REPUBLICANS SHOULD discuss and debate their own political history as well as their place in Irish history in general, Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald has said.
Speaking in Dublin at the launch last night of Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism by Eoin Ó Broin, former director of the party’s European department, she said: “It is important that we participate in the broader conversation with historians and political commentators beyond the republican family.”
Mr Ó Broin, a Sinn Féin candidate in the local elections for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council, said: “Sinn Féin has been one of the central architects of the peace process and is increasingly setting the terms of political debate in Ireland north and south. Despite this, the party remains much misunderstood and often misrepresented.
“It is the left republican tradition started by Connolly and continued by Mellows, Gilmore, O’Donnell, the Republican Congress, Clann na Poblachta and even the Workers’ Party to which we belong.
“While our history has seen many successes, it has also seen many failures. Honestly understanding our past is vital if we are to understand the limitations of our present and to achieve our objectives in the future.
“Sinn Féin’s future must be a left republican future, taking our place in the globally resurgent radical democratic left of Europe, Latin America and the wider world.”
McDONALD’S will charge more for Happy Meals and at “high-demand” stores, including at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Most of the outlets where prices will rise are in the city and working class suburbs, because McDonalds believes those consumers are more likely to accept the higher charges, while diners in more affluent areas would complain. The cost of menu items was previously based on restaurant overheads and ingredient prices.
But the multinational fast-food chain is now using socio-economic factors to determine charges under a new “demand-based pricing” scheme.
A confidential corporate document seen by the Australian Herald Sun reveals McDonald’s Australia has identified an “opportunity to introduce more aggressive price increases” at 52 of Victoria’s 214 outlets.
Melbourne’s CBD restaurants on Collins, Elizabeth, Swanston and Bourke streets will be among those to charge the highest prices.
The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne airport and select restaurants from areas such as Airport West and St Albans through to country Victorian restaurants in Traralgon and Echuca will all be hardest hit.Suburbs such as Werribee and Avondale Heights and country towns such as Benalla will only incur moderate increases.A McDonald’s franchisee, who asked to remain anonymous, said the biggest price rises were concentrated in low-income areas.”If you take the time to analyse the different restaurants, in general the poorer suburbs will pay more,” the franchisee said.
“In essence, areas that the franchiser thinks will pay more for our products will have to. This is so wrong.”
The document says the objective of the new system is for individual stores “to maximise the potential for a price rise” while minimising the risk consumers that will go elsewhere or choose a cheaper meal.The biggest price rise will be for children’s Happy Meals, which will increase by 16.5 per cent from $4.25 to $4.95, at all locations.Other items will rise in two stages by between 1.8 per cent and 3.3 per cent, depending on the location of the restaurant.
McDonald’s corporate communications manager Bronwyn Stubbs denied the prices were forced on franchise owners.”The company’s licensed restaurants have always, and continue to have, the power to set their own pricing based on individual factors,” she said.
InvisiblePeople.tv is the brainchild of Mark Horvath. 14 years ago Horvath was homeless on the streets of Hollywood, Calif. Today, he is dedicated to capturing the stories of the homeless on his vlog. His goal: for homeless people to no longer remain invisible. Each week, Horvath shares the story of a homeless person he meets on the streets. The stories are told by real people in their own very real words. They’re raw, uncensored and unedited
Mark Horvath is somewhat of an authority on America’s homeless population. That’s because he once was part of it. 14 years ago, Horvath was homeless. He lived on the streets of Hollywood, Calif. Today, Horvath is giving back to that community by breaking the mold and doing what, quite frankly, makes sense. Through invisiblepeople.tv, a new and dynamic video blog (vlog), he captures the stories of the homeless – one at a time.
Simply put, Horvath is breaking stereotypes.
Through his Web site, he shares the stories of homeless people he meets on the streets. The site’s segments are told by real people, in their own very real words. The innovative pieces, which began airing last November, are raw, uncensored and unedited – just like life on the streets.
There is meaning to the site’s name. According to Horvath, some homeless are passed on the street as if they don’t exist. Others are ignored the way one would disregard a piece of trash on the sidewalk.
Horvath’s goal? To make homeless visible to everyone else.
‘It’s not that people are bad,’ Horvath explains. “But if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, we have to admit they exist. It’s so much easier to simply close our eyes and shield our hearts to their existence.”
America’s homeless crisis is soon to get worse. According to data from the Labor Department, more jobs have been lost in the past 12 months than any other period since the government began keeping records in 1939. Perhaps most disconcerting is that experts predict unemployment will get worse before the economy gets better. In 1991 and 2001, unemployment didn’t hit its peak until two years after those recessions ended. We can no longer close our eyes to the issues of poverty and homelessness.
Horvath doesn’t ask for money. The purpose of his vlog is to make the invisible visible. He doesn’t want the world to look through or beyond the homeless anymore, but to be aware of them and their circumstances, and to let them not be forgotten.
The people and stories at invisiblepeople.tv are gripping. Some segments are, well, unsettling. Horvath wouldn’t have it any other way. He wants to inspire; and wants you to act.
In Horvath, the homeless now have a face and voice. Thanks largely to invisiblepeople.tv, they are invisible no more. He wants you to remember that the homeless people ignored today were much like the rest of us not very long ago.
