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[] | 2016-08-26T20:50:07 | null | 2016-08-26T20:00:00 | Businesses invested more in second quarter as economy showed few signs of uncertainty | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fretail-and-services%2Fuk-shoppers-upped-their-spending-just-before-brexit-vote-says-survey-1.2769306%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769305.1472236816!/image/image.jpg | en | null | UK shoppers upped their spending just before Brexit vote, says survey | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | UK consumers stepped up their spending in the second quarter and businesses increased investment as the economy showed few signs of reticence before the Brexit referendum in June.
Household spending rose 0.9 per cent from the first quarter, the fastest pace in almost two years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Friday. Business investment was up by 0.5 per cent.
Overall growth overall quickened to 0.6 per cent from 0.4 per cent, unrevised from an initial estimate. “Our survey returns, which include the period leading up to and immediately following the referendum, show no sign so far of uncertainty having significantly affected investment or GDP,” ONS chief economist Joe Grice said in a statement.
The decision to leave the European Union cast an abrupt shadow over the economy, prompting the Bank of England to cut interest rates this month and piling pressure on new prime minister Theresa May to deliver a tax and spending boost.
Tough times ahead
While surveys suggest the June 23rd referendum has done little to dampen the spirits of consumers, tougher times may lie ahead as quickening inflation threatens to erode almost two years of real-wage growth.
The rise in business investment in the last quarter was driven by spending on transport equipment, including cars and planes, the ONS said.
The level of investment was 0.8 per cent lower than a year earlier. Net trade once again dragged on the economy, knocking 0.3 percentage points off growth in the second quarter as exports barely rose.
The 10 per cent fall in the trade-weighted value of the pound since the Brexit vote may aid exports but not by enough to prevent a sharp slowdown.
The economy will contract by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, according to economists polled by Bloomberg between August 5th and August 12th. The pound showed little response to the figures in early trading on Friday.
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Growth in the second quarter was heavily centred on April.
– Bloomberg | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/retail-and-services/uk-shoppers-upped-their-spending-just-before-brexit-vote-says-survey-1.2769306?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/58195cb0f96f938e80d638a1e62eb73280c69cae50dac090889f087a2cff8634.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T04:48:52 | null | 2016-08-30T05:00:00 | Can it defend formula it has presented for calculating what US tech giant owes? | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fcantillon-commission-faces-intense-pressure-on-apple-ruling-1.2772270.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772258.1472495783!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Cantillon: Commission faces intense pressure on Apple ruling | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The European Commission faces one big job as it presents its ruling on Apple. Can it defend the formula it has presented for calculating what Apple owes?
The commission has accused the Irish Revenue Commissioners of having no proper technical basis for tax rulings made in relation to Apple in 1991 and 2007. In fact, its preliminary findings were that a kind of reverse engineering went on, under which both sides worked out how much tax Apple would pay, and a way was then found to achieve this.
But has the commission itself managed to come up with a defendable basis for what the bill should have been? The Government here will claim, with some force, that it has not and that its action in trying to do so is unprecedented and has no sound legal basis.
As the commission’s own deliberations have dragged on and on, and huge pressure from the United States has already been applied, it remains to be seen whether the competition directorate has come up with a clear formula which has a legal basis that will stand up in the European Court of Justice, which is where this is all going to end up.
It will face intense pressure in the days ahead of explaining the basis for its decision, with tax and legal experts immediately searching for holes. It remains to be seen just how robust the conclusions prove.
That is not to say that Ireland does not have a case to answer in the way Apple has been treated. Ministers and officials have tended to dismiss the investigation out of hand, rather than engaging in the detail of what actually happened. A key part of their response will be that the many of the key tax reliefs used by Apple and other US multinationals have now been closed off.
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Really what is going on here is a fight for tax dollars. The US wants more tax from its companies, and other European countries will argue that some of the tax which Ireland will be asked to collect actually should be going to them.
Apple, meanwhile, will say that it has applied the letter of the law. It is a mess, and how on earth the European courts will deal with it is anyone’s guess. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/cantillon-commission-faces-intense-pressure-on-apple-ruling-1.2772270 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/55f14e036df29fd99863639dd958d35b3722bc4031cf790922f628f3dbafa47a.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T00:50:38 | null | 2016-08-27T01:09:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fletters%2Fthe-future-of-the-usc-1.2769591%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | The future of the USC | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Sir, – Given the disastrous state of our health system, with vast numbers of people left waiting on trolleys and vital services being withdrawn from rural hospitals, and given that a Government-commissioned report has argued that €5.5 billion of capital funding is required over the next 15 years to maintain our crumbling third-level education system, it is only with considerable populist irresponsibility that the Government can contemplate the abolition of the universal social charge.
It is disingenuous of any government to ostensibly seek to put money back into people’s pockets, when in reality the majority of the income restored to people will be to higher earners and that vital public services will inevitably be jeopardised in order to do so. It represents an attempt by the Government to give the illusion of recovery to those citizens who are struggling most, while ultimately leaving them in a worse position by rolling back the services from which they disproportionately benefit.
Though it offers less attractive headlines and media coverage, the Government must use the present recovery as an opportunity to invest, not abrogate the State’s responsibilities. – Yours, etc,
CHRISTOPHER
McMAHON,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15. | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/the-future-of-the-usc-1.2769591?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/e6a4bfb3f51ed40e5682545788386e8fb2a9fa6b6a05ae6f58571c0c37d21a42.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:58:10 | null | 2016-08-26T05:30:00 | ‘I bumped up against Ulster as a competitor and was aware of the calibre of people here’ | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ffinancial-services%2Fgerry-mallon-ceo-ulster-bank-republic-of-ireland-1.2768319.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768276.1472136704!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Gerry Mallon, CEO Ulster Bank, Republic of Ireland | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | “We don’t have this every time I do an interview,” Gerry Mallon says with a smile as we prepare to tuck into some wonderfully fresh pea and mint soup, which is served in fancy china bowls in a meeting room at Ulster Bank’s Dublin headquarters. “It’s more to do with my schedule and the need for me to eat during the day.”
The Northerner has been busy since completing his gardening leave with Danske Bank in Northern Ireland and becoming the first chief executive of the standalone Ulster Bank business in the Republic at the start of June.
Its parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland, decided last year to separate the Ulster Bank businesses north and south of the Border, with Mallon recruited to run the operation in Dublin.
As chairman of the Irish Football Association, Mallon should have been preparing for the Euro 2016 championship in France with the Northern Ireland football team – its first appearance at a major tournament in 30 years.
Instead, he ended up spending most of his time here, introducing himself to staff, and finalising its half-year results, which included a €118 million provision to cover the expected cost of failing to apply the correct tracker interest rate to mortgage customer in recent years.
“It was pretty hectic,” Mallon recalls. “The timing was difficult. My aspiration was to have been out for a sustained period in France with the team. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, what I managed to do was overnight trips for each of the games. It was worth it.”
Mallon is something of an accidental chairman of the IFA, having taken up the role in mid 2014. He played football in school and is an ardent Liverpool fan – he was at the so-called miracle match in Istanbul in 2005 when the Reds came back from the dead to win the Uefa Champions League – but he wasn’t much of a footballer and never followed a club in the Irish Premier League.
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“My career was cut short by a tragic lack of talent,” he jokes.
His skills as an economist, banker and former strategy consultant with McKinsey made him a good candidate to be an independent non-executive chairman of a body which has had its share of governance issues.
Fighting fires
RBS will no doubt be hoping that he applies these skills in his new role. After years of fighting fires, Ulster Bank is back in profit and once again thinking about growth.
Mallon was attracted south of the border by the challenge following almost a decade with Danske Bank and its predecessor Northern Bank, seven of them as chief executive.
“I had largely fulfilled the opportunity that I saw in the Northern Ireland market,” he explains. “On the other hand, I see an enormous opportunity for Ulster Bank.
“I could see that in the Republic of Ireland there was a strong economy and a fundamentally strong bank with the weight of RBS’s resources behind it, which could be a very powerful challenger in this market [to AIB and Bank of Ireland]. I had bumped up against Ulster as a competitor and I was more than aware of the capability of the organisation and the calibre of the people here.”
Given that RBS had committed itself to owning Ulster Bank last year following a strategic review, Mallon says his brief when hired, was to “take the bank into the future and onto the next level”.
To “draw a veil over the resolution of the post-2008 crisis and start to fulfil the potential of the business”.
“You go and figure it out, Gerry,” is what he was told. “What is the best way to build this business? What is the best way to leverage what’s at your disposal? In all the discussions I’ve had . . . it’s been pretty much down to me [to figure it out]. It’s actually very liberating but also no less than I would expect if you come in to a job at this level.”
Its “far too early” to talk about Ulster Bank participating in any market consolidation, he says.
“There’s still a good, long job for Ulster Bank to run itself a bit better. My observation on the bank is that it’s a fundamentally strong franchise, it’s a sound bank, it’s got a mature market position but we have underleveraged our position as part of the RBS group.
“We haven’t brought the best of RBS to Ireland. The source of any competitive advantage that we have in this market is actually our position as part of the RBS group.”
World upside down
Mallon was hired last November and didn’t envisage that, within 3½ weeks of taking office in June, voters in the UK would decide to quit the European Union and turn his world upside down.
He says the Brexit decision makes Ulster Bank a “valuable” strategic asset for RBS, given that it holds a banking licence in the EU.
“There are a number of banking licences in the EU that RBS holds. There’s certainly one in Germany, one in Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. So there are a number of strategic options for what RBS might be able to do, and suitable passporting arrangements that they’ll be able to put in place.”
In addition, some of Ulster Bank’s costs are denominated in sterling and have improved as a result of the currency’s recent weakness, while its profits and capital are now more valuable to RBS when translated from euro to sterling.
The bank has made an application to the Central Bank of Ireland to use some of its surplus cash to pay a dividend to RBS, in what will be the first repayment by the Irish bank of the £15 billion bailout it received from its parent post the 2008 crash. Mallon says it will be a €1 billion-plus figure.
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Challenge
A bigger issue is what impact Brexit will have on Ulster Bank’s customers. “I see that as a short to medium term challenge. [But] there’s no real sense of panic among customers. There’s clearly pressure on exporters with the value of sterling. It’s just more uncomfortable for them but there’s been no immediate fatal impacts.”
One Brexit impact was a pausing of the sale of Project Oyster, a €2.5 billion portfolio of non-performing loans that Ulster Bank was in the middle of selling when the referendum result emerged.
“It’s still ongoing. It was delayed slightly in the immediate aftermath of Brexit just to let the dust settle. There has been a shortlisting of a number of potential bidders. Now we’re back into the detailed data phase.”
He hopes to conclude the sale by the end of this year.
Mallon accepts that trust in Ulster Bank was “dislocated” following the crash, as it was for other banks in Ireland. RBS group chief executive Ross McEwan wants all of its constituent parts to rank first for trust with their customers.
Interest rates
But legacy issues still weigh on Ulster Bank. It faces a fine from the Central Bank for its failure in past years to apply tracker interest rates to certain customer accounts and the bank has taken a €118 million provision to cover the costs of redress.
However, Ulster Bank has not disclosed how many customers had the wrong interest rate applied to their mortgages or how many of them lost their homes as a result. It will begin communicating with the affected customers in the coming months.
“It’s still too early for us to say what the impact has been,” he says. “To the extent that anybody has been disadvantaged or perceives that they’ve been disadvantaged, I would certainly apologise.
“The future of this bank has got to be built on customer trust and integrity and about doing the right thing. I’m definitely sorry to anyone who has been disadvantaged by this or perceives that they have been. We still need to get to the bottom of the level of that detriment.”
He hopes that by “this time next year we’ll not be talking about it”.
“My focus is on doing the right thing going forward for the bank to try and sort out the issues of the past, and move on to doing something more positive.”
Ulster Bank’s sustainable banking report sets out five big goals for 2016, including lending €2.5 billion to help “people buy their homes and grow their businesses”, and to support customers to “embrace mobile banking”, with a target to increase uptake by 30 per cent.
Its lending growth is trending well with the bank claiming an 18 per cent share of new mortgages in the first quarter.
“There’s a number of things driving that,” he says. “We’re back in the broker market, we’ve had good competitive rates, we’ve been on the front foot in marketing and advertising in a way that we hadn’t been for a period of time, and other innovations include mobile mortgage managers who go to customers homes or their place of work to facilitate them.”
Ulster Bank’s focus is on fixed rather than variable rates, which is “where we see the opportunity at the moment. We’re responsive to our customers. We have a variable rate as well”.
Renaissance
Mallon is impressed by the renaissance of the Irish economy, describing it as “incredibly entrepreneurial . . . much more so than the North, with people willing to challenge the status quo and willing to take appropriate risks”.
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He also believes we’re better at retaining talent in the Republic. “One of the biggest problems that Northern Ireland has is kids going away to college to other parts of the UK, and they don’t come home again.”
Mallon made that journey himself, to Cambridge, but did return home, albeit later, working for McKinsey in Dublin and London.
He is currently splitting his time between Dublin and Belfast, with the plan to move the family south of the Border on a full-time basis next year when his son’s school exams are completed.
Looking out five years, where does Mallon see Ulster Bank in the marketplace?
“In five years we will certainly be part of RBS,” he says without any equivocation. “In five years, we will be a valuable and profitable growing part of RBS. I think we will be regarded as a hungry innovator in the Irish market and somebody that is setting the benchmark for change and growth.”
**************************************
GERRY MALLON ON...
...the potential for a rebrand in the Republic given that it has split from Ulster Bank in the North:
“There are no plans for it but I wouldn’t say that it is something we would rule out either. It’s certainly one of the options that’s out there.
“I would recognise that there’s scope for confusion, certainly internally but absolutely externally. You should expect to see the two businesses diverge over time. It’s still a powerful brand and it’s got a lot of heritage. So you’d be very slow to walk away from that unless you had something even more powerful to replace it with.”
...the future of bank branches (Ulster Bank has 110 in the Republic):
“It’s very difficult to come up with a number but almost certainly it is less than today. Technology is changing the way that customers interact. The transactional stuff is gradually going to diminish. My son is 15 and he’ll probably never write a cheque in his life.
“So branches will become more like a car dealership, where you go very infrequently... you go for something high-end and the place is top class in its physical manifestation of what the brand represents.
“We’re bound to reconfigure our network and some of that maybe closing branches, some of that might be new branch openings, and some of that might be changing the physical layout or the facilities that we’ve got.”
...the FAI poaching some of the North’s best footballers to play for the Republic:
“It definitely rankles with people in the North and the association. It’s seen as something that is divisive and unnecessary to be quite honest. There’s been very little of it at senior level in the past number of years but you still see some movement of players at junior level.
“The unfortunate thing about it is that it potentially brings sectarianism into football, which is just inappropriate. There’s clearly only going to be one set of Northern Ireland players who would have any aspiration to play for the Republic. That’s not the way I want to see Northern Ireland football develop. I would like to see every kid in Northern Ireland aspire to play for us.”
...on growing up in Belfast during the Troubles:
“I was born in the year the Troubles started in Northern Ireland. I was six or seven when we moved further south, out of the hotter areas of west Belfast. When you’re a kid, what you see every day is what you perceive as normal and it probably wasn’t until I went away to university that I really grasped that what I had lived through wasn’t a normal situation. I’m glad to say that life in the North is a lot more pleasant now.”
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*********************************************
Name: Gerry Mallon
Job: Chief Executive of Ulster Bank in the Republic of Ireland
Age: 46
Family: Married to Una with four children
Lives: Splits time between Dublin and Belfast but family will move South in 2017
Hobbies: Goes to the gym and likes to travel for pleasure
Something that might surprise: Despite being chairman of the Irish Football Association in the North and an avid Liverpool supporter, he never played competitive soccer. But he did row while at college. “I rowed at Cambridge rather than for Cambridge. It’s an important distinction.”
Something we might expect: He feels his training as an economist has been useful in his career. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/gerry-mallon-ceo-ulster-bank-republic-of-ireland-1.2768319 | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/0136fcb4764b276afe32fda6f0f2db5cc83dbaffceb95c5c4479c9ca64330adf.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T00:50:39 | null | 2016-08-27T01:00:00 | Dublin City Council wants a new connection between Fishamble Street and north quays | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fenvironment%2Fliffey-bridge-plan-does-not-have-the-support-of-nta-1.2769890%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769889.1472244757!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Liffey bridge plan does not have the support of NTA | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The National Transport Authority (NTA) has said it cannot support Dublin City Council proposals for a new bridge across the river Liffey at Fishamble Street, despite having identified the bridge in its own cycling plans for the city.
The proposed bridge spanning the river from Fishamble Street on the south to Arran Street East on the north quays is proposed as a way of alleviating pressure on Parliament Street, which is to become a two-way bus corridor following the pedestrianisation of College Green.
The council plans to create a €6 million pedestrian and cycle plaza at College Green as part of widespread traffic changes to the city which will be needed to accommodate the Luas Cross City line which is due to begin operating from the end of next year.
Block traffic
The new plaza will block traffic from crossing College Green to and from Dame Street.
Buses, and taxis, but not private cars, will instead be able to run along the same route as the new Luas tracks, north and south in front of Trinity College, and could use this route to access Nassau Street heading south, and Westmoreland Street heading north.
Earlier plans had proposed allowing buses through College Green to Dame Street, and to compensate for the loss of this route, Parliament Street, currently one-way southbound, would become a two-way bus-only street, increasing the number of bus routes using the street from three to 20.
Cars would also be banned from the street.
Grattan Bridge, which connects Capel Street to Parliament Street, and is currently a southbound-only bridge, would also become a two-way bus corridor.
Concerns
However, concerns have been raised about the impact so many extra buses will have on Parliament Street.
Councillors last May voted to support a proposal by Green Party councillor Ciarán Cuffe for a pedestrian, cycling and public transport bridge linking Fishamble Street and Arran Street East to be included in the new city development plan.
“I’m suggesting that we build another bridge to the west of Grattan Bridge and that we would use that new bridge to relieve the pressure on Parliament Street and Capel Street,” he said.
The NTA has written to the council to say it is unclear on the function of the bridge.
“The requirement for a new bridge over the Liffey connecting Fishamble Street and Arran Street East has not been identified in the City Centre Transport Study . . . its inclusion in the development plan cannot be supported by the authority and it is recommended that it is removed, or its function clarified in a manner than could be supported by the authority.”
However, Mr Cuffe said he stood by his proposal and did not intend to accept its removal from the development plan.
“I believe that a bridge at that point will contribute to an improved environment for the city, particularly once the pedestrian and cycle plaza at College Green is in place.”
Mr Cuffe pointed out that the NTA’s Greater Dublin Area Cycle Network Plan, published in 2013, identifies the need for a new cycling bridge over the river at Fishamble Street. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/liffey-bridge-plan-does-not-have-the-support-of-nta-1.2769890?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/8fdb0ead855ccaf121f1ec76cef00f555ade126fae49edfdf2c7c8295a37386e.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:52:25 | null | 2016-08-30T06:00:00 | Research suggests investors can profit by buying funds that go against the grain | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fpersonal-finance%2Fshould-active-funds-embrace-high-conviction-investing-1.2771094%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771082.1472400879!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Should active funds embrace high-conviction investing? | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | It’s one of the most documented findings in finance: the majority of equity funds underperform stock markets. However, defenders of active management say the statistics are distorted by closet index funds containing so many positions as to make their performance almost indistinguishable from benchmark indices. Can investors therefore earn outsized profits by avoiding the closet indexers and embracing concentrated, high-conviction funds?
Neither passive nor genuinely active investors have a good word to say about closet index funds. Such funds are all too common, for two main reasons. Firstly, fund managers run the risk of being fired or losing investors if they suffer short-term underperformance; buying hundreds of stocks means outperformance becomes almost impossible, but it also ensures their performance will not deviate too much relative to their benchmark, thereby minimising career risk.
Secondly, managers want to bag the extra fee that comes with increased assets under management, but it’s difficult to manage large sums of money if your investment universe is limited to 30 or so stocks. Accordingly, managers are naturally incentivised to over-diversify and own more stocks; diversification becomes diworsification.
That’s bad news for investors hoping to outperform markets. According to a study conducted by money manager and author Robert Hagstrom, a randomly generated portfolio of 15 stocks has a 27 per cent chance of outperforming indices, but the odds of outperformance decline to just 2 per cent for portfolios consisting of 250 stocks.
What if managers took a more concentrated approach? Few if any investors can have in-depth knowledge of 200 or 300 stocks, but what if they had only to pick a few stocks – say their best ideas? One 2010 study, ‘Best Ideas’, found returns generated by managers’ “high-conviction investments” – for example, their top-five stocks – comfortably outperformed the market and their other holdings. Investors, the authors concluded, “would benefit if managers held more concentrated portfolios”.
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Similar conclusions are reached by the authors of ‘Diversification versus Concentration . . . and the Winner is?’, a 2012 paper that examined 4,700 US equity funds over the 1999-2009 period; the more concentrated the portfolio, the better the performance.
Active share
One way of avoiding closet index funds is to buy funds with a high active share, a concept popularised by Yale researchers Martijn Cremers and Antti Petajisto.
Active share refers to the percentage of a fund’s portfolio that differs from its benchmark. A fund with a score of 0 is identical to its benchmark index, whereas a score of 100 means it holds none of the stocks in the index. A 2009 Cremers and Petajisto paper that examined the 1980-2003 period found US funds with the highest active share “significantly outperform their benchmarks, both before and after expenses”.
A follow-up Petajisto paper in 2013 that analysed the 1990-2009 period found the average actively managed fund underperformed, with one exception – the most active stock pickers, who beat indices by 1.26 per cent per year after fees and by 2.61 per cent annually before fees, indicating a “nontrivial amount of skill”.
Other studies have replicated these findings regarding the value of active share. One recent study found significantly better performance from emerging market funds with a high active share over the 2009-14 period. Similarly, recent research by Premier Multi-Asset Funds’ manager Simon Evans-Cook has found UK funds with the highest active share have easily outperformed the FTSE All-Share index over one-, three-, five- and 10-year periods.
Sceptical
Many researchers are sceptical, however. A recent study of the Norwegian equity market found “no correlation between the active share and performance, persistence, nor skill”. Japanese firm Nomura’s analysis of the US market found that closet trackers actually outperformed concentrated stock pickers in eight of the 11 years from 2004 to 2014. Active share “may have been useful before 2004 but not since then”, cautioned Nomura.
Similarly, Morningstar researcher Russ Kinnel noted last month that funds with high active share have underperformed those with low active share over the 2011-15 period. Low fees are a better guide to fund performance, said Kinnel; 64 per cent of the cheapest funds outperformed, he said, compared to just 29 per cent of the funds with the highest active share.
Advocates of passive investing are also sceptical. A Vanguard report found high-conviction funds were associated with higher costs but not better performance. An S&P Dow Jones Indices report, meanwhile, cautions portfolio volatility “will almost certainly increase” if an active manager reduces his holdings from 100 to 20 or so stocks. The S&P report also suggests portfolio concentration makes management skill “harder to detect, and less likely to matter”; a few losing bets can make a skilled manager look bad just as a few lucky punts will make bad managers look good, resulting in investors’ decisions being “informed by luck rather than skill”.
The most trenchant criticism, however, comes from researchers allied to hedge fund AQR Capital Management. Their paper, ‘Deactivating Active Share’, says Cremers’ and Petajisto’s findings have “attracted considerable attention in the investment community”, with more active managers opting to “tout their active share”. However, AQR researchers argue that while the highest active share funds have outperformed in recent decades, this is because such funds were largely invested in small- and mid-cap companies; this, rather than active share, explains the results.
Patience
Cremers and Petajisto, who have vociferously rejected the AQR thesis, argue that critics are missing the point. Active share is “not a measure of skill”, Cremers said at a Morningstar conference earlier this year. “You do not need skill to have high active share, you just need to buy a bunch of different stocks”.
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On its own, a fund’s active share tells you little, he admits. The key is to examine a fund’s active share and its average holding period. Cremers’ latest paper, ‘Patient Capital Outperformance: The Investment Skill of High Active Share Managers Who Trade Infrequently’, finds that managers that trade frequently “systematically underperform”, even if they are funds with a high active share. However, funds characterised both by high active share and patience (defined as holding positions for at least two years) have significantly outperformed over the last 26 years, by over 2 percentage points per year.
Useful
Overall, the concept of active share appears useful on a number of levels. Calls for funds to reveal their active share have grown louder in recent years and that is a good thing – low active share scores expose closet index funds that are taking their investors for a ride. Additionally, if a fund’s active share declines rapidly, it may suggest that asset bloat – a rush of money into a fund after a period of outperformance – is driving a change in strategy.
Nevertheless, it’s clear investors would be naive to dive headlong into a fund purely on the basis of it boasting a high active share or a low number of stock holdings. Deviating from an index is risky. Investors frequently make the mistake of thinking a portfolio consisting of 10 or 20 stocks has a 50:50 chance of outperforming, but the aforementioned Robert Hagstrom statistics show a randomly-generated 15-stock portfolio has only a 27 per cent chance of beating the market.
That’s because most stocks actually underperform the market, with a small handful of so-called super-stocks historically accounting for the bulk of market returns. Doubtless, those odds will plummet further if a fund manager relies on a dumb strategy – managers that frequently trade expensive growth stocks will underperform, whether or not their fund boasts a high active share.
In that sense, active share is, as Prof Cremers puts it, “a very basic tool” in a large toolbox. If combined with other tools, however, the measure would appear to be a relevant one for investors seeking market-beating returns. Cremers’ research indicates the best managers outperform by focusing on stocks often shunned by others: specifically, picking safe, value and high-quality stocks “and then sticking with those over relatively long periods until their apparent undervaluation has been reversed”.
In that sense, high active share doesn’t mean a manager will outperform; it is, however, a necessary condition for outperformance. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/personal-finance/should-active-funds-embrace-high-conviction-investing-1.2771094?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/7821b50147a94ed8b1b73d079a49e76912fb922a4f056fa39011fbfbbebecdd6.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T12:51:12 | null | 2016-08-28T13:23:00 | Incident on Saturday sparked hours of traffic chaos on one of busiest weekends of the year | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fuk%2Fengland-s-m20-to-re-open-following-footbridge-collapse-1.2770961%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770960.1472386930!/image/image.jpg | en | null | England’s M20 to re-open following footbridge collapse | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | England’s M20 is expected to re-open Sunday evening, several hours later than initially planned, with extensive safety checks being carried out.
Restrictions on the motorway were initially put in place after a footbridge crashed on to the carriageways on Saturday, sparking hours of traffic chaos on one of the busiest weekends of the year.
The bridge came down between junctions three and four shortly after noon on Saturday when a digger being transported on the back of a lorry collided with it.
The M20 is the main route to the Channel Tunnel and the Port of Dover for travel to France and the rest of the Continent.
A motorcyclist in his 50s was taken to hospital with suspected broken ribs following the incident while the driver of the lorry was treated for shock at the scene.
The road was expected to re-open by lunchtime on Sunday, although that has since been put back.
Stuart Thompson, a Highways England spokesman, said: “We have worked overnight and removed part of the structure on the London-bound carriageway.
“We had hoped to reopen by lunchtime. Having done some of these assessments we needed to do more safety work before we re-open it. We will look to get it open again as soon as possible.
“We are look at this evening, hopefully earlier, although we are reluctant to put a time on it.
“It is a very, very complex situation. There are lots of different things needed to be done and we needed to be confident it is safe before we reopen it.”
The bridge collapsed on one of the UK’s busiest travel days of the year. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/england-s-m20-to-re-open-following-footbridge-collapse-1.2770961?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d454244ddddfa01435bf3d545793699b90c441d61cd7407692bf19f8b2892f4c.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T16:49:20 | null | 2016-08-30T15:58:00 | Dundalk-based becomes Siro second retail partner after Vodafone | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftechnology%2Fdigiweb-to-launch-fibre-products-on-siro-s-network-1.2773199.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773198.1472569103!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Digiweb to launch fibre products on Siro’s network | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Siro, the commercial broadband venture between ESB Networks and Vodafone, has signed up telecoms firm Digiweb as a retail partner.
Dundalk-based Digiweb plans to launch a number of fibre packages for residential and business customers on Siro’s network.
The company’s “Electric Broadband” services will go live in Dundalk, Letterkenny and Drogheda later this year, before it expands elsewhere via’s Siro’s ongoing rollout.
Siro is among the final shortlist of three firms for the Government’s National Broadband Plan, which aims to build a high-speed broadband infrastructure
The scheme was recently expanded to encompass 927,000 homes, more than a third of the State’s housing stock.
Siro is investing €450 million in a fibre-to-the-building network, primarily aimed at 50 regional towns.
It recently upgraded Skibbereen’s connectivity status, bringing it to the same level as leading international business hubs such as Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Commenting about the partnership with Digiweb, Sean Atkinson, chief executive of Siro, said: “Our partnership with Digiweb illustrates how Siro is driving competition in Ireland’s broadband marketplace.”
“We want to migrate Ireland from legacy copper based networks to 100% fibre-optic networks, this will ensure that people across the country can avail of next generation services and drive the economy forward,” he said.
Declan Campbell, managing director of Digiweb, added: “This is a different kind of internet and we are delighted to be offering our customers the choice.”
“It will be great to be able to offer our customers Siro powered broadband packages of up to one gigabits per second, enabling us to deliver one of the most powerful broadband services available in Ireland,”he added. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/digiweb-to-launch-fibre-products-on-siro-s-network-1.2773199 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/05fbdb68d3eb2adccefbe4bc2f29e4cb508be7fa28d314eda28ef0a806bf38a7.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T16:50:29 | null | 2016-08-27T15:48:00 | Footage shows five boys, allegedly including Briton, holding pistols behind a row of men | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fmiddle-east%2Fisis-video-appears-to-show-children-killing-captives-1.2770810%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770809.1472309289!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Isis video appears to show children killing captives | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Islamic State has released a propaganda video that appears to show five children, one of whom it identifies as British, murdering Kurdish prisoners.
The footage, released overnight on Friday, features five boys wearing military-type clothing and holding pistols, while standing in a row behind five men who are kneeling in orange jumpsuits.
Each of the children is captioned in the video with names that have been used by Isis before to denote a fighter’s country of origin.
A white boy with blue eyes is labelled “Abu Abdullah al-Britani” (the Briton) but the identity of the child has not been verified.
A child captioned “Abu al-Bara al-Tunisi” (the Tunisian) addresses the men - apparently Kurdish fighters - promising more violence, according to the BBC.
The other children are said to be Abu Ishaq al-Masri (the Egyptian), Abu Fu’ad al-Kurdi (the Kurd) and Yusuf al-Uzbaki (the Uzbek). It is not known where the video was filmed.
In February, Isis released a video purportedly showing a young British boy, thought to be four-year-old Isa Dare, blowing up a car and killing three prisoners inside.
He is the the son of the Muslim extremist Grace “Khadija” Dare, from Lewisham, south-east London, who travelled to Syria in 2012.
The Guardian | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/isis-video-appears-to-show-children-killing-captives-1.2770810?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d7579b0c470142f618b63eb655a15f49218f165ec70d0353a77d6a3f45f204b0.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T10:47:42 | null | 2016-08-29T06:08:00 | Bragging about not toiling on holiday part of wider trend of shorter working hours | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fwork%2Flucy-kellaway-poolside-working-no-longer-a-sign-of-importance-1.2770991%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770989.1472393563!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Lucy Kellaway: Poolside working no longer a sign of importance | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | When I was at university I spent a summer travelling around Europe with some friends, and one of them suggested we drop in on his parents’ place in the south of France.
There are two things I remember about that visit. There was the mortification of being greeted by a butler who ceremoniously carried my tatty luggage – a few things stuffed into a plastic bag – to the suite of rooms I’d been allocated. But what stays in my mind even more was the image of his father – who turned out to be a famous tycoon – clad in small swimming trunks with cigar clamped between teeth, holding a gin and tonic in one hand and a telephone receiver in the other.
The year was 1979 and this was what power looked like. The man was too important to be out of touch with the deals he was doing. So he had installed a telephone line by the swimming pool and passed his summers issuing instructions from a lounger by the water.
A quarter of a century later, technology allowed all of us to pretend to be tycoons. We might not have had the butler or the pool house but everyone could head to the beach with a BlackBerry packed along with their towels. And because we could, we did. Only for most of us, what we were doing was not deals, it was responding to mundane inquiries that could have waited two weeks – or forever.
This year, I decided to do something radical that I hadn’t done for almost a decade. I took a proper holiday. I disconnected myself from work altogether. I didn’t open any work messages. I spent time reading, walking, looking at the sea – and sometimes getting into it – while I thought about not much at all.
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Immersion in work
When I returned to work and reacquainted myself with email, it was perfectly straightforward. I deleted almost all of them unread, responding only to the things that looked interesting. Far from feeling overwhelmed, I felt a certain excitement in the sudden immersion in work. It was a new-shoes and sharp-pencil sort of feeling that used to go with the beginning of a school term.
Over the past week it has started to dawn on me that my radical action was not radical at all. I was merely following the latest fashion.
Last week I sent an email to an entrepreneur I know, and within seconds the automatic reply came back: “I am on holiday until August 30 and will not be checking messages.” This was particularly remarkable given that last time I’d seen him – some five years ago – he had told me how he expected all his employees to respond to messages instantly wherever they were and whatever they were doing.
So I emailed back asking what had made him change his mind – but all I got in return was the same automatic message telling me he wasn’t reading whatever I was sending.
The very next day I got an email from a woman who I had contacted before I went away. It began: “Sorry for my radio silence – I have had a blissful two-week holiday and am just catching up on emails on my return.” Here was the same thing again: a driven, thirtysomething entrepreneur who wanted me to know not how hard she worked on holiday but how she loafed around, and how much she enjoyed it.
Experiment
To see how widespread this change is, I’ve done a little experiment. I’ve collected all the out-of-office emails I’ve had this summer, and counted the number that were followed at once by an email sent from the beach. Three years ago, it was very unusual for an automatic message not to be quickly followed by a real one. This year I’ve had a total of 38 automatic messages telling me the sender was away, only six of which have been succeeded by a personal, poolside reply.
Bragging about not working on holiday seems to be part of a wider trend - which I wrote about a few months ago – in which fashionable execs flaunt not their long hours, but their short ones. To be emailing from the pool does not prove you are powerful, it is starting to be seen for what it is – a sign of weakness, poor time management and an inability to delegate. If you can take two weeks off altogether it shows you have overcome all gadget addiction, and like a modern-day tycoon can control when you work – and when you don’t. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016) | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/lucy-kellaway-poolside-working-no-longer-a-sign-of-importance-1.2770991?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/421497adeafe5b8e52de48b1f3b3689d2d9163d7aa8676a30c63af85f9953a92.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T14:51:34 | null | 2016-08-29T15:22:00 | Olympic medallists brothers said a bowl of cereal was the first thing they ate when they got home | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fireland%2Firish-news%2Fgary-and-paul-o-donovan-overwhelmed-by-welcome-as-they-return-home-1.2772005%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772004.1472480505!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Gary and Paul O Donovan ‘overwhelmed’ by welcome as they return home | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Olympic silver medallists, Gary and Paul O’Donovan spoke of their astonishment at the reception they have received in West Cork since returning home from Rio de Janeiro where they narrowly missed out on gold in the lightweight double sculls.
The brothers from Lisheen in West Cork arrived at their base at Skibbereen Rowing Club to a tremendous reception from friends and neighbours as they proudly displayed their silver medals at a press conference
Flanked by their coach Dominic Casey and Rowing Ireland’s high performance coach Morten Espersen, Gary and Paul spoke of their surprise at the reception they had received and their hope that their success in Rio would encourage others to take up rowing.
“Which camera do I look at it,? began Gary to loud laughter when asked about the reception that they received after arriving into Cork Airport on Sunday night from Rotterdam where Paul had won gold in the Lightweight Single Sculls at the World Championships on Saturday
“It was overwhelming- people were still sending us messages as we were boarding the plane in Rotterdam, telling us there were going to be huge crowds. We got messages from the lads in the club telling us there were buses coming up from Skibbereen and it was going to be insane,” Gary said.
“After we landed the pilot invited us into the cockpit as we were going through the water cannons on the tarmac at Cork Airport and he told us that as he was landing, he could see the crowds at the other side of the airport and he said ‘Lads, it’s going to be huge’ and really it is overwhelming.”
Paul explained that travelling all the way down from Cork Airport through towns and villages such as Innishannon, Bandon, Ballinascarthy, Clonakiity, Rosscarbery and Leap, and then into Skibbereen, people were out to greet them with flags and messages of congratulations.
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“We had a bowl of cereal when we got home,” Paul said.
“Christ, it’s hungry work, celebrating and waving at people. The Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery had a bonfire blazing and as we drove past, we stuck our hands out the window and they gave us a bag of sandwiches - we were delighted !”
“We never thought this would happen. We were just being ourselves and talking shite, answering questions and then it all escalated pretty fast but what harm - it’s all good for the club and for the sport- it’s just a reflection of what it’s been like for us for the last few years down here.”
With timing almost as perfect as their rowing stroke, Gary took up the theme: “That’s why we were so happy - there was such a good atmosphere for us here when we left for Rio and we were delighted to be able to keep it going by coming back with medals.”
