Category: news

Micheal Martin said the survival of ruling party Fianna Fail was at stake

The Irish government’s chief whip says the foreign minister’s decision to vote against PM Brian Cowen in a confidence vote is not backed by colleagues.

“I haven’t heard of any other minister backing [Foreign Minister] Micheal Martin at this time,” John Curran has told Irish broadcaster RTE.

Mr Martin has said that a new leader is necessary before a general election.

Brian Cowen has decided not to step down but has offered colleagues a secret confidence ballot on Tuesday.

The taoiseach, who is also facing an opposition motion of no confidence in parliament, has come under pressure because of revelations of a 2008 meeting with the head of Anglo Irish Bank shortly before he announced a multi-billion euro bank guarantee.

Former Anglo Irish chairman Sean FitzPatrick is still subject to official scrutiny over his role in the bank’s collapse and has previously been questioned by police.

Mr Cowen, who came to power in 2008, has denied discussing bank matters at the golf course, insisting he had not done political favours for any financial institution.

His position has come under political pressure since the Irish Republic was forced to seek a bail-out by the EU and IMF late last year.

A general election is expected in March and Micheal Martin, a potential rival to succeed Mr Cowen as leader of the Fianna Fail party, said on Sunday that he had “reluctantly concluded” that a new leader was necessary as the party’s “very survival” was at stake.

Mr Martin told a news conference that he had offered to stand down as foreign minister but Mr Cowen had told him that was unnecessary.

The prime minister said on Sunday that while Fianna Fail was important, the interests of the country were “paramount”.

“As taoiseach my total focus must remain with discharging my duties to the people,” he said.

The normal party procedure for removing the leader begins when a quarter of all party MPs sign a notion of no-confidence.

Mr Cowen said he wanted to dispense with those procedures to hold the secret vote of confidence on Tuesday.

Although Fianna Fail MP Noel O’Flynn has called for the party to unite behind Mr Martin, Deputy Prime Minister Mary Coughlan has said she believes in Mr Cowen’s leadership.

The chief whip said he believed Mr Cowen would win Tuesday’s vote.

“It’s a question that the members of the parliamentary party believe that he is the best person to lead this country over the next number of weeks into the general election and he is the best person to lead Fianna Fail into the general election,” Mr Curran said.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Barnardo’s Cymru says a ‘sophisticated grooming process’ is used on vulnerable youngsters in Wales

Children trafficked in Wales are being moved around the country and across the UK, says children’s charity Barnardo’s.

They are moved along the M4 corridor in south Wales and the A55 in north Wales to places including London, Bristol, Birmingham and Liverpool, it says.

Meanwhile, an AM says nearly 30 children in Wales’ social services system have been identified as victims of organised child sexual abuse.

Funding for a post to track the issue in Wales has been approved.

Barnado’s says children as young as 10 are being trafficked in the UK

The charity says it is working with more than 1,000 abused children who are moved around British towns and cities.

Dr Sam Clutton, lead policy officer for child sexual exploitation at Barnardo’s Cymru, said a “sophisticated grooming process” saw young people being tricked by abusers.

She told BBC Radio Wales: “We know that this is becoming more organised and more tied into organised crime.

“We are basically talking about children being tricked and duped into going, initially maybe, to a party as part of the grooming process and… just being transported to being sold for sex by adults.”

She said the charity had trained 3,000 professionals on the issue in Wales in the past five years, with Gwent Police becoming a “pocket of good practice”.

She said: “We have come a long way in the last five years in Wales from a point where we didn’t acknowledge that child sexual exploitation was a Welsh issue but we have still got a long way to go.

“We need everybody to be aware of this issue, to be alert to it, so we can start noticing things earlier and start assisting these very vulnerable children and young people.”

“Certainly the latest evidence we’ve got in Wales [is] we’re looking at an average age 14 for girls and a little bit older for boys in relation to this issue.”

