Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum won 3 non-binding contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado yesterday putting back in contention after poor results in Florida and Nevada and puts the front runner Mitt Romney under pressure. While all the contests were non-binding they are an indication on how the delegates may be divided among the candidates at later state conventions. In Colorado Santorum won with 40% of vote to Romney’s 35%. Newt Gingrich was a distant third 13% with Ron Paul...
Nine Eurozone members want the Danish Presidency of the EU to speed up its work on a directive on a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). While there is much opposition within the Eurozone and wider EU to such a tax, the nine countries intend to use the community method to allow them to use the EU institutions to set up and administer the tax and allow other countries to join while not holding them back. The nine countries are: France Germany Austria...
Continuing my look through the motions ahead of Young Fine Gael National Conference in Tullamore the next motion to pique my interest is one from my own branch in UCC. The motion reads as follows: YFG believes that a graduate tax should be introduced for all college graduates as a means of funding their education and the present entry fees should be phased out over 5 years. Households with an income of below €45,000 would be exempted One the issues I always...
Young Fine Gael is holding its National Conference in Tullamore, Co. Offaly between the 17th-19th February. One of the motions that has been accepted for debate is on Fracking or to be more exact Hydraulic fracturing which is way to extract Gas from shale. The motion from UCD YFG reads as follows YFG approves of the process of fracking as can it can prove a viable energy source in Ireland for the foreseeable future Clare County Council recently banned the process while in Leitrim and...
After the exciting initial contests in Iowa (Santorum), New Hampshire (Romney), South Carolina (Gingrich) and Florida (Romeny) which were at first wide open contests, February Republican Primarys will not be as exciting and the winner is nearly known before hand. While this may lead to some upsets, it is doubtful that any will occur. Today’s Nevada Caucus is a perfect example. With results due from about 1am Irish time. Mitt Romney is expected to win by a 20 point margin, the only...
The Campaign for Children will be holding a public meeting tomorrow, Wednesday 25th, at 6pm in the Geogrpahy Lecture Hall in UCC. It is part of a series of public meetings to inform people about the work of the campaign. The Campaign is chaired by Former Supreme Court Justice Catherine McGuinness. Its board also contains some influential people, including Fergus Finlay of Barnardos and Olivia O’Leary. The Campaign raises very important issues and more importantly has suggestions to how they should be solved....
A lot has been posted about Mitt Romney’s win of the Straw Poll at the Iowa Caucus on Tuesday night. While he beat Rick Santorum by 8 votes, how many of his supporters stuck around to be voted as Delegates to the County Caucus, which in turn selects Delegates to the State Caucus which decides on who will get the support of the Iowa Delegates at the Republican Convention. It is well known that Ron Paul (who came third)...
Image via Wikipedia For Part 1 see here Minister for Finance Michael Noonan TD today announced the rest of Budget 2012. The main points are as follows: VAT: Raised by 2% to 23% 1.4c increase on Petrol 1.6c increase on Diesel €17.32 increase on Fuel Oil (to rise in May) €14.46 increase on Natural Gas (to rise in May) No Carbon Tax on solid fuels 25c increase on pack of 20 Cigarettes Capital Acquisitions Tax: Up from 25% to...
Today we got a look at the first part of Budget 2012 . Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin today announced a series of measures that add up to the €2.2bn in cuts. The main points that I took from today’s announcements: Government will reduce the size of the public service to 282,500 by end 2015 €250 added to the Student Registration Fee Student Support funding cut by 14% Student Maintenance Grant cut by 3% No new...
Wave Change Cork
Over the 12th and 13th of November I spent time in the Cork School Music on the Wave Change programme from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland which I blogged about here. Over the two days there were speakers, such as Bill Liao and Myles McCorry of Bike Pure. We also had workshops on online and offline communication as well as some activities to get us thinking and learning about our skills. There was also a great opportunity to brain storm our ideas and help...
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