Thousands are expected to turn out this evening in Skibbereen when the two brothers will parade through the town on an open top bus before proceeding to the Fair Field in the town where they will be interviewed by RTÉ’s Jackie Hurley about their achievement in winning silver in Brazil. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/gary-and-paul-o-donovan-overwhelmed-by-welcome-as-they-return-home-1.2772005?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/206e8a6881068ac0fd271a02ab5ddeed7dc36c4da8adac65900061e7e13030b4.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T16:48:05 | null | 2016-08-26T14:09:00 | Business has surpassed levels achieved at height of boom, says port firm chairman | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftransport-and-tourism%2Fshannon-foynes-port-handles-7-6bn-in-trade-annually-report-1.2769462.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769450.1472225134!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Shannon Foynes Port handles €7.6bn in trade annually - report | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Shannon Foynes Port handles more than €7 billion in trade every year, according to a report commissioned by the State company that runs mid-western harbour.
Research by W2 Consulting, based on 2014 figures from the port itself and 31 companies using it, shows that it is worth €1.9 billion to the wider economy and handles €7.6 billion in trade annually.
It also shows that Shannon Foynes Port Company and its customers plan to spend €277 million between them over the five years to 2019, which will support 3,372 jobs in the region.
The port company intends to spend €130 million on an expansion plan, dubbed Vision 2041 , that will exploit advantages such as its deep water and sheltered harbours to develop an international trade hub there.
Investment
Combined with private sector capital spending, investment there will total €1.8 billion over the plan’s lifetime.
Chief executive, Pat Keating, said that Shannon Foynes will fund its share of this investment from its own resources. “We are generating the cash flow to do this,” he said.
As the EU recognises it as a core European port, Brussels provided it with €3 million last year to aid development. Mr Keating said that it will be able to get more funding from this source as time goes on.
He explained that the company commissioned the study to demonstrate the port’s worth to the regional and national economies.
“We always knew that it had a huge impact, but we didn’t have the figures to back that up,” Mr Keating said. “These are hard figures, collated from at the primary source, there’s no extrapolation.”
Launching the report, Shannon Foynes chairman, Michael Collins, confirmed that business at the port has overtaken levels achieved at the height of the boom in the first decade of the century.
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“We have a clear vision for the company that envisages it doubling its trade over the lifetime of our masterplan and driving very significant employment growth across the region,” he said.
Ambition
He added the completion of the proposed Limerick-Foynes road, already included in Government spending plans, was essential to this ambition.
“The other key project is the regeneration of the disused Limerick to Foynes rail link and a major feasibility study is being advanced in relation to that,” Mr Collins said.
The report’s author, Mark O’Connell, pointed out that the port has already attracted significant investment since the masterplan’s launch in 2013.
“If you take the capital expenditure of €277 million planned by Shannon Foynes Port Company and its customers up to 2019, that’s almost seven times the investment in redeveloping Thomond Park, ” he said.
“ That’s an indication of the importance that the port authority and the estuary will have in the years ahead.”
The port company has statutory jurisdiction over all marine activities and port management on the Shannon Estuary, covering 500sq km from Kerry and Loop in Co Clare to Limerick city. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/shannon-foynes-port-handles-7-6bn-in-trade-annually-report-1.2769462 | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/7bb04523960d84dc4f1e2f70a89e4d6b853ca5a74cda7ca587583ebefea5dce4.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T10:50:58 | null | 2016-08-28T10:30:00 | The health service in Ireland is put under the microscope this week | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fculture%2Ftv-radio-web%2Ftv-preview-seven-things-to-watch-this-week-1.2769741%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769740.1472232668!/image/image.jpg | en | null | TV preview: seven things to watch this week | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Keeping Ireland Alive: The Health Service in a Day, Monday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
Ireland’s ailing health service is in the news every day, with record numbers of patients on trolleys and resources being savagely cut back. But for one day, May 31st, 2016, 75 camera crews went out to hospitals and clinics around the country to film life at the coalface of healthcare.
The result is Keeping Ireland Alive: The Health Service in a Day, a six-part documentary which, say its producers, tells the human stories behind the headlines. This is not a propaganda exercise, they add, but an honest, unflinching look at the challenges facing healthcare professionals around the country and an intimate portrait of some of the people they treat.
In the first episode, we meet bus driver Brendan Flanagan, who is about to have a tumour removed from his spine. This risky operation will be carried out by consultant neurosurgeon David O’Brien. Meanwhile, David O’Flynn from Limerick is spending his 70th day in the ICU unit of Dublin’s Mater hospital, having developed complications from swine flu.
In Naas, Tommy McCormack is getting ready to sing with the Kildare Pastimes Choir, for people living with dementia, and at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in Dublin, Derek Hayes is waiting for an operation that could restore his eyesight.
African Pride, Monday, RTÉ One, 11.35pm
In South Africa’s townships, lesbian women face homophobic violence daily, and many have been assaulted, raped and murdered for their sexuality. But rather than cower and hide away, these women are fighting back by making themselves visible, taking to the streets to celebrate Pride and holding public memorials for their fallen sisters. African Pride tells the story of these indomitable women who have taken a stand against oppression in their communities.
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Made by Irish film-maker and journalist Laura Fletcher, African Pride won the best human rights documentary award at Galway Film Fleadh.
Find me a Home, Thursday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm
Soaring rents, negative equity and unattainable mortgages – it’s tough trying to buy, rent or sell a home on the current property market. Find me a Home (Thursday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm) is a new six-part series documenting the rigmarole of getting a place you can call your own. We meet people who are either trying to get on the property ladder, or out of negative equity hell, or to find their perfect home.
Home From Home, Tuesday, BBC Two, 10pm
Johnny Vegas has found the perfect second home, a holiday lodge in the idyllic setting of the Lake District in England. But there’s one blot on the landscape: his neighbours, Robert and Penny, who are superior in every way. Home From Home stars Vegas as the hapless Neil, with Joanna Page as his wife, Fiona.
Our Ex-Wife, Thursday, BBC Two, 10pm
Peep Show’s Robert Webb stars in a new comedy about a divorced dad trying to start a new life in Our Ex-Wife. Jack is happily engaged to new fiancée Sara, but demented ex-wife Hillary unleashes a post-marital blitz in a bid to ruin his future plans. Sara makes it her mission to befriend her future husband’s ex, for the sake of the children. Can it possibly be as base and cruel – and funny – as Peep Show? That’ll be tough.
Are You Being Served? and Porridge, both Sunday, BBC One
Sometimes it’s better to let a classic comedy series stay in the vault where it can be remembered fondly. But the BBC has decided to celebrate its comedy legacy by remaking some of telly’s most popular sitcoms. Are You Being Served? (Sunday, BBC One, 9pm) is a one-off episode featuring a brand-new cast playing the staff of Grace Brothers department store, including Mr Humphreys, Mrs Slocombe and Captain Peacock. Expect Mrs Slocombe’s famous pussy to make a reappearance. This is followed by an all-new Porridge (Sunday, BBC One, 9.30pm), in which Fletch’s grandson is banged up for cyber-crime. We’ll just stick with the un-PC originals, thank you. | http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/tv-preview-seven-things-to-watch-this-week-1.2769741?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/313812bddec581d535ef45b44aa1d6567276e2db4b2e0507bece36f279a7f82f.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T20:51:09 | null | 2016-08-28T20:19:00 | Traynor covered post-cold war Europe, including fall of Berlin Wall and EU expansion | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fian-traynor-europe-editor-of-the-guardian-dies-aged-60-1.2771260%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771258.1472411996!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Ian Traynor, Europe editor of the Guardian, dies aged 60 | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Ian Traynor, the Guardian’s globally respected Europe editor, died in Brussels on Saturday after a short illness at the age of 60.
Traynor witnessed, reported and interpreted the critical turning points in post-cold war European history including the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s reunification, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, the European Union’s expansion and crises.
“Ian was one of the finest reporters of his generation, who brought a rare level of knowledge and expertise to his work,” said editor-in-chief Katharine Viner. “He covered many epoch-defining events for the Guardian, from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the Greek financial crisis, and he will be hugely missed by colleagues and readers alike.”
Rare among journalists, Traynor was a true linguist as well as a gifted reporter. He started studying Russian and German in school in Glasgow and then at Aberdeen University, visiting both countries as a student in the 1970s. He worked as a translator and editor of foreign broadcasts at the BBC monitoring unit at Caversham Park, near Reading, before getting a job as a subeditor at the Guardian. He stayed in London only briefly.
When a stringer’s position covering central Europe became vacant in 1988 he took his young family out to Vienna. It was a characteristically prescient move, as central Europe was on the brink of a revolution with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He filed to the Guardian as a stringer initially but was put on staff as eastern European correspondent in 1990. He covered the Balkan wars from Vienna and then went to Bonn to report on the evolution of a new Germany, moving to Berlin as the capital shifted, and then to Moscow in 1999. He moved to Zagreb in 2003, covering much of Europe from there, before establishing himself as Europe editor in Brussels in 2007.
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“I think I’ve been out in the field longer than anyone,” he proudly told a visitor not long before his death.
His colleagues from the conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia remember him both for physical bravery and for vivid and crafted writing, but most of all for his sharp analytical mind.
Allan Little, who reported the Bosnian war alongside Ian for the BBC, recalled the UN security council passing an ill-fated resolution in April 1993 establishing Srebrenica as a “safe area” under the protection of UN peacekeeping troops.
“Ian unpicked that resolution with forensic precision and focus. He wrote about how vulnerable that left Srebrenica. He knew what would happen two years in advance,” said Little. “He was a ferocious critic of the UN intervention. Working alongside him, I learned a lot from him about the place.”
Jamie Wilson, the Guardian’s head of international news, said: “Ian was the journalist’s journalist. He was a brilliant foreign correspondent: supremely knowledgeable, always one step – but usually three – ahead of the opposition, a fantastic writer with that all too rare art of being able to pull a splash out of his back pocket on those days when there really was no news. The world will be a much poorer place without Ian reporting on it.”
– (Guardian service) | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/ian-traynor-europe-editor-of-the-guardian-dies-aged-60-1.2771260?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/0ec087615522e42855f8d8ca11f54c57007ac5225d8fc173f5cf00c41c402b8b.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T12:51:38 | null | 2016-08-29T12:03:00 | Dr Saleem Sharif allegedly failed to properly investigate patient who had recently given birth to twins | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fcrime-and-law%2Fcork-based-gp-accused-of-poor-professional-performance-1.2771900%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771899.1472469104!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Cork-based GP accused of poor professional performance | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | A Cork-based doctor who is alleged to have carried out only a “perfunctory” examination of a female patient has appeared at a fitness to practise inquiry of the Medical Council.
Dr Saleem Sharif, a locum GP from Ballyphehane, is accused of poor professional performance over an alleged failure to properly investigate the patient, who had recently given birth to twins.
Dr Sharif saw Alison Hunter at the GP Now clinic in Sandyford, Co Dublin, in October 2014, several weeks after she had given birth to twins by emergency caesarean section.
Mrs Hunter went to the GP after suffering flu-like symptoms and an odorous discharge. She says the consultation lasted no more than five minutes.
The council alleges Dr Sharif asked her only two questions, in relation to the discharge and whether she was suffering a sore throat. It is alleged he did not conduct any physical examination or further inquiries or investigations.
In 2011, Dr Sharif was found guilty of poor professional performance over his treatment of a cardiac patient while working on call in Cork two years earlier.
Last year he made a €733,000 settlement with the Revenue Commissioners in relation to his tax affairs.
In the case being heard on Monday, Dr Sharif diagnosed a urinary tract infection and prescribed antibiotics for Mrs Hunter. However, her symptoms worsened on returning home and she became increasingly unwell.
Her husband Carl called an ambulance the following day after her temperature reached 39.6 degrees and her body went into spasm. She was taken to the Rotunda maternity hospital in Dublin, where staff diagnosed endometritis, an inflammation of the uterus which can lead to sepsis and organ failure if not properly treated.
She was put on a course of treatment and her condition improved within a number of days.
Simon Mills, for Dr Sharif, said his client had offered Mrs Hunter and her husband his sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused. He described the incident as an “isolated case” involving a failure to take an adequate history or carry out an adequate examination.
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Dr Sharif accepted the wrong diagnosis had been reached but has not come to the attention of the Medical Council since 2014, he said.
Mr Mills said his client was prepared to give the council a number of undertakings; he undertook not to repeat the conduct he is accused of, to co-operate with a performance review and to agreed to being censured.
The committee has adjourned to consider this offer. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/cork-based-gp-accused-of-poor-professional-performance-1.2771900?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1c137ccecd01637ce5e1bb5b07aece10e67c9744e542308a40b279779891447f.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T18:51:50 | null | 2016-08-29T18:22:00 | Huma Abedin announces she is leaving Anthony Weiner after more lewd selfies surface | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fus%2Fclinton-aide-separates-from-husband-over-another-sexting-scandal-1.2772207%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772205.1472491304!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Clinton aide separates from husband over another ‘sexting’ scandal | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, has said she is separating from her husband, former US congressman Anthony Weiner, after he was caught “sexting” again.
Photographs of the 51-year-old Democrat, who resigned from office in 2011 after sending lewd snaps of himself to women, were published in the New York Post late on Sunday, appearing to show a sexually explicit selfie of Mr Weiner’s crotch taken as he lay in bed next to their toddler son.
The tabloid newspaper, which ran the photograph next to Monday’s front-page headline “Pop Goes the Weiner”, said the image was taken shortly after 3am on July 31st, 2015 when his wife was working away on the Clinton presidential campaign and was sent by the former politician to an unidentified woman with whom he had been exchanging text messages since January 2015.
The paper said that Mr Weiner has sent more than a dozen images to the woman, mostly of him posing shirtless, and that the pair were still exchanging racy texts until earlier this month.
“After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Ms Abedin said in a statement.
“Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.”
Mr Weiner and his wife are the subject of a recent fly-on-the-wall documentary that chronicles his bid to resurrect his political career in the 2013 New York mayoral election.
He initially led in the polls before his campaign crumbled when it emerged that he had sent other raunchy messages to another woman after he had resigned from congress under his internet pseudonym “Carlos Danger. ”
This time, when confronted with further evidence of “sexting” another women, the former New York representative admitted to having a relationship with the woman, whom the newspaper only identified as a 40-something divorced Donald Trump supporter from the west.
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He told the newspaper that he and the woman “have been friends for some time”.
“Someone just climbed into my bed,” Mr Weiner allegedly texted the women before sending what the paper claims is a photograph of the former congressman appearing to look aroused, lying next to his son. The picture shows a bare-chested man wearing white boxer shorts.
“You do realise you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman replied.
Mr Weiner apparently deleted his Twitter account after the New York Post’s report.
Donald Trump, Mrs Clinton’s Republican rival in the US presidential election, seized on the latest scandal surrounding one of the Democratic candidate’s closest advisers to criticise his opponent.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” said Mr Trump in a statement.
“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told. It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.” | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/clinton-aide-separates-from-husband-over-another-sexting-scandal-1.2772207?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/af232a888c8039735d04d599dd7b9e64f1b73ac7e42562a156ae9ff9fd90628f.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:11:09 | null | 2016-08-26T11:17:00 | Prosecution believes six-year sentence for killing Reeva Steenkamp is too lenient | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2Fjudge-rejects-prosecutors-right-to-appeal-pistorius-sentence-1.2769326%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769325.1472206639!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Judge rejects prosecutors’ right to appeal Pistorius sentence | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | South African judge Thokozile Masipa on Friday rejected an application by state prosecutors to appeal Oscar Pistorius’ six-year murder sentence, saying the petition had no reasonable prospects of success.
Judge Masipa had sentenced the Paralympic gold medallist in July for murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in 2013, but the prosecution had said the decision was too lenient.
More to follow. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/africa/judge-rejects-prosecutors-right-to-appeal-pistorius-sentence-1.2769326?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/992273e0ae52521cd09ef0ba6e06962dced2358937f3210b1ead85555e6f482e.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T08:52:04 | null | 2016-08-30T08:46:00 | Dublin win came from deep resolve says Jim McGuinness, Darren Clarke to go with experience and what to watch out for | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fthe-morning-sports-briefing-1.2772861%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772860.1472543189!/image/image.jpg | en | null | The Morning Sports Briefing | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | GAA
Dublin revelled in the pleasure of a rare and pivotal contest against old foes Kerry in last Sunday’s semi-final win - according to Jim McGuinness, supporters in the capital should be particularly proud this week.
The man who master-minded the last championship win over the Dubs, back in 2014, says that the game not only matched the hype of the occasion; it rose above it -
“Kerry threw all their invention and technical excellence at Dublin, hit them with two goals, and went three points up in the last 10 minutes. And Dublin just kept coming back. That’s why the northside was buzzing on Sunday night.”
Tennis
Novak Djokovic opened the defence of his US Open title with a 6-3 5-7 6-2 6-1 win over Poland’s Jerzy Janowicz in the early hours of this morning. His laboured performance however gave rise to fresh concerns about the world number one’s fitness.
Arriving at Flushing Meadows, Djokovic had struggled with a left wrist injury and undisclosed “private matters” and on Monday added a new worry as trainers were called out early in the opening set to work on his right forearm.
Golf
Come this afternoon and European captain Darren Clarke will finally lay his cards on the table, in selecting his three “wild card” picks for Europe’s defence of the Ryder Cup against the United States at Hazeltine.
Philip Reid says that Clarke is likely to favour experience in his selections - Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer are viewed as certainties, with Russell Knox and Thomas Pieters in the frame for the last slot.
Soccer
Meanwhile John O’Shea will join up with the Ireland squad this morning, having stayed in Sunderland on Monday to have treatment on a hamstring problem. However, he, Séamus Coleman and Jeff Hendrick are all believed to be in contention to start next Monday’s opening World Cup qualifier in Belgrade
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Manchester City and England goalkeeper Joe Hart is considering a loan move to Torino, conscious that his career could be seriously affected if he fails to leave before the transfer window closes on Wednesday.
What to watch out for
Seven League of Ireland fixtures tonight - including Dundlak versus Bohemians at 7.45pm in Dalymount Park.
Darren Clarke will reveal his Ryder Cup wild cards in a press conference at 12.30pm.
Andy Murray and Serena Williams are in action on Day Two of the US Open.
Eurosport, 3.30pm-8am | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/the-morning-sports-briefing-1.2772861?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/5bec3422a186fc31ed714d3894718e12b2aefb2e23c1b68feb3e683ce2115b00.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T20:49:10 | null | 2016-08-30T20:09:00 | Banks to stop ‘bundling’ research costs with trading fees under new EU rules | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ffinancial-services%2Fubs-hires-psychologists-to-help-revamp-research-reports-1.2773481.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773476.1472584190!/image/image.jpg | en | null | UBS hires psychologists to help revamp research reports | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | UBS has brought in psychologists, data scientists, shipments specialists and pricing experts to overhaul how it generates investment ideas and recommendations for clients.
Some investors have viewed the move with scepticism, but the investment bank says it has more than doubled readership of its research output in the past two years.
The revamp under Juan-Luis Perez, the global head of research who UBS poached from Morgan Stanley in 2013, comes at a time of existential crisis for the City of London’s sprawling research departments.
Banks and brokerages are preparing to abandon the age-old practice of “bundling” research costs with trading fees in order to satisfy new EU rules coming into force in 2018. UK-based banks expect the rules to be adopted despite Brexit.
Investors, already under pressure over the fees they charge their own clients and struggling with low interest rates, are expected to react by drastically reducing the volume of research they use.
Ask better questions
To thrive in the new era, Mr Perez said researchers must “ask better questions” rather than letting themselves off the hook with questions and buzzwords that are overly vague.
“This is the area where the sell side has to make the biggest investment, and we [the sellside] are not making as much of an investment as we have to,” said Mr Perez, a 30-year-veteran of sell-side research.
He brought in psychologists to help analysts think about their topics differently, and to pinpoint more precise and insightful research questions.
Words such as “risky” are discouraged, because Mr Perez said research showed “risky” could be interpreted as a risk of failure of between 10 and “80-something” per cent to investors.
“If you are using the word ‘risky’ all the time, you can never learn because the interpretation of risk is so broad that you can always take the victory lap,” he said.
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“It’s not just to avoid the word risky,” he added, but to “try to break down the big questions, like ‘what is the future of the bank into testable propositions?’, that can have an incontrovertible answer.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016 | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/ubs-hires-psychologists-to-help-revamp-research-reports-1.2773481 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/99485411d40eacbcec1400487207874becd78020795aba01797b489814f9159a.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T06:48:37 | null | 2016-08-29T06:00:00 | Chartered Land appoints JJ Rhatigan for scheme on site of former Berkeley Court | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fcommercial-property%2Fgalway-firm-hired-as-contractor-for-dublin-4-residential-scheme-1.2771053.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771051.1472397514!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Galway firm hired as contractor for Dublin 4 residential scheme | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Irish property group Chartered Land has appointed Galway-based JJ Rhatigan & Company as the main contractor for its high-end residential scheme on the site of the former Berkeley Court hotel in Ballsbridge.
The appointment followed a competitive tendering process for the multimillion-euro project. Site preparation works are currently under way, with initial construction work on the basement car park due to begin in September.
Pavilion-style development
Chartered Land, which is controlled by founder and executive chairman Joe O’Reilly, plans to build about 200 exclusive apartments in a pavilion-style development on Lansdowne Road.
The apartments are expected to come to market in the spring of 2017 with more than 500 jobs to be created during the construction phase.
The mature boundary trees and iron railings along Lansdowne Road, which date back to the mid-1800s, are being retained as part of the scheme.
The site was the Trinity College botanical garden from 1806 until the 1960s when the Jurys (now the Ballsbridge Hotel) and the Berkeley Court hotels were developed.
Planning modifications
Chartered Land is developing the site in accordance with the 10-year master planning permission granted in 2011. A number of recent planning modifications have been made to make the development more efficient but the overall height and mass of the scheme as originally granted remains intact.
Commenting on the appointment, Chartered Land’s chief executive Andrew Gunne said: “We look forward to working with JJ Rhatigan & Company in delivering a residential development to an international premium standard that befits this unique Ballsbridge site.”
Founded in 1999, Chartered Land is one of the largest property development and investment companies in Ireland.
The company, which has exited the National Asset Management Agency, has developed close to two million square feet of space. Its developments include the Dundrum Town Centre, the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and Grand Canal Square office scheme in Dublin’s docklands, the Swords Pavilions retail centre, and a mixed-use retail led development on South King Street in central Dublin.
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Other projects include the completion and repositioning of Elm Park campus on 17.3 acres in Dublin 4 in partnership with Starwood Capital Group.
Established in 1952, JJ Rhatigan is a leading Irish building contractor, with offices in Dublin, London, Galway, Sligo and Cork.
Its projects include Heuston South Quarter in Dublin, NUI Galway’s IT building, phase two of the Crumlin hospital redevelopment, the Radisson SAS hotel on Golden Lane in central Dublin, the Athlone Town Centre and, in Galway, the Bon Secours expansion.
The contractor has also worked on a number of recent residential developments in Dublin, including the Grange, Wyckham Point in Dundrum, and St Edmunds near Liffey Valley in the west of the city.
Project Trinity
Known as Project Trinity, the overall 6.8-acre site in Ballsbridge has planning permission for 490 apartments, 152-bedroom hotel, retail, a cafe, bar and restaurant.
The first phase involved the demolition of the Berkeley Court, with development of the Ballsbridge Hotel to come at a later date.
The site was originally acquired by Carlow developer Seán Dunne for about €400 million at the height of the property boom.
Chartered Land partnered with the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund to acquire the site from Ulster Bank last year. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/galway-firm-hired-as-contractor-for-dublin-4-residential-scheme-1.2771053 | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/7fdd23ed76eb99aeb9824093cdf055ac8d7b9f5b57d83134a6f4be6c49ded368.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T14:50:25 | null | 2016-08-27T15:39:00 | Max Verstappen becomes youngest driver to start F1 race on front row of grid | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fother-sports%2Fnico-rosberg-takes-pole-as-lewis-hamilton-starts-at-back-of-grid-1.2770805%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770803.1472308735!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Nico Rosberg takes pole as Lewis Hamilton starts at back of grid | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Nico Rosberg took advantage of championship rival Lewis Hamilton’s engine penalty to secure pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton, who is 19 points clear of Rosberg in the title race after winning six of the last seven grands prix, completed just one run before bowing out in 21st place.
And his severe punishment, following a number of changes to his engine here this weekend, means he will start from last position. No driver in Formula One history has ever won from the final spot on the grid.
Rosberg, who will now be expected to convert his pole into a much-needed victory, will be joined on the front row by Belgian-born Max Verstappen in the Red Bull with Kimi Raikkonen third for Ferrari.
The grid penalty has been lingering over Hamilton like a dark cloud after he encountered several engine failures in the opening rounds of the season.
His Mercedes team had been weighing up whether to take the grid drop here at Spa-Francorchamps or at next Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, with both circuits expected to offer him the best chance of fighting back through the field.
But a decision was taken by Formula One’s all-conquering team to incur the penalty on the sport’s return to action following its traditional mid-season break.
Following a raft of changes to his engine, Hamilton will serve a 55-place penalty under the sport’s complicated rules, but in reality, the size of his punishment actually matters little with the world champion simply ordered to the back of the field, and not incurring a further timed penalty.
“The guys did an incredible job, putting engines in and taking them out,” Hamilton said.
“I want to get up as high as I can [in the race] but it’s going to be hard. It won’t be smooth sailing – one car per lap – and it’s going to be lots of pit stops, so who knows?”
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Hamilton’s penalty hands the initiative firmly over to his Mercedes team-mate, and Rosberg, to his credit, made no mistake in qualifying. His best lap of minute and 46.744 seconds was enough to place him ahead of Verstappen, who impressed once again in front of thousands of his fans who made the short trip from the Netherlands.
Jenson Button will start in ninth while British rookie Jolyon Palmer qualified 14th albeit nearly half-a-second slower and two places behind his Renault team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
Fernando Alonso was already due to join Hamilton on the back row after serving an engine penalty, and his miserable weekend continued in qualifying after he failed to set a time when his McLaren came to a stop on track just moments after leaving the pit-lane.
Elsewhere, Sebastian Vettel qualified fourth for Ferrari with Daniel Ricciardo lining up in fifth for Red Bull.
Rosberg, who finished only seventh in final practice on Saturday morning, said: “We had a difficult weekend up to now and especially this morning as we were seriously off the pace on one lap. So, it wasn’t easy coming into qualifying.
“We got the job done in the end, we made a few changes on the car, and we found the right way. So, it all came together and it was feeling good so I am very pleased about that one.”
Verstappen, who becomes the youngest-ever driver to start a Formula One race on the front row of the grid at 18, added: “You can always do a better job, but Nico could have done a better lap, too. To be so close to them, on a lap with some long straights, we can be very proud of that.” | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/nico-rosberg-takes-pole-as-lewis-hamilton-starts-at-back-of-grid-1.2770805?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/e3e594211b89828e71770311e000c22c918ab5c6f7ca4ea078da9ff0b30db94c.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T12:50:28 | null | 2016-08-27T12:18:00 | Russian-made 9mm weapon found during search operation in the Botanic Avenue area of Dublin | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fcrime-and-law%2Fhandgun-and-ammunition-seized-in-anti-gangland-raid-1.2770756%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770755.1472296673!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Handgun and ammunition seized in anti-gangland raid | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | A handgun and ammunition has been seized by gardaí targeting serious criminal activity in Dublin.
The Russian-made 9mm weapon was found during a targeted search operation in the Botanic Avenue area of Dublin on Friday evening.
No one has been arrested in connection with the discovery.
The find comes after gardaí seized up to €2 million worth of drugs in five separate operations during the week to Thursday, as part of that the force described as an aggressive strike against organised crime.
Ten people in total were arrested across all of the operations.
The drugs seized included heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis, along with about €80,000 in cash and, in one operation, a military grade Mac 10 machine gun.
Raids on properties on Thursday also saw the confiscation of jewellery worth €30,000 and an Audi A3.
At a briefing on Thursday, officers said the raids represented a blow against organised crime throughout Ireland but specifically on the east coast.
Separate operations targeted Co Louth on Saturday, Castlenock in Dublin on Monday, Finglas in Dublin and Bellewstown, Co Meath on Wednesday and the south inner city on Thursday. Arrests were made in each case.
The Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) and the Special Crime Task Force (SCTF) carried out the seizures. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/handgun-and-ammunition-seized-in-anti-gangland-raid-1.2770756?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/851591b9a9bbf3365149398831e8829b2f35821ff623bb7bb5e244b586507f81.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T04:49:26 | null | 2016-08-31T05:10:00 | Rebranding follows the 2015 global merger of Cushman & Wakefield and DTZ | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fcommercial-property%2Fdtz-sherry-fitzgerald-to-trade-as-cushman-wakefield-1.2772907.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772905.1472571942!/image/image.jpg | en | null | DTZ Sherry FitzGerald to trade as Cushman & Wakefield | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Leading commercial agents DTZ Sherry FitzGerald are to trade from today as Cushman & Wakefield.
The rebranding follows the 2015 global merger of Cushman & Wakefield and DTZ. Sherry FitzGerald Group had been DTZ’s Irish partner since 1998.
The newly announced arrangement brings together Cushman & Wakefield’s global platform and Sherry FitzGerald’s considerable expertise across Ireland’s commercial property market.
Under the new arrangement Cushman & Wakefield will hold a 20 per cent stake in the commercial arm of the Irish business.
The company, which was previously linked to Lisney, is a top three global real estate services firm with 43,000 employees in more than 60 countries and recorded revenues of over $5 billion.
In the UK it has 2,000 employees in its London headquarters and in offices in key UK cities.
The Sherry FitzGerald Group’s business has 650 employees in 97 offices and a presence in every county in Ireland.
The newly branded Cushman & Wakefield office will have a 100-strong team working out of offices in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway.
Aidan Gavin, managing director of Cushman & Wakefield Ireland, described the rebranding as “a very significant watershed”.
It was more than a rebranding exercise, he said, which gave it access to many new services and opportunities driven by the scale of the merged Cushman & Wakefield business. Being the Irish arm of one of the top three global firms gave it access to many more occupier inquiries, finance market intelligence, research and experts than ever before.
Mr Gavin said one of its new service areas would be the substantial debt advisory facilities which were now an integral part of every property transaction.
Colin Wilson, head of UK & Ireland for Cushman & Wakefield, said Ireland had emerged from the recession stronger, and was a very important market for it. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/dtz-sherry-fitzgerald-to-trade-as-cushman-wakefield-1.2772907 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/9b78e85534ed7e54267cf269d606c59da0261f76083b00c1706759e8a95ad678.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T10:49:24 | null | 2016-08-31T11:09:00 | Unemployment remained at record low of 6.1 per cent in Europe’s powerhouse economy | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fgerman-jobless-rate-continues-to-decline-despite-brexit-1.2774149.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774148.1472638189!/image/image.jpg | en | null | German jobless rate continues to decline despite Brexit | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | German unemployment continued its decline in August, signaling that consumption driven by a strong labour market may cushion the blow to Europe’s largest economy from Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
The number of people out of work fell by a seasonally adjusted 7,000 to 2.675 million, data from the Federal Labour Agency in Nuremberg showed on Wednesday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey forecast a drop of 4,000.
The jobless rate remained at a record low of 6.1 per cent.The sign of job-market resilience comes after German business sentiment unexpectedly declined the most in more than four years and company executives raised concern that political uncertainty related to Brexit threatened to damp output.
Policy makers have expressed confidence that the economic recovery will continue, bolstered by private spending, a pickup in investment and solid export growth.”The labour market continued to develop favorably overall,” Frank-Juergen Weise, president of Germany’s labor agency, said in a statement.
“The demand for workers, measured by employment and reported openings, continues to be strong.”The number of people out of work fell by 1,000 in western Germany and decreased by 6,000 in the eastern part of the country, the labor agency said.
Unemployment is likely to climb in the coming months as hundreds of thousands of job seekers, who arrived as migrants last year, prepare to enter the labor market. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/german-jobless-rate-continues-to-decline-despite-brexit-1.2774149 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/c41298bd41936f4478f1b4538850165980a22903bda6b5b339c424cf45cab267.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:49:08 | null | 2016-08-30T13:51:00 | CEO says new office an ‘important milestone’ for the life and pensions administrator | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftechnology%2Fse2-to-double-jobs-at-new-waterford-operation-1.2772938.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773043.1472561517!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Se2 to double jobs at new Waterford operation | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Life and pensions administrator Se2 said on Tuesday it would double the workforce at its Waterford operations to 135 employees over the next three to four years. The US company has an existing full-time team of 70, and hopes to fill out its 135-seat office over the coming years.
It opened its new Waterford offices onTuesday in what is an “important milestone” for the company, said chief executive Gautam Thakkar.
“ This is a sign of our continued commitment to the region, which is an important hub for our global service delivery model, and we are excited about this investment in our business.”
Se2 supports more than 1,000 life and annuity products for more than 20 clients, and has approximately $100 billion in assets under administration.
Janet Dulohery, vice-president and head of human resources with Se2, said the company was still interested in “hearing from ambitious people who are similarly enthused about making a real impact on the US life and pension industry”.
The announcement is the latest jobs win for the Waterford region. Earlier this year healthcare company OPKO said it would create 200 highly skilled jobs over the next five years through the expansion of its EirGen Pharma facility in Westside Business Park in Waterford. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/se2-to-double-jobs-at-new-waterford-operation-1.2772938 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/2e8a7367af2553891c501cfc87280287601a4e1edf932166fc58c8b02513d035.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:52:18 | null | 2016-08-30T06:00:00 | I immediately noticed a difference in the elasticity and strength of my hair after a trip to Crow Street Collective in Dublin | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Ffashion%2Fbeauty%2Fhow-to-restore-abused-hair-to-health-1.2765649%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2765648.1471949106!/image/image.jpg | en | null | How to restore abused hair to health | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Finding a salon that pushes the boundaries with new style ideas but also takes the time to look after your hair’s long-term condition can be a big ask, but this week I have found just the one – and a product that achieves both of those goals.
Crow Street Collective, in Temple Bar, Dublin, has the cool, bohemian vibe that you would expect with the address but without any pretentiousness or pomp (or notions, as I would call it).
Directors Mark Talbot and Darren Lacken and their team of stylists are warm, personable and thoughtful hosts, constantly plying clients with glasses of prosecco or tea in fancy cups and saucers.
Most importantly, they take the time to figure out exactly what you are looking for and are not afraid to suggest new ways of changing your style, which can become dated without some professional guidance.
The salon has recently started using Olaplex, the new buzzword in haircare. Nikita, a stylist at Crow Street Collective, says she has been able to use the treatment to bring damaged hair back to a point of good health, where it can withstand quite a dramatic colour change.
My hair was in relatively good condition, thanks to the fact it is not coloured, but it was weak and brittle in places from using curlers and straighteners.
I immediately noticed a difference in the elasticity and strength of my hair, and was pleasantly surprised by how my natural curl had returned – without the frizz – when I washed it myself a few days later.
So if you are looking for a big change, why not try Crow Street Collective for a refreshingly cosy take on the city-centre salon? | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/fashion/beauty/how-to-restore-abused-hair-to-health-1.2765649?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ba5bad11dccb8e8377ded57aceb3f9505d9de01a3c858eeedf4bcfb1f34eb734.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T00:50:33 | null | 2016-08-27T01:05:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fletters%2Ffoxes-and-the-aristocracy-1.2769580%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | Foxes and the aristocracy | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Sir, – Michael Viney tells us that Vulpes vulpes – the common fox – “is prone to carrying a litany of diseases, with new ones added all the time” (“Another Life”, August 20th). He also states that, “Ireland has mercifully escaped rabies, the one fox-borne disease that could be so cruelly fatal to humans.”
While the above is true, there is a recorded case of death from rabies by fox-bite in Ireland. Mark Bence-Jones in his book Twilight of the Ascendancy tells us: “Lord Doneraile of Cork kept a pet fox; he used to take it with him when he went out driving his carriage. On one of these drives, the fox suddenly bit Lord Doneraile and his coachman and was found to have rabies. Lord Doneraile and the coachman travelled to Paris to be treated by Louis Pasteur; the coachman persevered with the treatment, Lord Doneraile grew bored with it and gave up. In due course he developed the disease and on August 26th, 1887, he died a frightful death”. – Yours, etc,
FRANK FOLAN,
Ballyvaughan,
Co Clare. | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/foxes-and-the-aristocracy-1.2769580?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/eef229502b49c2e9c2799b6ec50f4f8d6ffd449bbe2d8c5529245bfb744112dc.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T14:50:23 | null | 2016-08-26T15:29:00 | Lawyer Vicki Buckley has recently moved to Perth with her family (and her hairdresser) | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fgeneration-emigration%2Fthey-say-things-are-slowing-in-australia-but-there-are-still-lots-of-opportunities-1.2769516%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769515.1472221710!/image/image.jpg | en | null | ‘They say things are slowing in Australia but there are still lots of opportunities’ | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | New figures published this week show the number of people moving back from Australia has jumped dramatically in the past year, while the numbers moving out has fallen. Vicki Buckley moved to Perth with her family last year, and told Ciara Kenny why she’s delighted she did.
I moved to Perth with my husband Damian, our two kids Hannah and Jack, and my mum last year. The sad part of the story is that my dad passed away three years ago, and that put everything into perspective for us. He was only sick for six months. You have to grab the moment; I know that sounds like something from the television but it is true. If dad hadn’t been sick and passed away I’m not sure we would have travelled.
