Archive for the ‘Dublin Governments’ Category
Ireland ‘squanders’ geographical advantage with different Covid-19 stances North and South – Scally
Once Again, Professor Gabriel Scally points out that the British Government’s “let them die” Covid-19 policy does not stop at the border in Ireland.
Boris Johnson’s policy means unnecessary death and illness for hundreds and thousands of people.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland public health specialist Dr Gabriel Scally, who was the author of a report on the CervicalCheck screening controversy, has warned that Ireland’s geographical advantage is being “squandered” by differing approaches to the public health crisis North and South.
“Historically islands have advantages when dealing with epidemics. For example, avoiding importation of new cases by controlling movement to and from the island is comparatively simple.
“However, in this coronavirus pandemic Ireland’s geographical advantage is being squandered by the adoption of very different approaches to dealing with the disease.
“The advice to someone in Lifford [Co Donegal] with symptoms of the disease is to self-isolate for a minimum of 14 days – a stone’s throw away in Strabane [Co Tyrone] the advice is isolation for seven days.”
— Read on www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ireland-squanders-geographical-advantage-with-different-covid-19-stances-north-and-south-scally-1.4216251
Professor Gabriel Scally
Waterford Whispers News Imagines Boris Johnson Inspecting Corpses
The complete Gabriel Scally Irish Times Article : Read the rest of this entry »
“Labour should enter unity government to deal with coronavirus” says Cork East TD Seán Sherlock
The clock is ticking, a new Irish Government has to be put together. For the first time Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael –
Irish Civil War Parties of 1921, must govern together.
But numbers are against them – there are 72 FFFG Teachtaí Dála (TD’s), and 160 seats – 80 at least are needed for a majority.
A group of 8 (perhaps 9) Right Wing Independent Deputies is closing in on an agreement with FFFG, which would create a very slim majority with 80 or 81 seats. https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/nine-independent-tds-form-new-technical-group-for-government-formation-talks-983049.html
Taoiseach Varadkar and FF leader Micheál Martin want a bigger majority, Ministerial Appointments are a juicy carrot. The temptation is too great for one of the six Labour Party Teachtaí Dála Seán Sherlock : Read the rest of this entry »
Statement on the Irish government’s response to COVID-19 in Direct Provision – MASI
Irish State Racism in Action
The Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland is appalled by the discriminatory response to the Covid19 pandemic in Direct Provision. On the 20th March 2020, MASI asked members of the public to email Minister Charlie Flanagan with a simple ask: protect asylum seekers in Direct Provision by ensuring that they are able observe all the Health Service Executive guidelines on social distancing and self isolation, particularly for asylum seekers 60 years of age or older, people with pre-existing health conditions, and asylum seekers in shared and crammed bedrooms, and other congregated gatherings such as canteens during meal times.
This is because asylum seekers around the country are following news and updates from the Health Service Executive on what measures they can take to protect themselves and people around them from the Covid19 pandemic. The guidelines were also posted on notice boards in Direct Provision centres and efforts were made to translate them into some foreign languages. However, the HSE posters on social distancing are useless to an asylum seeker sharing a tiny bedroom with a stranger or as many as 7 other strangers, having to use communal bathrooms and congregate in a canteen for meals 3 times a day. MASI was not surprised to learn that an asylum seeker in a hostel styled Direct Provision centre contracted the virus. We are pleased to hear that he is doing well.
— Read on www.masi.ie/2020/03/27/statement-on-the-irish-governments-response-to-covid-19-in-direct-provision/
All Out At Home, Thursday March 26 2020 Across Ireland for Health Workers
All Out, Thursday March 26, 8pm Tonight Across Ireland.
Well Done Brid Smith TD and Memet Uludag
I will play Bella Ciao from my IPAD – Other Suggestions! https://youtu.be/X5dGRM7Fw88
Also here https://youtu.be/nJTOD5jjac4
Nursing home staff spread coronavirus to other facilities, CDC investigation finds – Los Angeles Times
This is a scary factual report about the spread of the CoVid-19 illness in an American Nursing Home based in Seattle, Washington State.
A key cause of the crisis was :
low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
Could this happen in Ireland? The answer has to be Yes.
Of the deaths linked to the nursing home, one was a visitor and the rest were patients.
The advanced age of many long-term care facility residents, their underlying health conditions and their proximity to one another put them at risk for sickness and death, the report said.
Life Care residents infected by the virus ranged from 54 to 100 years old, with a median age of 81.
“Substantial morbidity and mortality might be averted if all long-term care facilities take steps now to prevent exposure of their residents to COVID-19,” the report said.
Infected Life Care workers ranged from 22 to 79 years old.
A spokesman for the nursing home said Wednesday that managers welcomed the CDC report, because it could alert other facilities and lead to new guidelines.
“For us this is all positive, even if there are things they found that we could have done better,” said Timothy Killian, a crisis communications specialist, on behalf of Life Care.
He said that two or three days after the outbreak was discovered, staff members were banned from working at other facilities.
