Glas Securities have described the unemployment situation in Ireland as 'disappointing'. It's not disappointing, it's an obscenity. By Michael Taft.

When the unemployment figures were released yesterday, showing the highest levels since 1993, Glas Securities wrote a note that described the situation as ‘disappointing’. Well, that’s a word for it. I could think of other, more urgent words. And if 14.9% is ‘disappointing’, what about unemployment blackspots, where unemployment exceeds 50%? I suppose we could call this ‘really disappointing’. Let’s take a countrywide tour of really disappointing areas with the help of the 2011 Census.

The recent census records unemployment levels. This measurement is different from official unemployment figures as they are self-reporting. We discussed this before. In the last Quarterly National Household Survey, from the first quarter of this year, official unemployment was 14.8%.  However, 17.1% reported themselves as ‘unemployed’. The difference is that people may be in a temporary part-time job at the time of the survey, or on a training scheme, but still characterise their situation as one of being unemployed. The CSO’s Indicators of Labour Supply captures some of this difference: the unemployment rate is 14.8%, but when under-employment and those marginally attached to the workforce are included, the figure rises to 25%.

The lack of action on a survey of Travellers first published in 2010 shows no one cares. By Vincent Browne.

In September 2010 the then minister for health, Mary Harney, launched a major report on the health of members of the Traveller community. She noted how 32,000 Travellers had taken part in the all-Ireland survey out of a total Traveller population on the island estimated at 40,000, an 80% participation rate. The survey was conducted by a group of researchers at UCD led by Cecily Kelleher of the school of public health, physiotherapy and population science.

The report revealed life expectancy for Traveller women in the Republic was just over 70 years, 11½ years less than for women in the general population. For men, life expectancy was under 62 years (61.7), 15 years fewer than for the general population of men – this had worsened by 5.2 years from a survey conducted in 1987.

Ireland is a ‘low-insured’ economy. When it comes to both contributions and benefits this country is a laggard. What is needed is a long-term strategy that transforms social insurance from a mere ‘safety net’ to a welfare state that provides social and economic certainty to all workers. By Michael Taft.

Long-time readers will know that I’ve been hammering away for some time at our low level of social insurance. Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton has also started making noises on this theme. Good. The problem with the structure of Irish taxation is not that it is necessarily low-taxed (it isn’t).  Rather, it is low-insured. We pay in little, we get little and we end up with a big hole in our public finances and considerable levels of social and economic uncertainty.

Let’s first run through some comparisons.

Ahead of tomorrow's vote on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in the European Parliament, Paul Murphy MEP explains why the agreement needs to be defeated. 

This week may see a rare occurrence in the European Parliament - the defeat of a key item in the big business agenda pushed by European Commission. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is set to be voted on by the full plenary of the European Parliament on Wednesday, despite some last minute chicanery by the European People's Party to try to delay the vote. Given the votes against ACTA that have already taken place in the International Trade Committee and other committees in the Parliament, if the pressure is kept up, it looks set to be defeated.

From European Digital Rights (edri.org).

ACTA and its impact on fundamental rights

 The Internet has become a key enabler of rights such as the fundamental rights to communication and association. Any legislation which aims to regulate this medium must therefore be carefully considered to ensure compatibility with the Charter. At least as importantly, when dealing with countries with less robust fundamental rights protections, the EU must take care that any Internet-related policies it promotes fully respect the EU's Treaty obligation to consolidate democracy and the rule of law in its international relations.[1]

This business of human rights seems, in part, to be a device for privileged people to escape the discomfort of being the beneficiaries of a hugely unequal society. By Vincent Browne.

It was heartening to witness some 2,000 people packed into the Grand Canal Theatre on 18 June to honour one of the world's iconic campaigners for human rights, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.

It was heartening to appreciate that, so ardent was the commitment of those two thousand people to the cause represented by Aung San Suu Kyi, many of them paid up to €150 a ticket for the thrill of attendance.

Heartening also that some of our homegrown icons, Bono and Bob Geldof among them, were among the welcoming party. (Bono seems to be a serial welcomer for, it appears, he welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi to Norway, welcomed her to Ireland and someone said he was planning on welcoming her back to Burma when she returned.)

He and Sir Bob are very much among the 'in crowd', obviously, for they referred to the guest as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ('Daw' means 'aunt' in Burmese).

Mrs Merkel went to Brussels intent on striking two birds with one stone, picking up her bag immediately and returning to Berlin with no further ado. The stone was the fraudulent repackaging of existing structural and EIB funds (with the addition of a paltry €10 billion) into a grandiose-sounding ‘Growth Pact’. The two birds were, respectively, the SPD opposition back home (which had set as its condition for supporting the ratification of the ESM some ‘movement’ on growth) and Mr Hollande (who also needed some semblance of a Growth Pact to sell to his voters as a sugar coating with which to swallow the bitter pill of the Fiscal Pact).

The early part of the summit was expended discussing this inconsequential ‘Growth Pact’. When it was seemingly in the bag, Mr Rumpoy and Mrs Merkel tried to make a clean getaway, hoping that the summit was over. It was at that point that Mr Monti called the chancellor’s bluff. In effect, he threatened the summit with permanent delay until two agreements were reached: One was the direct recapitalisation and supervision of banks (from the EFSF and the ECB); precisely as outlined in our Modest Proposal two years ago. The other was that Italy (and one presumes other countries) gains access to direct EFSF funding (i.e. that the EFSF is allowed to purchase Italian bonds in the primary market). Naturally, Mrs Merkel resisted. But, as if to prove once again that her recalcitrance was always paper thin, the moment Spain and France sided with Italy, she buckled. The result was the very first sensible EU Council agreement since the Crisis erupted.

Political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, 'austerity' and 'perpetual war'; an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. By John Pilger.

Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20^thcentury. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.

Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the "collection room" and, unofficially, as the "room of horrors". It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny "cover to the enemy". This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.

In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that "the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children". The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children.