Mum had been here twice to visit family friends. She came six weeks after we arrived, and now looks after our kids. My husband works in Sydney a good bit with his job, so that makes having Mum here even better. We are really lucky to have her.
Hannah is five, and Jack is two and a half. To Jack, this is how life has always been, in the sunshine wearing shorts and no shoes. Hannah does remember things from home, but with FaceTime it is hard for her to forget. She is in Kindergarten and has adapted so fast.
I was practicing as a barrister for eight years - mostly in Cork - before we left. I was very lucky to get sponsorship here in Perth, so I went straight into a job working with another Irish woman, Lindsay Ahern, from Limerick. Immediately I had friends and connections through her.
It is difficult to convert your Irish qualifications. It is considered a common law jurisdiction, but procedure is extremely different. It is even different between states. My qualifications were assessed and I had to do a number of exams and do some legal practice board requirements. It is the same for all foreigners coming in. It was expensive too, as an international student. I am fully up and running now, and causing chaos in the courts of Western Australia.
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I am currently working for a commercial firm as a solicitor, specialising in commercial law. It is very different to what I did back home. I went from being an independent self-employed barrister, to having the security of working with a firm. I think I am the only Irish person practicing law in WA who is also a member of the Irish Bar. But there are lots of Irish solicitors. There is a lovely community of Irish lawyers over here, including Marty Kavanagh, the Irish Honorary Consul in WA.
Because there are two Irish lawyers in our office now we have started to push ourselves out there. For Irish people setting up businesses here, having an Irish lawyer to represent them, who understands both the Irish and Australian systems, is a huge bonus. We have started answering questions on social media too; on the Irish Families in Perth Facebook page, for example, there will be at least one legal question every week which we will give advice on. I am also part of the Irish Networking Business Forum, a support network for Irish people who want to set up their own business here.
Cork being Cork, the girl who used to do my hair back home has moved to Australia, and she does my hair here in Perth. I have not only brought my mother, I have brought my hairdresser as well!
We live beside a park with a beautiful lake. Childhood is a little bit old-fashioned in Australia, like going back 10 or 15 years back home. They trot off into school in their flip flops and little hat, and there’s no new commercial influence. I wanted Hannah to go to Catholic school here, but you have to have their name down from birth pretty much to get in. We were extremely lucky; I had to play the “poor Irish emigrant” card with the registrar.
Hannah still has her wonderful east Cork accent, but Jack has a strong Australian twang already. It is surreal when he comes out with a big Australian phrase.
I know they are saying things are slowing down economically here in Australia, but I still think there are a lot of opportunities. By nature, Irish people want to go and work hard and get on with whatever they set their minds to.
It has probably been easier for me to settle here because I have to. I have to have schools and a sensible house and a sensible car for the kids. But I am lucky that I have a good job, right around the corner from the school, and our house.
It is very hard to say what our plan is, whether we will stay or move home eventually. For the moment we are having such a good time. Something new is coming up for us every week. You hear a lot about Irish people looking towards home now. They say you can be totally fine, until one day you wake up and you’ve had enough, and nothing can stop you from going back. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/generation-emigration/they-say-things-are-slowing-in-australia-but-there-are-still-lots-of-opportunities-1.2769516?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/9c532bde9d466b8ba64c79d54862d062c51564f43652d8179d7703d2358d3a70.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T00:50:23 | null | 2016-08-27T01:08:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fletters%2Ffree-trade-workers-and-citizens-1.2769589%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | Free trade, workers and citizens | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Sir, – When, in his article “Ireland symbolises the benefits of free trade”, John FitzGerald mentions “those who stand to lose”, he acknowledges that free trade is predicated on sacrificing part of the population and, if we are not to face social breakdown, on the need to redistribute resources to them so that they quietly accept the loss of their jobs, their status, their hopes for the future and their dignity (“Ireland symbolises benefits of free trade as protectionism on the rise”, Economics, August 26th).
Many workers in Ireland are now faced with short-time, minimum-hour contracts, paid by the hour, at the minimum wage. The fact that, in some sectors of employment, they only get their timetable for the week at the last minute means that they cannot even plan their life outside work.
Our education system is more and more adapted to the needs of enterprises rather than to the needs of the person and, furthermore, it prepares students psychologically to a life of “flexibility”, which, in practice, means a destabilising prospect of insecurity.
Workers throughout the world, if they are employed by multinational corporations, are pitched against each other, with the threat of the relocation of their enterprise should they ask for better salaries or work conditions.
Instead of this race to the bottom, could we not envisage a basic income for all and, for workers, a shorter working week (which could create more jobs) and a living wage?
And could we restore education to its proper role, giving more space in the curriculum to literature, sports, art or music, so that people would have the option to use their free time in personally fulfilling, creative ways?
In short, could we envisage, in the brave new world of free trade, treating all people with respect? – Yours, etc,
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CLAUDINE GAIDONI,
Navan Road, Dublin 7. | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/free-trade-workers-and-citizens-1.2769589?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d4498fa7b8aadde978af30ec33b56191bbbd80809420ac5ce6204bf1bec0f11f.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T10:49:17 | null | 2016-08-31T11:29:00 | Mortgage loans fell at a rate of 1.9% over the year to July, new Central Bank figures show | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fhighest-annual-growth-in-lending-since-early-2009-recorded-1.2774175.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774174.1472639328!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Highest annual growth in lending since early 2009 recorded | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Irish households drew down more in new loans than was repaid in the three months to the end of July, leading to the highest annual growth in lending since early 2009.
New figures from the Central Bank show €98 million more was drawn down than was paid back with new lending greater than repayments for medium-term loans, which typically cover car purchases, furniture and holidays, only.
Repayments by short and long-terms borrowers continued to outpace new lending activity, the bank said.
Loans to households adjusted for loans sales and securitisations, were down 3.2 per cent in July compared with the same month a year earlier.
The data show mortgage loans, which account for 83 per cent of onbalance sheet household loans, decreased by €103 million last month. On an annual basis, mortgage loans fell at a rate of 1.9 per cent with households repaying €1.5 billion more than was advanced in new lending.
Non-housing loans for consumer and other purposes were down 2 per cent over the last year while deposits from households rose 2.8 per cent, increasing by €559 million in July alone.
The latest figures show households were net funders of the Irish banking system for the thirteenth consecutive month. Banks now hold €7.4 billion more household deposits than loans, as against early 2009 when loans exceeded deposits by €53.5 billion | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/highest-annual-growth-in-lending-since-early-2009-recorded-1.2774175 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/93c976e546340aee121b4b339fb78fc72dd398d200b2102ba0cc3d9f3df03551.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T10:48:44 | null | 2016-08-29T11:18:00 | Retail sales down 0.5 per cent from June to July once motor sales are excluded | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fspike-in-car-purchases-leads-to-12-6-hike-in-consumer-spending-1.2771859.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771858.1472466288!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Spike in car purchases leads to 12.6% hike in consumer spending | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Retail sales rose 12.6 per cent in July compared to the previous month on the back of a huge jump in car sales, new figures show.
Sales were also up 6.3 per cent versus July 2015, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) data show.
However, once sales of motor cars are excluded, retail sales declined by 0.5 per cent from June to July and were up 2.7 per cent on an annual basis.
The figures show sales of vehicles rose 12.5 per cent last month, while furniture and lighting-related purchases increased 5.3 per cent. Sales of books, newspapers and stationary were up 2 per cent during July.
The biggest decline in retail sales occurred was in clothing, footwear and textiles, down 2.5 per cent.
The value of retail sales increased 4.5 per cent on a monthly basis and up 3.9 per cent versus July 2015. Once car sales are excluded, the value of sales dropped by 0.5 per cent on a monthly basis and was up 0.8 per cent versus the same month a year earlier. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/spike-in-car-purchases-leads-to-12-6-hike-in-consumer-spending-1.2771859 | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d7113871a55f1d7af20e3a1be23617198a7015c509f56492741a4f3fbfa0cfec.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T00:48:53 | null | 2016-08-30T01:00:00 | Move comes after drugmaker faced backlash over allergy auto-injector’s steep price | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fhealth-pharma%2Fmylan-to-launch-generic-epipen-at-half-the-price-of-original-1.2772248.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772246.1472493964!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Mylan to launch generic EpiPen at half the price of original | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Mylan NV said it would launch the first generic version of its allergy auto-injector EpiPen for $300, half the price of the branded product, the drugmaker’s second step in less than a week to counter the backlash over the product’s steep price.
The company reduced the out-of-pocket costs of EpiPen for some patients on Thursday, but kept the list price at about $600, a move that US lawmakers and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said was not enough. EpiPen cost about $100 in 2008.
Mylan said on Monday it expected to launch the generic product “in several weeks”, an unusual move considering the branded bestseller is still patent protected and major rival treatments have failed to get regulatory clearances.
Mylan has defended EpiPen’s high price, saying it had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the product since acquiring it in 2007.
It has said it recoups less than half the list price as pharmacy benefit managers, which often require discounted prices or rebates from drugmakers, are involved, along with insurers and others.
However, consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said Mylan’s latest move was another “convoluted mechanism to avoid plain talk, admit to price gouging and just cut the price of EpiPen.”
Mylan’s shares were little changed at $43.17 in midday trading. The stock had fallen 12 per cent last week amid a wave of criticism over prices of EpiPen, which dominates the market and generates annual sales of $1 billion.
– (Reuters) | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/mylan-to-launch-generic-epipen-at-half-the-price-of-original-1.2772248 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/5d4635f404c3f9c541a361df1167388d53b29cec97fc26d91a4ee7027f9cf5d6.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:52:33 | null | 2016-08-30T14:02:00 | The Catalans’ sixth summer signing scored 13 times last season in La Liga | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fsoccer%2Fbarcelona-swoop-for-valencia-striker-paco-alcacer-1.2773046%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773045.1472562176!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Barcelona swoop for Valencia striker Paco Alcacer | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Barcelona announced on Tuesday the signing of Spain forward Paco Alcacer from Valencia on a five-year contract.
He moves to the Nou Camp on his 23rd birthday for a fee of €30 million and is likely to be the Spanish champions’ last signing in the transfer window.
Alcacer’s buyout clause has been set at €100 million and the player, who is on international duty with Spain, will be unveiled next week.
Barca’s priority was to add a striker but they lost out on signing Nolito and Kevin Gameiro, with the former joining Manchester City and the latter Atletico Madrid.
Alcacer is Barca’s fourth attacking option behind Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar.
He scored 13 times last season in La Liga.
Alcacer had been at Valencia since 2005 and has featured at every age-group level for Spain.
The Torrente-born player is the Catalan side’s sixth singing of the summer following the arrivals of Jasper Cillessen, Denis Suarez, Lucas Digne, Samuel Umtiti and Andre Gomes. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/barcelona-swoop-for-valencia-striker-paco-alcacer-1.2773046?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/2f828096076da1722b9168ab008860e51f00ac75f5a6aec85307d01d5fc56e00.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T14:49:40 | null | 2016-08-26T09:44:00 | Car maker has set aside €16.2 billion to cover cost of the emissions scandal in America | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftransport-and-tourism%2Fvolkswagen-to-pay-1-2bn-to-reimburse-us-dealers-1.2769266.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769265.1472222005!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Volkswagen to pay $1.2bn to reimburse US dealers | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Volkswagen will pay about $1.2 billion (€1.05bn) to reimburse US dealers for losses caused by the emissions-cheating scheme, a person familiar with the matter said.
VW will also buy back unfixable used vehicles under the same terms as those given to consumers, lawyers for the 652 dealerships said in a statement, without disclosing the value of the tentative settlement.
The German car maker said separately it agreed to make cash payments and provide additional benefits to dealers to resolve their claims.
The agreement, which raises the amount VW will pay to resolve US lawsuits to $16.5 billion, removes one obstacle for the company as it seeks to repair its tarnished reputation.
While the automaker has already settled with car owners and regulators in the US, VW still faces investor claims and possible criminal charges.
VW also doesn’t have an approved fix for the 562,000 rigged diesel vehicles still polluting US roads.
“The dealers are VW’s front line in this matter, so getting them compensated is critical,” Rebecca Lindland, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said in an emailed statement.
“Not only do they represent the company to the owners, they’re also impacted financially since they’re hamstrung on what products they can sell.”
Shares rise
The shares gained as much as 2 per cent and were up 1.4 per cent to €122.05 as of 9.39am in Frankfurt trading.
The stock has dropped 8.6 per cent this year, valuing the German automaker at €63.2 billion .
VW reached a $14.7 billion agreement in July with car owners and US and California regulators that calls for buying back or fixing 480,000 vehicles with 2-litre engines.
The company is also on the hook for $603 million it agreed to pay 44 states.
VW still faces more state government claims and investor suits in the US as well as legal claims in Germany and South Korea. Criminal penalties hang over the company in all three countries.
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US district judge Charles Breyer, who last month gave preliminary approval to the carmaker’s settlement covering the 2-litre models, pressed VW in court on Thursday for a solution for vehicles with 3-litre engines.
Those include the Volkswagen Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and Audi Q5. Breyer ordered VW to file a plan for fixing the 3-litre engines, and proof that it works, to regulators by October 24th and report back to him on November 3rd.
– Bloomberg | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/volkswagen-to-pay-1-2bn-to-reimburse-us-dealers-1.2769266 | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/27927545e41cc2815dad992ee18717df0d108cbb826f5856d1cc934df12b6486.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T18:51:43 | null | 2016-08-29T18:46:00 | Italian PM intervenes to insist Tuesday’s service for 78 victims takes place in Amatrice | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Frenzi-quells-row-over-funeral-venue-for-earthquake-victims-1.2772231%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772229.1472492767!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Renzi quells row over funeral venue for earthquake victims | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Paddy Agnew in Rome Faced with a citizens’ protest in the earthquake-hit town of Amatrice, Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi on Monday intervened to insist that Tuesday’s mass funeral should take place in Amatrice itself and not in Rieti, some 60km way.
Tempers flared as Amatrice prepared for the funeral of 78 of those who died in the town last Wednesday. Concerned about the difficulty of getting large numbers in and out of the small hilltop town, and further worried by forecasts of bad weather, the police in mid-morning opted to move the funeral venue to Rieti, which has also become the operational headquarters of the rescue operation.
This decision prompted bitter protests from relatives of the victims who argued that they wanted the funeral service for their loved ones to be held in their own town. After he had spoken with town mayor Sergio Perozzi, Mr Renzi intervened with a tweet in which he said that the funeral should take place in Amatrice “which is what the local community and the Mayor are asking for. And this is right too!”.
More than 220 of the victims died in Amatrice but Tuesday’s funerals concern only 78 dead since many bodies have not yet been identified, while some 74 families have chosen to bury their dead privately elsewhere. With the recovery work still ongoing, workers found another body under the rubble of the Hotel Roma on Monday.
At this point, the certified dead number 291, while 238 people have been pulled out of the rubble alive, with a further 2,925 having moved into the temporary tented accomodation set up around the regions of Lazio, Umbria and Le Marche.
Turning his attention to the imposing reconstruction task now facing these regions, Mr Renzi said he would be calling on the national anti-corruption authority to oversee the rebuilding. If the experience of L’Aquila seven years ago is anything to go by, that will prove no small task since an overwhelming body of evidence would suggest that organised crime won many of those rebuilding contracts.
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As it is, the hand of “Cosa Nostra” may be involved in this latest tragedy, since media speculation claims that some of the firms that carried out a €600,000 reconstruction of the now collapsed Romolo Capricana primary school in Amatrice have links to the Sicilian mafia. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/renzi-quells-row-over-funeral-venue-for-earthquake-victims-1.2772231?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/aa8947317d3839dd0921ac8aceeeb00f3323e0ecbb4ff3ab3fa0162e8c62fb72.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:49:00 | null | 2016-08-30T01:00:00 | Firm behind Kenny energy project has reasonable prospect of survival, court hears | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fenergy-and-resources%2Fcourt-appoints-interim-examiner-to-mayo-renewable-power-1.2772253.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772252.1472494993!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Court appoints interim examiner to Mayo Renewable Power | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The company behind a renewable energy project launched last year by Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been granted High Court protection from its creditors.
The court on Monday appointed Michael McAteer of Grant Thornton as interim examiner to Mayo Renewable Power, which plans to build a wood-chip burning electricity generator at Killala at a cost of €180 million.
Mayo Renewable Power’s plans ran into financial difficulty in recent weeks and this was compounded when a company that had been hoping to supply the Irish plant with fuel sued its promoter for $60 million in a New Jersey court in the United States.
In May, British bank, Barclays, one of three lenders that were originally meant to contribute €118 million to the project, pulled out as a result of the uncertainty surrounding the UK vote to leave the European Union.
Neither it, nor the project’s other lenders, AIB and Ulster Bank, have provided any finance. Mayo Renewable’s lead backer, Irish American businessman’s Gerald C Crotty’s Weichert Enterprises has spent €90 million on the development, €10 million more than it originally planned, through its parent, US-registered Rockland Mayo LLC.
Mr Kenny laid its foundation stone last October but the project ran into a number of difficulties and building was suspended last month.
One of the problems was with sourcing a boiler, a key component. The banks’ consent to a change of supplier was required, and this delayed funding.
The High Court heard that builder John Sisk & Son is the main contractor and there are 130 sub-contractors and suppliers. The construction company has sought €17.5 million for work done.
If the court confirms Mr McAteer’s appointment when the case is returned on September 12th, he will have up to three months to come up with a rescue plan for the company.
Creditors will not be able to enforce debts against the business during that time, although it is open to the examiner to pay suppliers if he believes it is in the company’s best interest.
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At the High Court on Monday afternoon, Mr Justice Tony O’Connor said that he was satisfied to appoint Mr McAteer of Grant Thornton as interim examiner to Mayo Renewable Power Ltd after being informed that the company has a reasonable prospect of survival as a going concern if certain steps are taken.
These include the examiner helping to securing additional investment that would allow the plant to be built. He said that nine potential investors have expressed in the venture from some nine major investors.
The examiner would also put together a scheme of arrangement with creditors, which if approved by the High Court, would allow the company to continue trading.
Mayo Renewable Power’s lawyer, James Doherty SC, told the court that an independent experts report said in the event of it being wound up the deficit would be more than €100 million. On a going concern basis, that shortfall was a little over €200,000.
The company intends to initially import fuel from north America, but ultimately plans to buy it from Irish suppliers. It will employ 130 people when it is up and running. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/court-appoints-interim-examiner-to-mayo-renewable-power-1.2772253 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/e24ab3a31c2d0030fb9dd766b30755eb29c84f9af4e8f37f2e07b62fc8ced4db.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T16:51:51 | null | 2016-08-29T16:21:24 | Irish Blood Transfusion Service says travel abroad remains a major reason why people did not donate | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fhealth%2Fjust-3-of-eligible-blood-donors-make-donations-1.2772099%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772098.1472484061!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Just 3% of eligible blood donors make donations | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Just 3 per cent of the population eligible to give blood actually do so, yet one in four people will need blood transfusions at some stage in their lives, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service has said.
Publishing its annual report for 2015 on Monday, the service said travel abroad remained a major reason why donors were deferred from giving blood.
Insect-borne virus diseases acquired when travelling, even within Europe or the USA, were “a concern”, since these could be readily transmitted from donor to blood transfusion recipient even when the donor felt well and healthy.
The IBTS said West Nile virus, Chikungunya, and Dengue were present in continental Europe as well as farther afield in 2015.
It had also kept “a wary eye” on the parasitic disease babesiosis in the north eastern US and the Mers-CoV respiratory illness in the Middle East.
“More exotic viruses, including Bourbon virus in the mid-west USA, and zika virus in South America that was to cause such concern later, were also kept under surveillance.”
Chief executive Andrew Kelly said in 2015 the service had continued to deliver blood tranfusion “to the highest standards despite the many challenges the organisation faced”.
“We continue to operate in a very constrained financial environment and there is a requirement for us to effect further cost savings. For the first time in a number of years there was an increase in the use of blood and platelets. However, the usage is 13 per cent and 10 per cent lower than 2009 for red cells and platelets respectively.”
The IBTS said about 90,000 donors were impacted by a problem with a new method for testing haemoglobin levels, which it had identified towards the end of 2015.
The problem with the new system resulted in donations being taken from women who may have been anaemic at the time their haemoglobin levels were tested, or who may have become anaemic as a result.
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A total of 132,953 whole blood donations were processed nationally in 2015.
The board’s total income last year was €65.69 million, which included €65.43 million in income from the sale of products and services provided to hospitals.
Expenditure for 2015 amounted to €71.61 million compared to €68.03 million in 2014.
The IBTS said the increase in expenditure mainly arose from increased employer pension costs.
It emerged last year that the IBTS owed the State €10.3 million in pension-related deductions from staff.
In a statement, the IBTS said it had, in conjunction with the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, negotiated a solution with staff and their representatives to align the IBTS scheme with that of public servants who pay PRSI at class A1.
Separately in its annual report, the service warned that it continued to face financial challenges.
Chairman Prof Anthony Staines said the service hoped its “long-standing proposal” to link its prices to its internal activity-based costing system would be accepted by the Department of Health and Minister for Health Simon Harris. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/just-3-of-eligible-blood-donors-make-donations-1.2772099?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/86a198150d033555b1604e39d5a8852f9c6ff78295a378f2736edf75fa1dca99.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T06:52:52 | null | 2016-08-31T07:00:00 | Partially occupied office portfolio has five units | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fcommercial-property%2Fblanchardstown-office-portfolio-for-sale-at-1-8m-1.2773075%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773072.1472563941!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Blanchardstown office portfolio for sale at €1.8m | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | A partially occupied office portfolio located within Blanchardstown Corporate Park in Dublin 15 is to be offered for sale at around €1.8 million through QRE Real Estate Advisers on the instructions of receivers Deloitte.
Providence House, a three-storey block with a floor area of 1,104sq m (11,881sq ft) and basement car parking is currently occupied by Arvato, who will be moving out at the end of the year.
The second lot includes a first floor unit of 260sq m (2,796sq ft) and an own-door ground floor area of 97sq m (1,045sq ft). Both have their own car parking facilities.
The sale also includes 257sq m (2,776sq ft) in Block 1 which is occupied by iCom Technologies on a 25-year lease from 2004.
The fifth unit is located on the first floor and shares the access with one other tenant. The unit has a floor area of 112sq m (1,207sq ft).
Blanchardstown Corporate Park has a range of attractive amenities including a childcare centre, Spar convenience store, an O’Brien’s sandwich bar and bagel factory and the Bell and Bear restaurant. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/blanchardstown-office-portfolio-for-sale-at-1-8m-1.2773075?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/9c750165ef2d9ccc815ce5f147d745e071683c06ea2e9600a7eb02c37edc491e.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T16:51:39 | null | 2016-08-29T14:00:00 | Anxiety presents itself to many on a daily basis but support services are there, as are measures to reduce it | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhealth-family%2Ften-practical-ways-to-ease-your-anxiety-1.2767128%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2767125.1472225496!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Ten practical ways to ease your anxiety | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Whether it’s the back-to-school panic that is invading many homes, the “Monday fear” following a weekend of excess or the crippling anxiety that forces you under your duvet for days on end, many people have found themselves on the scale of anxiousness at one stage in their lives.
More and more, thanks to our increasingly frantic and demanding lifestyles – not to mention our dependence on technology and all things digital – anxiety is no longer just something we feel momentarily before we give a presentation or go for an interview. For many, it’s an affliction that presents itself on a daily basis and, frustratingly, it requires long-term management. There are support services available and anyone suffering from anxiety should speak to their GP about options.
There are also practical ways to help to ease your anxiety.
Step 1: Understanding It’s doubtful that you’d think to read up on anxiety and all of its nastiness until you’ve actually experienced a panic attack or two. However, not understanding what anxiety is, why it’s happening or how to handle it, can often worsen the experience when it first presents itself. It’s the not knowing what’s going on that, for many sufferers, is the most unnerving.
Having an idea of your body’s inner workings on a very simple, physical level will not only be a relief to the part of your mind that questions whether or not you are having a heart attack but knowing that your body is merely working too hard to protect itself will be somewhat reassuring, and thus reduce the symptoms.
Simply put, though our lifestyles have evolved hugely since our cavemen days of hunting animals for dinner, our biochemistry has not. Our fight or flight response was essential for our survival back then; without it, we wouldn’t have experienced the fear necessary to drive us away from danger and keep us alive.
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These days, though we no longer face the same threats to our survival – unless of course you still chase down wildebeest for your Sunday roast – that very same warning system is still consistently stimulated by the everyday stressors we face.
Understanding that your body is trying to warn you that perhaps it’s time to take your foot off the gas is the first step to coping with and overcoming anxiety.
Step 2: Assess your current situation Okay. By now you understand what anxiety is and you have a newfound respect for your body and the ways in which it tries to protect you. Now you need to assess precisely why your body’s internal alarm system is ringing.
Maybe you’re working yourself to exhaustion at work, have had something on every evening and, in between that, you’ve had pretty hectic weekends.
Something awful doesn’t have to have happened in your life to justify a more intense bout of anxiety. In this incredibly common case, you’re running on empty and your body wants you to take a breather, but chances are you didn’t listen to the first warning or two. Or maybe you’re stuck in a toxic work environment that goes against your own core values; your conscious mind may want to keep the head down and plough through for money’s sake but your more intuitive subconscious is telling you to get the hell out of there for the sake of your mental health. If your eyes are wide open, this part’s usually easy to conquer.
Step 3: Acceptance This is where it gets tricky. You know why you’re feeling anxious and you now face an internal conflict wherein you naturally try to run away from it and, as a consequence, you feel it more.
Your body does everything in its power to resist and stop the anxiety; understandably so as it’s a truly crap experience. Stop what you’re doing and accept it. Accept that anxiety is something that every single one of us is managing; some just feel it worse than others.
Accept that it’s not a permanent thing. Most importantly, if you’ve had a really bad bout, stop looking at your anxiety as something to be cured and never experienced again. Instead, accept that you’re human, that it’s normal, that it’s understandable and that it’s something we will all feel at certain points in our lives, but know that you’ll get really good at dealing with it.
Step 4: Understand the negativity bias This is a very basic flaw of the human condition and, to go back to our cavemen days once more, it too is all about survival. Our brains are programmed to focus on the negative: We receive 100 compliments and just one insult but it’ll be that one negative that we focus on. We’ll hear and worry about that one unfortunate person who died of an obscure illness and ignore the thousands who didn’t.
Sound familiar? This is both nature (how our brains work) and nurture (just watch the news and you’ll see how society has been conditioned to focus on the negative). You may have experienced one particularly anxious day and one day without a care in the world, but thanks to the negativity bias, it will be the former, negative experience of anxiety that will have a greater effect on our psychological state, rather than the latter. Understanding this helps you take a step back and consciously bring your attention to the positive. A gratitude diary – where you list the positives in your life on a daily basis – will help to correct this imbalance.
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Step 5: Mindfulness You feel anxious, somebody tells you to try “mindfulness”, you try it and . . . nothing. Yep, we’ve been there. You’re impatient, you want to feel better now not next week, and you just can’t see what all of the fuss is about. The good news is you’re not alone in this struggle, but, mindfulness, as a tool in your arsenal against stress and anxiety, is overwhelmingly backed by science. What’s more, it’s a skill that takes considerable time to develop and requires daily practise. Apps such as calm.com and Headspace make it a whole lot easier to find your inner Zen. Stick with it; the “om” will come.
Step 6: Diet There have been countless tomes written on this step alone – your diet can wreak havoc on your state of mind – but for an instant and noticeable effect, go caffeine free. If you’re already in an anxious state, your body is over-stimulated, caffeine will serve only to exacerbate it. Ease off the sugar too and give your body a chance to reset.
Step 7: CBT Cognitive behavioural therapy, where you work with a therapist to alter the behaviours and beliefs that are fuelling your anxiety and/or depression, is one of the most practical and positive approaches you can take. It’s very scientific, with plenty of real-life exercises that help you break the vicious cycle of anxiety. Rather than talk therapy, where you can often find yourself talking in circles, this is a measured and hugely (and scientifically) supported method of intervention.
Step 8: Stop comparing yourself to others This sounds easy but, again, it’s quite the skill to acquire. We’re all guilty of comparing ourselves to those around us. “He’s doing better than me in work.” “She takes on so much more than I do.” “He has absolutely no fear when it comes to public speaking and I’d sooner eat my own skin than willingly get up on that podium.” And so on and so forth. Comparing yourself to others is usually more of a hindrance than a help. For some, it’s motivation, for others, it’s a weapon to use upon themselves that – you guessed it – fuels anxiety. Focus on yourself. A) You’re doing your best and b) chances are they’re feeling it too.
Step 9: Make it work for you If you look at things from a positive perspective, you’ll soon realise how that same anxiety that you’ve long considered as your own worst enemy is actually one of your most useful allies too. You feel anxious because you care, you’ll naturally be concerned about doing a good job and will be a lot more motivated than the person who’s never felt it. What’s more, several studies have shown that those who experience heightened anxiety are often more intelligent and more creative than those who do not. Winning.
Step 10: Prioritise the things that give you joy An important, final step. Don’t force yourself to do things that you just don’t like or be someone you’re not because you think it’s “just your anxiety” holding you back. There’s a fine line between managing your anxiety or conquering your fears and doing things that just don’t sit right with you. If you hate the thought of slumming it at a festival and you really prefer to sleep in a mud-free zone, don’t beat yourself up about it. Trying to suit other people instead of yourself will only give you stress. Find out what you like and do more of it and, most of all, know the difference between your anxiety and that which defines you; your own personality.
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How to recognise anxiety
Everyone experiences anxiety in different ways. You may experience the following:
Difficulty concentrating. A sense of feeling constantly on edge.
Physical symptoms such as headaches, butterflies in your stomach, sweaty hands, high blood pressure, dizziness, breathing heavily, feeling faint, sweating.
You may be smoking or drinking more than usual.
You are eating too much or not eating enough.
You are fidgety or rushing around nervously.
You might also feel run down, tired, have problems concentrating or problems sleeping at night.
You might feel worried all the time.
You feel overwhelmed or panicked about even little things.
You spend a lot of time thinking and often overthink things.
Source: SpunOut.ie, Ireland’s youth information website created by young people, for young people.
Some good reading: Mind Over Mood, Dennis Greenberger; The Lifechanging Magic of not Giving a F*ck, Sarah Knight; The Rules of Life, Richard Templar; Rising Strong, Brene Brown; Thinking Fast & Slow, Daniel Kahneman; Flourishing, Maureen Gaffney; Thrive, Arianna Huffington; The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/ten-practical-ways-to-ease-your-anxiety-1.2767128?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1bb5b6d6e1253eb99b8ca19954a0b1eabd9add7842b3bf55815458da5be1bb7d.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T16:50:07 | null | 2016-08-26T16:00:00 | Good flight prices? Time to travelBad sterling? Time to travel | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fso-what-s-hot-and-what-s-not-this-week-1.2768509%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768507.1472143968!/image/image.jpg | en | null | So what’s hot and what’s not this week? | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | WHAT’S HOT?
Skyr We’re spotting the Icelandic wonder-yogurt in more Irish shops. Delish
Pantisocracy Panti’s new RTÉ Radio 1 show on Tuesday nights at 10pm
WOW transatlantic Great deals to the US and Canada from Dublin with a brief stop in Reykjavik
Tweed blazers Taking inspiration from the 1970s, and nerdy college professors
Tiger Dublin Fringe Get booking. We like the look of RIOT, Age of Transition, and Collapsing Horse’s The Aeneid
Stephen Byrne The Seattle-based Irish comic artist and animator taking fan art to epic levels
Rihanna’s fluffy slippers Otherwise known as the Fenty x Puma fur slide
Fish fingers As perfected by Kai in Galway and Cervi in Dublin
WHAT’S NOT?
Watering the plants Trying to find a silver lining to all this rain
Gawker The end of an online era as the online news website announces it is to close
Avocados Demand is having a serious environmental impact in Mexico
Sterling Bad for Britain, good for weekends in London
Winter-fear When the prospect of dark mornings pops into your head
Moody action heroes The new Bourne film adds little to the franchise, Tom Cruise keeps banging the Jack Reacher drum, and Vin Diesel and the Rock bickered on set of the latest Fast & Furious
Puffa jackets Everywhere. We’re not quite ready to succumb to the marshmallow vibes | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/so-what-s-hot-and-what-s-not-this-week-1.2768509?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/14cd8d76b6ec4fab5ec4f3d535ba83d2b7e6fd7813c07c409bb25be74402c47b.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T14:50:06 | null | 2016-08-26T15:42:00 | The care home was the controversial subject of a RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fhealth%2F%25C3%25A1ras-attracta-s-services-criticised-in-a-draft-hse-report-1.2769530%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769529.1472222560!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Áras Attracta’s services criticised in a draft HSE report | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | A draft Health Service Executive (HSE) report on the Áras Attracta care home in Co Mayo is believed to have identified numerous issues including low morale and fraught relations between management and staff.
The home was the controversial subject of an RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme in 2014, which examined care practices for adults with intellectual disabilities.
According to the broadcaster, a draft report of a review of services, which has been two years in the making and which is due to be published next month, has found failures throughout its management system.
In particular it found low staff morale, ineffective use of staff resources and weak governance, particularly in respect of “bungalow three” which featured in the documentary.
“Staff in Áras Attracta...describe bungalow three as the ‘forgotten bungalow’ where there was a culture of bad practices,” Prime Time Investigates reporter Barry O’Kelly said.
“Management are criticised under a number of different headings. It notes as well there were fraught relations between management and staff in Áras Attracta.
“However it also states that even today there are many relatives of people who are living in Áras Attracta, people with intellectual disabilities, who are happy with the services provided there. It also notes that the HSE has introduced quite sweeping changes since our programme almost two years ago.”
A spokesman for the HSE declined to comment other than to say the completed report would be published in the first week of September. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/%C3%A1ras-attracta-s-services-criticised-in-a-draft-hse-report-1.2769530?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1aeaec163a23c15d778f4fb21008d512de76cdf85af6bafbc78b0b249138a1c9.json |
[
"John Horne"
] | 2016-08-27T04:50:29 | null | 2016-08-27T05:00:00 | Ronan McGreevy beautifully demonstrates the process of how Ireland’s memory of war is changing | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fculture%2Fbooks%2Fwherever-the-firing-line-extends-ireland-and-the-western-front-review-1.2764784%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2764783.1471887382!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front review | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois; painting by Fortunio Matania depicting an incident in France in May 1915, when the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered very heavily at Rue du Bois, in the Pas de Calais. Photograph: Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans
Book Title:
Wherever the Firing Line Extends. Ireland and the Western Front ISBN-13:
9781845888732 Author:
Ronan McGreevy Publisher:
The History Press Ireland Guideline Price:
€20.0
“Site of memory” is what historians now call the places that symbolise key episodes in the past. Ronan McGreevy has written a vivid and endlessly informative study of Irish sites of memory of the Great War in France and Belgium, though in the case of nationalist Ireland they are really sites of non-memory. In each of his 22 chapters, McGreevy tells the tale of a different monument, and most will be unknown to most readers.
They range from humble plaques to major statements such as the Ulster Tower on the Somme or the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Belgium, with its striking round tower. Most date from the decade after the war but some are recent, such as the Peace Park or the monument near Ypres to the poet and nationalist Francis Ledwidge, in whom “all the strains criss-cross” as Seamus Heaney put it.
In fact, McGreevy tells two tales, one about the people commemorated and the other about the monuments themselves. So what do the monuments say about the Irish soldiers on the western front? From this angle, they fall into three clusters according to time and place.
The first cluster contains the most surprises. It represents the Irish soldiers already in the army or its reserves in 1914. They fought in the helter-skelter opening campaign from Mons in Belgium to the Marne and back until the front was formed, and then in the efforts to break the deadlock in 1915.
A plaque at Casteau in Belgium marks the first British shots of the war, fired by the “Mounted Micks” (or Royal Irish Dragoon Guards). Ironically, a plaque in nearby Mons to other Irish cavalry commemorates the end of the war. For British troops had reached the town again after four and a half years’ fighting on November 11th 1918, and it was the Irish who supplied the victory parade.
Most of these monuments testify to the place of the Irish in the small regular army that was virtually destroyed in the first part of the war. The officers included Catholics, such as Lt Maurice Dease, from a landed family in Westmeath and one of the first two winners of a Victoria Cross. A recent monument is that to the 2nd Munsters at the spot where they were immortalised receiving final absolution in the painting by an Italian artist, Fortunino Matania, before they were devastated at Aubers Ridge in May 1915.
A second cluster commemorates a very different kind of soldier, the wartime volunteer, who first saw mass action in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This was a crucible of national mythmaking. In 1921 the Ulster Tower was the first monument completed on the western front because it memorialised the exploits of the unionist 36th (Ulster) Division on the opening day of the battle.
The comparable heroism of the nationalist 16th (Irish) Division at Guillemont in September, where Tom Kettle died, garnered only a modest granite Celtic cross. McGreevy demonstrates the ambiguities of the Free State towards the war by showing both that the cross attracted large crowds when it was displayed in College Green on Armistice Day 1924 but also that the government avoided any official role in its inauguration in France.
The monument to the Tyneside Irish, recruited among the descendants of post-famine emigrants to England’s industrial northeast and devastated at the Somme, reminds us that the diaspora provided fertile frameworks for recruitment and distinct sites of memory.
