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Ageism or a genuine question? – Are we too non-discriminatory?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Ageism or a genuine question? – Are we too non-discriminatory?

If you are looking for a boy-friend/girl-friend/husband/wife/partner or a person for ANY other role in your life (e.g. baby sitter, chauffeur, pool boy ;-), cleaner, butler etc), you have a certain type of person in mind. You might have an idea if that person should be male or female, you know what skills that person should have and without a doubt you also think about that person’s age.

It is extremely unlikely that you will select a male baby-sitter that is 80 years of age if he applied for the job and if you are looking for a life-partner you DEFINITELY have an ideal age range and lots of other “parameters” in mind.

This is normal and everyone would agree that it makes sense. However, if a company is looking for an employee, they are NOT allowed to make a decision based on age. EVEN if the applicant is 64 and the other 20 people in your company are all under 25 you are NOT allowed to rule someone out because of age. Do you have to employ the 64 year old who will retire in one year? No! But if the reason for not hiring him is age, it could cost you a LOT. So what do you do? You INVENT reasons for rejecting him or you lie about your reasons. So making things up is ok, but being honest is not? Yep, that’s the world we live in.

The background of the story is this: The State’s further education and training organisation “Solas” was looking for an Assistant Manager for its Limerick Training Centre in 2013. Someone who was an employee in Solas already applied for the job and he was coincidentally 60 years of age. If that person had the skills and all other pre-requisites then the age shouldn’t be much of a problem, but Solas doesn’t allow you to work after 65, so in this case the employee only had 5 years left and maybe the company would have liked to get some more years out of this appointment.

A question was asked that referred to the age of the applicant. The applicant claims he was asked “Do you not think at this stage that you should be taking it easier?” and Solas claims they asked “What motivates you to take on this role at this stage in your career?”. No matter what the wording was (and we will never find out!), the question was about the age.

The poor applicant felt that an assumption was made about his ability to do the job based on his age and he couldn’t sleep that night because he felt unfairly treated. So he sued Solas and the Labour Court (officially: Workplace Relations Commission) sentenced Solas to pay him 20,000 Euro. Not because he should have got the job and didn’t. Not because he was fired, because he wasn’t. No, just because the FELT that injustice was done to him.

We don’t know if he got the job, but what is your guess: Would he have sued Solas if they had given him the job? I’d say he would have happily taken it and suddenly would have much less unfairly treated.

And do we think that age was the only problem? Well, if he was supremely suitable and another candidate was less suitable but was younger. It would be odd if the employer chose the less suitable candidate. And if two candidates were exactly evenly suitable, but there is only one job than SOME criteria has to be found to make a decision. And should it then not be permissible to use ANY criteria?

Sure, we will all feel a little miffed when we get older an start feeling pushed out of the areas in life that we would like to be in. But who do you sue if you are 65 and the 20 year old man or woman that you adore doesn’t want to marry you because you are too old? Ageism? Nonsense!

There is NO justification in awarding someone 20k because in an interview a question about his age was asked. Political correctness or non-discrimination is definitely gone mad!!

Oh and by the way, do you think that the 20k punishment will stop the employer next time to make a decision based on age? Not in the slightest, they will just not ask the question anymore and will instead PRETEND that the decision was based on skills/aptitude/attitude etc. Result: The 60 year old applicant will still not get the job, but he will never find out why. Well, that is a a good improvement, dear Workplace Relations Commission.

 

Irish, Odd, Society, , , , , ,

National Dairy Council is spreading nonsense

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
National Dairy Council is spreading nonsense

The National Dairy Council has accused “Social media channels” to confuse consumers about the health effects of dairy products and at the same time, they are doing their best to confuse consumers about almond milk, the biggest competitor to cow’s milk. It is nothing else than protecting their commercial interests, after all the National Dairy Council is just a milk producers’ organisation.

Blaming social media channels for a changed consumer behaviour is just nonsense, BUT I am happy to confirm all the prejudices the National Dairy Council has. :-P So let’s finish with this:

Interestingly, a study shows that 41% of Irish women and 30% of men have already realised that “baby calf growth juice” is not the best food for human beings and they are limiting or avoiding dairy. The rest should watch this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=toZ7Mr-ClCE ;-)

Irish, Other, ,

Are Irish judges idiots??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Are Irish judges idiots??

It seems that there is no end to astonishing decisions by judges in Ireland. This could be a case where drunk driving gets a little slap on the wrist or where the theft of social welfare money will be “rewarded” with the thief getting away with no punishment at all.

Last week another amazing story made it from the courts into the newspapers. The court decision that is absolutely unbelievable is already from 2013/2016 and the reason why it is appearing now again is because thankfully the losing party has appealed the decision to the High Court and I can only hope that the 2016 decision will be overturned.

