Hope – A continuing series May 31, 2018

Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:

I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.

There’s the obvious this week to get us started!

Beyond awful… May 31, 2018

Then, exactly a year ago this month, Jaki was summoned to Colchester for “reassessment” – a two-hour round trip from her home in her scooter, to prove she was still disabled enough to keep her benefits. When she got there, she found herself staring up at the building: the entrance had a 5in step and no ramp. The slightest jolt in her scooter means pain for Jaki; each bump of the road shoots a spike up her spine. Besides, her scooter engine won’t lift her up the step – even if she holds her breath and rams it, the wheels just spin futilely.

A film-maker looking to document this decade’s punitive “welfare reform” might reject such an image as lacking subtly: a person with disabilities literally blocked from her benefits because the test centre isn’t accessible for wheelchairs.

Unable to physically get to either assessment building, Jaki was promptly found fit for work “in her absence”. “Logic that Kafka would be proud of,” she sighs. That was August 2017. She hasn’t had a penny of her disability benefits since.

And this:

I asked the DWP if it knew how many centres being used by them for disability benefit assessments aren’t fully accessible for disabled people, and the department had no comment. I asked the DWP whether there had at least been any improvement since the 2016 research and it had no comment.
Instead, the department said it is committed to ensuring “everyone gets a fair assessment”, adding that all their centres meet “legal accessibility requirements” and that disabled people can arrange to meet at more accessible sites nearby or ask for a home visit. But ask Jaki and the reality may as well be a parallel universe. A home assessment is like gold dust, and isn’t considered without a GP letter; at £25, without her benefits, Jaki couldn’t afford one. As she got more desperate, she asked the DWP to agree to do her assessment in multiple locations; a different test centre, the local jobcentre, and even the Colchester centre’s car park. She was refused each time.

A spot of bother in Kerry… May 31, 2018

I’m a bit amused by the following report in the IT on foot of the referendum which notes the YES vote in Kerry (58.3% YES to 41.7% NO) and suggests that:

Like other TDs on the No side the Healy-Rae brothers will analyse the electoral implications of the vote. The surprise Yes majority in the Healy-Rae stronghold, mirroring similar results throughout the country, comes at a time when there is speculation the second family seat, Danny’s, could be under threat from Fianna Fáil at the next election.

I’m sure, 100% sure, that FF has been eyeing up one of the Healy-Rae seats since long before the referendum. Indeed there’s a subtle irony that this story would be framed this way given the FF party was, in the main, at least nominally attached to the NO side.
Meanwhile there’s this:

An unknown factor is what are perceived by some to be Danny Healy-Rae’s increasingly eccentric views on a variety of topics.
Local sources say even hardened supporters have been bewildered by some of Danny’s comments. Others say they are no more than part of his personality.

I’d have thought it was the latter rather than the former.

Corruption hunter May 31, 2018

Laudable that Paddy Cosgrove would be so exercised by ‘corruption’ in Ireland, to the degree that he is lobbying the government for legislation.

Still even a year ago there were sceptical souls who poured cold water on the proposals.

In fairness the Web Summit wasn’t looking for money, but it was looking for public services which would have to be paid by public funds, or if you prefer subsidies:

The letters show that Cosgrave didn’t ask for funding but was concerned with four main issues – traffic management, public transport, hotel costs and WiFi at the RDS.
Cosgrave repeatedly asked for the State’s involvement in organising these issues in the e-mails.

Hmmm… and another aspect, as regular as clockwork the media are back covering this individual!

Lazy, careless, insensitive May 30, 2018

Describes Germaine Greer’s thoughts on rape. And that’s just for starters. Are people losing their minds?

Chutzpah May 30, 2018

Fools and money…

That Swiss cheese border… May 30, 2018

Not sure this will work, even though there are multiple unchecked crossing points and cars can travel reasonably freely between the EU and Switzerland, there’s also this:

While motorists are largely unimpeded, the situation for truck drivers is a lot more difficult. When I visited the main border crossing from France near Geneva, there was a queue of lorries up to 300 metres long. Each one had to submit its customs papers.
As with the motorists, the lorries are assessed according to risk, and the suspect vehicles are electronically scanned.
Jacqueline De Leon says: “We know a lot of the trucks that are coming through, and the companies they belong to, and we don’t have to check them regularly.
“We look at the risks for certain trucks, and these change all the time.
“At the moment, we have a lot of ham and sausage coming in undeclared from southern Europe.
“And there are a lot of drugs and cigarettes coming in from Eastern Europe at the moment – so we are checking lorries from there more rigorously.”

And of course Switzerland is in Schengen too.

That land border… May 30, 2018

Good piece by Noel Whelan in the IT on the appearance of UK immigration minister Caroline Nokes before the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs committee. As he notes:

ne of the worst parliamentary committee performances I have seen in years happened at the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs committee on Tuesday when the immigration minister Caroline Nokes appeared as part of the committee’s inquiry into existing passport processes. In the words of the Guardian’s Brexit correspondent, Lisa O’Carroll, it was car-crash parliamentary TV.

It sure was, for when Kate Hoey – of all people – asks the following question one gets a sense of how little this Minister understand the situation:

Labour MP Kate Hoey asked the minister whether she felt the different arrangements met the obligation for “parity of esteem”. After a lengthy pause, the minister said she found it difficult to answer the question but that southern-born Northern Ireland residents seeking British citizenship should have to go through the same process of naturalisation and citizenship as other third-country nationals. Hoey expressed amazement at that response and asked the minister if she had ever read any Irish history. “Not recently no” was the reply.

This too is interesting:

It began with MPs pointing out an interesting anomaly in how the dual citizenship provisions under the Belfast Agreement are administered by the two governments. The agreement provides that the people of Northern Ireland can “identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose”. A resident of Northern Ireland seeking Irish citizenship can exercise that right by applying for an Irish passport in the usual way and paying a fee of €89.50. However any person living in Northern Ireland born south of the Border after 1949 can only exercise their right to British citizenship if they are prepared to go thought the full complex naturalisation process and pay a fee of £1,330 (€1,517).