The third cluster of monuments marks the grim fighting in Belgium in 1917 at Messines and Ypres (Passchendaele), where Ledwidge died. Famously, the only time the 16th and 36th Divisions fought together was in June at Messines, displaying a comradeship that belied the discord deepening at home. When Willie Redmond, the 56-year-old MP and younger brother of John, was killed not long after making an impassioned speech in the Commons calling for a new start in Anglo-Irish relations, it signalled the last gasp of Home Rule Ireland.
McGreevy reconstructs the efforts to memorialise that moment in the preservation over the decades of Redmond’s lone-standing tomb in the face of efforts to relocate it to an official cemetery. Another Celtic cross marked the joint engagement of the two divisions.
The monuments can also be read from a different angle for what they tell us about memories of the Great War over time. The obvious contrast is that between the early and unwavering claims made on the war by a unionist Northern Ireland in need of foundation myths after partition and a Free State for which the Rising performed this function. Yet, lest we draw the contrast too sharply, McGreevy not only reminds us of the level of support for commemorating the soldiers’ sacrifice in Free State Ireland but also points out that the Ulster Tower fell into disrepair in the decades after the second World War. For all of Ireland, the Great War was pushed into the background by its successor and then by the conflict in the North.
The change came in the 1990s with the peace process and the new relationship of each part of the country with the other and of both with the past. In an excellent chapter, McGreevy shows us that the Island of Ireland Peace Park, inaugurated in 1998, the year of the Belfast Agreement, is a symptom of that transformation and also the last national monument to be erected by any country on the western front. As the memory changes, so new sites are created and old ones rediscovered. The great merit of McGreevy’s book is to demonstrate that process for Ireland’s Great War over the past century.
John Horne is emeritus Fellow and former Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin | http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/wherever-the-firing-line-extends-ireland-and-the-western-front-review-1.2764784?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/50f89cc8c00d45dd802f99421df89e98c7b83e171394d7648a7b714c9ee8a9bb.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T00:48:40 | null | 2016-08-29T01:00:00 | DIY company forecast to have underlying trading profits of £68.6 million | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fconstruction%2Fbuilders-merchant-grafton-group-set-to-report-interim-results-1.2769281.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769620.1472226636!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Builders’ merchant Grafton Group set to report interim results | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Builders merchanting and DIY company Grafton Group is due to report interim results this Wednesday, with underlying trading profits of £68.6 million (€80 million) forecast.
Davy Stockbrokers is forecasting underlying trading profits to have grown by more than 17 per cent on a year-on-year basis, or by 10 per cent adjusting for the acquisition of Grafton’s Netherlands operations in the second half of 2015.
Davy said the outlook for Grafton’s earnings remains uncertain, akin to other names in the same sector.
The stockbroking firm noted that Grafton has fallen by more than 20 per cent since the beginning of 2016.
“The stock is the worst performing in the sector on a year-to-date basis despite offering best-in-class growth prospects over the coming 18 months,” it said.
Grafton Group last month warned that Brexit is likely to dampen demand for new housing and home improvements for the remainder of the year in the UK, its most important market.
Growth in UK merchanting like-for-like sales, which make up more than 70 per cent of group revenues, slowed to an annual 1.6 per cent in the second quarter from 5.3 per cent in the first three months of the year. Sales turned negative in June.
Irish merchanting like-for-like sales rose by 10 per cent in the second quarter, while Belgian sales declined 9.5 per cent. A recovery in retail sales in its Woodies’ DIY business in Ireland has continued so far this year, the company said. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/construction/builders-merchant-grafton-group-set-to-report-interim-results-1.2769281 | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/a606f4ee49fd492b00da664d7838b2ccb9267e3dde313fa93afa011cc71ef634.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T14:51:02 | null | 2016-08-28T12:59:00 | Sigmar Gabriel says Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership has made little progress | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Ftalks-on-eu-us-free-trade-deal-have-failed-german-minister-1.2770951%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770950.1472385564!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Talks on EU-US free trade deal have failed - German minister | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Germany’s economy minister says free trade talks between the EU and the US have failed.
Negotiations on the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have made little progress in recent years.
Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Germany’s vice chancellor, said that “in my opinion the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it”.
He noted that in 14 rounds of talks the two sides have not agreed on a single common chapter out of 27 being discussed.
Mr Gabriel compared the TTIP negotiations unfavourably with a free trade deal forged between the EU and Canada, which he said was fairer for all sides.
If reached, the deal could encompass almost half the global economy, potentially generating €92 billion in added output for the EU and US. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/talks-on-eu-us-free-trade-deal-have-failed-german-minister-1.2770951?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/7fb31173d708ee765f376a0469a2e8af6d385efb00e73bfbf047875ea63c46e8.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T10:49:21 | null | 2016-08-31T11:11:00 | Study claims deal will damage competition in beef processing sector | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fagribusiness-and-food%2Fifa-report-raises-further-concerns-about-abp-slaney-deal-1.2774152.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774151.1472638505!/image/image.jpg | en | null | IFA report raises further concerns about ABP/Slaney deal | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has published a report raising further concerns about the part takeover of Slaney Meats by Larry Goodman’s ABP Group.
The report suggests the deal would have an adverse impact on competition in the beef processing sector and would make “co-ordinated effects” on price more likely.
The IFA has already submitted the report, prepared by Pat McCloughan of PMCA Economic Consulting, to the competition authorities in Brussels, which have yet to rule on the deal.
“This report is very clear on the competition concerns in the beef sector, the income pressures that exist for livestock producers and the impact that any weakening of competition would have on their livelihoods,” IFA president Joe Healy said.
The Slaney deal is at the centre of an escalating row between the IFA and ABP .
Earlier this month, the Goodman firm halted the automatic collection of levies from farmers, which part fund the IFA.
The farmers’ group claims this was in retaliation for its opposition to the Slaney deal - a claim the company denies.
Presenting the findings of the report, Dr McCloughan pointed out that ABP and Slaney combined currently account for 25.8 per cent of all cattle slaughterings in the State.
However, when the market is narrowed down to premium cattle, the figure rises to 36.2 per cent, he said.
Dr McCloughan also outlined the growing gap in cattle prices between Ireland and Britain, the State’s largest export market, which has been a source of tension between farmers and processors.
Under the deal, ABP will buy the Allen family’s 50 per cent stake in Slaney, creating a new partnership with Linden Foods, which owns the remaining 50 per cent.
The deal will also see ABP move back into lamb processing - via Irish Country Meats - for the first time in decades.
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Mr Healy called on Minster for Agriculture Michael Creed and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to address the issue. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/ifa-report-raises-further-concerns-about-abp-slaney-deal-1.2774152 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1c0dc5ffd6c21e8f70bd5d04466c1dfd26ee720dd1a718df5d9db670811c070e.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T20:51:12 | null | 2016-08-28T20:40:00 | Outstanding Kerry team book their All-Ireland final place alongside Galway | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fgaelic-games%2Fkildare-minors-no-match-for-the-majesty-of-kerry-at-croke-park-1.2771274%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771272.1472413196!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Kildare minors no match for the majesty of Kerry at Croke Park | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Kerry 2-26 Kildare 0-10
It was a painful beating to receive at Croke Park, but Brendan Hackett reckons his Kildare minors were defeated by a Kerry side that will go down in history.
The Lilies were no match for the majesty of Kerry, and in particular forward duo David Clifford and David Shaw, who delivered tallies of 0-8 and 1-3 to secure their All-Ireland final place alongside Galway.
Kerry will challenge for three final wins on the trot when they return to Croke Park on September 18th, and on the evidence of their campaign so far, they will be firm favourites.
They have scorched all opposition, beating both Waterford and now Leinster champions Kildare by 22 points, while they overcame Derry by 11 in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Cork came closest to Peter Keane’s Kingdom in the Munster final, but still lost by six points.
There were just four points in it at half-time and Kildare were well in the game, but an awesome second-half display from Kerry saw them outscore their opponents by 2-15 to 0-3.
Asked if it’s the best minor team he’s seen, Hackett, whose term as Kildare boss is up, nodded. “Yeah, it’s the best minor team I’ve seen – and the two minor teams they’ve had the last couple of years were excellent as well,” said Hackett. “I knew this was a serious Kerry team. I didn’t make a big deal of that but we played them in June after the Leaving Cert and they did exactly that to us as well, so at the back of my mind I knew how good they were.
“You’d have to say that fundamentally they were just far better. There’s days you’re beaten by a team and it’s close. Today, they were just better.”
Clifford has been a revelation for Kerry all season. He was Man of the Match in the Munster final with 1-5, hit 0-5 against Derry and got the individual award again yesterday.
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He fielded superbly before laying the ball off to Shaw too for Kerry’s first goal in the 40th minute, which finished Kildare off, opening up a 13-point gap.
Kerry led by just 0-11 to 0-7 at half-time having wasted a decent goal chance and blasted seven wides.
Dominated
The sides were level four times in that half and Kildare fancied their chances of pushing on, having dominated Leinster in recent seasons.
Cian Costigan’s 28th minute point left just them one back, but Kerry finished the first-half with three points. And the Kingdom seized that momentum to outscore the Lilies 1-7 to 0-1 in the 10 minutes after the restart to all but put the game to bed.
KERRY: B Courtney; D Naughton, M Potts (0-1), G O’Sullivan (0-1); N Collins (0-1), D O’Brien, M Foley (0-1); M Breen (0-1), M Ryan; D O’Connor (1-1), S O’Shea (0-5, two frees), D Moynihan (0-2); B Sweeney, D Shaw (1-3), D Clifford (0-8, two frees). Subs: C Linnane (0-1) for Moynihan (44 mins), C Teahan for Sweeney (50 mins), F O’Brien (0-1) for Shaw (55 mins), S Okunbar for Ryan (58 mins), K Dwyer for Collins (59 mins), S O’Luing for Courtney (59 mins). KILDARE: L Mullins; J O’Toole, M Dempsey, D O’Sullivan (0-1); T Archbold, J Gibbons, S Doran; D Marnell, A Masterson; P Woodgate (0-1), B McLoughlin, C Costigan (0-1); C Kelly (0-3, two frees), J Robinson (0-1), J Hyland (0-2, one free). Subs: K Foley (0-1) for Woodgate (36 mins), M Barrett for Archbold (36 mins), S Kavanagh for McLoughlin (41 mins), D Kelly for Costigan (41 mins), J Burke for Marnell (46 mins), N Murphy for Robinson (52 mins). Referee: M McNally (Monaghan). | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/kildare-minors-no-match-for-the-majesty-of-kerry-at-croke-park-1.2771274?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/8fa3afe88e25148c8161ced903059bee29ac7ca9e062cdb2bd58196ab4d40af4.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T18:48:34 | null | 2016-08-28T19:32:00 | Trends for US employment and inflation are in right direction, says rate setter | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fus-interest-rate-increase-case-compelling-says-fed-figure-1.2771218.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771216.1472409141!/image/image.jpg | en | null | US interest rate increase case compelling, says Fed figure | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | One of the United States Federal Reserve’s rate-setters has described the case for a further increase in short-term interest rates as “compelling”, arguing that the trends for employment and inflation are in the right direction.
Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said the US economy had “proven itself to be resilient through a number of shocks” which was why a gradual upward path for the federal funds target range was appropriate.
Upside risks
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) member acknowledged there still might be negative risks looming overseas – for example, the slower Chinese growth rate and the aftermath of the Brexit vote – but she argued that the central bank also needed to recognise “upside” risks.
“If you inappropriately keep interest rates too low for too long then you put yourself in a position of perhaps having to raise interest rates more strongly in the future,” said Ms Mester, who votes on rates this year as part of the regular rotation between regional Fed presidents. “Those are the kind of risks we have to weigh . . . We have to be very deft about it.”
Her words follow a speech from Janet Yellen, the Fed chair, who signalled a rate increase was on the cards in the coming months.
Ms Yellen’s intervention at the Kansas City Fed’s symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, came after a number of other Fed colleagues including Stanley Fischer, the vice-chair of the Federal Reserve board, and Bill Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, signalled they were open to a move. However, the minutes to the Fed’s July meeting suggested there were deep divisions among policymakers over how quickly to move.
Ms Mester was also attending the symposium at Jackson Lake Lodge. While second-quarter gross domestic product figures were soft at 1.1 per cent annualised growth, she argued that the consumer part of the economy was still quite strong, and employment was making progress.
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Inflation goal
In terms of what monetary policy can do with respect to maximising employment, “we are about there”, she argued. “I think that basically we are at the point where we have met that goal, and I think we are very close to meeting the inflation goal in terms of the path being up to 2 per cent over the next couple of years.”
Ms Mester declined to say what her decision would be at the Fed’s September meeting, saying she wanted to review all the economic data at that time and listen to her colleagues. But she added: “Making another gradual step – there is a compelling case for that.”
In a separate interview, fellow FOMC voter James Bullard of the St Louis Fed sounded ambivalent over whether a move should come as soon as September. Earlier this summer Mr Bullard switched to a dovish stance after his bank’s economists adopted a new approach to analysing the US. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016) | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/us-interest-rate-increase-case-compelling-says-fed-figure-1.2771218 | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/09a852839c2401cb2c02e957d7eae8d5354c3c373fb8804546b348f6fbac226b.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T06:52:37 | null | 2016-08-31T07:19:00 | UK merchanting sales were ‘relatively flat’ in July and August after Brexit vote | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fconstruction%2Fgrafton-profits-rise-even-as-uk-merchanting-struggles-1.2774071%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774070.1472624380!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Grafton profits rise even as UK merchanting struggles | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Grafton Group posted a 12 per cent increase in adjusted operating profit in the first half as strengthening Irish and Dutch economies offset weakness in its UK builders merchanting business amid concerns about Brexit.
Adjusted operating profit rose to £68.4 million (€80.3 million) from £61.2 million for the same period last year, helped by the €91.5 million acquisition late last year of a Dutch took distributor, Isero.
However, the Dublin-based company said its trade-only Selco Builders Warehouse business continued to see its profits grow during the first half even as the group’s traditional UK merchanting businesses faced “more challenging markets”.
“Progressively weaker trading conditions were encountered during the period at a time of increased uncertainty in the lead-up to the UK’s EU referendum,” Grafton said on Wednesday.
The group had previously warned in mid-July that its UK merchanting sales had dipped in June and that Brexit is likely to dampen demand for new housing and home improvements for the remainder of the year in its most important market.
On Thursday, it said: “It is still too early to assess the likely impact on the UK economy of the vote to leave the European Union. Following weak trading in June, demand in the UK merchanting business was relatively flat during July and August with markets remaining very price competitive.”
Grafton said its Woodie’s DIY retailing business in Ireland performed well as a result of management actions combined with increased household spending in the sector.
The interim dividend approved by the board has been increased by 6 per cent to 4.75p, in line with its progressive dividend policy. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/construction/grafton-profits-rise-even-as-uk-merchanting-struggles-1.2774071?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ffce57349a7d90bdcef043b68e310f0aa87eea6012d44de776d6586802ac8920.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T04:50:30 | null | 2016-08-27T05:00:00 | Flamingos, Hemingway and Bud are August’s Hennessy New Irish Writing winning poems | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fculture%2Fbooks%2Fflamingos-by-kerrie-o-brien-1.2765662%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2765659.1471949869!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Flamingos, by Kerrie O’Brien | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Flamingos
The name comes from fire
Legs thin as cherry stems
Wade and paddle
In white lake crust
Guarding their lithium salts
Power source
Where water and heaven
Are mirrored
Pink contortionists
Feathers dark
Beneath each wing
Dip and shimmer
Stained red
By their fish meats
Rose flickers
Against horizon
Crimson on gold
Like Burmese monks
Bald headed
Clothed in orange
Bodies arched to sky
Saluting the dawn
In ruffled flamboyance.
Hemingway
One of the days it was too cold
To do anything but sit
And read in Shakespeare & Co.
The air thick with spirit
All the great dead visiting
Their warm hum.
I was learning of his time in Paris
When he was my age
The fires, snow, hunger, love
He was talking of the winds
At the river
How they would cut you
In gusts if you walked home
By the bridges
Better to slowly climb
The back streets
Huddle low
Against the walls
Walk in the quiet.
I knew where he meant
Felt it like a slap –
As if he was saying
Come, now, look alive
We walked the same paths
How could he be so close
And I not know it –
Then lights out
Powercut, blackout
In the dark holding his words
Everything aligned
The worst time to search
Too late, too cold, I hadn’t eaten
The deep vicious hunger
Raw and persisting
In blizzard sleet
And lamplight pink
He led me
And right where he lived –
A cafe
Rose star in the wilderness
Warm jewel
Run by an American woman
Big hearted
Who talked and gave me a muffin
Flooded with raspberry
Bloodsweet, glittering, hot.
It then came
A thudding chant
Be still, still in the howling
Have faith
Just a little longer.
Bud
I think you need to be empty to fall in love
To have been pure in yourself for long enough
to know who you are again
there needs to have been a winter
where you were bare and elegant as an orchid
moving towards the light but in no rush
holding your grief well
not waiting, expecting
but quietly knowing
there will be layers of new
flowering softness
you will tremble with life
the buds will split open
again and again
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Kerrie O’ Brien has been published in Cyphers, the Stinging Fly, Banshee Lit and Southword, among other journals. She was shortlisted for the Penny Dreadful Novella Prize 2015 and is working on her first novel. Her debut collection of poetry, Illuminate, made possible by a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, is due to be published by Salmon Poetry in October | http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/flamingos-by-kerrie-o-brien-1.2765662?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/db55ab53b1ef0c6e1f2d86c9f8f09a8e6a0c6024a5f5e8c7e2a940f1d280474e.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:04:12 | null | 2016-08-26T05:35:00 | Trump and Brexit vote represent backlashes against against EU free-trade model | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fireland-symbolises-benefits-of-free-trade-as-protectionism-rises-1.2768044.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768025.1472122147!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Ireland symbolises benefits of free trade as protectionism rises | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | As a small, open economy, heavily dependent on exports for its prosperity, Ireland has embraced free trade since the late 1950s. However, the political tide elsewhere, particularly in Britain and the United States, seems to be moving towards greater protectionism.
Since the 1800s, Britain has strongly championed free trade. However, the Brexit vote marked a backlash against the EU free-trade model, and particularly against the free movement of labour.
In the US, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is running on an anti-free trade and anti-immigration platform. Bernie Sanders, a challenger for the Democrats’ nomination, built his strong showing in the primaries around opposition to further freeing of trade. His challenge has pushed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a more negative position on future free-trade deals. Her ads mock how Trump’s own-brand clothing line is sourced overseas.
Trade partnership
The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US is facing growing public opposition, although, at government level, and in the European Commission, there remains a commitment to the benefits of eliminating remaining barriers to trade within the EU, and to widening trade deals with other regions of the world.
Driving this growing public disenchantment with free trade is the fact that, while trade growth has raised national incomes, the costs and benefits have been unevenly shared within individual countries, and between different social groups.
As manufacturing jobs gravitated to lower-cost countries, areas such as Britain’s northeast and the US rust belt have lost out. Jobs for skilled graduates have grown with rising prosperity, but low-skilled workers have experienced rising unemployment, particularly in former industrial heartlands.
The understandable populist response is to return to protectionism. The more challenging approach is to continue a commitment to growth-enhancing trade, but to emphasise measures to ensure that the benefits of free trade are shared, redistributing resources to those who stand to lose. In particular, governments need to take remedial action where the losses are geographically concentrated, and to address alternative opportunities for those with low skills.
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Ireland stands out as an exceptional case, both on the scale to which it has benefited from free trade and in the extent to which those benefits have been shared.
When freer trade in the rest of Europe opened up after the second World War, Ireland stood aside, retaining massive tariff barriers in place until the 1960s. If you wanted to buy a car in Ireland, it had to be disassembled in the UK (or elsewhere) and then rebuilt in Ireland from the parts; if you wanted to buy a shoelace it had to be made in Ireland.
EEC accession
All of this massively raised costs for consumers and restricted choice. In turn, Ireland’s exports consisted largely of agricultural produce sold at a discount on foreign markets. As a result, Ireland failed to share in the rapid increase in European living standards in the 1950s. It was only with the freeing of trade over the course of the 1960s and entry into the EEC in 1973 that Ireland moved to share in the economic growth that the rest of Europe had experienced since 1950.
Freeing of trade and entry into the EEC involved significant closures of Irish domestic firms that could not compete. In particular, the car-assembly plants all closed by the end of the 1970s. However, in the immediate aftermath of EEC entry, most of those who lost their jobs found employment elsewhere, many in new factories built to supply the European market. For farmers, unfettered access to the European market was particularly beneficial, helping spread the geographical gains from trade.
A particular feature of Ireland’s experience of free trade has been the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). Since the 1960s, FDI in Ireland has involved the opening of new factories or businesses, providing new jobs. While in the early 1970s there was some opposition to expanding FDI, that opposition evaporated as the new businesses brought increased employment.
However, in other parts of Europe the effects of FDI have been more complex. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in eastern Europe found themselves with a totally uncompetitive industrial base. Their initial experiences of FDI involved the takeover of existing enterprises by foreign firms, resulting in major job losses to address productivity.
While ultimately this built more sustainable enterprises, this form of FDI was obviously very unpopular. However, over the subsequent 20 years FDI in newer EU members such as Poland and Slovakia resulted in a major expansion in activity and employment in profitable export-oriented enterprises, such as car manufacturing. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-symbolises-benefits-of-free-trade-as-protectionism-rises-1.2768044 | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/5f4bfce370bb2ef74d336ad0889db6c45f1ad5f1bbef0b55e43cd4a6dcb32075.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T18:49:10 | null | 2016-08-30T18:48:00 | IFG is biggest faller in Dublin while Total Produce, Permanent TSB and BoI all gain | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fmarkets%2Ffinancials-help-european-shares-hit-a-two-week-high-1.2773431.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | Financials help European shares hit a two-week high | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | European equities climbed to a two-year high on Tuesday, with financial stocks gaining ground on mounting expectations of a possible US rate hike this year.
The European Banks index rose 1.8 per cent, the top sectoral gainer, helped by a 2.7 - 3.8 per cent rise in share prices of Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, Natixis and Credit Suisse.
US stocks fell in early trading after stronger-than-expected consumer confidence data stoked worries about the potential rate hike this year.
The ruling that Apple must pay the Irish Government €13 billion in back taxes also impacted sharply on tech shares in the US with the company being the biggest drag on all the major stock indices.
DUBLIN
The Iseq index of leading shares closed marginally lower, down 11.59 points to 6,202.77.
IFG, the UK-focused financial services group, was the biggest faller of the day. The company, which last week reported a 31 per cent surge in adjusted operating profit for the first half of the year, was down nearly 7 per cent to €1.90 as investors reacted to a downgrade from Macquarie. Datalex, which announced its first half results on Tuesday, saw its stock close the day just shy of 1 per cent lower to €3.42 after it reduced its 2016 guidance by about 4 per cent as it seeks to scale the business. CRH was 0.6 per cent lower at €30.35 after its US peer USG Corporation sold a part of its business to ABC Supply.
Total Produce was one of the biggest gainers of the day, up 3.5 per cent to €1.61 after it reported first half revenues that were 10.6 per cent higher.
Elsewhere, Permanent TSB was up by just under 5 per cent to €2.05 after new figures showed mortgage approvals up 17.6 per cent in the year to July.
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Other movers of the day included Paddy Power Betfair, down 2 per cent to €107.65, and Bank of Ireland, up 2.5 per cent to 19 cents.
LONDON
London’s premier index struggled to make headway as falling copper prices took their toll on the mining giants. The FTSE 100 Index closed 17.26 points lower at 6820.79, as London-listed miners dominated the biggest fallers, with Fresnillo leading the market lower, down 100 pence to 1690 pence.
Copper prices sunk to two-month low during the session and were unable to mount a strong recovery, forcing Anglo American to drop 41 pence to 817.5 pence, and Glencore to slip 7.9 pence to 177.1 pence.
Penneys/ Primark owner Associated British Foods (ABF) was the biggest riser on the top tier after RBC Capital handed the firm a broker upgrade from sector perform to outperform. Shares were up more than 3 per cent to 3051 pence after RBC said ABF’s sugar business was benefiting from stronger sugar and euro prices, while Primark held an “attractive international rollout story”.
EUROPE
Banks helped the pan-European STOXX 600 to close 0.5 per cent higher, after rising earlier in the session to its highest level since mid-August. Among some sharp movers, Germany’s Wirecard jumped 3 per cent after Barclays raised its rating on the stock to “overweight” from “equal weight” and lifted its target price.
Belgian investment holding company Ackermans & Van Haaren dropped 6.6 per cent after reporting a weak set of first-half results.
NEW YORK
US stocks were lower in late morning trading as Apple dragged down technology shares after EU antitrust regulators ordered the company to pay €13 billion in back taxes to the Irish government.
The S&P 500 technology index fell 0.37 per cent, the biggest decline in nearly a week, hurt by a 0.9 per cent drop in Apple. Hershey dropped 10.6 per cent to $99.92 after Mondelez said on Monday it was no longer pursuing an acquisition. Mondelez rose 4.2 per cent and provided the biggest boost to the S&P and the Nasdaq.
Abercrombie & Fitch plunged 20 per cent after the apparel retailer said it no longer expects comparable sales to improve this year.
- Additional reporting: agencies | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/markets/financials-help-european-shares-hit-a-two-week-high-1.2773431 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/017cedfa13a75e2794f8a2ee55516c214e4a43feb7f979b841600d06d1fbf005.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T14:52:41 | null | 2016-08-30T14:25:00 | Efforts to win back customers with store revamps and other measures does not work | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fretail-and-services%2Fabercrombie-fitch-no-longer-expects-results-to-improve-this-year-1.2773064%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773063.1472567550!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Abercrombie & Fitch no longer expects results to improve this year | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Clothes retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co posted a bigger-than-expected loss for the second quarter as efforts to win back shoppers through store remodelling and other measures failed to boost sales and are not expected to do so for the rest of the year.
The retailer’s about-turn from a forecast issued in May, when it said it expected results to improve in the second half of the year, sent its shares tumbling more than 14 per cent in premarket trading on Tuesday. Abercrombie’s sales dropped for the 14th straight quarter and comparable sales fell a slightly steeper-than-expected 4 per cent, mainly due to lower traffic, including from tourists, at its flagship stores.
“Comparable sales [will] remain challenging through the second half of the year, with a disproportionate effect from flagship and tourist locations,” the company said.
Abercrombie, like other teen apparel retailers, has posted a string of sales declines as it struggled to compete with the trendier and often cheaper products at fast-fashion retailers such as H&M and Inditex’s Zara. To win back shoppers, Abercrombie is investing heavily in remodelling its Hollister stores, has hired designers from top brands to keep up with trends and shifted away from the logo-centric designs that were once a big draw.
Abercrombie said its cost of sales dipped 0.6 per cent, stores and distribution expenses dropped 1.6 per cent, while marketing, general and administrative expenses fell 7.3 per cent in the quarter ended July 30th. But, that was not enough to offset a 4.2 per cent fall in net sales.
– Reuters | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/retail-and-services/abercrombie-fitch-no-longer-expects-results-to-improve-this-year-1.2773064?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/08bd3234895ca3567a4dc27026f6272aed074e44a660882f4e40da6b6180e2f5.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T06:50:33 | null | 2016-08-27T06:30:00 | A Roman picnic and a visit to Morocco’s ninth-century Fez el Bali medina deliver an assault on the senses | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Ftravel%2Flong-haul%2Fhaggling-for-snails-and-eating-a-roman-picnic-on-a-trip-to-fez-1.2768550%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768546.1472144977!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Haggling for snails and eating a Roman picnic on a trip to Fez | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Dormouse was not on the menu. Nor flamingo tongue. But when in Morocco, do as the Romans did, and have a picnic.
We do just this at the Walila farm. Sitting on kilim rugs below the Zerhoun mountain, we raise flutes (rather than 4th-century goblets) to toast the world’s first celebrity chef and cookery book author. Marcus Gavius Apicius, confidante of emperor Tiberius, probably provided most of the recipes for the 4th-century cookbook bearing his name. He was a well-known gourmand and once sailed to Libya to sample its shrimp. Banqueting bankrupted him before he died by suicide.
Our unique Roman picnic comprises saffron chicken with plums, beans, celery, custard, olive bread and cheese. With lots of cherries and, of course, grapes. But no potatoes or tomatoes or chocolate – these ingredients came from the New World and had no place in a Roman picnic basket. Thankfully, today, togas are not obligatory.
Volubilis (or Walili in Berber) is the old capital of Mauritania and the southernmost city in the Roman empire. It lies between the important cities of Fez (which has held the title of capital of Morocco five times) and Meknes, the capital from 1672 to 1727. Containing plenty of mosaics celebrating Dionysius and Bacchus, Volubilis has triumphal arches, temples, blue limestone villas and the remains of olive presses and mills. Volubilis olives once lit Rome.
It is said this is the only place in the world you can enjoy an authentic Roman picnic, but you can also learn to cook Fassi (Fez-style) too. Fez, which was the capital until 1912, now proclaims itself Morocco’s foodie capital, as well as its spiritual and intellectual centre. It houses Africa’s largest mosque and oldest university in the world (859AD).
You can do some study of your own, with lessons in Berber and Fassi cooking, where you learn everything from lemon preserving to making your own traditional seasonal Moroccan salad, complete with self-foraged mallow leaves.
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Local chefs will teach you how to coddle a chicken and smoke an aubergine and how to fluff up your couscous. There are cookery workshops at the Palais Amani (palaisamani.com) which offers a range of classes from learning to make traditional breads and pastries for €67 per person, to a tajine workship which includes a souk shopping tour, €97 per person.
Or you can take a trip 10 miles from Fez to Dar El Mandar, where, at a bijou farm guesthouse with a farran (public bakery), you can release your inner Berber by learning basic skills at the bakery for €195 for the day (this is cheaper for groups).
At the Palais Amani, I meet chef Houssam Laassari who takes us on a market tour prior to the cooking lesson. Nothing prepares you for the sensual impact of Fez’s ninth-century Fez el Bali medina, the largest car-free urban area in the world. Some 160,000 people work in 80,000 shops in almost 10,000 alleys dedicated to all the crafts and grafts, traditional and modern.
You follow the chef and his straw shopping basket around the bazaar as he shops for the lesson. No navigational app is available, so an escorted tour is vital to orient yourself in the most disorientating of places.
One which writer Paul Bowles thought “a city which was not easy for everyone to like”. And he was right. Fez is an acquired taste. The taxis may be cheap but their seats leave your buttocks doing an impression of the local zellij mosaic tile patterns. Shopping lends new meaning to words like browsing, harried, hassled and hot.
No one much cares that the 560-acre souk is a Unesco heritage site. There are dirhams to be made, families to be fed and deals to be struck. As well as Maghrebi (north-west African) tea trays, crepe pans and teapots to be bashed out.
Everywhere, silver is being hammered, wood sawed and planed, copper chased, wool carded and spun. You are pulled around by a tide of kaftans, baggy djellabas (cloaks) and gold-tinselled sandals, all the while surrounded by shouts of “Belek! Belek!” (“Watch out!”).
Donkeys carrying cured hides, horses with carpets and scooters loaded down with eggs have right of way.
If you are not lucky enough to visit in the company of a chef, for a couple of euro, young men will navigate you through it all and introduce you to their father (or uncle) in his underground showroom where you sit on a battered sofa while he climbs a ladder to show you something you don’t want, because all you need is a breather.
And then, with a polite “La, shukran” (No, thanks), you are back in the maze, the dead ends, windowless high walls, narrow passageways, wall-eyed beggars, shisha pipes, walking the cobble streets past the area dedicated to wedding wear, pashmina shawls, desert nomad bling, embroidered pouffes and slippers.
Recognising your dry scalp, smiling men jump out at you with hair-nourishing argan oil. They shout “Kiss, kiss”and offer poppy petal lipstick and hamman scrub mitts.
Your young guides will undoubtedly walk you straight into the smell of cow urine and pigeon guano at Chouwara, a leather tannery dating from the 11th century. This is one of the few locations you’ll be able to find without a guide: your nose will lead you there.
From the terrace of a leather goods shop you look down at the huge inkpots of dye, your guidebook telling you it’s “the most odiferous place in the world” and the shop owner telling you that the smell is free and his leather negotiable.
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Back on street level on our Palais Amani culinary tour, we thread our way through the sacks of olives, flour, powdered and flaked almonds, figs, dates, okra, giant cucumbers and aubergines in the vegetable district of Rcif. You need to watch your step here or you may get your shin scuffed by a passing cart selling “beghrir” crumpets, or a donkey might step on your toe.
Sticking to the main “dreb” or street, Talaa Kebeera, we walk behind Real Madrid football shirts, surrounded by women staring through burqas at shopping lists on their mobile phones.
Chef Laassari makes his selection at a chicken stall and we watch as the butcher, Zouhir, slits the throat of a cockerel, saying a prayer for its soul.
Progress out of the market is halted when we get stuck in a bottleneck of olive dealers from the Talagh hills. A few yards on, we are held up by a “hemar” (mule), bow-legged under a five-seater Arabic floor couch.
But then we are through a giant studded door into a courtyard with obligatory ornate fountain. Then onwards into a mausoleum, a 14th-century Koranic madrasah school and a weaving workshop.
Chef stops for some persil, which he tells us is an essential ingredient for a Moroccan zaalouk salad. This seems rather unappetising until we learn that persil is not a washing powder brand, but rather the name Moroccans give to coriander.
For an hour, we trail Laassari through the organised bedlam of unforgettable Fez, passing a camel’s head with blue-bottles nesting in its eyelashes. “The hump is the best cut,” says Laassari with a smile.
We are invited into every cafe to enjoy mint gunpowder tea and the “best” panoramic view of the medina. While I’m sure this spiel hasn’t changed in 1,300 years, the prices keep up nicely with inflation.
Chef bought some filo-like “warka” bread from his friend Oussame. It’s used for Moorish pigeon pies. The filling flaps in cages next door.
We pass mountains of salt (that were once traded for Italian marble) and hole-in-the-wall enterprises selling doughnuts, honey and sesame pretzels, and the famous Ras el Hanout spice mix.
Before getting back to the Palais Amani, a restored former merchant’s house with a citrus garden courtyard, €13 G&Ts and views of laundry lines and satellite dishes, we pass flip-flop emporiums, more stuffed footstools, bedspreads and clutch bags, get a last waft of shaved cedarwood and grilling almonds before a snaggle-toothed man offers me a tortoise for €1.
He also has five snails for sale in case I want to make traditional Moroccan snail soup. How do you haggle for snails?
Marrakesh receives 10 million visitors every year. Fez gets just a tenth of that figure, partly as it has only been a tourist destination for eight years. With direct flights from London though, this will change.
Gail Leonard, a Yorkshire woman who runs Plan-It-Fez, the company behind the Roman picnic excursion, says part of its charm is that “Fez is in-your-face, authentic Morocco”.
“The past is still alive and flourishing here,” she adds, something we learn as we tuck into the meal prepared during our Berber cooking class.
Ryanair flies daily from Stansted, see ryanair.com – for more information, see visitmorocco.com, palaisamani,com, plan-it-fez.com/ 212 0 535 638 708. info@plan/it-fez offers Roman picnic excursions to Volublis, €115pp inc transport and translator. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/long-haul/haggling-for-snails-and-eating-a-roman-picnic-on-a-trip-to-fez-1.2768550?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1c6a8e4037b88e6ec7afb8ab0c89140a8f74d1a0eac2ce70678810b33e1a585a.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T08:50:22 | null | 2016-08-27T08:00:00 | A big results week, IFA rows with ABP, employment is up and car insurance swerves | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftechnology%2Fbusiness-week-crunch-time-for-apple-the-eu-and-us-1.2769338%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769337.1472225078!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Business week: crunch time for Apple, the EU and US | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | All the signs are that the EU Commission will shortly issue its final decision on the tax arrangements between Ireland and Apple. This week, the row started to heat up. Everyone expects the European Commission to stick to its original decision that the deal involved illegal state aid to the American giant. But the question is what the commission says should be done about it, and particularly how much tax the Irish Government should recoup.
On Wednesday, the US treasury come out fighting, taking the unusual step of issuing a “ white paper”, which was a strong attack on what the commission was doing. While it was not specifically about Apple – the European Commission is also investigating the tax affairs of a number of other US giants – no-one was in any doubt that this case is the “ big one”.
The treasury said that the EU commission was acting beyond its powers as a “supra-national” tax authority. It went on to argue that, as US companies had no notice of this new approach, it was particularly unreasonable for the commission to tell countries to seek to recoup tax payments going back years. The commission’s approach, it added, threatened the whole multilateral approach to tax.
Add in a warning about the potential “chilling” impact on transatlantic investment and a not very veiled threat to unspecified retaliation and you can see what is at stake here.
The commission is expected to press ahead and make its decision. But how much will it say Ireland should collect from Apple? Either way, it looks very likely that this affair – already three years cooking – will now head to the European courts, meaning we will not get a final outcome for a few more years.
COMPANY RESULTS
In a big week for company results, CRH was in focus, promising a return to dividend growth for the first time in seven years and signalling that full-year earnings will top €3 billion. The company lifted its interim dividend by 1.6 per cent to 18.6 cents, after reporting figures slightly ahead of market expectations. Chief executive Albert Manifold said continued positive momentum in the Americas and some recovery in Europe would continue to boost performance.