“As soon as we had an idea that this was something that shouldn’t be done, we stopped,” he said.
Killian said that “it’s a relatively common practice” for nurses to work in multiple long-term care facilities.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Assn. of Long Term Care Medicine, said that low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
— Read on www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-18/coronavirus-spread-nursing-homes
“Never Waste A Good Crisis” – Big Economic Recession Coming Our Way – Irish Ruling Class Cuts “Meals on Wheels” – EU Leaders Pour Petrol ⛽️ on Flames 🔥
An Irish Warning : Sam Nolan reports his HSE “meals on wheels” service has been suspended. Friends and Comrades are rallying, Sam will be supported. Des Derwin reacts, very perceptively :
“I’m speechless. Just as an expanded service is needed. Have y’all noticed how the (Fine Gael!) state is building up its repressive apparatus for the crisis. Templemore early graduation trainees given crash course in public order (read riot control). New standing public order unit. (WTF?!) Scores of hired in Garda cars to ‘help the vulnerable’. Maybe the HSE is transferring the meals on wheels service to An Garda Siochana.”
Former SYRIZA Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis Analyses the European Union Response :
Those of us who know how the Eurogroup works were not holding much hope yesterday. Nevertheless, Europe’s finance ministers managed to do even less than what we feared: They failed to use the fiscal compact’s proviso for loosening up fiscal policy across the euro area. They continued with the tragic error of treating a crisis of insolvency as a crisis of liquidity. And they failed to recognise that some countries, in particular those savaged by the never-ending euro crisis, need a great deal more support than others.
In short, the Eurogroup’s bazooka is no more than a pathetic waterpistol. It is time that Europeans pushed for something better than this. It is time that we organise at a transnational, paneuropean level to replace this instrument of austerity-driven recession, the Eurogroup, with an institution that can work for a majority of Europeans everywhere.
APPENDIX: The Eurogroup’s telling reference to “automatic stabilisers”
The Eurogroup communique referred to the “full use of automatic stabilisers”. What did they mean?
Here is an example of an ‘automatic stabiliser’: When people lose their job, they go on unemployment benefit. This means a transfer of money from the better off to the worse off. As the worse off, who are now unemployed, save nothing and, therefore, more of the money of the better off enters the markets. That’s what economists refer to as an ‘automatic stabiliser’ (‘automatic’ because no government decision was needed to activate it – the loss of jobs does it automatically | and ‘stabiliser’ because the higher portion of spending relative to savings boosts GDP ).
Can you see dear reader what the Eurogroup are really saying when confessing to relying to the ‘automatic stabilisers’ in the absence of concerted fiscal expansion? They are saying: Don’t worry folks. While it is true we, the finance ministers, are doing almost nothing to avert the disaster, when the disaster comes your job losses and poverty will trigger some automatic mechanism that will break the economy’s fall. A little like consoling the victims of the plague with their thought that their death will, through shrinking the labour supply, boost future wages…
Some Proposals for Resistance :
DiEM25’s answer to: What should they have done?
At the very least, the Eurogroup should have recommended to the European Council that the European Investment Bank is given the green light to issue EIB bonds worth €600 billion with the stipulation that, as part of its ongoing and recently enhanced quantitative easing program, the European Central Bank will support the value of these bonds in the bond markets. That €600 billion should be spent directly to support national health services and also be invested in sectors of the economy badly hit by the lockdown – while also nudging our economy toward greener forms of transport, energy generation etc. Additionally, the fiscal compact should be immediately side-lined and governments should effect a tax haircut for small and medium sized firms, households etc.
The above would probably be enough not to avert but to contain the recession to something like between -1% and -2% of GDP. To avert it completely, the Eurogroup should have decided to mimic Hong Kong and have the European Central Bank mint an emergency fund from which every European household is given between €1000 and €2000.
Westminster Government in London and Stormont Puppet in Belfast Planning Virus Mass Murder
Eamonn McCann, a People Before Profit Derry and Strabane Councillor, argues that, in effect, the Boris Johnson British Government is planning Mass Murder :
But this isn’t really about herd immunity. It’s about a dangerous and reckless drive to keep Britain open for business and maintain profits at all costs
Veteran British Comrade Phil Hearse Makes the Same Argument : he says the Westminster “herd immunity” strategy is akin to a “far-right death cult” https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/government-strategy-tipping-britain-towards-huge-death-toll
McCann continues in the same vein below. He calls on Admiral Arlene Foster to steer the Stormont Titanic Away from the Mass Grave. But, she won’t do that. It is Time for a Mutiny – Sinn Féin should sink the Stormont Titanic.
Read the rest of this entry »The Boris Johnson/Arlene Foster CoronaVirus Inaction Strategy “Government tipping Britain towards huge death toll”
Actions of the Dublin and Belfast Governments Confronting the CoronaVirus Health Crisis Diverge.
Phil Hearse’s attached article graphically explains the “death cult” plan of Prime Minister Johnson and his Adviser Dominic Cummings.