According to an article in the Irish Independent, this is what happened:

A guy entered a pub in Rathmines one evening in April 2013. He ordered a pint and put EUR 10 on the counter. The barman picks up the EUR 10 note and says that this note is fake and possibly 10 other people in the pub heard that. The customer claimed that he got the note from the post office and therefore the note was not fake. Then the customer claims that he went to the Rathmines Garda Station, the note was tested and he was told that it is perfect. He then returned to the bar and told the barman what the garda said. The next day the customer went to his solicitor and sued the pub for defamation.

Sounds like a simple story, but I am still waiting for where the customer was defamed. The Circuit Court was totally on the customer’s side and awarded EUR 5,000 to the customer.

This is a super odd case, so keep reading, it gets a lot more interesting.

But let’s look at the definition of defamation first. A defamatory statement is one which tends to injure a person’s reputation in the eyes of reasonable members of society. So if the pub had been empty, the customer would not have been awarded a cent. But because there were some people in the pub that MIGHT have heard that the barman stated that this was fake money, it could be defamation. But it is ONLY defamation if the statement “injures a person’s reputation”. With the huge amounts of fake money going around, I think a lot more people than we know have handled fake notes. And if we assume that you might get a fake note as change and because most of us do not check every note we get, I think it is not certain that a person’s reputation is automatically damaged if somebody thinks that the money you have is fake.

We can all FEEL to be defamed, but that doesn’t mean our reputation actually did suffer!

But it continues!! Oddly, it turns out, that the customer did NOT go to the Garda Station in Rathmines and NO Garda confirmed that the money was “perfect”. The two gardai on duty that night said that nobody came with a potentially fake note and that they also don’t have a machine to check money. Wow! So did the the customer tell a big fat lie?

Could that also mean that he did not get this note from the post office? Not that getting a note from a post office is a guarantee that it is not fake, but possibly the money was NOT from a source that is perceived to be reputable. Allegedly he told the barman that he got it from a “bookies or a shop” but in court the customer claimed that he said he got it from the Post Office.

Looks to me that the customer’s statements might not be the most reliable? How can the Circuit Court in a situation like force the pub to give him EUR 5,000?

Was that Circuit Court judge asleep? Odd!!

Dublin, Justice, Odd, , , , ,

“New” Luas causing problems!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
“New” Luas causing problems!

It is a good and a bad sign that the Public Transport system in Dublin is reaching max. capacity. Darts are packed, Busses are full and Luas trams need to be extended to deal with the amount of customers that want to use the systems. This is what the creators of Public Transport want. This is what they created all car traffic limitations for! But when it happens, then there is panic because nobody seems to have a “Next Step” plan in place. Dart platforms have been extended to the maximum. Busses are passing by bus stops without stopping and there is currently no plan to buy/use/deploy more busses on the busy routes and for the Luas the only way to deal with it is to extend the trams so much that now they don’t fit into our streets anymore. :-O

TheJournal.ie reports that the new 55m long Luas is too long for O’Connell Bridge and therefore blocks traffic when its back is sticking out. But the longer trams are needed to accommodate all customers.

What will we do when all three systems are overcrowded?

Dublin, Traffic, ,

Are we booming or busting? – The confusion about the “current financial climate”

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Are we booming or busting? – The confusion about the “current financial climate”

A friend posted a notice from a small business in Dublin on Facebook. The business (the name or sector is not relevant for this post) closed its doors on 31 January and the explanation for the closure started with “due to the current financial climate”. Interestingly, that business was in the same part of Dublin where a 3-bed apartment on Daft.ie has a rental price tag of EUR 3,800 per month and it was not a million miles away from a number of areas in Dublin, where the pubs are booming like mad.

If we talked about a place far away from our world, we would wonder what is going on, we would be puzzled!! Why are there these type of significant contradictions happening: One business closes due to “the current financial climate” and other businesses are booming and house and apartment prices are higher than they were before. But it is just around the corner from us, in the middle of our life and neighbour hood. So are we booming or busting?

The answer is most likely that we are BOTH in a boom and at the same time still in trouble. There are some companies who are (still) in trouble, some because they were not made or managed to be ever successful and others because the people running them are still in the mindset of “trouble”. But other areas are just ignoring that and it seems to work for them.

The “current financial climate” is still in the head of people while at the same time they are prepared to spend like there is no tomorrow. It also seems that we have a new split in society with one part being still – at least partially – in the bad financial climate, while the other part is riding the crest again. Nearly all formerly bankrupt or at least “NAMA-treated” developers seem to be back in buying mode! :-O

Where does that leave us? It leaves us in a weird and eerie twilight zone of a “boom-bust”, where the emotions about the economic situation might influence us more than the actual facts.

It’s a pity about that small business, because without a doubt dreams and hopes were dashed, replaced by disillusionment and despair.But I would also guess that that small business had made it through harder times a few years ago. Maybe they just reached the point were they couldn’t take it any longer?

Dublin, Economy, Society, , , ,
 
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