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CRH spent a massive €6.5 billion buying assets hived off after the merger of Lafarge and Holcim, but such is its earnings growth that the market remains confident that the extra debt taken on to fund this will quickly reduce. And now, in the relentless drive to growth, Manifold is signalling more acquisitions on the radar, with the possibility of spending €1.5 billion to €2 billion in the year ahead.
Meanwhile, merger costs left Paddy Power Betfair with a £47.5 million (€55.4 million) loss at the end of June. The gambling giant created last February, when Paddy Power and Betfair joined forces, said that revenues grew 18 per cent to £759 million in the six months ended June 30th from £642 million during the same period last year.
Operating profits grew 39 per cent to £147.6 million from £106.5 million over the same period. However, a £195.1 million charge for February’s merger left it with a £47.5 million loss. The group said that it expected full-year earnings to be £365-£385 million.
Kingspan had strong results, reporting that pre-tax profit rose 54 per cent to €155 million in what was a record first half for the insulation and building materials maker. Revenues rose 19 per cent to €1.47 billion in the six months ended June 30th from €1.24 billion during the same period last year.
Trading profit also rose by about 50 per cent, growing to €167.3 million from €111.7 million, well ahead of the €140 million and €150 million predicted by most analysts. Chief executive Gene Murtagh said the Cavan group expected the momentum to continue into the second half.
IFA ROW OVER LEVIES
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) faces substantial losses following a row over the collection of levies from farmers.
Larry Goodman’s ABP has thrown the cat among the pigeons by ceasing automatic collection levies on farm sales, a vital source of funding for the IFA.
The company claims it was acting on foot of persistent complaints from farmers about the way the tariff was administered.
The IFA, however, claims the move was designed to sabotage its funding arrangements and weaken its standing in the farming sector.
In response, it cancelled ABP’s authorisation to collect it, effectively jettisoning up to €300,000 in contributions from ABP suppliers.
Now all eyes on whether other processors will follow Goodman’s lead, a move that could have disastrous consequences for the farmers’ group, which is still reeling from a string of pay scandals involving former bosses.
MOTOR INSURANCE CRISIS
The Irish motor insurance market is in crisis, with premiums rising by almost 40 per cent a year. And there is little sign of relief for drivers. This week’s news that Gibraltar-based underwriter Zenith Insurance is to withdraw from the market will not lead to the same immediate crisis for policyholders as the Setanta collapse. Existing policies will remain in force and claims will be met. It further reduces competition in the market meaning premiums will probably continue to rise. Of course the problem appears to have been that previous competition for market share drove premiums down to unsustainable levels. Add in the high cost of claims here and you have a toxic mix which is hitting policyholders hard in the pocket.
EMPLOYMENT RISES
Amid all the dire warnings about Brexit, there was further good news for the economy this week with the Central Statistics Office’s Quarterly National Household Survey showing the number of people working in the State has reached two million for the first time since 2009.
The survey revealed unemployment had also fallen by 23,400, or 11 per cent, in the year to the end of June, pushing the total number out of work down to 187,800, marking the 16th consecutive quarter in which unemployment has fallen.
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While unemployment rates are up, with the July figure at 8.3 per cent as against the previous 7.8 per cent, the change was due to an increase in the labour force, rather than newly unemployed people. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/business-week-crunch-time-for-apple-the-eu-and-us-1.2769338?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/41f0f21f9ff1b8eaf62bb2591a0e6534c9de0bb9a0b066179802238b300d5b92.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T14:48:30 | null | 2016-08-28T12:59:00 | Sigmar Gabriel says Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership has made little progress | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Ftalks-on-eu-us-free-trade-deal-have-failed-german-minister-1.2770951.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770950.1472385564!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Talks on EU-US free trade deal have failed - German minister | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Germany’s economy minister says free trade talks between the EU and the US have failed.
Negotiations on the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have made little progress in recent years.
Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Germany’s vice chancellor, said that “in my opinion the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it”.
He noted that in 14 rounds of talks the two sides have not agreed on a single common chapter out of 27 being discussed.
Mr Gabriel compared the TTIP negotiations unfavourably with a free trade deal forged between the EU and Canada, which he said was fairer for all sides.
If reached, the deal could encompass almost half the global economy, potentially generating €92 billion in added output for the EU and US. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/talks-on-eu-us-free-trade-deal-have-failed-german-minister-1.2770951 | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/19141723099e6ed22ae111ea9ddc10fcb165135da6cfa7dbd1faccf15469b1a4.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T04:50:49 | null | 2016-08-27T04:00:00 | Four paintings from late singer’s collection will be on display in RHA Gallery in advance of sale | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhomes-and-property%2Ffine-art-antiques%2Fdavid-bowie-s-irish-art-to-be-shown-in-dublin-1.2769340%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2765875.1472207460!/image/image.jpg | en | null | David Bowie’s Irish art to be shown in Dublin | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The announcement by Sotheby’s this week that a Jack B Yeats painting had unexpectedly turned up in the art collection of the late David Bowie has sparked Irish interest in the auction of the late singer’s estate.
Bowie, who died earlier this year, was well-known as an art collector. Hundreds of his paintings and pieces of 20th century design furniture have already been consigned to Sotheby’s and will go under the hammer in London in November.
The collection is being exhibited during a world tour in London, Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong ahead of the auction. However, a selection of four paintings from the Bowie Collection chosen specifically because of their interest to Irish collectors will be shown in Dublin this week.
They will go on view, alongside the viewing for the annual Irish sale at the RHA Gallery on Ely Place, Dublin 2, from Thursday, September 1st-Sunday, September 4th. The top lot is Sleep Sound by Yeats, an oil-on-canvas from 1955 with an estimate of £120,000 -£180,000 (€140,000- €210,000) that Sotheby’s describes as “daring, poetic and introspective” and demonstrative of why Yeats “holds a defining place in Irish art”. Bowie bought it anonymously at auction in 1993 for £45,500.
A watercolour titled James Joyce by Louis le Brocquy, dated 1981 from the artist’s Portrait Heads series of paintings is estimated at £10,000-£15,000.
There are two paintings from the Bowie Collection by William Scott, the Scottish painter who lived for a time in Enniskillen and Dublin and who died in 1989. Sotheby’s says Scott’s work will be of interest to Irish collectors.
Girl Seated at a Table, dated 1938, is estimated at £150,000-£200,000 while Winter Still Life No 2, dated 1956, is estimated at £100,000-£150,000. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/david-bowie-s-irish-art-to-be-shown-in-dublin-1.2769340?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/f6f2540ac2d76bcb287610a0a3f7bd324cc0c23fb4ee00e08adeacd6e2b2360e.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:09:04 | null | 2016-08-26T12:00:00 | As the sun shines this weekend, try these al fresco dishes - which also taste great when the weather's not so hot | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Ffood-and-drink%2Fdonal-skehan-s-bbq-beer-can-chicken-and-al-fresco-recipes-1.2768385%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769327.1472206706!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Donal Skehan's BBQ beer-can chicken and al fresco recipes | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | I realise this is a sensitive subject – the concept of eating al fresco is not something we Irish have ever really mastered. Normally, hampered by impending grey clouds, the dreamy idea of sipping wine and nibbling on tapas outside is often best left to our Mediterranean cousins. Still though, with summer coming to an end, there may be one or two long evenings left to savour outside.
I feel a little like a traitor even writing this as my summer in Los Angeles has been extremely kind weather-wise, lending itself to lots of outdoors eating and barbecues. Since we arrived in June, we haven’t had a day without sunshine and blue skies. But I’m embarrassed to admit that I have started to miss those soft days which bookend brilliant bouts of good old Irish sunshine.
Our most recent house, in Echo Park, one of the older neighbourhoods in the city, has been the perfect base for exploring the city’s great restaurants and cafes.
With a huge selection of restaurants, farmers’ markets and street food, the temptation to go out is always strong when it comes to choosing whether to cook at home or to eat out. I’ll be honest and tell you that we’ve been giving in to temptation more often than not as we struggle to break out of tourist mode and get settled in each new kitchen and temporary home.
Of course, I have been cooking, but then there are giant bowls of ramen to be eaten at Silverlake Ramen, or crab fried rice and some of the best Thai food outside Thailand to be devoured at Night + Song Market. Weekend brunches have also posed problems, with difficult choices to be made between Valerie’s epic smoked salmon avocado tartines and Dinette’s perfectly rectangular Instagram-worthy waffles doused in butter and maple syrup and daintily sprinkled with sea salt.
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First world dilemmas aside, one of the best summer evenings we’ve spent in the city was eating in our own back garden. I cooked barbecue chicken with a brilliant Thai dipping sauce, and experimented on the grill with lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower and corn on the cob grilled until the kernels were charred and tender. It all made for simple and delicious summer eating.
With summer all but gone, savour the last of it with these recipes for easy outdoor eating. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/donal-skehan-s-bbq-beer-can-chicken-and-al-fresco-recipes-1.2768385?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/b06aa32564edbae078585e9a95e82943515f5c598d9c22b87be25bc2d145e2cc.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:05:36 | null | 2016-08-26T12:16:00 | Get on your bike if you want to meet leading investors or start-up bosses and start pedalling | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Ftechnology%2Fcycling-the-in-sport-in-silicon-valley-1.2769365%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769364.1472214130!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Cycling - the ‘in’ sport in Silicon Valley | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Thinking he needed to take up a “California sport,” Greg Gretsch started cycling in 1988, when he moved to the Bay Area to work in marketing at Apple after graduating from the University of Georgia. He bought a 10-speed road bike and joined a group of other Apple employees for a standing noon ride.
“I think I went four miles before I got dropped,” he said, a reference to being left behind by faster riders.
Today, Gretsch (49) is a founding partner with San Francisco-based Jackson Square Ventures, which makes early-stage investments in fledgling companies, including a social network and performance-tracking app for athletes call Strava.
He rides an average of five days a week on paved roads in the Bay Area and on trails near his second home near Lake Tahoe. Cycling is primarily for exercise and escape, he said, but it has also been good for his career. “Connecting with people is important to what I do, and you can learn a lot about a person, and from a person, on the bike,” said Gretsch, who founded three companies before going into venture capital in 2000 at a firm called Sigma Partners.
For many years, cycling has been the sport of choice for workers in the region’s highly competitive tech community, the antidote to more leisurely pursuits like golf. But just like golf, it has become a way for investors and executives to socialise and strike deals.
Fast-track connections
Max Levchin (41), one of the founders of PayPal who has a well-known cycling obsession, recalls how some people have tried to pitch ideas to him during his typically breakneck daily training sessions, cruising at more than 30km/h. “I’ve been pitched companies on the bike, but I tend to ride fairly fast,” said Levchin, who is an early-stage investor and chief executive of the San Francisco-based financial services company Affirm.
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It was through cycling that he got to know one of his Affirm co-founders, Jeffrey Kaditz. “We did a training ride,” Levchin said, “and he was one of the faster riders out there.”
Sami Inkinen, a co-founder of the real estate website Trulia and an accomplished triathlete, made the case for his startup, Virta Health, while on a ride this year with Levchin and another investor and cycling enthusiast, Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital. That was exceptional, Levchin recalled. “It’s rare that you have someone who can pitch a company while riding hard, and I’m not going to slow down.”
Tonsing invested shortly after the ride, and Levchin joined in several months later.
‘My shrink’
Steve Anderson, founder of Baseline Ventures, which was the first investor in Instagram, has heard investment ideas while cycling, “but mostly in the context of, ‘can you help me work through my pitch, and if you are interested, let’s talk about it later,’” he said. As a boy he rode 15km a day delivering newspapers, and he started riding again regularly 20 years ago. “It’s my exercise, my shrink and my Zen rolled into one,” he said.
Gretsch got to know the computer billionaire Michael Dell through cycling after Dell acquired the Sigma portfolio company EqualLogic in 2008 for $1.4 billion. The two met in Hawaii after the deal was completed and went cycling. “Outside of college, the strongest relationships I have are with people I have worked with or worked out with,” Gretsch said.
Venture capitalists, recruiters and other professional networkers have introduced cycling events throughout the Bay Area that focus on building camaraderie, not just lactic acid.
In May, Gretsch started inviting “Silicon Valley types” to join a monthly ride that typically meets near the Golden Gate Bridge and covers 30km to 50km around the Marin Headlands. This summer, Gretsch invited the group to a mountain bike ride near Lake Tahoe. The outing, which climbed to a gruelling 2,500m, included Andrew Buckley, who heads up cycling programmes at the Northstar California resort; Jake Knight, an entrepreneur whose family started Knight Transportation; and Anderson from Baseline Ventures.
Startup Ride
To find potential members of the group, called the JSV SF Startup Ride, Gretsch compares his company’s network of professional contacts with San Francisco Bay Area users on Strava, the app that lets users track and compare their times, distances and routes.
Some members of the group, which now has more than 40 members, are longtime acquaintances of his, but Gretsch said he had met new people on every ride and had “already seen one deal because of it”. He is still a regular at some of the continuing group rides in Silicon Valley – there are several of them, each with its own personality and pace. The Noon Ride, for example, meets every weekday, follows the same route around Palo Alto, and has nearly 150 members on Strava. “There are sometimes three group rides on any given day, from moderate to ‘kick you in the butt,’” said Jeff Selzer, general manager of Palo Alto Bicycles, which opened in 1930.
“What I like about cycling is a ride can be any length, and most people know how to ride a bike,” said Ali Behnam, co-founder of Riviera Partners, a national recruiting company that counts Dropbox, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Uber among its clients. “Golf is a big-time commitment, and it requires practice to be reasonably good,” he said. “There is nothing worse than stepping up to a tee and duffing it.”
Cycling, by contrast, is communal and lends itself to the formation of common bonds, whether it’s because of the lung-burning sensations of a hard climb, the endorphin-inducing thrill of a big descent, the expense of the equipment or the form-fitting attire. “You can’t hide much,” said Behnam (49), who has been cycling for 17 years, “but usually there is food and drink involved.”
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In the spring, he participated in the Bottega Gran Fondo, a cycling and culinary event in Napa Valley. He has organised several group rides with cycling celebrities, including the former professionals Gary Fisher and Bob Roll, who is best known for his Tour de France commentary.
With these rides, Behnam said, there is some unspoken etiquette. Fellow cyclists should not monopolise one person’s time, and, unless the group is exceptionally competitive, “You don’t want to just drop the person you’re riding with,” he said. “Don’t try to crush them.”
Likewise, participants should not claim to be “big” cyclists if they are in fact recreational riders – especially if they are trying to win the trust of prospective business contacts.
Before riding with anyone new, Levchin usually does a quick search on Strava to get a read on the person’s experience. “If I think it will be painfully slow,” he said, “I suggest we go for coffee.”
– New York Times News Service | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/cycling-the-in-sport-in-silicon-valley-1.2769365?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/c806a8f820794217bca5f8489c6d965a593d2b766a93b6d900d00fb1af0d9422.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T16:51:13 | null | 2016-08-28T17:15:00 | IABA chief Pat Ryan ‘appalled’ by claims two Irish boxers bet on Rio 2016 Olympics events | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fireland%2Firish-news%2Fboxing-body-awaits-outcome-of-ioc-inquiry-into-alleged-gambling-1.2771098%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771092.1472400901!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Boxing body awaits outcome of IOC inquiry into alleged gambling | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) has said it is awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations that two Irish boxers at the Rio Olympics were engaged in gambling before it decides its response.
The boxers are facing disciplinary action from the International Olympic Committee for alleged gambling activities during the Rio Games.
IABA president Pat Ryan confirmed on Sunday he was informed of the allegations by the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI).
“My immediate reaction was one of surprise,” he said.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, he said he had been “appalled” at the allegations because the authority had enough matters to concern itself with in relation to the Rio Olympics.
A source within the OCI confirmed on Friday night that the boxers were reprimanded for a breach of the code of ethics by betting on Olympic sports between July 24th and August 24th.
‘Awaiting a report’
Asked whether the boxers had allegedly been involved in betting on boxing or on other events and whether this happened while they were in the Olympic village, Mr Ryan said: “At the moment I am awaiting a report from the International Olympic Committee and when completed and when I receive the manager’s report of the Olympic team, we’ll be in a better position to answer those questions.”
He confirmed that all athletes going to Rio had been aware it was against the rules and in contravention of their contracts to bet on events.
“All the Olympians have signed contracts and the contracts are very explicit. There are regulations in it on gambling which bans them from participating in betting on Olympic events and providing inside information to gamblers. So it’s very explicit and they are fully aware of this regulation,” Mr Ryan said.
‘Very explicit’
“The contracts have been really very explicit and they have been fully informed of the contract’s content.”
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Mr Ryan said sanctions would depend on the extent of the betting and what occurred, but these could vary from fines to attending workshops, seminars and “education programmes”.
He added the IOC would impose whatever sanctions it deemed necessary. When the IABA received “all the relevant information and reports” on the matter it would also take “the appropriate action”.
“We have our own disciplinary procedure and that will be followed,” he said.
Mr Ryan said the IABA expected the IOC’s report “over the next couple of weeks”.
“I think it’s important and appropriate that we allow due process to take place before we make any further comment,” he added.
He had not spoken to the boxers, but intended to.
“I think over the next coming days we will get an opportunity to discuss all matters pertaining to this issue with the boxers.”
Mr Ryan voiced support for the OCI’s recent regulations regarding gambling.
“Basically it bans participants from betting on Olympic events and from providing inside information to gamblers. I think this regulation would be very appropriate for us to implement as part of our policy and procedures.”
On the controversies involving the scoring and judging of fights in Rio involving Irish boxers Katie Taylor and Michael Conlon, Mr Ryan said he believed the Irish boxing body was “duty-bound” to make a submission to the International Boxing Association. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/boxing-body-awaits-outcome-of-ioc-inquiry-into-alleged-gambling-1.2771098?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/8782f4cfab79c1edda89986787c5aeeaea3d792b0286f0c9c8b9d316825d5f17.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T06:52:49 | null | 2016-08-31T06:15:00 | Incoming purchaser has option of converting three-storey property into 12 apartments | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fcommercial-property%2Fballsbridge-mixed-use-period-building-and-site-for-4m-1.2772117%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772115.1472485388!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Ballsbridge mixed-use period building and site for €4m | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Knight Frank is guiding €4 million for a period building and site in Ballsbridge with permission for a conversion into 12 apartments.
The property at 19 Pembroke Road in Dublin 4 is three-storey over basement with 853sq m (9,181sq ft) and was constructed circa 1830. Many of its original features are intact.
It is located on a site of 0.34 acres with mature gardens to the rear and off-street car-parking to the front for 15 cars.
At present the property is laid out in 11 apartments and three office units, and is being sold with vacant possession.
There is planning permission, granted in May, to refurbish the main building, demolish the side extension and construct 701sq m (7,545sq ft) of new accommodation. All of this would provide 12 apartments (10 two-beds, one one-bed and one one-bed plus study unit).
The site is zoned Z2 in the Dublin City Development Plan 2011-2017 to “protect and/or improve the amenities of residential conservation areas”. It is situated on the southern side of Pembroke Road between Wellington Road and Waterloo Road.
Ballsbridge village is within 700 metres while St Stephen’s Green is 1km away. Furthermore, Charlemont Luas stop is within 1.2km while the Dart at Lansdowne Road Station is 1km away.
Knight Frank says the property allows an incoming purchaser to either obtain instant rent roll through the letting of the existing accommodation or to enact the planning grant to provide top quality accommodation in this “high-end residential location”. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/ballsbridge-mixed-use-period-building-and-site-for-4m-1.2772117?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/2993fcd74216cef70a8cf4d7ecce2d370113da8a3b7a91bbe0d06a0caf68a2b3.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T10:51:52 | null | 2016-08-29T08:55:00 | Apple’s tax bill, a bomb in Brussels and Beyone at the Video Music Awards | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fireland%2Firish-news%2Ffive-things-you-need-to-know-today-1.2771814%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771813.1472458118!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Five things you need to know today | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | 1. Apple
The EU is expected to rule in the coming days that the Government gave Apple an illegal “sweetheart” tax deal. Which means the tech company could be on the hook for a tax bill of billions of euro.
http://iti.ms/2bTIA69
2. Brussels
A bomb exploded at the Brussels Institute of Criminology but the building was empty and no one was wounded. A car rammed through the barriers at about 3am and one or more attackers detonated the bomb near the laboratories which caught fire.
http://iti.ms/2c2iHi0
Irish Times Page 1 Photo of the Day @IrishTimesNews Page 1 Photo: Dublin fan Luke Feely (aged nine) celebrates late on in yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park. Photo: James Crombie/INPHO Full coverage at irishtimes.com/sport A photo posted by The Irish Times (@irishtimesnews) on Aug 29, 2016 at 12:59am PDT
3. Rio
The executive committee of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) played no role in appointing the council’s authorised ticket reseller for the Rio Games, a trawl of the organisation’s minutes has indicated.
http://iti.ms/2bTICuJ
4. VMAs
Beyonce took top honours at the MTV Video Music Awards last night, winning video of the year for Formation and best female video for Hold Up. The singer turned up to the awards with supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, including Sybrina Fulton, the mother of murdered teenager Trayvon Martin.
http://iti.ms/2c2hzLo
5. Colombia
A permanent ceasefire is taking effect in Colombia after the military and Farc agreed a peace deal. It is the latest step to bring an end to 52 years of bloody combat between the government and the country’s biggest rebel group.
http://iti.ms/2c2i20i
And finally...
In a month where he has had to replace a lost passport, renew his driving licence, change his car insurance details, do his NCT and get a new parking permit, Peter McGuire asks: how bad is Ireland’s bureaucracy?
http://iti.ms/2bTIImp | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/five-things-you-need-to-know-today-1.2771814?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/f06a0130af4ad4a7ce8aa64411e84607ec6841d08959a98ebc77c685b1883cb4.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T10:51:30 | null | 2016-08-29T10:14:00 | The longest sequence ever written by an Irish poet, it was reworked and expanded over three decades and among its key voices are Marx, Freud and Baudelaire | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fculture%2Fbooks%2Fanthony-cronin-the-end-of-the-modern-world-my-elegy-for-our-capitalist-era-1.2771830%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771829.1472461812!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Anthony Cronin: The End of the Modern World, my elegy for our capitalist era | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The End of the Modern World is a poetic sequence of more than 3,000 lines which I believe makes it by some way the longest sequence to have been written by an Irish poet, not excluding Tom Moore’s Lalla Rookh which is a sort of Irish Arabian Nights – different stories told by the same narrator. It is an elegy for a period of capitalist development, the latter part of which many of us lived through and which most of us experienced as liberating and even exciting, despite its horrors. Here are some lines which describe wishes that it was not impossible to think might have been fulfilled by a city of that era.
Let the city be spectacle, circus, arena this evening,
Its justification sensation, its poetry wonder,
And let it cling fast to its colours, unholy and gaudy,
Forgetting the facts of its life, its grimness of purpose.
Let the news that is flashing through bulbs on facades be exciting
But innocent also. Let crowds in another city
Bring down a dictator, lone ocean fliers be sighted,
Sporting events bring riches to all the participants,
Records be broken in every sort of endeavour,
The roar of the crowd sustain the elation of sacrifice.
But over it all, like the neon red glow on the clouds,
The sense of a future the artists have comprehended,
Demanded in manifestoes, foreshadowed in dramas,
Simple, electric and complex, achieved like the morning.
This was “modernity” as Susan Sontag described it in an interview (published as an essay titled A Few Weeks After) – the only culture, as she pointed out, that makes possible the emancipation of women as well as capitalism: “The modern world, our world”. A world that, as she also pointed out, had been shown to be seriously vulnerable.
Like all elegies, The End Of The Modern World is as much a celebration of what is past or passing as it is a lament. But a comparison of the full version now published with the extracts which appeared in this newspaper in 1982 will show an increasing emphasis on the grimness of purpose of our culture at the expense of the playful aspects; the purpose being the profits of a few and the anxiety of everybody else to sell what little they have to offer.
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As will be seen from the fact that a good portion of The End of the Modern World was first published more than 30 years ago, I have been engaged on it for a considerable length of time, though not exclusively, it goes without saying. During those years I published a number of other books and regular pieces of journalism. They included No Laughing Matter and The Last Modernist, which are biographies of the major Irish literary figures, Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett; another long poem, The Minotaur; and two collections of shorter lyrics as well as a Collected Poems. I would go to it at odd hours, drawn I think as much by the desire to continue with that wonderful English parent rhythm, the iambic pentameter, as by the view of the world which I wanted to express.
Much of that time I have been conscious of the fact that a prophecy Karl Marx made more than 150 years ago was coming true. This was that under capitalism, sooner or later all values other than monetary values would be superseded and that everything would become a commodity to be judged only by its monetary value. To trace this process, I had to go back to the Middle Ages which is where the modern era and The End of the Modern World both have their beginnings. Remote in time though that is, much of what began then is only now coming to be archaic and its true nature revealed. The medieval ideals of chivalry and romantic love were still clearly reflected in the popular music of my youth, for example. To assist this process of uncovering and disentangling I have called many other voices to my aid. Here for example is the voice of Hoss, the Commandant of Auschwitz.
What people did not know was how I worried
How when at night I stood beside the transports
Or at the crematorium or fire-pits,
I thought at length about my family,
Fearing for them in the uncertain future….
And then there was my work. My sense of duty
Has always made life much more difficult
For me than for my colleagues. I worked hard,
Perhaps too hard, at everything I did,
And when they offered me another post
Which meant promotion and which I accepted,
I was at first unhappy. My involvement
With all I did at Auschwitz was so great.
Putting this into poetry was not so much a matter of versifying Hoss’s prose, which I have done, as placing it ironically. There seems to me to be an extraordinary overlap with our own values, perhaps not a sharing but certainly some kind of identity. Ours has been a time of great wars and revolutions, of new obscenities and old. In many cases I have tried to illustrate our dilemmas directly as in the above quotation.
Chief among these voices, though, are those of the great historical uncoverer, Karl Marx, and his counterpart in psychology, Sigmund Freud. If these seem unpromisingly poetic figures let me add immediately that it was the chief poet of the age itself, the Frenchman Charles Baudelaire, who provided one of its principal themes and this was the commodification of the self, better known by an older word, prostitution. This primary activity, which Baudelaire saw as underlying all else, has of course many disguises, and disguise in its multiplicity of forms is also one of the principal themes of The End of the Modern World.
I don’t want to give the impression, however, that this is in any way a propagandist work. It does not call for us to return to a prior state of being, nor mobilise to advance on a future one. I have let my own sensibility roam pretty freely over the history of our time and the possibilities for its future. I have discovered inter alia the truth which I have always believed, that everything is poetic if we are open to unlocking it.
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My father used to say when confronted with childish hullabaloo about things supposedly gone missing – “Nothing is ever lost, but sometimes we don’t know where to find it”. In return I would say that nothing is un-poetic. But sometimes we do not know how to discover the poetry which is all around us.
The End Of The Modern World by Anthony Cronin is published by New Island, 96pp, €11.95 | http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/anthony-cronin-the-end-of-the-modern-world-my-elegy-for-our-capitalist-era-1.2771830?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/f7402000eb9eee3ef4140236e399d7b948a827bc8ed1ea313bf44bd6d9a4431f.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T20:52:17 | null | 2016-08-30T20:20:00 | The Government will fall if the Independent Alliance cannot agree to appeal the decision | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fconvincing-voters-to-forgo-apple-s-13bn-will-not-be-easy-1.2773489%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773487.1472584803!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Convincing voters to forgo Apple’s €13bn will not be easy | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The number caught everyone by surprise. The announcement by the European Commission yesterday that Apple owes Ireland €13 billion in back taxes (plus interest) astonished the waiting political world, prepped on recent rumours to expect a not-gargantuan sum.
It is not clear whether the rumours were spin or spoof; either way they were wrong. The commission didn’t pussyfoot around – it went the whole hog.
A finding that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on its taxes was entirely expected, but dealing with a potential windfall of that magnitude changed the anticipated context immediately.
At least one Minister, to the direct knowledge of The Irish Times, met the news with a loud expletive. The number also greatly complicated the politics.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan has long since said the Government would appeal an adverse finding by the commission on Apple’s tax arrangements. That was one thing when everyone thought the bill would be a few hundred million, or – at most – a few billion euro.
But the prospect of a windfall of €13 billion was another matter. Suddenly launching a major legal and political initiative with the intention of rejecting the money was a less straightforward narrative. Shortly after Ireland had to explain the “leprechaun economics” of a 25 per cent growth in GDP to the world, now it had to explain why it was strenuously seeking to avoid the largest tax windfall in history. More than one commentator liked it to winning the lottery and not bothering to pick up the winnings.
The Apple tax ruling The EC issued a ruling on August 30th in relation to the tax arrangements of Apple in Ireland, where it has its European HQ. The EC said Apple had been granted selective treatment by Ireland through two tax rulings in 1991 and 2007. The EC has ordered Ireland to recover up to €13 billion from the tech giant. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan indicated Ireland would appeal the decision "to defend the integrity of our tax system; to provide tax certainty to business; and to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign member state competence of taxation”. Q&A: Cliff Taylor answers the key questions I found this helpful Yes No
The Independent Alliance went into conclave, conspicuously unable to agree with Fine Gael’s intention to appeal. If the Alliance cannot agree to the appeal at this morning’s Cabinet meeting, then this Government is probably over, sooner rather than later. If they can’t agree this, you wouldn’t give them much chance of agreeing a budget, and a government that can’t budget can’t govern.
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Predictable
The cacophony of demands to grab the cash and spend it was entirely predictable.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett raged that the”entire political establishment have colluded over many years with Apple in an act of economic treason to rob the Irish public of €13 billion or more in desperately needed cash for public housing, the health service and other vital public services.”
Sinn Féin has been waiting with some relish for the EU verdict and leaped into action. “Give us back our money,” demanded MEP Matt Carthy. For good measure, Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty also called for a public inquiry into Apple’s tax arrangements.
The best can be said of all this is that at least the people doing it know its just political grandstanding. Well, this is one of the luxuries of Opposition.
For all that, even a cursory reading of the commission’s findings demonstrate that it is clear that Apple – like other multinationals presumably – has constructed a series of contrived structures designed to pay as little tax as possible. All the tech giant’s platitudes about paying the tax it owes are simply public relations guff. They are not meant to be taken seriously except by the gullible. The point at issue is not whether Apple has these structures, it is whether they constituted illegal State aid or not. That will now be decided in the European courts.
But the sort of hocus pocus that allows Apple to pay – by the commission’s calculations – less than 1 per cent tax on its global profits is under growing scrutiny everywhere. It is increasingly one of the great political issues of the age, even if it is confined to the margins of political debate in Ireland by the national shibboleth of the 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate.
The OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting process is designed to produce international consensus on reducing tax avoidance, but it moves slowly, as such process inevitably do. It is likely that corporations will pay more tax in the future. How and where is another matter.
Nonetheless, it may be that the commission has bitten off more than it can chew with this one. It’s hard to argue with Apple’s summary that it is now being “being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don’t owe them any more than we’ve already paid”.
It certainly seems like an extension of the commission’s powers into the realm of taxation, which the member states of the EU have repeatedly declined to grant.
International movement
Nonetheless, the commission’s move is part of an international movement. If it doesn’t win this one, it has fired a warning shot across the bows of the Apples of the world. National governments may be afraid of multinationals or susceptible to lobbying. The European Commission apparently is not.
The furious debate thrown up by the decision exposes again one of the principal fault lines of Irish politics – between the (roughly) two-thirds of voters who vote for mainstream, centrist parties and Independents, who feel they have a stake in the country and its prosperity on the one hand, and those who vote for parties of the radical left, anti-establishment Independents and Sinn Féin on the other, who feel the State often conspires against them, and that politics ignores those like them. Political debate is between these two sides; but political and electoral competition is more usually within them.
But yesterday’s ruling also exposes another cleavage, too. It forces the State to choose between two of the pillars of its policies for the past 40 years: loyalty to the EU institutions and openness to multinational investors. That these choices are now forced upon an Irish Government shows how much the world has changed. There are no reasons to expect that process is at an end. | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/convincing-voters-to-forgo-apple-s-13bn-will-not-be-easy-1.2773489?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d7b742ca3eae5b5231416882bf2e4f69ecb10cda6d9388cfe73d6e53910e6c8a.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T14:50:34 | null | 2016-08-27T15:16:00 | At least one person has been hurt in incident on M20 during one of UK’s busiest travel days | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fuk%2Fbridge-collapses-onto-motorway-after-being-hit-by-lorry-1.2770795%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770793.1472308555!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Bridge collapses onto motorway after being hit by lorry | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Emergency services in the UK have declared a major incident after a lorry hit a motorway bridge, causing it to collapse on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
Images on social media show the footbridge on the carriageway of the M20 between junctions three and four following the incident, and badly damaged vehicles.
Kent Police said one person had been hurt but their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
The M20 is the main route to the Channel Tunnel and the Port of Dover for travel to France and the rest of the Continent.
A Kent police spokesman said: “It is believed a lorry collided with a pedestrian bridge which has collapsed on to the carriageway below.
“Officers are in attendance along with Kent fire and rescue service and south east coast ambulance service.
“No people are believed to be trapped in the debris, however one person is believed to have suffered injuries, not reported to be life-threatening at this time.
“Police are treating this as a major incident and the M20 has been closed in both directions to allow this incident to be dealt with. Traffic will be heavier than usual.”
Witness Andy Sunnucks (24) said: “We are about 15 cars back on the same carriageway as the collision. “We were driving on the road and came to a standstill.
“People were getting out of their cars and running towards the bridge. All I could see was the wreckage.”
The graphic designer, a passenger travelling from Maidstone to Sevenoaks, said: “It looked like a lorry had jackknifed, and I could see half the bridge was missing. We went to have a look and the back end of the lorry was in pieces.
“The motorcyclist was laying down underneath his bike. “We heard a guy in front of us talking and he said he didn’t even see it even though the crash happened just in front of him.”
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An estimated 13 million drivers are expected to take to the road for a holiday or an outing between Friday and Monday, according to the AA.
The busiest single day for motorists embarking on leisure journeys is expected to be Saturday, when 10 million drivers have been predicted to be getting behind the wheel.
PA | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/bridge-collapses-onto-motorway-after-being-hit-by-lorry-1.2770795?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/a49da192961936123ef4ed7dadeb93144b41629769c96bb2bdf8b9ce0434d26c.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T10:50:26 | null | 2016-08-27T11:02:00 | It may lack glamour but the competition’s structure should ensure an exciting climax | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Frugby%2Fpro12%2Fguinness-pro12-has-lots-of-promise-even-if-it-s-crying-out-for-a-little-love-1.2769886%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769882.1472243494!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Guinness Pro12 has lots of promise - even if it’s crying out for a little love | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Until such time as the Guinness Pro12 dips into the US gravy train, it’ll just have to make do with a cross-border competition from four different countries.
At last Tuesday’s seasonal launch in the Aviva Stadium, the ever-eloquent Gerald Davies, Pro12 Rugby chairman, called upon everyone to embrace the Pro12’s cross-border diversity, and having quoted William Shakespeare at last season’s launch, concluded his opening address by quoting Robert Browning this time.
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
It’s doubtful that many of those even competing in the Pro12 would be quite so moved, but then again on reflection, Connacht’s stirring and stunning triumph – along with the decision to have the final in Murrayfield – was something of a boon for the competition, even if Leinster might not have seen it that way.
Wearying effects
From the moment the two sides met a week after the Six Nations at the Sportsground, Connacht’s unlikely rise gave the Pro12 a climax it hasn’t known in years, which was all the more welcome given the wearying effects of a World Cup season.
The organisers have ensured a climactic ending to the regular 22-game campaign this season with a manufactured conclusion on May 6th, which has, all too predictably, been entitled Super Saturday.
All six matches will kick off at the same time and will be parochial affairs: two Welsh and Irish derbies, with Glasgow facing Edinburgh and Zebre taking on Treviso. The playoffs will take place a fortnight later, with the final at the Aviva Stadium on May 27th.
So an interesting, localised finale is seemingly assured, as is usually the case, for the Pro12 has historically been illuminated with high-quality semi-finals and finals.
Last year was no exception, with Leinster and Connacht producing their best performances of the campaign in their home semi-finals, and Connacht going better again in the final.
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The organisers’ decision in advance to have the final in Murrayfield was not without its bad planning – clashing as it did with the Edinburgh marathon – but on balance the sense of occasion and record attendance for a final proved a benchmark for the often troubled competition.
Having the final at the Aviva appears the likeliest way to replicate that sale of 35,000 tickets last May, while there remains the forlorn hope that Dublin hoteliers won’t rip off customers on the same scale.
There must also be the hope that the Welsh RFU will pitch their bid for the 2017 final at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.
Whether the Italians are yet ready to host a final is a moot point, but rotating the final at the main stadia in each participating country would ensure the competition’s growth, and certainly Italy retains the most potential, as yet untapped, for the tournament’s further development.
Priority
Of course, the league remains a particularly hard competition to sell in Wales.
The Pro12 chief executive, Martin Anayi, has said increasing the tournament’s fan base is their priority and with disgruntled Welsh fans specifically in mind, have thus decided to abandon Sunday matches in Wales. This will be well received in the other countries as well.
Even so, the Welsh have always seemed like reluctant participants having lost their much cherished Anglo-Welsh League. The clear signals from the English clubs are that they are doing just dandy for themselves.
