“You need to find a way to sell your ideas to people. Make them want to buy into them.”
That was the advice given to me in a little Belfast coffee-shop months ago by a lady whose area of expertise is working with troubled youth. Promoting social justice issues for her is akin to selling brand [...]

Socialist Register 2010 - Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism (Merlin Press) Ed: Leo Panitch & Colin Leys.
There’s been some excellent work published on the many faults of the Irish health service by campaigning journalists like Sara Burke and Maev-Ann Wren. For those who want to put the debates about Irish healthcare in an international context, [...]

The Equality and Right Alliance conference, A Fairer Ireland: Equality and Rights at the Heart of Recovery is on today in Dublin. According to the Conference program, this morning’s speakers included Dr Kathy Walsh and Brian Harvey who are presenting their research into the real impact of government cuts in the funding of both the [...]

Responding to the publication of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions last week, Anna Visser Director of the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland, welcomed the 2.1% fall in the at risk of poverty rate but warned of significant challenges ahead for 2010.
At risk of poverty rates were down for all age groups from 2007 but [...]

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Penguin, 2009). xvii + 331 pp.
This brilliant book demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that economic equality is good for society. In doing so, it exposes the complete falsity of the dominant view that massive inequalities are a necessary [...]

If you are in or near UCD at the moment you may be interested in this book launch. Apologies on the short notice on this one.

I think - but would be happy to be corrected - that one of the weaknesses with the Left is a shortage of ambitious and feasible policy ideas to change a key source of inequality in Western economies: the scale of the inequality in the income that those who are in employment receive for their [...]

The European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) Ireland) recently published a factsheet for members on ‘Social Welfare: How Ireland Compares in Europe, which challenges some of the myths and misinformation on social protection spending in Ireland. In this article, Niamh O’Grady, Research Assistant, challenges the view that Ireland’s social welfare and protection levels are among the [...]

One of the most beautiful novels that I have read is The African Child by the late Guinean author, Camara Laye. This autobiographical work retraces his childhood, ending with the author on a flight to France, having won an academic scholarship.
Set during the colonial period, one of the things that stand out in the novel [...]

Paula Clancy, director of TASC, has written an articulate and forcefully response to David Quinn’s column in last Friday’s Irish Independent. In that article Quinn claimed that ‘out of control public spending’ combined with the poor enforcement of existing regulation was to blame for the current crisis, but not, to the extent that it has [...]