Environment Minister rolls over again
national |
miscellaneous |
news report 
Wednesday January 25, 2006 11:14
by Gumshoe
but can you follow his logic?
A week after an Irish Times report revealed that he reversed national waste policy after private meetings with a wannabe incineration operator, Environment Minister hands a second success to industry lobbyists.
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has agreed to industry demands to drop the idea of a chewing gum levy. The levy had been proposed to help cover the gum clean up costs falling on Local Authorities. Explaining his decision the Minister said he had made a deal with manufacturers, including Wrigleys, that they would instead contribute to a public awareness campaign, and fund 'research'.
Seeming to challenge the currently accepted laws of physics the Minister added:
"If you put a 100% levy on chewing gum you might actually stop some people chewing but you wouldn't stop them spitting it out on the streets," Mr Roche said.
Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5Great. I see Roche is living up to his forename again. This man needs to start doing some research.
Who's pockets is this guy in? Several, going by his recent record. Incineration, litter, pollution from transport, carbon emissions, gmos...Roche is bonkers!
Wrigley's have a virtual monopoly in a lot of markets for chewing gum. how many shops have you been in where they sell gum NOT made by Wrigley? It may be a small product, but it's a huge market and they have most of it.
Wrigley are huge, and have pots of resources to defend themselves.
Obviously they called in some heavy hitting lobbyists to lean on Roche. Perhaps they threatened to donate 0.01% of their income to the Fine Gael election campaign if the levy went through.
"... that he (Dick Roche) reversed national waste policy after private meetings with a wannabe incineration operator, Environment Minister hands a second success to industry lobbyists."
Any chance we could we see that report published here please?
Can anyone else comment on this?
should get you what you are looking for. Otherwise see the original story by Mark Hennessy in the Irish Times of January 16th last.
The UN Charter already makes war illegal. That's why people never go to war anymore, except for wars on drugs or wars on poverty or wars on whathaveyou. If the framers of the Initiative wanted to say 'all armed conflict is criminal' -- a sort of radical pacifist position -- then they should have said so. I know one or two of those people are Quakers, so I suppose that might be what they meant.
Or perhaps they meant Aggression? But then, again, they should have said so. They could have referred to the UN General Assembly definition, which the International Court of Justice acknowledged as being authoritative. That would leave some wiggle room for legitimate resistance against foreign occupation and attack. But then again it would only bring us back to where we started from in the first place with the UN Charter, which already makes war illegal. Otherwise though the initiative looks good.
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