So too, of course, are the French, whose impending €98 million a year deal with Canal+ for rights to the Top 14 and Pro D2 dwarf the undisclosed but relatively modest combined rights for the Pro12 of around €11 million. Securing increased TV rights is paramount.
Whatever about a climactic run-in and final few weekends, where – or more accurately when – the league struggles is from the November window through to the end of the Six Nations in mid-March. What with the December and January rounds of European matches, the league is left sucking the hind tit of the season. It just becomes very staccato and the league’s leading lights rarely feature.
The World Cup pretty much had the same effect on the first three months of last season’s campaign, so it’s little wonder that the Pro12 only caught fire from mid-March onwards. This season, therefore – with teams and players wanting to make an impression both in the opening six rounds of the league and the first forays into Europe – should be different.
Another difference, of course, is that Connacht are reigning champions.
From their opening day joust with Glasgow, they will be a target now, as John Muldoon admits. “The surprise factor is gone. I would imagine there won’t be too many teams coming to the Sportsground and resting players or leaving some of their international contingent behind. That in itself will pose a big challenge for us. The key last year was that our away form was so good. It will be difficult. It is not a Wold Cup year so there will be a tighter focus and we are also involved in the Champions Cup. It is a huge challenge.”
Yet they were deserving champions, and are capable of making hay again through the November and Six Nations windows. They won five of the first six before and during the World Cup, and four from four from the week before the Six Nations until the end.
Gregor Townsend, who coached Glasgow to their first title two seasons ago before Connacht wrenched it from their grasp on successive days at the Sportsground, does not believe Connacht will fade away.
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“No, they’ve got a formula that worked for them. I’m sure they’ve been doing that in pre-season. They always had that aggression, that passion playing at home; what Pat [Lam] has done is make them more ambitious and certainly improve their skills.
“The final was a great example of taking on one of the best defences in Europe and finding gaps and running the ball from your own 22. I think they’ll have the same approach and will be very tough to beat.
“In the first half of the season no one was tipping them to get to the playoffs. They had to build their confidence through their performances, and they should start the season with that confidence. I genuinely mean this – any one of seven or eight teams could win.”
Competitive
Facing into his last season as the Glasgow head coach before succeeding Vern Cotter at Scotland, Townsend said: “I see this Pro12 being more competitive than the last two, which were already pretty competitive with four or five teams pushing right to the wire. I can see seven or eight teams this year in the mix. We’ve all got our players from the beginning of the season, so you should see teams really competitive right at the beginning.”
Ulster, boosted by the arrival of Charles Piutau to add to their attacking riches and with the Kingspan such a fortress, should be one of those contenders. Without the same potency, Rassie Eramus will assuredly need time at Munster, and akin to the Welsh, the league does not seem to do it for their supporter base.
Indeed, perhaps more than any of the Irish teams, Munster’s history dictates their fanbase will judge them more by what they do in Europe.
Asked if he was glad that there would be no World Cup this season, as there was in his first, trying campaign as Leinster head coach, Leo Cullen quipped that he’d miss watching such a high-quality tournament. But his answer was laden with sarcasm.
Leinster and Glasgow have been the league’s most consistent sides in recent years and having supplied over 20 players apiece to the World Cup, they were assuredly hardest hit last season and thus should be less affected this. Even then, they still finished first and third.
So by rights, they should be there or thereabouts again. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/pro12/guinness-pro12-has-lots-of-promise-even-if-it-s-crying-out-for-a-little-love-1.2769886?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/876bcff5170eed43cb829d53ba47daa348d8a40b27920a2496d7d7cd5082c525.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T04:50:40 | null | 2016-08-27T04:00:27 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Ffood-and-drink%2Frecipes%2Fboozy-blueberry-compote-with-apricots-and-dates-1.2768418%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768416.1472140468!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Boozy blueberry compote with apricots and dates | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Boozy blueberry compote with apricots and dates
Cooking Time: 60 mins
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Irish
Ingredients 150g dates
150g dried apricots
250g fresh blueberries
100ml Port
100ml cream sherry
50ml Drambuie
50ml Grand Marnier
1.5litres of water
Juice of 2 lemons
300g brown sugar
200g frozen blueberries
Method
Combine all the ingredients except the frozen blueberries in a heavy-based, non-stick pot. Bring to the boil and reduce until it has reduced by more than half, and until it coats the back of a cold spoon. This will take approximately 40-45 minutes.
Remove from the heat. Blend with a hand blender (stick blender), then fold in the frozen blueberries. This will help chill the compote more quickly, but it will also add to the flavour and texture.
Once the mixture is cool, place in the fridge, in an airtight container.
Always remember to remove it from the fridge at least one hour prior to use, in order to allow it to come to room temperature. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/recipes/boozy-blueberry-compote-with-apricots-and-dates-1.2768418?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/365b9a907a83573b522162c00910e7310d655ebafa3d6df1e7d3834c0b67fc87.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:49:06 | null | 2016-08-30T06:20:00 | ‘There is nothing like shopping face to face, getting real customer satisfaction’ | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fpersonal-finance%2Fme-my-money-paddy-magee-renault-group-ireland-1.2770995.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770993.1472483336!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Me & My Money: Paddy Magee, Renault Group Ireland | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Are you a saver or a spender?
I’m generally a day-to-day saver, though when it comes to gadgets, all sensible thoughts go out the window. Gadgets, I definitely tend to splurge on them.
Do you shop around for better value?
In every aspect of business life I would say yes. The three-quote rule was hammered into me at a very young age and has served me well through the years. In personal life, I do shop around a little, with the exception of Christmas shopping, which, despite my very best effort is always done on Christmas Eve.
What has been your most extravagant purchase ever and how much did it cost?
I wouldn’t be a frequent extravagant buyer by any stretch. I do, however, like to invest in family memories, as cheesy as that sounds. Every year I look forward to one “blow out” holiday with my daughter, Katy-May, and my wife, Clare. I also have an appreciation for a good watch, so I treated myself to a Breitling a few years ago. I’ll keep the price of that to myself, though.
What purchase have you made that you consider the best value for money?
Undoubtedly, I would say, my wife Clare’s engagement ring nine years ago.
What way do you prefer to shop – online or local?
Whilst I like to do price comparisons online before I buy, I still love the fun and excitement that comes with shopping locally. There is nothing like shopping face to face, getting real customer satisfaction, and most importantly personal great customer service.
Do you haggle over prices?
My background is in sales, so on big items I love to haggle. It’s always good to gauge reaction and see what new sales lines are out there. Sales psychology fascinates me, so I like to visit car dealerships from other brands and see what kind of sales pitches work for them.
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Has the recession changed your spending habits?
I think it changed spending habits for everyone. As a family, we cut down on big non-essential items and focused on quality holidays over quantity.
Do you invest in shares?
When I first started working in Renault many moons ago, there were two colleagues of mine always harping on about shares. I never really got into them. I did the usual like most Irish people and invested a little in Eircom and Vodafone shares. In the last couple of years I have (wisely) invested in shares within the Renault Group.
Cash or card?
On small items below €50 always cash, then everything else is the card.
What was the last thing you bought and was it good value for money?
The last thing I bought was a tent. My family and I absolutely love it. Camping is so much fun around Ireland, especially when the sun comes out.
Have you ever successfully saved up for a relatively big purchase?
Yes, thanks to my general save-not-spend habit I saved up for the family home. Saving up for a deposit on a house is such a satisfying achievement.
Have you ever lost money?
I never lost anything substantial, thankfully. My mother schooled me as a teenager playing cards at home, so that has and hopefully will continue to sort me in the future.
Are you a gambler and if so have you ever had a big win?
I wouldn’t be a regular gambler at all. I like the social aspect and the atmosphere that comes with big GAA events or Punchestown, etc, so I would flitter away a few euro to join in and have a bit of craic. No big wins or losses so far.
Is money important to you?
Security is important to me, so I guess money is important in that aspect. I’m very content with my life at the moment. Money definitely isn’t my day-to-day focus. Once my house is ticking over and my family are happy and healthy, I’m truly happy with my lot.
How much money do you have on you now?
€28.80. And a credit card, just in case. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/personal-finance/me-my-money-paddy-magee-renault-group-ireland-1.2770995 | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/b8d05fc50abdafdbb794414b7db6d209c77e9fc76becd352afd04ac3724218d8.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T16:51:43 | null | 2016-08-29T16:00:00 | In a paranoid society anxious parents must empower children to listen to their intuition | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhealth-family%2Fparenting%2Fstranger-danger-what-are-the-real-risks-of-our-daily-interactions-1.2760673%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769445.1472216260!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Stranger danger: What are the real risks of our daily interactions? | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | It’s many parents’ greatest fear – that their child could be whipped away by a stranger with bad intentions. Growing up, many of us were told “don’t talk to strangers” and many parents warn their children that strangers can be bad people who might harm them.
But the reality is that almost all of us talk to strangers every day – idle chitchat in the supermarket, say, or a small bit of conversation in the coffee queue – so is it realistic to warn our children off such basic human interaction?
Should we make our children fearful and anxious about chatting and socially interacting with perfectly nice people?
The answer, of course, is no.
Except that parents today are in a vicious cycle of over-parenting and are more paranoid and more stressed than ever before. Parenting expert Sheila O’Malley, in her book Cotton Wool Kids published last year, says the most dangerous thing facing parents and children today is challenges to their mental health.
O’Malley, a psychotherapist, sees a steady stream of children in her practice who are paralysed by fear; they have been told that it is a terrible world out there, full of crazies and maniacs.
Today the rates of child mortality, injury and sexual abuse are lower than at any time since records began, so it makes no sense to instill fear into our children about the risks of strangers.
It’s a view shared by child psychologist David Carey, who says we should empower children to listen to their intuition and teach them to work things out from a place of power rather than fear.
“Worrying that a random adult who your child chooses to talk to will turn out to be a kidnapper makes very little sense. Kidnapping by a stranger is a scenario that is scary and gets a lot of attention, but statistically speaking it almost never happens,” he says.
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Carey warns against instilling intense fear and anxiety in children around strangers and implanting the notion of “stranger danger”.
Instead, he advocates teaching children how to meet and greet strangers and how to exercise caution in a practical, commonsense way without crippling them with fear by honing their intuition.
Learning the rules
“I like to think of it in the same way that we teach them the rules of the road,” he explains. “They have to obey the green man, look both ways, check whether cyclists are coming and be aware of a number of issues. So we need to use common sense in teaching them how to meet and greet strangers, too.”
It’s an approach that’s backed up by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The society’s director of services Caroline O’Sullivan says it’s crucial to strengthen children’s resilience. “It is important to keep safe, but also to foster independence. With the right guidance, rules and boundaries, children can develop internal resilience and coping skills that will stay with them throughout their lifetime.”
The society believes it is important to teach children to be aware of all the risks – not just stranger danger – and help them to put strategies in place that give them confidence, rather than anxiety.
You need to discuss scenarios for all risks, such as crossing the road, getting their telephone stolen out of their hand, getting lost, as well getting approached by adults or older children, adds O’Sullivan.
”The important message is that children have rights, that it is actually okay to say no to adults and that each parent talks to their children about each risk area and what they can do to minimise these risks.”
Carey agrees that what children need to know from parents is basic safety information: “You don’t divulge your address or phone number to a stranger. You don’t allow adults you don’t know to pat you on the head or touch you on the shoulder. You don’t engage in lengthy conversation with them or pause and hang around with them for 10 minutes.”
He believes you need to teach them to follow their instinct - if they feel uncomfortable they should turn around and walk away, he says.
“We all have this old evolutionary system in our brain that alerts us to any possible threat. It immediately activates the fight, flee or freeze response and they need to learn to listen to it . . . A child needs to know that if he or she feels any sort of discomfort in dealing with a stranger, listen to the brain, move away and stop talking.”
Anxious parenting
Carey believes we are living in an age of rampant paranoid and anxious parenting fuelled by the media, but suggests there are safety basics that all families should follow.
“We can help children to trust their instincts and recognise dangerous situations,” he says. “If you don’t allow children to socially interact with adults, you’ll deprive them of that ability to recognise what doesn’t feel right.”
The good news is that the rate of stranger child abduction is not increasing. It is orders of magnitude more safe to be a child in 2016 than it was in 1985.
The sad reality is that while there are some “bad” people out there, the chances of your child being molested by a stranger in the park are tiny compared to the chances of them being molested by someone they know, be it a teacher, family member, family friend, sports club coach, and so on.
Carey advocates always exercising a degree of caution around people who don’t know your children well. Often we can be lax with more general acquaintances, he says.
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“You don’t let some distant cousin go into their bedroom or take them out for sweets because you don’t know them well enough. It’s common sense and we must follow it.”
Childhood experiences
O’Sullivan counsels that parents must not let their fears damage their children’s childhood experiences.
“Let children be children, give them the freedom they need to experience fun childhood activities – climbing trees, cycling, involvement in sports, hanging out with their friends going to the local shop. These activities build children’s sense of worth, view of self, social skills and ability to cope with problems,” she says.
While you cannot physically there for your children 100 per cent of the time, parents need to ensure that children have the ability to make good decisions and choices, develop problem-solving skills and learn social interaction skills.
You cannot teach your children to be confident in their ability to deal with risky or troublesome situations if you have not worked through the scenarios with them, adds O’Sullivan.
“If they are interacting in confidence, they will be able to think clearly and handle problems themselves.” | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/stranger-danger-what-are-the-real-risks-of-our-daily-interactions-1.2760673?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/be7710debcd4ba755642e68854c146868b2a80749cdda86aecec82667a738713.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T12:49:18 | null | 2016-08-31T11:59:00 | MLS club takes out advertisement ahead of striker’s final Republic of Ireland match | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Foffbeat%2Fla-galaxy-pays-tribute-to-robbie-keane-on-irish-times-front-page-1.2774213.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774212.1472641388!/image/image.jpg | en | null | LA Galaxy pays tribute to Robbie Keane on ‘Irish Times’ front page | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Major League Soccer club LA Galaxy has paid tribute to Robbie Keane ahead of his last game in an Irish jersey by taking out a front page ad in The Irish Times.
Keane is due to line out for his last international cap on Wednesday night as the Republic of Ireland take on Oman at the Aviva Stadium. The game will bring his impressive 18-year international career to an end.
Marking the occasion, Keane’s US club took out an ad on the front page of Wednesday’s Irish Times.
Accompanying a photo of the Dubliner with his fist held up, the ad reads: “Congratulations Keano! The LA Galaxy would like to congratulate Robbie Keane for all of his accomplishments in his remarkable 18-year career with the Republic of Ireland.”
Speaking on Monday, Keane said he was grateful to Martin O’Neill for giving him the opportunity to play on Wednesday.
“I’m going to take it all in as much as I can and enjoy it - everything I’ve done - but it will be an emotional night for me and my family,” he said.
“Physically, I feel I can go on for another couple of years and I’ll keep on playing as long as I can, but in terms of international football this is the right time for me to go.
“It’s important to focus on my club career for a couple of years; after that we’ll see what happens.”
Keane said Ireland had a special place in his heart and he never imagined he would earn 145 caps.
“I played for a lot of teams, wore a lot of shirts, but it always seemed to be the Irish one that fitted me the best.”
Ireland versus Oman kicks off at the Aviva at 7.45pm and can be viewed on eir Sport 1 from 7pm. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/offbeat/la-galaxy-pays-tribute-to-robbie-keane-on-irish-times-front-page-1.2774213 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/fbad5ad3ebbf5709be1ef2ea54874adf2481efeba1f06a7d6205bac679d243ce.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T16:50:22 | null | 2016-08-27T17:20:00 | Defending champions off the mark thanks to a trademark goal from England striker | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fsoccer%2Fenglish-soccer%2Fjamie-vardy-gets-his-first-of-the-season-as-leicester-open-win-account-1.2770838%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770836.1472314795!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Jamie Vardy gets his first of the season as Leicester open win account | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Leicester 2 Swansea 1
Jamie Vardy’s first goal of the season set Leicester on their way to the first victory of their Premier League title defence as Swansea were beaten 2-1 at the King Power Stadium.
Vardy, the champions’ leading scorer last season with 24 goals, got off the mark for the new campaign in typical fashion by emphatically finishing a lovely Leicester move.
Captain Wes Morgan doubled the lead early in the second half before Riyad Mahrez saw a penalty saved by Lukasz Fabianski and Leroy Fer headed a goal back for Swansea late on.
The victory meant Leicester avoided becoming the first champions since Manchester United in 2007-08 to begin the defence of their title without winning any of their first three Premier League matches.
In the opening minute Shinji Okazaki poked out a leg to reach Robert Huth’s flick-on from a Christian Fuchs long throw but was unable to get a telling contact to worry Fabianski.
Mahrez curled a free-kick over the crossbar after Federico Fernandez had brought down Vardy right on the edge of the penalty area with a mis-timed sliding tackle that earned the Argentinian defender a 10th-minute yellow card.
Leicester enjoyed a period of sustained pressure midway through the first half which saw Danny Drinkwater glance a header across the face of goal and a Vardy pull-back from the byline scrambled clear.
Leicester were knocking on the door but Swansea reminded them they were a threat on the break and Gylfi Sigurdsson twice worked Kasper Schmeichel either side of the half-hour mark with shots from the edge of the box.
In the 32nd minute Leicester took the lead and it had more than an echo of last season about it.
Daniel Amartey was N’Golo Kante-esque in tracking back to tackle and win the ball. He played a one-two with Drinkwater just in front of his own penalty area before playing a ball up to Mahrez, who cushioned a header back to Drinkwater.
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Then, as we saw many times last season, Drinkwater dropped a pass behind the Swansea defence for Vardy to chase. Vardy out-paced Jordi Amat and held him off before blasting a right-foot shot into the net via the inside of the near post.
Fabianski had to push away a fiercely-struck shot from Okazaki to prevent Leicester from going into half-time with a two-goal lead.
However, seven minutes after the restart it was 2-0. If the first goal was a thing of beauty, the second was sheer luck and about being in the right place at the right time.
Huth’s header from a corner hit a Swansea defender and ricocheted into the path of Morgan, who simply hammered the ball home on the half-volley.
Leicester should have extended their lead after 56 minutes when Amat brought down Okazaki inside the box but Mahrez’s penalty was brilliantly saved by Fabianski diving to his right.
An eventful start to the second half concluded with Schmeichel waving to the bench asking to be substituted after rushing from his area to make a clearance. Summer signing Ron-Robert Zieler replaced the injured Dane to make his debut for the club.
He was beaten with nine minutes remaining when Fer brilliantly powered his header from Modou Barrow’s cross into the bottom corner of the net.
Mahrez and substitute Ahmed Musa had late chances to restore Leicester’s two-goal lead but neither did. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/jamie-vardy-gets-his-first-of-the-season-as-leicester-open-win-account-1.2770838?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/df204a6f7f7f575e2d4e43aabdedfa214cef2133614906d9f4ae009fffa1ff54.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T12:52:14 | null | 2016-08-30T12:33:00 | Nice appear prepared to take the same gamble that Brendan Rodgers did in 2014 | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fsoccer%2Fenglish-soccer%2Fmario-balotelli-set-to-headline-list-of-liverpool-discards-1.2772989%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772988.1472556836!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Mario Balotelli set to headline list of Liverpool discards | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Liverpool misfit Mario Balotelli is edging closer to a departure as negotiations with Ligue 1 side Nice continue.
The Italy international has been in talks with the French club since last week and with the transfer window closing tomorrow the expectation is that deal will get done.
It will bring to an end a miserable spell at Anfield where he featured for just one campaign having been signed for £16million by former manager Brendan Rodgers.
Balotelli scored just four goals in 28 appearances and was farmed back out to AC Milan on loan last season but he returned this summer having been told he has no future.
A host of clubs have turned down the chance to sign the occasionally troublesome striker but Nice appear prepared to take the same gamble Rodgers did in 2014.
With manager Jurgen Klopp having done most of his buying early in the current window, it is understood that all the activity leading up to the deadline will be out-goings.
Winger Lazar Markovic has not featured in any match day squad since returning from last season’s loan spell with Fenerbahce.
The 22-year-old Serbia international is keen to secure a loan within the UK and has been linked with SkyBet Championship side Newcastle.
Liverpool are also actively seeking a club to take centre-back Mamadou Sakho on loan.
The France defender has turned down Stoke and West Brom after being sent home from the club’s pre-season tour of the United States after Klopp expressed concerns about his attitude and instances of poor timekeeping.
It is understood Sakho has been told it is in his best interests to leave on a temporary basis in order to save his Liverpool and international career.
Klopp does not want to sell the 26-year-old at the moment as he still rates him as a player but the defender has to prove his fitness and professionalism at another club.
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Sakho has fallen well down the Anfield pecking order — Klopp brought in Joel Matip and Ragnar Klavan this summer and both have already played in competitive matches — because of his attitude.
Fellow defender Andre Wisdom is set to join Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg on a temporary basis but Liverpool have turned down loan bids for striker Danny Ings.
The 24-year-old has yet to feature as he works his way back to full fitness after last season’s serious knee injury but Klopp plans to introduce him gradually back into first-team football.
Liverpool do have an interest in Borussia Dortmund forward Christian Pulisic but it became apparent early on any deal would not be feasible in this window. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/mario-balotelli-set-to-headline-list-of-liverpool-discards-1.2772989?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/eeeff0fca7ecdf63ec8f6617f1165b62530399ecb40fd5da968b8b6624a22bd5.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:52:05 | null | 2016-08-30T06:00:00 | Alarmed by his daughter’s daring endeavours in the air, Bland’s father promised to buy her a car if she would stop flying | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fpeople%2Flilian-bland-the-first-woman-to-fly-an-aircraft-in-ireland-1.2765782%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2765781.1471961606!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Lilian Bland, the first woman to fly an aircraft in Ireland | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Lilian Bland, who was born in Kent, England in 1878, was known as “the flying feminist.”
In 1900, after the death of her mother, Bland and her father moved back to his homeplace of Carnmoney, north of Belfast, to live with her aunt Sarah.
In Northern Ireland, Bland stood out as a visibly unconventional woman for the time. She wore trousers, openly smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. She rode horses like a man, that is, astride, rather than side-saddle, and was also proficient at the traditionally male-dominated sports of hunting, shooting and fishing.
As a keen photographer, she was drawn to the sports she loved as her subject, and her pictures appeared in various London publications. “When taking photographs of racing, polo, etc the best plan is to use your camera like a gun, sight the object at a distance, and follow it along, when you can ‘pull the trigger’ at the right moment,” as Bland wrote herself in The Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes in 1905.
In early 1910, she spent much of her time constructing a home-made biplane glider, which she named Mayfly. The controls were apparently the recycled handles of a bike. Her first test flights were short glides from Carnmoney Hill.
Bland became more ambitious, and ordered a two-stroke engine from Manchester. It arrived before the fuel tank did, and so keen was Bland to get airborne, that she improvised. She created a temporary fuel tank from an empty whiskey bottle, decanting petrol into it via her deaf aunt Sarah’s ear trumpet. Mayfly did not become airborne that day.
It was in August 1910, on parkland at Lord O’Neill’s estate at Randalstown that Mayfly, complete with a real fuel tank, finally lifted off. Bland took her biplane some 30 feet off the ground for a series of short flights, making her the first woman to fly an aircraft in Ireland.
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Alarmed by his daughter’s daring endeavours in the air, Bland’s father promised to buy her a car if she would stop flying. She taught herself to drive, then collected the Model T Ford car in Dublin, and drove it back to Belfast. By the following year, Bland was running a car dealership in Belfast, where she was Ford’s first agent in Northern Ireland.
In 1911, she married her cousin Charles Loftus Bland. He had become a lumberjack in Canada, and she emigrated there with him, to Vancouver Island, where they established a farm. They had one child, a daughter, who died of tetanus at the age of 16.
In 1935, Bland returned to England. She became interested in gardening and painting, and apparently retained her unconventional spirit by partaking in some gambling. Lilian Bland died in Cornwall in 1971, aged 92. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/lilian-bland-the-first-woman-to-fly-an-aircraft-in-ireland-1.2765782?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ce91062f07929808d497cfff84a349bc09a22440dff2aadde68ae243acaf3cdf.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T20:51:49 | null | 2016-08-29T20:00:00 | Ireland is 4th of 31 European countries when we compare suicide rates for young people aged 15-19 | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhealth-family%2Ftackling-suicide-and-self-harm-in-ireland-1.2767072%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2766748.1472227156!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Tackling suicide and self-harm in Ireland | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | In 2014, the Central Statistics Office reported that 459 people died by suicide in Ireland. We also know there is a strong relationship between suicide and self-harming behaviours, which are non-suicidal injuries to body tissue.
The National Self Harm Registry Ireland, which reports on self-harm presentations to emergency departments across Ireland, highlighted that in 2014 alone, 8,708 people were treated for self-harm episodes.
According to the data, we know that at least one in five individuals will have repeated admissions to the emergency department following self-harm.
We also know that repetition of self-harm increases suicide risk (Self-harm: Short-term pain is a long-term suicide risk, Health+Family, March 1st). Given these statistics, efforts to understand and manage self-harm and suicide have and must remain a priority for both clinicians and the wider public.
“Connecting for Life, Ireland’s National Strategy to Reduce Suicide 2015-2020” emerged as a result of engagement of a broad range of statutory, non-statutory and community stakeholders, with the aim of identifying agreed strategic priorities on how to tackle suicide and risk factors for suicide.
The strategy aspires to create a strong community partnership to focus on increasing education and understanding about risk factors for self-harm and suicide. Key goals of the strategy include looking at targeted approaches to reduce suicide and improve mental health and to ensuring high-quality evidence-informed services for people who are vulnerable.
Ireland’s suicide rate across the population is comparable to other European countries ranking us 21st of 31. Of concern is that we rank fourth of 31 when we compare rates for young people aged 15-19. We see similar trends when it comes to self-harm in Ireland, with the National Self Harm Registry reporting the highest incidence of self-harm occurring for both males and females in those under 24 years. Thus the environment in which this policy has been developed remains challenging. Nonetheless, it is a positive step forward in setting a direction for tackling self-harm and suicide in Ireland.
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Psychologist’s role
As a clinical psychologist, one of my roles is to understand the international research evidence as to why people engage in self-harm and to play my part in translating that evidence into changes in clinical practice.
If we consider self-harm behaviours or suicide as means of coping with life crises for individuals, we must question what events, thoughts and feelings precede such behaviours. What factors make people choose such extreme actions? Understanding and breaking these chains of events are key components in any intervention to change people’s behaviour.
There is a growing body of research evidence highlighting the importance of deficits in coping and inability to regulate emotions as critical precursors to self-harm behaviours and suicide.
Biological factors and temperament can predispose individuals to emotional sensitivity and this, combined with a psychologically testing environment, can result in self-destructive ways of coping.
However, despite underlying vulnerability, people can learn to regulate themselves and respond more effectively to challenges in their environment. With insight and understanding, solutions in the form of new skills acquisition provide healthy, more adaptive coping strategies and can help reduce risk of further episodes of self-harm or suicidal behaviours.
Treatments, such as dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), a well-researched and validated intervention, emerging from this biosocial understanding of risk, is one of the targeted interventions highlighted in “Connecting for Life”.
An increasing number of psychologists and other mental health professionals across Ireland have participated in advancing their training in this model over the past number of years. This is part of the HSE and National Office for Suicide Prevention’s ongoing efforts to reduce risk of self- harm and suicide, particularly with individuals with a history of repeated self-harm attending child and adult mental health services.
Challenging
Tackling risk factors with individuals with a known history can be challenging for individuals and clinicians alike. Change can be difficult and destructive ways of coping, in the absence of alternatives, can sometimes seem like the only solution. Evidence-based treatments such as DBT and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) are helping people make the necessary changes to improve their outlook and quality of life. Linking with your GP; talking to someone you trust; and telling them how you are feeling is the first step in accessing the help that you need. Any treatment, or any intervention, will work only if a person is ready to take this first step.
However, there are many individuals who suffer in quiet desperation and engage in self-harm behaviours, or experience suicidal thoughts but do not communicate their difficulties and thus may never access professional help. An ongoing challenge is how to improve the emotional resilience and skills for the wider population as a means of inoculating against self-harm and suicide.
To coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th, the Psychological Society of Ireland is hosting public talks to highlight and support suicide prevention. In a public lecture – titled Connected: Advances in Tackling Suicide and Self Harm in Ireland – I will talk in more detail about self-harm and suicide, the risk factors and evidence-based interventions.
I am fortunate to have an individual with a lived experience and a family member co-present this lecture, sharing their first-hand experiences of overcoming the challenges associated with self-harm and suicidal behaviours. One of the hallmarks of the national suicide-prevention strategy is partnership.
Ongoing sharing of knowledge and public debate will assist us in working together to create hope and offer new direction for individuals and families who have been impacted by self-harm and suicidal behaviour.
Daniel Flynn is a clinical psychologist with a special interest in self-harm and suicide and is an accredited DBT therapist.
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What’s On Connected: Advances in Tackling Suicide and Self harm in Ireland, being held by the Psychological Society of Ireland, will take place in the Cheyne Theatre, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on September 1st, at 6.30pm. A second public lecture, titled Parenting depressed and suicidal adolescents, also held by PSI, will take place on Thursday, September 22nd and will be presented by Gary Diamond, PhD.
See psychologicalsociety.ie for more information and to register to attend either event. Follow the society on Twitter @PsychSocIreland
The Psychological Society of Ireland is the learned and professional body for psychology in the Republic . | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/tackling-suicide-and-self-harm-in-ireland-1.2767072?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/5cf95cfcdda67d90df35c7533cc8f96b92524cb746bf2da136fe1d1a7ff1649b.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T20:51:22 | null | 2016-08-28T21:30:00 | Monday, Aug 29th – Sunday, Sep 4th | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fhandy-guide-to-sport-on-television-this-week-1.2770818%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2124352.1425394347!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Handy Guide to Sport on Television this Week | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Sign up for the very best in news and views from The Irish Times sports team
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Email | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/handy-guide-to-sport-on-television-this-week-1.2770818?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ec06cca0b00cc9c819465615403d46cbf3a4edc901beb9f543b3e56f4c754215.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T00:50:31 | null | 2016-08-27T01:10:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fletters%2Ffrance-and-banning-the-burkini-1.2769594%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | France and banning the ‘burkini’ | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Sir, – As a proponent of political secularism, I find reports of armed police making a woman in Nice remove her clothing worrying, and ironic.
A Nice tribunal has found that the burkini was “liable to offend the religious convictions or (religious) non-convictions of other users of the beach”, and “felt as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by” the community. No-one has the right not to be offended. This is an argument that we secularists use in relation to blasphemy laws, but it swings both ways.
In any event, I do not see the rationale for a police-enforced burkini ban. Concerns about religious clothing in the wake of recent terrorist killings have been proffered as justification. I don’t recall the demented truck-driver who massacred innocent people in Nice wearing a burkini, nor would it be an integral part of the modus operandi of a terrorist attack by a woman.
The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (religious police) in Saudi Arabia has rightly been criticised for enforcing a dress code among women. Is it not ironic that the police in France – the great bastion of liberté, égalité and fraternité – is now doing it too?
There has been an increase in sales of the burkini since the ban was introduced. There have been reports of non-Muslim women purchasing and wearing them in acts of solidarity.
Are the police going to arrest and fine all these women? What about women who wear wetsuits, or women who suffer from sun allergy? Are they to be told that they must remove their clothes on beaches too?
Individual rights, such as how one dresses, should only be compromised where there is a risk to others.
The ban will not do anything to combat Islamic extremism. If anything, it will do the opposite. – Yours, etc,
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ROB SADLIER,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – Images of a woman being forced to remove her long-sleeved top and leggings at the request of armed French police officers on a beach in Nice are not only offensive to women everywhere but also deeply sinister and evocative of some very dark history in Europe.
This woman was singled out because of the way she dressed; an assumption was clearly made by those officers about her faith and therefore that she was some kind of threat to public order and safety.
Women have the right to wear whatever they want. Women have the right to be a member of whatever faith they wish. And yet, Ireland’s progressive forces remain silent at how that woman and other women on the beaches of France are being legislated against and profiled for attention because of what they choose to wear because of their chosen faith or even personal fashion sense. French laws about beachwear of any sort are wrong. Yet, where is the protest of support in Ireland?
Where are the outraged opinion pieces in the Irish media?
Where is the demonstration of burkini-clad protestors outside the French embassy in Dublin?
It is clear that if you a Muslim woman you are not worthy of support and solidarity from the sisterhood and progressive agencies, especially at a time when it is clearly needed. Why not? Are Islamic women not good enough? Why the silence?
It is not so long ago that Jewish women were forced to undress in front of armed guards. The Irish silence then remains to our eternal shame. We should remember that our worst examples of sectarian horror began with profiling people because of how they looked, what they wore, and where they professed their faith and practised their way of life.
Clearly, nothing has been learned since. – Yours, etc,
JUDITH GOLDBERGER,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – It is not such a long time ago that Catholic nuns wore pretty much identical daywear and swimwear as devout Muslim women of today, although I don’t recall any of them being forced to change out of their swimming garb on the beaches of France. – Yours, etc,
LIAM POWER,
Ballina,
Co Mayo.
Sir, – Did women burn their bras to be told by men to don burkinis? – Yours, etc,
EVE PARNELL,
Dublin 8.
A chara, – Patricia Mulkeen is being either naive or disingenuous when she claims France’s decision to ban the “burkini” as a victory for feminism (August 26th).
Let there be no doubt that this decision was motivated entirely by the French government’s knee-jerk reaction to recent atrocities.
The authorities here in France could not care less about the rights of Muslim women, which should be obvious given that many of the latter are compelled by male relatives to wear such garb. – Is mise,
Dr GARETH P KEELEY,
Grenoble,
France.
Sir, – The opinion piece by Dr Roja Fazaeli appears to indicate that Muslim women covering themselves up to appear in public is something optional, and is done purely out of personal choice (“Burkini ban is another way to subjugate Muslim women”, Opinion & Analysis, August 25th). If so, there can be no objection. We live in a modern western democracy and religious displays such as special headgear or wearing a crucifix are tolerated. The psychological and legal aspects of non-verbal communication are well understood.
However, if there is any element of coercion or threat of violence then we have a societal right to be concerned.
Islam, like Christianity, makes extraordinary claims for itself, and makes intelligent people do and say silly things. The French approach of accosting people at the beach seems to be a silly response to a silly display. – Yours, etc,
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JIM BRILLY,
Dublin 8. | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/france-and-banning-the-burkini-1.2769594?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/edb9c8497c77363e804828b09ffdd90f015ddbc5fc57c675512e433913960446.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T10:52:17 | null | 2016-08-30T11:29:00 | Dr Saleem Sharif displayed a ‘worrying level of clinical judgement’ | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fcrime-and-law%2Fcork-based-gp-accused-of-multiple-acts-of-incompetence-1.2772946%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772945.1472552965!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Cork-based GP accused of multiple ‘acts of incompetence’ | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | A Cork-based GP has been accused of multiple “acts of incompetence” by his failure to properly diagnose a serious infection in a patient.
Dr Saleem Sharif displayed a “worrying level of clinical judgement” by jumping to an incorrect conclusion about the condition of the patient without carrying out examinations or tests, a disciplinary hearing into his conduct has heard.
Eoghan O’Sullivan, for the chief executive of the Medical Council, said Dr Sharif was the subject of the previous fitness to practise hearing in 2011, when he was found guilty of poor professional performance for failing to carry out a proper examination of a patient.
Mr O’Sullivan said Dr Sharif, a GP with a private practice in Ballyphehane, deserved credit for admitting to poor professional performance for failing to properly examine and perform tests on the patient in the current case.
The patient, Alison Hickey, has told the inquiry she was feeling very unwell and could barely walk when she went to see Dr Sharif at the GP Now clinic in Sandyford, Dublin, in October 2014.
Dr Sharif diagnosed a low-grade urinary tract infection but Ms Hickey was found to have suspected sepsis when she was taken by ambulance to the Rotunda hospital a day later.
Mr O’Sullivan said the significance of Dr Sharif’s various clinical failings could only be appreciated by reference to Ms Hickeys circumstances. She had given birth to twins three weeks earlier, delivered by emergency caesarean section after she suffered pre-eclampsia.
Systemic infection
In a five-minute consultation, Dr Sharif’s clinical failings were numerous, counsel said. He didn’t take a detailed history of the patient, physically examine her or carry out tests.
Each failing was an “individual act of incompetence,” Mr O’Sullivan said. The shivers Ms Hickey was experiencing were indicative of a systemic infection, not the urinary tract infection he diagnosed.
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“To jump to that conclusion and form that impression in the absence of taking a history and carrying out investigations displays a very worrying lack of clinical judgment.”
Simon Mills, for Dr Sharif, said there was no evidence that Ms Hickey’s outcome was made worse by what happened at the appointment with his client.
He said no question of “recidivism” arose in relation the 2011 finding against Dr Sharif because there was no question about the quality of the examination he carried out on the patient in this case. What was at issue was the location where the examination was performed.
Mr Mills said his client wrote an apology to Ms Hickey in January 2015 but this was not communicated to her by GP Now until a month later, and it was this lack of response by the practice that led to Ms Hickey’s husband making a complaint to the Medical Council.
Pleading for mitigation, Mr Mills said it would be disproportionate for the council to take any action that would affect his client’s professional registration. It would also be an error in principle to take into account the previous inquiry as evidence of recidivism.
