Friday 16th December

LAST sunday I joined an impressive crowd of people at a protest for Greystones Harbour. It was great to see such a turn out, loads of families, kids playing. Sadly the promised appearance of Dustin the Turkey failed to happen - the run up to Christmas obviously has him hiding.

Its been a busy run up the Christmas break in general. Last Friday I went down to Cork to host an Arts Forum. It was organised by Labour Artists and was really heartening to have such interested and committed people turn up to debate and thrash out the issues. Cork has had a great year as European City of Culture overall but we do need to see a continued and coordinated approach to the arts. Of course, needless to say Labour's Arts Policy "art4all" is availabe on www.labour.ie ! Hmm, seems that every week on this blog I'm directing people to our website....but it's all there folks! And I would like your comments and feedaback on any of it!

Actually I was down in Cork over the summer to speak at the Older Women's Network and I spoke on the incredibly poor represenation of women in the Dail, managerial positions etc. Today I've just noticed on breakingnews.ie that the Central Stats Office has confirmed that the figures are as disappointing as ever. "13% of serving TDs are women, while female businesspeople also make up only 30% of positions on state boards." It means that issues that affect women are being legislated for by a constant majority of men....would childcare for example have taken a back seat for so long if there was a higher representation of women making decisions?

Oh and for any Wicklow based bloggers - I hope you slept soundly through our recent earthquake - I certainly did!

Happy Christmas!!


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