Society

The US, despite the health insurance reforms, still does not offer universal health care. By Sara Burke.

Every year one of Ireland’s leading anti poverty groups, Social Justice Ireland (SJI) produces a social and economic review.

This detailed report provides both a critique of government policy in the previous year and a set of alternatives aimed at producing a more equal society. This year's report, entitled An Agenda for A New Ireland, was published on April 6.

The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, confirms that many modern societies are social failures. By Edward O'Hare.

Where has the world gone wrong? These days you don’t have to be a vigilant monitor of current affairs to know that the rates of crime, anti-social behaviour, drug-use, and physical and mental ill-health are rising steadily throughout the developed world. Neither do you have to be an acutely sensitive individual to notice a coldness, an unfeeling disregard, has crept into everyday life.

Siobhan O’Donoghue replies to Trevor Sergeant who has defended proposals to cut the minimum wage.

A flawed assumption prevails within business, media and political circles that cutting the minimum wage would somehow assist economic recovery and improve competitiveness.

For starters this approach will not help create employment.  Much of the work undertaken by minimum wage earners is considered to be in low productivity sectors and it is not these jobs that has traditionally driven competitiveness or fuelled growth.

There has been no Catholic Church inquiry into the priests who butchered and were then protected.

So the Supreme Pontiff thinks that demands for accountability on his part amounts to petty gossip of dominant opinion, which he is confident his faith will give him the courage to deflect.

Celebrities’ Favourite Books, recently published by Apex Publishing, is dedicated to those affected by dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. It contains around 100 articles from the well known and the not so well known – from Tony Blair to Jeffrey Archer, and others including Mohammed al Fayed, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Ben Elton, Alex Ferguson, Stephen Hendry, Glenn Hoddle, Gary Lineker, Ken Loach, Sam Neill and Terry Wogan.

The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security yesterday, 24 March, to discuss a number of key issues in relation to energy and electricity needs.

Legendary. Genius. Phenomenal.

Superlatives such as these rear their ugly faces far too often in popular usage. They are cheapened in a world of short-term disposable celebrities, where questions over the talent or wealth of said celebrities are hushed by a media world which pilfers to commercialism over public interest.

But.

When it comes to The Beatles...

Siptu is planning a 48 hour all out strike action in seven Dublin hospitals on 7 April. At the centre of this industrial action is ‘outsourcing’. Outsourcing is the jargon used to describe the privatising of services which have been traditionally carried out by public sector workers. The workers involved in this action are ‘support staff grades’, i.e. anybody who does not do clinical care work in a hospital including porters, caterers, cleaners, security, care assistants and their supervisors. These are the lowest paid staff in the health service.

A sheltered internet technology created by Meath native Ian Clarke (pictured) has opened an anonymous world of electronic communication to Chinese dissidents and child pornographers alike. By Joseph Galvin