The fitness to practise committee has retired to consider its verdict. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/cork-based-gp-accused-of-multiple-acts-of-incompetence-1.2772946?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d3f4fc02e82e273e9c11cef6519b58415aa3e2b0f593941320627611086f4d3f.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T00:52:21 | null | 2016-08-31T01:00:00 | Injury-hit province also seeking Craig Gilroy, Stuart Olding for Dragons opener on Friday | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Frugby%2Fpro12%2Fulster-call-on-sean-reidy-to-fill-openside-flanker-gap-1.2773341%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773335.1472575665!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Ulster call on Sean Reidy to fill openside flanker gap | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Ulster are hoping to have Ireland internationals Craig Gilroy, Stuart Olding and Sean Reidy involved in Friday’s match day squad for their Guinness Pro12 opener at home to the Dragons.
All three toured, and got game time, with Ireland in June’s losing series to South Africa but Ulster director of Rugby Les Kiss is optimistic that the players will be released early to boost Ulster’s already injury-hit squad.
Reidy’s involvement will be particularly sought after in the wake of Ulster’s current predicament at openside flanker as neither Chris Henry nor new signing Marcell Coetzee are fit, with the former still a few weeks away after undergoing shoulder surgery in the off-season, while the South African’s medial collateral ligamen injury means he will not be seen until January.
“I’ve just got to finalise one conversation,” Kiss said yesterday, “and, you know, the process to negotiate this [the players’ release] has been ongoing for the last number of weeks.
“I would hope we have three available though whether they all start I’m not sure yet.”
First cap
A surprise call-up for the Ireland tour, Reidy won his first cap off the bench late on in the second Test defeat and his ability to cover openside flanker could see the 27-year-old involved from the off against the Dragons while Gilroy and Olding will bring extra cutting edge to Ulster’s already formidable resources in the backline.
Also on the injury front, Kiss was hopeful that Ruan Pienaar might have recovered from his elbow issue to be available for the first PRO12 game after missing out on last Friday’s friendly defeat of a pretty much full-strength Northampton Saints.
Louis Ludik, though, was a casualty from that Saints hit-out after suffering damage to his hand and, though Kiss was upbeat about the South African’s recovery, it is unclear if the utility back will be in the match-day squad for Friday.
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Definitely missing for an unspecified period of time are tighthead props Wiehahn Herbst and Ricky Lutton as well as Tommy Bowe, Dan Tuohy, and utility back Peter Nelson.
“Last year when we played the Dragons I think we only beat them by an aggregate of about six points in our two games,” Kiss warned ahead of what would appear to be a fairly straightforward home opener. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/pro12/ulster-call-on-sean-reidy-to-fill-openside-flanker-gap-1.2773341?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/a23282ce15bbeceb8095525abff4d429d01a909dc78ec68a6a6262271531679d.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T04:52:04 | null | 2016-08-30T05:45:00 | Breaking the ice that threatens the doctor-patient relationship | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhealth-family%2Fhave-you-ever-been-ice-d-by-your-doctor-1.2766927%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2764773.1472227427!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Have you ever been ‘Ice’d’ by your doctor? | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | ‘I never asked to be Ice’d” was the headline over a recent British Medical Journal article, written by the journal’s patient editor. Intrigued, my initial reaction was to wonder how had such violent Mafia terminology entered the lexicon of medical communication?
Rosamund Snow writes about a friend who, after a recent visit to her GP, asked “Don’t you hate it when [doctors] ask you what you think is wrong?” The friend was sorely tempted to reply, “Why don’t you know? You’re the bloody doctor.”
Snow subsequently learned that her friend had been “Ice’d”. An acronym for Ideas, Concerns and Expectations, Ice is taught in medical school as a communications tool to help discover what a patient may be really worrying about so doctors can deal with those concerns.
Communication skills
Stung by criticism of abrupt, one- sided and doctor-centred consultations, medical schools upped their game in teaching communication skills. They encourage doctors to ask questions such as: “Tell me about what you think is causing it?” and “What were you hoping we might do for this?”
In fairness these techniques come from a desire to create more balanced consultations; an effort by doctors to practise holistically rather than reduce their patients to a crop of symptoms.
Of course, the real impact of questions such as these depends on how they sound and, most importantly, how they make the patient feel. Spoken mechanically, as if following a computerised checklist, Ice is bound to strike a raw nerve – as it did for Snow’s friend.
She reserves her sharpest criticism for one training website which suggests asking patients about their “darkest moments”, or “what are your worst fears?” How can that possibly end well, she asks?
Most doctors who responded to the article agreed with the author. “The Ice questions are a template to help those who are not good with spontaneous communication to get started, they are not the end, but the launch pad to, over a period of time, understanding the patient’s expectations, fears, and worries,” said one family practitioner.
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Another suggested avoiding the formulaic questioning of patients: It’s best for the doctor to share their thoughts as they go along; knowing why the doctor asks a particular question will tend to elicit a more helpful answer.
And while it is vital for every doctor to find their own voice and phraseology to make questions sound natural, approaches such as the following are less likely to get patients’ backs up: “That sounds worrying for you – can you tell me a bit more as to why it worries you so much?” or “I guess that you’ve had some thoughts about what could be done for your problem. Would you like to tell me a bit more?”
Primary focus
Reflecting on a subsequent consultation with a doctor who was easy to talk to, Snow says that instead of probing her feelings with Ice-based questions, “her primary focus was answering the questions I had asked, so I felt she was listening, and that we were working together . . . She shared her thoughts as we went along, so we could discuss them, rather than putting me on the spot – and that made it much easier for me to share my thoughts and worries with her, too.
“It didn’t take long. I had already started to trust her in the first 15 seconds.”
Snow concludes by observing that she now understands why doctors Ice her. “But an acronym can’t build rapport; it’s just another checklist. And it feels like it, on the receiving end.”
And in my opinion it’s yet another example of why “tick-box” medicine will never work.
So next time you feel uncomfortable in a consultation, instead of exclaiming “Well, you’re the bloody docto,” you could smile pleasantly and ask “Am I being Ice’d?” You never know – it could break the ice that threatens to sink your doctor- patient relationship. mhouston@irishtimes.com @muirishouston | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/have-you-ever-been-ice-d-by-your-doctor-1.2766927?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/48ff4df86fc0b5bb0bc62b8b830a1d9514cdfdcb20817410da848b46ed2de40e.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T04:48:37 | null | 2016-08-29T05:35:00 | Vayu report shows 24 per cent of electricity demand supplied through wind in August | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fenergy-and-resources%2Firish-wholesale-gas-prices-down-35-year-on-year-1.2770964.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770962.1472388425!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Irish wholesale gas prices down 35% year on year | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Irish wholesale gas prices have fallen 35 per cent since this time last year, according to the latest energy market report from Vayu Energy.
Vayu, which supplies gas to 20 per cent of Ireland’s industrial and commercial market, said the drop in prices was due strong supplies, decreased demand and falling oil prices.
The company, which is backed by mining giant Glencore, also highlighted that gas prices were down 10 per cent on a monthly basis as August is traditionally a period of low demand.
Sterling performing poorly
“Abundant supply continues to be the main driver of gas prices for delivery next month, and there may be a further downside to winter prices as sterling continues to perform poorly against the euro, which is good news for euro-backed traders,” Vayu senior energy analyst Gillian Lawler said.
“Updated storage figures show European stocks are extremely healthy,” she said, pointing to a recent update from Centrica, which houses 70 per cent of the UK’s storage capacity.
However, she noted liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries have been disappointing as producers have engaged in competitive tactics to bolster global prices.
Cargos have been diverted from Europe to keep prices elevated to avoid the LNG market crashing altogether, Ms Lawler said.
Qatar has been sending cargos below market value to Japan and India, and the US is sending cargos to non-European markets.
It looks like 16 per cent of global LNG production will have come to Europe by the end of 2016, below some forecasts, she added.
Wind energy
Vayu’s report also highlighted that wind energy accounted for 24 per cent of electricity generation in August.
Wind generation reached a peak of 2,313 megawatts on August 3rd, meaning it had the potential to meet more than 52 per cent of total electricity demand on the island of Ireland at that time.
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Some 18,917 gigawatts of wind energy have been generated since the start of the year, representing 21 per cent of total electricity demand on the island of Ireland during this period.
Ireland’s 2020 renewable energy targets commit the State to sourcing 40 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, such as wind. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/irish-wholesale-gas-prices-down-35-year-on-year-1.2770964 | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/3436e4e60c602f69ddbb44c4331396ebb003d660caf5b3767b0fbee6182f8172.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T00:51:54 | null | 2016-08-29T01:00:00 | Analysis will lead to recommendations on salary rises for State employees | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fireland%2Firish-news%2Funions-clash-over-confidentiality-of-public-service-pay-review-1.2771414%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771406.1472425530!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Unions clash over confidentiality of public service pay review | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The public may never learn the details of the research that will lead to recommendations on pay rises for State employees drawn up by the new Public Service Pay Commission, trade unions have indicated.
In a submission on the role and methodology of the planned body, public service unions said it was essential that the commission undertake research on earnings in the private sector before coming to its conclusions on public pay recommendations.
However, the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) warned that information on private sector earnings was only likely to be provided on the basis of confidentiality.
“This will, undoubtedly, generate difficulties in terms of transparency that may have to be an unintended consequence of the need to ensure accuracy and fairness,” it said.
“The priority ought to be to make fair comparisons with the various grades/categories in the public service.
“Under no circumstances could it be deemed acceptable for comparison to be made with the deplorable practices in some parts of the private sector.”
However, the employers’ group Ibec, in its submission, said all research analysis undertaken should be made publicly available.
One of the main controversies around the public service benchmarking exercise in the early 2000s was that it never published research findings to support its recommendations for pay increases.
Like-for-like
In their submission to the Government on the new pay commission, public service trade unions said it was vital that public servants’ pay was not compared to some crude average of all pay in the private sector but rather that comparisons were made on a true “like-for-like” basis.
The unions said it would be “inconceivable” for the new commission to make a discount on pay to take account of job security in comparison with the private sector.
They maintained that the recent economic crisis had shown that a large number of public service staff on temporary and fixed-term contracts “did not enjoy any security of tenure and the significant numbers involved highlight the fact that tenure is a considerably less significant factor in any external comparison than it was in the past”.
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Pension changes
Unions also argued that when comparing pensions in the public and private sectors, the commission would need to have regard “to the huge changes” in the public service superannuation arrangements in recent years.
“In particular, all staff appointed since 2004 have a raised retirement age of 65 years. Staff appointed since 2013 are part of a career average scheme, rather than final salary scheme, with an effective minimum retirement age of 68.
“A 12 per cent discount, as applied by the 2007 benchmarking body, is excessive in light of these figures.”
Ibec said the new commission should be given the flexibility by Government to “prioritise adjusting pay rates in particular areas of the public sector where skill shortages are leading to severe recruitment and retention problems”.
“Money spent on across- the-board pay awards is money that is not going on recruiting new staff, retention of specific skills within the public sector or on much-needed public investment.
“ It is crucial that all decisions are informed by the broad needs of the country.”
Ibec said an effective mechanism to assess the market value of jobs in the public service would be to increase external recruitment.
It said membership of the new commission should be balanced between sectoral interests and private sector expertise, and that the chairperson should be recruited from abroad.
Ibec also argued that focus by the commission on pay alone would represent “a missed opportunity”.
“Quite simply, pay does not equal improved effectiveness. It is important that the new public sector pay agreement delivers the necessary and very significant transformation of work practices that are still required.” | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/unions-clash-over-confidentiality-of-public-service-pay-review-1.2771414?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/93774744f463b2ac0680f26162c808b9eeb7c95291bf9a59fd708c4bc0ce1ff7.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T06:50:41 | null | 2016-08-27T06:00:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhomes-and-property%2Fgardens%2Fit-s-showtime-in-the-garden-1.2767213%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2767210.1472058485!/image/image.jpg | en | null | It’s showtime in the garden | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Lines of neatly labelled vases filled with picture-perfect gladioli, roses and dahlias, vegetables arranged like Dutch still lifes, polished jars of homemade pickles, jams, honey and chutneys . . . there are surely few things in the world of Irish gardening more nostalgia- (and envy-) inducing than a traditional horticultural show.
Held in village halls around the country and attracting some of the best and most competitive growers, these are the events where the smallest blemish on a vegetable, fruit or flower is enough to lose its owner a prize.
It’s on their show benches that you’ll see giant marrows, perfect trusses of glossy tomatoes, and cauliflowers with curds of snow-white perfection, all grown by Irish gardeners. Even just the smell of one of their colourful displays – typically a heady blend of floral and vegetable notes, combined with a sweet whiff of honey and fruit – is enough to conjure up images of a gentler age.
One of the country’s most seasoned participants when it comes to such shows is the north Dublin-based gardener John Warren, whose competitive year kicks off in late May and continues until late September in a whirl of horticultural events.
In an average year, he takes part in 15-16 different Irish horticultural shows, skilfully timing the propagation of each exhibit (he also grows vegetables) so that they’re in peak condition when required. Ireland’s reigning sweet-pea champion, he won the title for the fourth year in a row this summer at the Rush Horticultural Show.
Another well-known competitor, also based in north Co Dublin (an area with a long tradition of competitive growers), is Christopher White, the Irish gardener famed for his extravagantly beautiful dahlias.
White, who has won several medals at the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show for his floral displays, has got the knack of growing and exhibiting these sumptuous, late summer blooms down to a carefully-timed art.
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So protective is he of his flowers that they travel to shows in cages ingeniously constructed out of milk crates and clothes pegs. This way, not even a single petal runs the risk of being bruised.
But even John Warren and Christopher White’s long involvement in the art of competitive growing can’t match that of the Laois-based nonagenarian Harold Lawlor, who’s been exhibiting and judging at these traditional shows since he was a schoolboy.
Lawlor has passed his love of competitive growing on to his son Martin and grandson Colin, who also regularly participate in shows around the country.
But while Warren, White and the Lawlor family all belong to a tradition that harks back to the Victorian era, some say the skill required to grow and stage these exhibits is a dying art.
Certainly, it’s true that the numbers of gardeners competing isn’t what it used to be. When Warren first started exhibiting some 40 years ago, for example, each competitive class attracted something between 15-20 exhibitors. “Now you’d be lucky to get something like four-five.”
That said, there are some small but definite signs of a revival. An example is the increasing number of Irish gardeners growing sweet-pea flowers for competitive exhibit- a result, says Warren, of a recent initiative instigated by the late expert Irish grower, John Markham, who persuaded the country’s most seasoned exhibitors to mentor a younger generation of amateur enthusiasts. “The results are really impressive.”
Another hopeful sign is the welcome revival of the Totally Terrific Tomato Festival, an Irish horticultural show dedicated to one of the quintessential fruits of summer.
After a hiatus of a few years, it’s now found a new home in Killruddery House in Co Wicklow; this year’s event, which takes place at the beginning of next month, includes a talk on the history of tomato cultivation by Matthew Jebb, director of the National Botanic Gardens, as well as a mouth-watering exhibit of many rare and unusual varieties grown by expert Irish kitchen gardeners including Nicky Kyle, Madeline McKeever and Tanguy de Toulgoët.
Yet another recent addition to the calendar is the Phoenix Park Honey Show, also being held next month. Beekeeping and gardening naturally go hand in hand; I found last year’s event absolutely fascinating in terms of how discovering more about how the colour and flavour of honey is so heavily influenced by the species of flowers from which the bees have been feeding.
My advice? Do, if you get a chance, try to pay some of these traditional shows a visit over the coming weeks.
Not only are they a wonderfully atmospheric distillation of horticultural skill, but they’re also a fantastic opportunity to pick the brains of some of the country’s greatest gardeners. See garden.ie for a comprehensive listing of the different shows taking place around the country
This week in the garden
Disbud dahlias If you want your dahlia plants to produce large flowers with long stems suitable for cutting, then it’s important to regularly disbud them. To do this, examine the tips of the plant’s stems for young flower buds, which typically appear in a cluster of three. Using your finger and thumb, gently pinch out the two smaller buds so just the largest central bud remains.
Lop lavender Late August is an excellent time to prune English lavender, the aromatic, silver-leafed plant . To do this, use a very sharp shears to cut away the faded flowers and about 5cm of the current year’s growth. This will keep the plant nicely bushy and prevent it from becoming too woody.
Vent the glasshouse Watch out for signs of botryrtis, a common fungal disease that often appears in glasshouse/ polytunnel grown plants at this time of year, causing a fuzzy grey mould to appear on plants. Reduce the risk by making sure your glasshouse/ polytunnel is kept well ventilated, only watering/ pruning in the morning, and being extra vigilant when it comes to good garden hygiene by regularly removing dead or damaged leaves/ flowers/fruit.
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Dates for your diary
‘Dahlia Celebration’ continues until the end of August at June Blake’s garden, Blessington, Co Wicklow. There will be a talk by Blake on growing dahlias from seed on Sunday August 28th at 2pm; see juneblake.ie
Saturday, September 3rd (2.30-4.30pm) , at St Nessan’s Community School, Moyclare Road, off Warrenhouse Road, Baldoyle, Dublin 13. Howth & Sutton Horticultural Society’s Autumn Show, entries welcome; see hshs.ie
Sunday, September 4th ‘The Totally Terrific Tomato Festival’ takes place in Killruddery House, Co Wicklow, entries very welcome; see killruddery.com
Sunday, September 4th The annual Balbriggan Horticultural Show takes place in Balbriggan Community College, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, and will include a wide range of competitive exhibits | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/gardens/it-s-showtime-in-the-garden-1.2767213?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/859382ab1900c9db19bbd48f738dc6776078666312f656d54d7a0b7b2ae5b21c.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T16:48:37 | null | 2016-08-28T17:00:00 | Q&A: Dominic Coyle | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fpersonal-finance%2Fabuse-of-dwelling-house-relief-may-see-changes-to-inheritance-tax-code-1.2763509.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2763508.1472228500!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Abuse of dwelling house relief may see changes to inheritance tax code | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | I was wondering what you think is coming up in the next budget? At present a house is tax free if you’ve inherited it while living in it for a few years, but I read that this is being reviewed. I’d just like your take on this.
Mr J.McJ, email
Answer:
At this remove, it is hard to have any clear sense of what will be in the budget in October, although there has been some fairly clear signalling of an intention to address/reduce the impact of the universal social charge. Ironic really, as it operates more cleanly and transparently than a lot of our tax system.
In any case, the two driving forces shaping the budget will be, first, the Government’s determination to be seen to share some of the benefits of the recovery – especially after the last election showed the presumption of a rising tide lifting all boats was not shared by the electorate. This might be mitigated somewhat by the second influence – the impact of the UK Brexit vote on the Irish economy and the exchequer.
One of the things that has been brought into the mix is the relief you’re talking about – dwelling house relief. I certainly did see some venting in certain media channels on the subject, much of it very exaggerated.
However, it is true to say that the number of families availing of the relief has jumped sharply, and there are concerns in Revenue circles that it is being abused – which it most likely is.
As usual, eagle-eyed tax specialists have been advising their often wealthy clients of the possibility of providing a home for children without any tax implications on. They have been surprisingly open on the subject of such “tax planning”.
Revenue has been clamping down recently on the practice of wealthy parents financially supporting the lifestyles of their adult children. Most recently in the 2014 Finance Act, it tightened up the rules for such support under section 82 of the Capital Acquisitions Tax Act 2003, covering the “support, maintenance and education” of children. The suspicion is that support no longer available under section 82 is now being redirected to dwelling house relief.
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If they have strong grounds to suspect the tax exemption on dwelling houses is being similarly abused, I would expect them to push hard for reform.
Still, the relief is a valuable element of social policy to ensure that family members living with, and often caring for, elderly parents are not effectively forced into homelessness by inheritance tax charges on the death of those parents which forces them to sell the only home they know.
I think, as with the review of section 82, any reform will look to retain the relief for those people who have been genuinely living in the family home for the three years prior to any inheritance with an aged or infirm parent and who subsequently remain in the home (or replacement accommodation) for six years thereafter.
Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or email dcoyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/personal-finance/abuse-of-dwelling-house-relief-may-see-changes-to-inheritance-tax-code-1.2763509 | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ffb1c8b1a574d742c7607e8a4f0c607e4935213e0f9ce650a579d93ac4813eb9.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T00:52:18 | null | 2016-08-31T01:00:00 | Unclear leadership and Kyrgyzstan bombing add to regional instability fuelled by terror threat | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fasia-pacific%2Fdictator-s-stroke-plunges-uzbekistan-into-uncertainty-1.2773443%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773442.1472580128!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Dictator’s stroke plunges Uzbekistan into uncertainty | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Since emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago, central Asian states have rarely, if ever, marked their sovereignty amid such uncertainty.
For the last 24 years, the independence day celebrations of Uzbekistan’s 30 million people have been led by Islam Karimov, who seamlessly became president after leading the republic’s ruling communist party from 1989-1991.
Officially, the dictator Karimov (78) is now in hospital recovering from a stroke suffered last weekend; but some journalists, citing reliable sources inside the tightly controlled Uzbek state, say he is dead and succession plans are secretly being made.
Whatever his condition, he will surely not attend Thursday’s Uzbek independence day celebrations, where he has customarily performed a traditional dance and reassured his people that all would be well while he was in power.
In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, plans for Wednesday’s independence day events there were shaken today by a suicide car bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in the capital, Bishkek, which killed the driver and injured three embassy workers.
China’s foreign ministry called the bombing a “serious terrorist attack” and pledged that Beijing would “resolutely strike against all forms of terrorism”, comments which suggest the attack would be attributed to Islamist militants or Muslim Uighurs who oppose Beijing’s rule.
Across ex-Soviet central Asia, an oil- and gas-rich region wedged between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia, leaders justify appalling human rights records by citing the need to crush groups linked to Islamic State and the Taliban.
Egregious abuses
There is a real threat – thousands of central Asians are believed to have joined those groups and their allies – but it is also a pretext for egregious abuses of citizens’ rights and democracy, which in turn have fuelled extremism.
In Karimov’s stroke and the Kyrgyzstan bombing, two key questions for central Asia and world powers crystallise: what happens when the region’s veteran autocrats die, and can their highly personalised and deeply corrupt power structures tackle the threat of radical Islam? Like Karimov, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled since 1991; in Tajikistan, Imomali Rakhmon has held power since 1992; Kyrgyzstan has seen much more political change, some peaceful, some violent; and Turkmenistan’s two post-Soviet leaders have maintained bizarre and repressive personality cults.
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All the so-called Stans have sought, to different degrees, to play off the rivalry of the US, Russia and China in a region of natural wealth and strategic importance, where major powers have been competing since the “Great Game” of the 19th century.
Geopolitical significance
The US used airbases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for its post-9/11 campaign in Afghanistan, and Karimov has continued to use his country’s geopolitical significance as a shield against criticism of his regime’s abuses.
Rights groups say Karimov’s security services operate a reign of terror and are guilty of everything from boiling detainees alive to massacring hundreds of demonstrators in 2005 in the city of Andijan, near the border with Kyrgyzstan.
Karimov’s officials claimed the Andizhan violence was triggered by Islamist extremists, and neither the bloodshed nor the subsequent cover-up prompted Washington to cut its ties – Uzbekistan still receives US aid, and US secretary of state John Kerry (and Russian president Vladimir Putin) have visited in the past year.
Taliban and Islamic State
Uzbekistan, the most populous state in ex-Soviet Asia, gave birth to its most prominent radical group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has fought alongside the Taliban and Islamic State since its formation in the 1990s.
Kyrgyz officials claim that hundreds of the country’s citizens are fighting for Islamic State, also known as Isis, in Iraq and Syria, and Kazakhstan has accused Islamist radicals of attacks on its territory, including a shooting last month that killed three police officers and two civilians.
In Tajikistan, Rakhmon used Russian support to crush Islamist guerrillas in a 1992-1997 civil war, and has imposed tough laws in recent years to combat what he calls the rising danger of radicalisation.
His officials claim that more than 1,000 Tajiks have joined Islamic State, foremost among them Gulmurod Khalimov, the US-trained former commander of Tajikistan’s elite police force; militants allegedly linked to Islamic State were also accused of planning to assassinate Rakhmon last year.
How great a threat Islamic State represents to the region is still unclear; how Uzbekistan and its neighbours will cope without Karimov may become apparent very soon. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/dictator-s-stroke-plunges-uzbekistan-into-uncertainty-1.2773443?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/e56faf68e4883699f4811ff077700229ae0124f1b51b576fa1d82c6dd2e4e2a7.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T20:51:18 | null | 2016-08-28T21:14:00 | Support for acting prime minister not enough to end eight-month stalemate | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fspain-s-ciudadanos-agrees-to-back-mariano-rajoy-in-confidence-vote-1.2771310%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771308.1472415248!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Spain’s Ciudadanos agrees to back Mariano Rajoy in confidence vote | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Spain’s liberal newcomer party Ciudadanos (“Citizens”) has agreed to back acting prime minister Mariano Rajoy in a confidence vote, but the support is not enough to end an eight-month political stalemate.
Mr Rajoy’s centre-right People’s Party (PP) won most votes in two inconclusive general elections in December and June but it fell well short of a majority, leading to months of fruitless political negotiations to form a coalition.
Ciudadanos, which came fourth in both elections, said yesterday it would add its 32 parliamentary seats to Mr Rajoy’s 137 in Wednesday’s vote, but this still falls short of the 176 needed for an absolute majority. The PP is also expected to get the backing of the small conservative Canary Islands party Canarian Coalition, which will bring the support to 170 seats.
“We have managed to reach agreement amongst 170 seats so that Spain can have a government. It’s a large figure but it’s not enough,” Mr Rajoy told a news conference where he called on other parties to end the deadlock.
Mr Rajoy needs the abstention of the opposition Socialists to form a government, but they have steadfastly refused to smooth the way for an administration led by their main rivals.
To secure its backing, Ciudadanos demanded the PP agree to a list of conditions including the implementation of anti-corruption measures and an electoral reform to end discrimination in the voting system against smaller parties.
If Mr Rajoy loses Wednesday’s vote, a second vote will take place on Friday where a simple majority will suffice to allow him to form a government.
If he loses this second vote it would trigger a two-month window to form a government at the end of which another election would have to be called. – (Reuters) | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/spain-s-ciudadanos-agrees-to-back-mariano-rajoy-in-confidence-vote-1.2771310?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/10428b6e414216f40012828857aae81929873f1be9ba2d1cae5a600d97338aaf.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T00:51:44 | null | 2016-08-29T01:00:00 | Tech giant may have to pay millions to State if EU decides its tax arrangements were illegal | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fireland%2Firish-news%2Fapple-could-face-major-irish-tax-bill-after-eu-ruling-1.2771321%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771320.1472416655!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Apple could face major Irish tax bill after EU ruling | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | The Revenue Commissioners will be required to raise a tax assessment on Apple in the coming months when the EU rules that the technology giant’s tax arrangements in Ireland were illegal under state aid rules, as is expected in the coming days.
The Apple tax bill – expected to amount to hundreds of millions of euro – is not likely to be transferred to the State immediately, however.
Instead, it may be held in an escrow account pending appeals of the EU’s decision by Apple and the Irish Government. Ministers will continue to insist Ireland did not offer Apple a special deal.
Even if the appeals are ultimately lost and the cash reverts to the Irish State, it will not be used for budget spending or investment, according to sources who have been briefed on the issue.
Windfall gain
Instead, it will be treated as a windfall gain and the Government will be required to use it to pay down the national debt.
“At no point will we have extra billions to spend on schools and hospitals,” one Minister said.
The European Commission is expected to make public in the coming days – perhaps as early as tomorrow or Wednesday – a ruling that Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland constituted illegal state aid.
Officials and Ministers in Dublin are preparing for the EU’s decision and Government Buildings circulated a memo to Ministers over the weekend stressing that Ireland would contest the expected findings. Apple is also certain to appeal the European Commission’s ruling.
According to persons familiar with the briefing, the commission is expected to require the Revenue Commissioners to pursue Apple for back taxes, and is also likely to estimate a figure for the tax bill, though the exact amount will be a matter for the Irish authorities to be calculated using a formula suggested by the commission.
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Worst-case scenario
Estimates for Apple’s likely tax bill have varied from billions of euro to hundreds of millions but sources said yesterday that the Government has no indication of the amount involved, and will await the detail of the commission’s ruling.
When the initial negative finding was made, investment bank JP Morgan warned that – in a worse-case scenario for Apple – the bill could amount to some €19 billion.
All the indications, however, are that the final figure will be significantly lower. One Minister speculated that the bill would not be much more than €100 million.
The ruling has been expected for months but, at a meeting in July, the European commissioner for competition Margrethe Vestager, from Denmark, told Minister for Finance Michael Noonan that she expected to formally deliver the finding in September or October.
Sources say, however, that the decision is “ready to go” and Ministers are expecting the decision to be announced in the coming days, or next week at the latest.
It will come almost two years after the initial preliminary finding that illegal state aid was given to Apple by the Irish Government.
The commission investigation relates to two rulings given to Apple in 1991 and 2007. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/apple-could-face-major-irish-tax-bill-after-eu-ruling-1.2771321?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/55d194d3b3db2705d7977aac124ccdabf52df804f6971e118dd09db2d5384327.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T06:52:03 | null | 2016-08-30T05:45:00 | Mayo Renewable Power’s difficulties are problems that could affect many businesses | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fenergy-and-resources%2Fbanks-lacking-expertise-in-lending-to-utilities-1.2772286%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772353.1472506139!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Banks lacking expertise in lending to utilities | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | In the background to the difficulties that Mayo Renewable Power has encountered with finance are problems that could affect many other Irish businesses.
The projects’s US backer, Weichert Enterprises, has provided €90 million of the €180 million required, €10 million more than it originally committed. However, a number of factors conspired to ensure that its three lenders, AIB, Ulster and British bank, Barclays, did not contribute any of the €118 million that they originally signed up to provide.
Barclays pulled out earlier this summer because of the uncertainty surrounding the UK vote to leave the EU. All three banks had to sign off on the company’s decision to change the supplier of a boiler, a key component for its proposed electricity generator in Mayo, and this delayed funding. A lawsuit in the US further compounded its problems.
Commentators say that one of the consequences of the financial crash and subsequent downsizing of the banks eight years ago was the loss of expertise needed to lend to projects such as the renewable power plant that the company is building.
Lending to utilities is a specialised business, normally done by teams within each bank that have built up expertise over a period. As the Irish lenders effectively shut up shop in the closing months of 2007, those teams left, taking their expertise with them.
The banks are only now rebuilding those teams, meaning that big ticket projects, with the potential to deliver real wealth and jobs to the country, could face delays getting finance here, or will have to look abroad.
The consequence of their having to go abroad is, of course, that some of the wealth they create will end up gracing someone else’s balance sheet, instead of being recycled back into the Irish economy, where it belongs. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/banks-lacking-expertise-in-lending-to-utilities-1.2772286?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/d726300b39b4d4fd295d8be9722c49d7a1f8b96e26e5b71ae191b1d4c9f95e6c.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T10:49:19 | null | 2016-08-31T10:50:00 | Consumer prices rose 0.2 per cent in August, less than anticipated | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Feuro-area-inflation-fails-to-accelerate-in-wake-of-brexit-uncertainty-1.2774123.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774122.1472637004!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Euro area inflation fails to accelerate in wake of Brexit uncertainty | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Euro area inflation failed to accelerate in August, adding to signs that the euro area’s economic outlook deteriorated ahead of a European Central Bank meeting next week.
Consumer prices rose 0.2 per cent in August from a year earlier, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on Wednesday.
The medium estimate in a Bloomberg survey was for an increase of 0.3 per cent.Two months after the UK’s Brexit vote, the 19-state economy is beginning to show signs of faltering, suggesting that more stimulus may be warranted.
Business and consumer sentiment declined, and executives are warning that orders may suffer from political uncertainty.
The International Monetary Fund has already cut its forecast for euro-area growth next year, and the European Central Bank will release new projections after its meeting next week.
ECB president Mario Draghi “is failing to get inflation up to 2 per cent,” Michael Spies, a strategist at Citigroup in Frankfurt said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “He thinks about what he still can do in terms of quantitative easing and I think that’s the way he’s going to operate - there will probably be more QE and longer QE.”
Policy makers have already deployed a raft of unconventional stimulus that includes large-scale asset purchases, negative interest rates and long-term loans that see banks getting paid for extending credit to companies and households. Still,
inflation remains far below the ECB’s goal of just under 2 per cent, a level it hasn’t reached since early 2013.The Frankfurt-based institution currently predicts price growth will accelerate to 1.6 per cent in 2018.Core inflation slowed to 0.8 per cent in August from 0.9 per cent a month earlier, Eurostat said.
German inflation unexpectedly decelerated to 0.3 per cent, while consumer prices extended their decline in Spain.Euro-area unemployment remained unchanged at 10.1 per cent, according to a separate release.
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The inflation report comes one day after a European Commission survey showed economic confidence declined across most countries and most sectors in a delayed reaction to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. The data may reopen the debate about more stimulus at the ECB’s September 8th meeting, after the economy’s relative resilience over the summer months led economists including those at JPMorgan Chase and Danske to push back projections for further easing.
Bloomberg | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/euro-area-inflation-fails-to-accelerate-in-wake-of-brexit-uncertainty-1.2774123 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/cf63e7f74a7a6565f9e4d3f3906b9da48b908e9d9b841c440519399b0ed2c0ae.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:09:37 | null | 2016-08-26T12:00:11 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Ffood-and-drink%2Frecipes%2Fbeer-can-chicken-with-nam-jim-sauce-1.2768391%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2768389.1472139311!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Beer can chicken with Nam Jim Sauce | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Beer can chicken with Nam Jim Sauce
Serves: 4
Cooking Time: 90 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: Fusion
Ingredients Serves four
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 x 1.2kg chicken
Sea salt and ground black pepper
1 large can of either beer or cider
For the nam jim sauce:
1 lime
75ml fish sauce
2 tbsp caster sugar
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 green chillies, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
Small handful coriander roughly chopped
Method
It might be easily dismissed as a crude method for cooking chicken, but plopping the bird on an open beer can results in seriously tender chicken, with crispy skin all over.
When the chicken is this good, serve it with a salty, sweet and sour Thai dressing and it needs nothing else. The nam jim dressing, a classic element of Thai cuisine, can be made up to five days in advance and it works wonderfully with meat, vegetables and fish. For the dressing, whisk together the lime, fish sauce and caster sugar. Stir through the garlic, chilli and coriander.
Rub the oil all over the bird and season with a generous pinch of sea salt and ground black pepper, along with a third of the nam jim sauce.
Open the can of the booze and sit the bird on top. It should now be upright, standing to attention.
Stand the chicken on a hot barbecue at 200 degrees Celsius, with the lid down, for about 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until cooked all the way through.
Using a large pair of tongs, remove the bird from the barbecue and then remove the can from the bird and discard. Carve up the bird and serve, with the remaining dressing for dipping. | http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/recipes/beer-can-chicken-with-nam-jim-sauce-1.2768391?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/e95d1445aae608b1fbd8334458815eb57be263ab8a5b7a07a7e92842502411c3.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T14:49:32 | null | 2016-08-31T10:50:00 | Consumer prices rose only 0.2 per cent in August as business confidence declines | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Feuro-zone-inflation-fails-to-speed-up-in-wake-of-brexit-vote-1.2774123.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2774122.1472654583!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Euro zone inflation fails to speed up in wake of Brexit vote | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Inflation in the euro zone failed to accelerate in August, adding to signs that the euro area’s economic outlook deteriorated ahead of a European Central Bank meeting next week.
Consumer prices rose 0.2 per cent in August from a year earlier, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on Wednesday.
The medium estimate in a Bloomberg survey was for an increase of 0.3 per cent.Two months after the UK’s Brexit vote, the 19-state euro zone is beginning to show signs of faltering, suggesting that more stimulus may be warranted.
Business and consumer sentiment declined, and executives are warning that orders may suffer from political uncertainty.
The International Monetary Fund has already cut its forecast for euro zone growth next year, and the European Central Bank will release new projections after its meeting next week.
More QE
ECB president Mario Draghi “is failing to get inflation up to 2 per cent,” Michael Spies, a strategist at Citigroup in Frankfurt said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “He thinks about what he still can do in terms of quantitative easing, and I think that’s the way he’s going to operate – there will probably be more QE and longer QE.”
Policymakers have already deployed a raft of unconventional stimuli, including large-scale asset purchases, negative interest rates and long-term loans that see banks getting paid for extending credit to companies and households. Still, inflation remains far below the ECB’s goal of just under 2 per cent, a level it hasn’t reached since early 2013.
The Frankfurt-based bank currently predicts price growth will accelerate to 1.6 per cent in 2018.Core inflation slowed to 0.8 per cent in August from 0.9 per cent a month earlier, Eurostat said.
German inflation unexpectedly decelerated to 0.3 per cent, while consumer prices extended their decline in Spain. Euro zone unemployment remained unchanged at 10.1 per cent, according to a separate release.
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Delayed reaction
The inflation report comes one day after a European Commission survey showed that economic confidence declined across most countries and most sectors in a delayed reaction to Britain’s vote to leave the EU.
The data may reopen the debate about more stimulus at the ECB’s September 8th meeting, after the economy’s relative resilience over the summer months led economists, including those at JPMorgan Chase and Danske, to push back projections for further easing.
