Horrendous child benefit cuts

By any ones’ estimation December’s budget shall be interesting.

The Government has threatened to cut child benefit by 20- 25%. This is hardly surprising considering the state of the economy. However, what is surprising is that this is to be a straight- cut, across all households. It is unreasonable to suggest that poorer households should suffer as great a cut as richer ones.

The Sunday Tribune, 25/10/2009, quoted a senior source ‘You can forget about taxing or means testing it.’ Efforts of this nature are proving ‘horrendously complicated.’ Horrendously complicated? Both the social welfare system and allotment of student grants are based on means testing systems. Of course these have no doubt proven imperfect but are preferable. The only thing that is horrendous is that a means- test- system had not been introduced earlier. It makes as much sense to give houses of unequal wealth the same assistance as it does to reduce in equal amounts

Outcry over Stephen Gaetly article spurs highest number of complaints over a single article in BPCC history

Over the weekend, the British press complaints office was so overwhelmed with complaints, a hefty 21,000, against Moir’s Stephen Gaetly article that it crashed for several hours. While readers and critics alike were right to use this forum as a response to the unequivocal ‘gay-bash’, the cynic in me feels that it probably only served to highlight this article and thus drive traffic to the daily mail website. Moir herself seems to understand this, adding fuel to the fire with her statement “ I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones” The fact that her statement was un- remorseful and claimed that assertions such as “The circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy” and “Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy- ever- after myth of civil partnerships” are not homophobic will only succeed in fuelling the outcry further and driving even further traffic to the website.

Further, it is interesting that the complaints only caused advertisers to pull their ads from that given page. Meaning that they did not want to hurt the papers’ revenue but also, did not want to be associated with the negativity surrounding the article. I would have thought any one would have been jumping at the chance to advertise on the page spurring so much traffic.

I would recommend reading Charlie Brooker’s article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir

The sham that is Dublin airport

A couple of friends and I had the pleasure of visiting Dublin airport last Friday. We had decided to fly Ryanair and spend Î60 less on our Edinburgh trip. In a further attempt to keep costs down, and like the majority of passengers on our flight, we had decided to side- step the ridiculous luggage charge and carry ours on flight. Now, the Dublin airport website says that the allowance for carry on luggage is … At no point was my bag or anyone else’s weighed but those carrying little wheelie bags had to put them into a stationary box of 55cm x 40 cm x 20cm.
The woman in front of me was able to put her bag into the compartment but as she had to thug hard on the bag to get it back out she was charged the Î30 to put the bag in the under compartment. Surely if the bag fit into the slot it met the airlines’ requirements. Further, this rather time- consuming and painful experience was left to the optimum moment when we were boarding the plane.

Also, the fact that the baggage requirements apply solely to items brought in to the airport is ridiculous. That is, that I can only pack a maximum of 10kg but can purchase as much shampoos, aerosols, razors, clothes etc etc at the airport without affecting my carry- on allowance. Is it just me or does this sound like an elaborate ruse to increase airport purchases.

On, our way back we were sure all bags would be heavier as we had purchased an exceptional amount for such a short trip and were ready to take clothes out of the bags and onto ourselves if deemed necessary. To our disappointment Edinburgh airport’ staff did not way anything and all our plotting and planning became redundant.

My advice, travel from anywhere but Ireland, but if you absolutely must travel from Dublin airport be sure to chose a non- discriminatory, double strap rucksack type.