Here are the views of a genuine expert, Professor Gabriel Scally
The nonsense in England about the #publichealth concept of ‘herd immunity’ is shocking. The Government’s Chief Scientist is a former researcher in vascular biology and for over a decade has been working on R&D for a major pharmaceutical company. Where’s the public health voice?
https://mobile.twitter.com/GabrielScally/status/1238761911459733504?s=04
Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster is faithfully implementing the Johnson plan –
Serious Questions Arise Over Sinn Féin Participation in the Belfast Devolved Government.
TV journalist Robert Peston has summed up the government’s virus strategy as follows:
The strategy of the British government in minimising the impact of Covid-19 is to allow the virus to pass through the entire population so that we acquire herd immunity, but at a much delayed speed so that those who suffer the most acute symptoms are able to receive the medical support they need, and such that the health service is not overwhelmed and crushed by the sheer number of cases it has to treat at any one time.[1]In other words, you’ve all got to get the virus, and then we’ll be OK. Except we won’t. Jeremy Rossman of Kent Universityestimates that the herd immunity strategy would require 70% of the population to get the disease, or 47 million people. He says:
Achieving herd immunity would require well over 47 million people to be infected in the UK. Current estimates are that COVID-19 has a 2.3% case-fatality rate and a 19% rate of severe disease. This means that achieving herd immunity to COVID-19 in the UK could result in the deaths of more a million people with a further eight million severe infections requiring critical care.[2]
This strategy, which the Financial Times attributes to Dominic Cummings, is an exercise in brutal eugenics. As Owen Jones argues, poorer people are much more likely to have underlying health conditions and weaker immune systems. He says:
A decade of austerity, and a social order that deprives millions of citizens of a comfortable existence, will mean many more deaths in the coming weeks and months that could have been avoided. The government’s determination to discover a vaccine for coronavirus must be accompanied by a renewed commitment to addressing poverty. Like every crisis, this one is likely to affect working-class and poor people worst. That is not inevitable. It’s a choice – and one within our power to stop, if only we had the will to do so.[3]
The Johnson/Cummings strategy is basically to let poor people and old people die. No wonder a Daily Telegraph journalist said that the virus might mean ‘an economically beneficial cull of over-80s’.[4]
— Read on www.timetomutiny.org/post/government-strategy-tipping-britain-towards-huge-death-toll
On Saturday March 14 Stormont Bosses Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Foster aired public policy differences
When asked about the different approaches being taken on the island, she said: “In terms of the co-operation I don’t think the co-operation could be any better between our chief medical officers, between our ministers of health and between the Government of Ireland and the Northern Ireland Executive.”
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill repeated a call she made on Friday that Northern Ireland should follow the Republic’s lead and close schools.
She said: “People are taking decisions in advance of government and my own personal opinion is that schools should close now.
I think the fact that you can have two schools a mile apart and one school’s open and one school’s closed, that’s a very confusing picture and a very confusing message for the public.”
Mrs Foster said both governments had “very coherent messages” and that Stormont is taking advice from the Public Health Agency and the chief medical officer on when was the appropriate time to shut schools.
There are two different jurisdictions on this island and we may do things differently in terms of timing, but the tools are all the same in terms of what we are going to do to try and combat this virus,” she said.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, who was not at the meeting, said the UK’s response to coronavirus “should be rejected” and is “totally unacceptable in the north of Ireland”.
Stormont, Lord Carson’s Crypt, Is Back to Normal – Time for Sinn Féin to Evacuate.
Fumbling in the Greasy Till – Paul Murphy TD Campaigns Against CoronaVirus Price Gouging
We need to speak out about the profiteering taking place.
Just like September 1913 – the Worst Elements of the Irish Middle Class “fumbled in the greasy till” – and “added prayer to shivering prayer” – determined to wage war on the poor. The workers were on strike, led by the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. The employers were led by William Martin Murphy, owner of the Irish Independent Newspaper, Spiritual Godfather of today’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Parties.
Paul Murphy Declares :
I’m organising a press conference tomorrow to highlight the huge number of examples people have sent me. This is a chance to show the real impact this greed is having, and to demand price controls are implemented. The government must take action to ensure those who need masks and hand gel most get it first.
We need more people willing to speak up on this, and tell their story. Get in touch to share your story, and help end this rip off
‘September 1913 is a devastating piece of satire in which Yeats takes the well-off Catholics to task for not only their meanness and materialism but also for the shallow nature of their religious devotion. The image of the shopkeeper fumbling in the ‘greasy till’ captures the greed while the image of them adding ‘prayer to shivering prayer’ sums up their terrified devotion to the Catholic Church who were enormously influential at the time.
Yeats declares that through their greed the middle classes have made Ireland a materialistic and un-Romantic place: ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone.’ By doing so they have betrayed the legacy of past heroes. The middle classes are incapable of understanding the heroes’ courage and self-sacrifice.
The repetition emphasises Yeats’ contempt for the state of contemporary Irish society. Also like many Irish political ballads it personifies Ireland as a female figure
https://prezi.com/qly2zy81pfqx/september-1913/
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 