– (Bloomberg) | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/euro-zone-inflation-fails-to-speed-up-in-wake-of-brexit-vote-1.2774123 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/ebbcd73433ed59b8f612f2678a5abf76fb714e9c7d1215cc5be4688d3404619f.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T00:49:12 | null | 2016-08-31T00:21:00 | Independents undecided over whether to support Noonan’s plan to appeal tax ruling | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fgovernment-faces-threat-of-split-after-eu-s-apple-ruling-1.2773654.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773651.1472594885!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Government faces threat of split after EU’s Apple ruling | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Independent Alliance Ministers were undecided last night on whether they would support the proposal from Minister for Finance Michael Noonan to appeal yesterday’s ruling from the European Commission which directed Apple to pay €13 billion in back taxes to the Irish State.
The Cabinet will meet this morning to discuss the ruling. Mr Noonan will seek formal approval for the decision to appeal the directive but Fine Gael Ministers have already said repeatedly that the decision will be appealed, a position also endorsed by the Taoiseach.
If the Independent Alliance Ministers do not agree to the appeal, it will place the future of the Coalition Government in immediate jeopardy, according to sources in Fine Gael.
Independent Alliance Ministers were in contact with each other last night following briefings with Department of Finance officials and with their own independent advisers. However, sources close to Independent Alliance Ministers said that they had not decided whether to agree to an appeal, and would not decide until they meet before Cabinet this morning.
Yesterday, the European Commission announced that Apple’s tax arrangements – which enabled it to channel profits earned in Europe and other markets outside the US through Ireland without paying tax on the bulk of them – constituted a form of illegal state aid to the firm. Consequently, the commission ruled, Apple must pay the State back taxes of €13 billion, plus interest – which by some estimates could add several billion euro.
The unexpectedly large sum calculated by the commission took many in political circles by surprise, including a number of the Independent Alliance members who had anticipated a sum of €6 billion-€7 billion following briefings from Mr Noonan and his officials on Monday.
It also precipitated a storm of criticism for Mr Noonan’s stated intention of appealing the ruling, with Sinn Féin and the People Before Profit-Anti Austerity Alliance group demanding that the State accept the money and begin to spend it.
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The Apple tax ruling The EC issued a ruling on August 30th in relation to the tax arrangements of Apple in Ireland, where it has its European HQ. The EC said Apple had been granted selective treatment by Ireland through two tax rulings in 1991 and 2007. The EC has ordered Ireland to recover up to €13 billion from the tech giant. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan indicated Ireland would appeal the decision "to defend the integrity of our tax system; to provide tax certainty to business; and to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign member state competence of taxation”. Q&A: Cliff Taylor answers the key questions I found this helpful Yes No
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett accused the “entire political establishment” of having “colluded with Apple in an act of economic treason to rob the public of billions of desperately needed cash for public housing and other cash starved public services.”
Public inquiry
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty also called for a public inquiry into Apple’s tax arrangements.
Department of Finance officials confirmed that once collected from Apple in the coming months, the €13 billion sum, plus interest, will be lodged in an escrow account pending the outcome of the appeals process, which could take several years.
Department of Finance officials and Ministers said that, even if Ireland loses the appeal and is ultimately paid the money, it will be required by EU rules to use it to pay down the national debt, rather than invest it in public services and infrastructure. However, this is disputed by Opposition TDs.
Apple issued a statement rejecting the findings and saying the company now found itself required to pay tax to a government which says no tax is owed.
The Government immediately began an aggressive campaign against the ruling. According to a briefing document obtained by The Irish Times, the Government believes it would be “irresponsible and extremely short-sighted to consider the European Commission decision as a windfall for the State.”
“Keeping the money would mean accepting the commission’s hugely damaging analysis which would mean, agreeing that Ireland provided illegal state aid; accepting the commission’s encroachment into sovereign tax rights; and creating huge uncertainty for business in Ireland,” the document states.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Noonan likened accepting the money to “eating the seed potatoes.”
The Government also accused the commission of encroaching into an area – taxation – where it has no powers.
However, announcing the ruling in Brussels, European commissioner for competition Margrette Vestager said that EU state aid rules applied to taxation as well as other areas of activity and were in place to protect EU taxpayers.
So-called head office
Ms Vestager said that Apple had allocated most of its profits to a so-called head office incorporated in Ireland but which existed only on paper.
“It has no employees, no premises and no real activities,” she said.
EU politicians in Brussels widely welcomed the European Commission’s decision. However, the reaction in the US was predictably more hostile, with White House spokesman Josh Learner confirming that the Obama administration had been contacted by Apple executives in the wake of the Brussels announcement.
The White House expressed concern too about the commission’s ruling saying that American taxpayers will ultimately foot the €13 billion tax bill imposed by the EU on Apple. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/government-faces-threat-of-split-after-eu-s-apple-ruling-1.2773654 | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/901b7f5b12441c287036ead3a1d06eb100ab0fc9a2ce6e81d124dca3f2425664.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:07:35 | null | 2016-08-26T12:17:00 | Saturday and Sunday will see long sunny spells and temperatures of up to 21 degrees | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fenvironment%2Fgot-the-back-to-school-blues-well-the-weekend-weather-looks-great-1.2769367%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769366.1472210205!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Got the back to school blues? Well the weekend weather looks great | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Good news: this weekend will be warm and dry with temperatures of up to 21 degrees forecast for Saturday and Sunday.
According to Met Éireann both days will see prolonged sunny spells with just the “the odd bit of rain” breaking through.
An unexpected fillup for those facing the back to school and work blues.
This sunny forecast marks a departure from what has been a rather damp July and August, even by Irish standards.
Those who took their holidays in May and June enjoyed warmer and drier months than the same months in previous years whereas July was wetter and colder and August is expected to follow suit.
On Saturday a significant crowd is expected at the Phoenix Park in Dublin for the annual Big Pink Run for Breast Cancer Ireland.
The positive forecast is good news for the 80,000 fans who will watch Dublin face Kerry in the GAA All-Ireland semi-final on Sunday.
Also on this weekend is the Charlie Chaplin Film Festival in Waterville, Co Kerry, featuring workshops, performances, exhibitions and screenings.
In east Galway the Monieva Fair takes place on Sunday. | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/got-the-back-to-school-blues-well-the-weekend-weather-looks-great-1.2769367?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/5e0812069f2211e2f07dd040856c7697a00a8cef0bf03ba3112ecba22d2658fb.json |
[] | 2016-08-29T00:51:46 | null | 2016-08-29T01:01:00 | null | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fletters%2Fgarden-variety-1.2769807%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/assets/images/favicons/irishtimes.png | en | null | Garden variety | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | X
By using this website, you consent to our use of cookies. For more information on cookies see our Cookie Policy | http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/garden-variety-1.2769807?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-29T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1bd94823153eba2cf3a91ed4aeb2dcdc61510dfa3392a96ca85242867d47de07.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T20:52:25 | null | 2016-08-30T21:46:00 | Rebels hit the Seasiders for four at Turner’s Cross in an impressive performance | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fsoccer%2Fnational-league%2Fcork-breeze-past-bray-wanderers-to-close-gap-at-the-top-1.2773598%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773597.1472589989!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Cork breeze past Bray Wanderers to close gap at the top | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Cork City 4 Bray Wanderers 0
Cork City closed to within a point of Premier Division leaders Dundalk – albeit with a game more played – as they enjoyed a comfortable victory at Turner’s Cross last night.
Having put five past Longford Town on Friday night, John Caulfield’s side carried their good form forward and didn’t find too much resistance from the Seasiders. Gearoid Morrissey settled City in the 13th minute as he sent a low 20-yard, left-footed shot past Peter Cherries and both Stephen Dooley and Karl Sheppard went close after that.
While home goalkeeper Mark McNulty had to deny Mark Salmon with a good save on the half-hour, the lead was doubled shortly before half-time as Kevin O’Connor’s inviting ball from the left was headed in by Gavan Holohan at the far post.
The second half was only nine minutes old when Kenny Browne made it three as he met Dooley’s corner and Dooley was instrumental in the fourth two minutes later too as he was dragged down for a penalty, which Seán Maguire converted.
From there, the outcome was inevitable, with Dooley unlucky to denied by a great Hugh Douglas tackle. Tim Clancy might have got one back for Bray but Alan Bennett made a great goal-line clearance to ensure that his side retained their clean sheet.
CORK CITY: McNulty; Beattie, Bennett, Browne (Mulcahy 60), O’Connor; Buckley, G Morrissey (Healy 60); Sheppard, Holohan, Dooley; Maguire (O’Sullivan 65).
BRAY WANDERERS: Cherrie; Douglas, Kenna, Noone (Marks 84), Lynch (Kehoe 63); Salmon, Sullivan; Moore, Noone, Connolly; Lyons (Pender 63).
Referee: T Connolly (Dublin).
Attendance: 1,715. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/national-league/cork-breeze-past-bray-wanderers-to-close-gap-at-the-top-1.2773598?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/886395a9e2d246b259c66432ccf34e267d7eb76fee5e481135dcd437d5910e74.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T20:51:21 | null | 2016-08-28T21:05:00 | Champions show remarkable mettle to complete their comeback in an epic clash | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fgaelic-games%2Fgaelic-football%2Fdublin-brew-up-a-late-storm-to-leave-kingdom-down-and-out-1.2771292%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771288.1472414183!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Dublin brew up a late storm to leave Kingdom down and out | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Dublin 0-22 Kerry 2-14
For all the glorying we do in their panoply of talents, Dublin’s ability to end days like this still standing rarely gets the press it deserves.
Kerry emptied every chamber at them here and Jim Gavin’s side reacted by catching bullets between their teeth.
They go into the third All-Ireland final of Gavin’s four seasons knowing that whatever Mayo bring three weeks from now, the toughest score to find will be the one that kills them off.
This wasn’t snatch-and-grab, for they were undoubtedly the better side.
But they needed to come back from five points down at half-time – and three points down on 62 minutes – to make this theirs.
They were outscored by 2-4 to 0-0 in the 10 minutes before the break but they sucked it up and ground it out.
The words barely need typing but for the avoidance of doubt, let it be said that this was an extraordinary game.
Kerry’s status as underdogs is alien to their very being as a people and they played at times as though insulted by it.
They are betwixt and between right now – an uneasy balance of diminishing and developing forces. That they very nearly found a way past the best team of the age says only good things about Eamonn Fitzmaurice and his players.
Plastic bottles
If right was right, indeed, they would surely have come close to sending this to a replay.
Referee David Gough was pelted with match programmes and plastic bottles as he walked off into the tunnel underneath the Cusack Stand at the end, the Kerry crowd outraged at a late decision not to award Peter Crowley a free around 43 metres out.
Crowley took a pass on the run from Bryan Sheehan before being met with a shoulder to the jaw from Kevin McManamon. The Kerry sideline – already thoroughly convinced they’d had the rough end of the stick from Gough all day – screamed for a free that Sheehan would have fancied to level the game going into the last throes of stoppage-time.
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Gough waved play on and Diarmuid Connolly kicked the sealing score at the other end.
That said, Kerry had much bigger problems than an unhelpful referee for much of the day.
Routed everywhere
For the first 25 minutes, they were routed everywhere but on the scoreboard. Dublin ransacked the Kerry kick-out, bursting through off broken ball and swishing points before turning and facing and making them start from scratch again.
Kevin McManamon, Bernard Brogan and Connolly all split the posts from this scenario midway through the first half, with Connolly’s second of the day pushing them five clear.
Kerry were gasping for air at the other end. Jonny Cooper was at his dogged, belligerent best in the Dublin full-back line and of the Kerry forwards, only Paul Geaney could find any sort of space.
Kieran Donaghy was trying manfully though, catching one sky-scraper to dish off to Geaney for a score and diving on dirty ball to win a free for Colm Cooper to convert in the 29th minute.
That made it 0-9 to 0-6 but what happened next made it a game.
Even as Cooper was taking the free, the whole of the Kerry team was pushing up the pitch to flood the Dublin half for Stephen Cluxton’s kick-out.
Defenders even abandoned their posts, with four Dublin forwards left inside the Kerry 45 and only two men to keep tabs on them.
By the time Cluxton put the ball down to kick it out, 12 Kerry players were within his kicking range and each of them had their hands in the air waving frantically. Cluxton had to try and land a chopper in a minefield and it blew up in his face.
He tried a short one to corner-back Davy Byrne and Geaney swooped to intercept. A quick transfer to Donnchadh Walsh, an even quicker one from Walsh to Darran O’Sullivan and Kerry were walking in a goal.
A perfect coup.
Dublin were rattled, all of a sudden. The next Cluxton kick-out went out for a sideline ball; Geaney fed Cooper for a score. Emboldened, Anthony Maher had a rare pop at goal from 50 metres – it dropped on top of Cluxton but Geaney managed to get a touch and Byrne couldn’t prevent the ball crossing the line. When Cooper added a free just before the break, 0-9 to 0-4 had flipped on its head to become 2-8 to 0-9.
Hang on
But for Kerry to hang on, they needed to do more than hang on.
Dublin took advantage of half-time arriving when it did, gathering themselves in the dressing-room and proceeding as if the 10 minutes before the break hadn’t happened.
They wiped out the Kerry advantage by the 50th minute, with Dean Rock dead-eyed from frees and Brian Fenton throwing into the pot from play.
Kerry weren’t done though. Barry John Keane came off the bench and boomed a point immediately. James O’Donoghue set Geaney up for a slick score before flicking one of his own. With 62 minutes on the clock, Kerry led by 2-13 to 0-16.
Dublin kept coming, however. Philly McMahon got forward to snipe a fine score, Rock iced a couple of frees. McManamon, excellent all day, looked like winning it with a sumptuous score in the 70th minute, only for Stephen O’Brien to equalise in the 71st. The place was pulsing.
In the end though, Dublin carried the day. Eoghan O’Gara sent the Hill into a spiral to put them one ahead.
Kerry didn’t get their free with the next attack and Connolly applied the full-stop.
DUBLIN: Stephen Cluxton; Philly McMahon (0-1), Jonny Cooper, David Byrne; James McCarthy, Cian O’Sullivan, John Small; Michael Darragh Macauley, Brian Fenton (0-1); Paul Flynn, Kevin McManamon (0-2), Ciaran Kilkenny; Dean Rock (0-12, eight frees, two 45s), Diarmuid Connolly (0-3), Bernard Brogan (0-2). Subs: Paddy Andrews for Flynn (46 mins); Paul Mannion for Small (51 mins); Eoghan O’Gara (0-1) for Macauley (60 mins); Michael Fitzsimons for Cooper (68 mins); Cormac Costello for Brogan (71 mins).
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KERRY: Brian Kelly; Shane Enright, Mark Griffin, Killian Young; Aidan O’Mahony, Peter Crowley, Tadhg Morley; Anthony Maher, David Moran (0-1); Paul Murphy (0-1), Colm Cooper (0-5, 0-4 frees), Donnchadh Walsh; Paul Geaney (1-4), Kieran Donaghy, Darran O’Sullivan (1-0). Subs: Stephen O’Brien (0-1) for O’Sullivan (40 mins); James O’Donoghue (0-1) for Donaghy (51 mins); Barry John Keane (0-1) for Walsh (52 mins); Brian Ó Beaghlaoich for Morley (57 mins); Bryan Sheehan for Maher (59 mins); Marc Ó Sé for Geaney (68 mins).
Referee: David Gough (Meath) | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/dublin-brew-up-a-late-storm-to-leave-kingdom-down-and-out-1.2771292?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/4ca6751cfb3c7c2de42a0f695e37c0e5a7112d19c778d85014ccd5782627606f.json |
[] | 2016-08-27T12:50:26 | null | 2016-08-27T11:43:00 | Among the caskets in sports hall were remains of a five-month-old and a 93-year-old | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fitaly-holds-state-funeral-for-35-of-earthquake-s-victims-1.2770749%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2770748.1472294691!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Italy holds state funeral for 35 of earthquake’s victims | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Italy marked a day of national mourning on Saturday for 290 people killed in a quake that devastated parts of its mountainous heart, holding a state funeral for 35 of the victims.
As political leaders gathered for the funeral Mass, rescuers kept searching through the rubble of the worst hit town, Amatrice, even though they had little hope of finding more survivors from Italy’s worst quake in seven years.
Nine more bodies were recovered from the town on Saturday, including three corpses that were pulled overnight from the crumpled Hotel Roma, bringing the death toll in Amatrice alone to 230 residents and tourists.
Italian president Sergio Mattarella flew to the town by helicopter on Saturday to see the damage for himself before travelling on to the nearby city of Ascoli Piceno for the funeral service held in a sports centre.
Some 35 varnished wood coffins were lined up in sports hall, including white caskets containing the remains of two of the 21 children killed in the disaster. The youngest victim was five months old. The oldest was 93.
Foreigners who died in the calamity included six Romanians, three Britons, a Spanish woman, a Canadian and an Albanian. The area is popular with vacationers and local authorities are still struggling to pin down how many visitors were there when the quake hit.
Mourners gathered in Ascoli Piceno hours before the service was due to begin to pay their respects.
“Even if I didn’t know them my heart broke for them. My thoughts are with them because there are people who have lost everything, homes, loved ones,” said local resident, Luciana Cavicchiuni.
“These things should not happen,” she said.
Most of the buildings in the quake zone had no anti-seismic protection, but even some of those that did, including a school in Amatrice that was renovated in 2012, fell apart.
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Investigation opened
Magistrates have opened an investigation into some of the incidents, including the collapse of a belltower in the town of Accumoli, which smashed through the roof of an adjacent building killing a family of four.
“What happened cannot just be considered fate,” said prosecutor Giuseppe Saieva, who is leading the probe. “If these buildings had been constructed like they are in Japan then they would not have collapsed,” he told la Repubblica newspaper.
Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, who also attended the funeral, has promised to rebuild the shattered communities and the mayor of Amatrice urged the government to learn the lesson of painfully slow post-quake reconstructions of the past.
“What we need is a reconstruction in record time. It is a great opportunity for politicians to show extraordinary commitment,” mayor Sergio Pirozzi told Mr Mattarella.
Aftershocks continued to rattle the area overnight, the strongest measuring a magnitude of 4.2.
The Italian geological institute said some 1,332 aftershocks have hit Italy’s central mountains since Wednesday’s pre-dawn 6.2 magnitude quake.
Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe. Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 while more than 300 died in the nearby city of L’Aquila in 2009.
Reuters | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/italy-holds-state-funeral-for-35-of-earthquake-s-victims-1.2770749?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-27T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/789d0f11d563999350fdb2b6e527c84c4951981ce43b2082bf9d3335bf399149.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:23 | null | 2016-08-26T11:42:00 | Retail sales data for August reverse much of Brexit fall | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fbritish-economy-escapes-brexit-blow-for-now-1.2769350.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769349.1472208176!/image/image.jpg | en | null | British economy escapes Brexit blow, for now | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Britain’s high streets are heaving with shoppers despite June’s shock vote to leave the EU, big companies have reported few signs of distress and some tabloid newspapers are even talking about a post-Brexit economic boom.
The overwhelming view from economists is that it is too early to know how Britain will cope with years of Brexit uncertainty - but there is a growing belief the country can avoid a recession that only weeks ago was regarded as likely.
On the face of it, the early optimism contrasts with the pre-referendum warning from former prime minister David Cameron that a Brexit vote would put a “bomb under the economy”.
Retail sales in August reversed much of an immediate post-Brexit vote fall, with retailers reporting their strongest sales in six months, industry data showed on Thursday, partly due to a weaker pound attracting overseas buyers. Official figures out last week showed the number of people claiming unemployment benefit fell unexpectedly in July.
Before the June 23rd referendum, the British finance ministry had warned a Brexit vote would mean homeowners facing higher borrowing costs, pushing the economy into a “DIY recession”, and that equity prices were likely to fall. However, nearly half of mortgage borrowers look set to gain from the Bank of England’s interest rate cut on August 4th, while British equity markets have risen. Some British newspapers which supported the Leave campaign have hailed such news. “Remainers were WRONG!” the Daily Express declared earlier this month, adding: “Brexit Britain booms”.
But most economists do not share this jubilance and caution these positive signals may have little bearing on the long-term outlook for the economy, which must contend with years of uncertainty as Britain extricates itself from the EU.
New British prime minister Theresa May has said she will not trigger the EU’s Article 50 this year, to begin formal talks with the bloc to negotiate the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU and its future trading relationship with the bloc. “The fact that the UK avoided an immediate crisis does not tell us much about the future,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, adding he thought Britain would probably avoid a technical recession - defined as two consecutive quarters of falling economic output.
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Business surveys and some forward-looking indicators of inflation already offer reasons for caution. Price pressures in factories - which feed through into consumer prices - shot higher after the pound’s post-referendum plunge, posing a threat to consumers’ future spending power. Market research firm GfK’s gauge of consumer confidence also fell sharply after the vote. The survey often predicts changes in household spending in the following quarters. A YouGov/CEBR gauge of consumer morale, published on Friday, showed consumers have regained some of the confidence they lost after the referendum, but researchers warned this positive trend could easily change next year.
The outlook for the housing market, the bedrock of British consumer wealth, is also unclear: a Reuters poll on Thursday suggested the Brexit vote will have a negative impact on both prices and turnover.
Charles Goodhart, a former BoE interest-rate setter, said so far there had been almost no data on important areas of the economy such as investment, inventory levels and construction. “I think it would be very dangerous to take a position either that it’s all going to be alright and that the fears were massively overdone, or that the fears were justified,” said Goodhart, a professor at the London School of Economics, said. “The answer is, frankly: we don’t know.”
While the mood among economists remains one of concern, it has brightened across financial markets. Investors were braced for a global economic shock after a vote for Brexit, but the FTSE 100 index of UK blue-chip companies is about 8 percent higher since the referendum, helped by overseas earnings that will benefit from the fall in the value of the pound. The more domestically focused FTSE 250 index of mid-sized companies is up by about 5 per cent. Many big companies have reported little immediate impact from the vote in Britain, including retailers John Lewis and Next, the world’s biggest staffing company Adecco and carmaker BMW.
Some major employers - carmaker Nissan, for example - say their plans for investment in Britain will hinge on the trade deals it strikes with other countries. Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the world’s largest advertising group WPP, said there was little clarity on when Britain would even begin negotiating its EU exit and that his company’s clients were increasingly cautious. “Our own position will depend on what gets negotiated,” he told Reuters.
The pound’s fall since the referendum - it was down almost 15 percent at one point versus the dollar - has benefited some companies; it has boosted manufacturers’ exports, for example. But it also reflects the weaker outlook for the economy. “In essence, the currency markets are saying that all UK assets are worth less than they used to be,” Rupert Pennant-Lea, a former BoE deputy governor, wrote in the Financial Times.
“The British have become poorer than they were before the votes were counted on June 23rd, and that reality will become clearer as the months go by.” But investors, responding to the recent upbeat data, have cut their bets against a weaker pound this week, which has helped lift the currency. Sterling has started to edge higher against major currencies, but it remains around 11 percent lower against the dollar than before the referendum, underscoring how investors see the challenge ahead for Britain’s economy.
Reuters | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/british-economy-escapes-brexit-blow-for-now-1.2769350 | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/01ff8e23d689abe0ccec41640a5298b13cb45b234e887c898c056292737f08df.json |
[] | 2016-08-31T04:52:26 | null | 2016-08-31T05:25:00 | Private ambulance operator service reports a €101,231 profit for year ending June 2015 | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fhealth-pharma%2Fdavid-hall-owned-ambulance-service-lifeline-back-in-rude-health-1.2773441%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2773439.1472579887!/image/image.jpg | en | null | David Hall-owned ambulance service Lifeline back in rude health | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Lifeline, the private ambulance operator service owned by businessman David Hall, reported a €101,231 profit for the 12 months ending June 2015. This compares to a €436,412 loss the previous year, newly-filed abridged accounts show.
The company, recently involved in a high-profile court action involving employees, had net assets of €106,794, as against just €5,563 a year earlier.
Turnover rose to €4.3 million as against €4.1 million the year before, having halved between 2008 and 2014.
Established by David Hall in 1998, Lifeline is the largest private ambulance operator in the State with a fleet of 49 vehicles. Based in Leixlip, Co Kildare, the company employs 66 people.
Mr Hall is also founder of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation (IMHO), which last year helped over 2,500 people to come to an arrangement with lenders over their debts.
HSE contract
Lifeline has a framework agreement with the Health Services Executive (HSE) through a service level contract for patient transport services. However, the company has previously taken legal proceedings against the HSE for alleged breaches of the agreement and Mr Hall told The Irish Times that additional proceedings were currently “on hold”.
Mr Hall said the return to profitability was partly due to better compliance with the Lifeline contract by the HSE.
“We won the tender to be the number-one provider nationally and that contract hasn’t been adhered too and, while it is not being fully complied with, there has been an improvement. If we don’t see further improvement though we will end up back in court,” he said.
“The need to injunct the HSE to comply with the contract is currently under review, as is seeking to recover monies not given under it, which were given to third parties.”
Mr Hall added that the turnaround was also due to him being back at the helm again. “I’m back running Lifeline again after being more focused on the mortgage stuff over the last couple of years, “ he said. “There has been a restructuring of the company and a better focus on how it is being run that has involved us looking at our cost base and so on.”
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Mr Hall and his wife Susan Wiseman Hall are listed as directors of Lifeline. Directors’ emoluments for the year ending June 2015 totalled €209,966, down from €217,817 a year earlier.
The accounts show Mr Hall previously provided a guarantee to the value of €377,000 for the company’s banking facilities.
Lifeline operates from a premises owned by Mr Hall, paying him rent in the year to the end of June 2015 of €116,379.
Future viability
The latest set of accounts said restrictive practices in the sector, the state of the economy and a decline in the number of people with private health cover were all concerns that threatened the viability of the company.
However, Mr Hall said that conditions generally had improved over the last year. “All health-related businesses were under pressure for a long time and I wasn’t around. I expect the 2016 accounts will post a higher profit than the 2015 ones. I’m back doing what I think I do well, which is running the business and we’ve acquired an additional 10 ambulances this calendar year and taken on 17 extra staff in the last number of months, so things are going the right way,” he said.
Two managers at Lifeline recently became the first employees in Ireland to win court protection under newly introduced whistleblower legislation.
The Circuit Court ruled late last month that Mick Dougan and Seán Clarke, who were made redundant after accusing Mr Hall of “serious wrongdoing” in a disclosure to the Revenue Commissioners, should continue to be paid until their unfair dismissal case is heard.
The men claimed in affidavits opened in court, that staff were paid mileage expenses in place of taxable pay and alleged they were subjected to bullying and harassment. | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/david-hall-owned-ambulance-service-lifeline-back-in-rude-health-1.2773441?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-31T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/04d9cfa2d70543eaf2d100889795b13af619065ade81dfb67f916406b956a674.json |
[] | 2016-08-30T00:52:21 | null | 2016-08-30T01:00:00 | Star fillies seek to add to trainer’s seven victories in Leopardstown feature | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fsport%2Fracing%2Fminding-and-found-could-carry-o-brien-s-hopes-in-irish-champion-stakes-1.2772280%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2772278.1472497687!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Minding and Found could carry O’Brien’s hopes in Irish Champion Stakes | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Just two fillies, Snow Fairy and The Fugue, have won the Qipco Irish Champion Stakes in two decades but bookmakers appear to believe the fairer sex will carry Aidan O’Brien’s principal hopes for some fresh Leopardstown history on Saturday week.
The champion trainer’s tally of seven wins in the €1.25 million ‘Irish Champions Weekend’ highlight is matched only by his former jockey Mick Kinane who rode the last of his seven on Sea The Stars in the final year of his illustrious career.
O’Brien has indicated he will be multi-handed and has kept open the option of running his superstar three-year-old, Minding, as well as another star filly, Found, who was runner-up to Golden Horn in the race a year ago.
Minding is a 7-4 ante-post favourite for the Coolmore Matron Stakes on the same card but is a general 7-2 second-favourite for the Champion which is run over the same 10-furlong trip that the O’Brien star has won her last two starts in the Pretty Polly and the Nassau.
With Dermot Weld outlining a possible alternative Arc warm-up for the dual-Derby hero Harzand in the Prix Niel if ground conditions are too fast at Leopardstown, the only firm running plans for the Champion Stakes currently appear to be in relation to the French Derby hero, Almanzor. It is a quarter of a century since the last French-trained winner of the race, Suave Dancer.
British-trained
The last four winners, including both The Great Gatsby and Golden Horn who won under the ‘Champions Weekend’ banner, have been trained in Britain, with Snow Fairy and The Fugue scoring back to back wins in 2012 and 2013.
A total of seven fillies have landed the race, including three in a row between 1986 and 1988 for Park Express, Triptych and Indian Skimmer respectively. All seven of O’Brien’s previous winners have been male but his shortest-priced colt this time is US Army Ranger, a general 12-1 shot after failing to make the frame in the Royal Whip Stakes earlier this month.
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Should Minding take the Champion Stakes route it could leave the Matron open for another Ballydoyle Group 1 winner, Alice Springs, while O’Brien has anticipated significant improvement for Found after her return to action.
As well as his seven wins, O’Brien has also had to settle for the runner-up spot on six occasions, including a memorable defeat for Galileo in 2001 to Fantastic Light.
That was the last of five Champions Stakes victories for Godolphin who could yet be represented this year by the Eclipse winner Hawkbill if ground conditions are suitable.
“He is in the Irish Champion and the Champion at Ascot. Wherever there is soft ground he will go,” said the Godolphin trainer, Charlie Appleby. “If conditions at Leopardstown are not right we will wait and go for Champions Day.”
However one horse already out of the equation is Time Test, who had been as low as 7-1 in some betting lists.
“Time Test is having a break. Roger (Charlton) wasn’t particularly happy with him in the lead-up to the Juddmonte so he won’t be going to Ireland,” said a spokesman. “We’ll see how he does. Only when he’s back in full work and pleasing Roger will a decision be made on his future.”
English trainer Brian Ellison is targeting Day Two of ‘Champions Weekend’ at the Curragh with Sunday’s impressive Beverley winner, Orewa who is set to line up in the €300,000 Tattersalls Ireland Super Auction Sale Stakes.
“He’s a bit of a lad so we had him gelded and had his wind done at the same time. He’d been working well so we expected him to go close at Beverley. He’ll head to Ireland for the big sales race,” said Ellison.
In other news the leading jump jockey Andrew Lynch faces up to two months on the sidelines after fracturing his arm in a fall at Cork on Sunday. “Andrew has a fractured right humerus. He’ll be out for two months at least,” said the Turf Club, medical officer, Dr Adrian McGoldrick. | http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/racing/minding-and-found-could-carry-o-brien-s-hopes-in-irish-champion-stakes-1.2772280?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-30T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/1c4afbfae4bb56b833d9bb793c5282f111b589c22779bfb280379dea9d7c8255.json |
[] | 2016-08-28T18:48:35 | null | 2016-08-28T18:24:00 | Administrators shut final 22 shops across UK in chain that had more than 150 outlets | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fretail-and-services%2Fbhs-exits-british-high-street-after-88-years-1.2771179.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2771203.1472407016!/image/image.jpg | en | null | BHS exits British high street after 88 years | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Once a staple of the British high street, BHS closed its doors for good yesterday, ending 88 years of British retail history.
The last bargain hunters could be seen emerging from the retailer’s Walthamstow branch in north London clutching heavily discounted items as administrators shut 22 stores across the UK, the last of more than 150 branches.
The department’s only overseas store was on O’Connell Street in Dublin, a space now occupied by Penneys. However, the shop fell victim to recession and was closed in the 1980s.
Heatons later took up the Irish franchise, opening three outlets in Kilkenny, Letterkenny and Dublin’s Jervis Centre under the British chain’s name. But in 1998 all three were changed to Heatons shops.
In the UK, Duff & Phelps and FRP Advisory have already overseen 141 closures over recent weeks, including BHS’s flagship Oxford Street store in London’s West End.
Parliamentary inquiry
The department store’s collapse in April has affected 11,000 jobs, 22,000 pensions, sparked a lengthy parliamentary inquiry and left its high-profile former owners potentially facing a criminal investigation.
Retail billionaire Sir Philip Green has borne the brunt of the public fallout, having been branded the “unacceptable face of capitalism” by furious MPs.
Green owned BHS for 15 years before selling it to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell for £1 in 2015.
Green has come under fire for taking more than £400 million in dividends from the chain, leaving it with a £571 million pension deficit and for selling it to a man with no retail experience.
Veteran Labour MP Frank Field has asked the serious-fraud office to launch a formal investigation into the pair to ascertain if any criminal wrongdoing occurred during the sale of the chain and throughout their respective ownerships.
It has also emerged that Mr Field is investigating Green’s Arcadia retail empire, which includes Topshop.
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Discounted goods
In Walthamstow, shoppers rummaged through boxes of heavily discounted goods, with discarded items strewn across the floor.
Paul Campbell, who lives locally, left the store shortly after 4pm with a trolley full of DVDs. He said: “I’ve paid a pound for this lot. I reckon it’s about 200 or so DVDs, if they are all there in the right cases.
“There are some Rugby World Cup box sets, golf DVDs which I’ll give to my mate, the rest I will sell or give to the local charity shops. “At the end of the day, I’ve paid a pound for all this. It’s not really much of a risk.”
Veedoo Clash, from Tottenham, said she was sad to see BHS leave the high street, having shopped at the branch for 28 years. She said: “I just grabbed whatever I could.
“I went to Oxford Street when it closed, I bought lots of things for my husband and the grandchild, but I hid them because I didn’t want my husband to see. Then I came here to Walthamstow.” – (Additional reporting by PA) | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/retail-and-services/bhs-exits-british-high-street-after-88-years-1.2771179 | en | 2016-08-28T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/c21164042bf5cd29e9aa735565a0ebaaa447466b5412a6fe932aa71c75f41ede.json |
[] | 2016-08-26T13:07:48 | null | 2016-08-26T12:53:00 | Relatives of victims of IRA attacks seeking state money to fund legal bid for answers | http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fuk%2Fbirmingham-bombings-families-to-meet-home-secretary-1.2769395%3FlocalLinksEnabled%3Dfalse.json | http://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2769394.1472212642!/image/image.jpg | en | null | Birmingham bombings families to meet Home Secretary | null | null | www.irishtimes.com | Families of victims of the Birmingham pub bombings are to meet the Home Secretary weeks after appealing for government money to fund their legal bid for answers.
Relatives of nine of the 21 people killed in the double IRA bomb attacks in 1974 are to meet Amber Rudd in London on September 5th.
Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine died in the attacks, said she was “hopeful” the meeting could clear the way to public funding for their legal representation at recently-announced inquests into the deaths.
A pre-inquest review into the bombings is due to be held in October but a full inquest is not expected to get under way until next year.
Ms Hambleton said that, without public money to pay for solicitors and barristers at the hearings, the families would be unable to afford the legal costs to ensure they were properly represented.
The families’ lawyers, at KRW Law, and legal counsel who helped to successfully make the case for fresh inquests have been acting free of charge so far.
But the relatives’ solicitors have said it is not realistic to continue that arrangement, handling the complex case work involved for the inquests, particularly when all other parties’ lawyers, including the police and other Government agencies, will be funded by taxpayers’ money.
Christopher Stanley, from KRW, said he hoped the Ms Rudd would have “good news” for those relatives left behind to mourn the dead, adding that it would be their last chance at getting the answers they seek.
In a landmark decision for the families’ Justice4the21 campaign in June, the senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, Louise Hunt, ruled that fresh inquests should take place into the attacks on the night of November 21th, 1974.
Ms Hunt said “significant” new information had come to light suggesting that West Midlands Police missed two potential warnings of the bomb attacks at the Tavern In The Town and Mulberry Bush pubs.
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Miscarriage of justice
The IRA bombings led to one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history: the wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six.
One of the men jailed, Paddy Hill, who served 16 years for a crime he did not commit, has backed the families’ campaign for answers as to who carried out the attacks.
The campaign has also had the support of several MPs from across the political spectrum including Labour’s Khalid Mahmood, and the Conservatives’ Andrew Mitchell.
Last year, Mrs Hambleton and other family members held a private meeting with then home secretary Theresa May, leading campaigners to be optimistic about their chances of legal funding.
Mrs Hambleton said the Home Office had given them no clue as to what the content of the hour-long meeting in the House of Commons would be.
“They haven’t said anything about what we’re going to discuss - only to say we will meet,” she said. “We don’t know what the agenda will be, but we’re hopeful, obviously, it will be for her to tell us what decision she has made about our funding.”
Mrs Hambleton added: “I cannot imagine that the Home Secretary would want to meet us to just send us away again.”
The families’ lawyer, Mr Stanley, said: “We hope that by meeting the new Home Secretary she will have good news.
“The families we represent are now at historic point of truth recovery.
“This is the first time an independent investigation into the Birmingham pub bombings will take place - and the last.
“It is important that those families who want to participate in the inquest process are able to do so effectively, which means with legal representation to examine material and witnesses.
“We bring a depth of experience regarding the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland to the bereaved families of the pub bombings.
“We ask the Home Secretary to allow us to continue to do so in their interests and in the interests of justice, truth and accountability.” | http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/birmingham-bombings-families-to-meet-home-secretary-1.2769395?localLinksEnabled=false | en | 2016-08-26T00:00:00 | www.irishtimes.com/2984babb78925cf7efc1d184c26c08678f18419ca988b511164490985d3a4187.json |
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