Across the UK, Barnardo’s is calling for a minister to be appointed to ensure the issue of children being sexually exploited and trafficked into the sex industry is addressed.

In Wales, the charity says the issue is progressing along different lines. It has welcomed new guidance to key practitioners in Wales such as teachers, health professionals, social workers, the police, to tackle sexual exploitation.

Deputy Social Services Minister Gwenda Thomas has commissioned a review within six months of the guidance being published to examine how it is being applied by Local Safeguarding Children Boards.

Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) consist of representatives from councils, health boards, social services and the police, who work together to prevent the mistreatment of children.

They were set up as part of the UK government’s 2003 Every Child Matters strategy alongside the formal response to the report into the death of Victoria Climbié.

Joyce Watson AM, who chairs the cross-party working group on trafficking, said the working group’s own report identified nearly 30 children in Wales’ social services system as victims of organised child sexual abuse.

Ms Watson said: “The fact is trafficking knows no boundaries.

“Once people are trafficked in the UK, they are then re-trafficked time and time again and each time that they are trafficked money changes hands, so they really are a commodity to those people that control them.

“It is particularly worrying when you see that has happened in the care sector in Wales, or anywhere else for that matter.”

She said Local Government Minister Carl Sargeant had put money towards a post of “trafficking co-ordinator” to keep across the issue in Wales.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Top three: Roosevelt (FDR), Lincoln, Washington. Next five: Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan

Franklin D Roosevelt has topped the first ever UK academic poll rating the performance of 40 US presidents since George Washington.

Barack Obama was not included in the survey, but interim assessments indicate that he would have made the top 10 of the rankings. George W Bush was in 31st place, putting him in the bottom 10.

In 1960, US political scientist Richard Neustadt began his seminal book Presidential Power with the observation: “In the United States we like to ‘rate’ a President. We measure him as ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ and call what we are measuring his ‘leadership’.”

In the half century since then, systematic presidential rating has become a regular exercise for US scholars. Over the same period, study and research of US history and politics expanded dramatically in UK universities. Until now, however, there has been no UK poll of US presidents.

The new survey was conducted before the 2010 mid-term elections by the United States Presidency Centre of the Institute for the Study of the Americas (part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study).

In total, 47 British academics specialising in American history and politics took part. They were asked to rate the performance of every president from 1789 to 2009 (excluding William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, who both died shortly after taking office) in five categories:

vision/agenda-settingdomestic leadershipforeign policy leadershipmoral authoritypositive historical significance of their legacy

Participants were required to score the presidents in each equally-weighted category from one (“not effective”) to 10 (“very effective”). Results were then were tabulated by averaging all the responses in a given category for each president.

Franklin D Roosevelt (1933-1945) came first in three categories: vision/agenda-setting; domestic leadership; and foreign policy leadership. George Washington (1789-1797) came first for moral authority, and Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) did so for the positive significance of his legacy.

Only one president who has held office since 1960 – Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) – made the overall top 10, in eighth position.

However, George W Bush (2001-2009), in 31st position, was the lowest-rated president of any who has held office since the scandal-hit Warren Harding (1921-1923), 38th.

Other than Harding, the bottom-rated five presidents held office just before and just after the Civil War (1861-1865).

US polls habitually place Lincoln first because of his achievements as Civil War leader in restoring the Union and ending slavery. In addition, they often put Washington second because of his significance in establishing the authority of the presidency.

The UK poll puts Lyndon Johnson 11th and JFK 15th out of 40

UK scholars, by contrast, elevated FDR in recognition of the breadth of the challenges he faced as president during the Great Depression and World War II, his confident and inspirational leadership in both of these crises, and the significance of his New Deal legacy.

It is also likely that Roosevelt’s stock rose because the poll was conducted against the background of the worst economic troubles since the 1930s.

Lincoln was a close second overall. His achievement is further highlighted by the presence of very low-rated presidents before and after him (as in US polls).

Clearly, the US was fortunate to have a president with his skill, vision and humanity to fulfil the leadership potential of the office at America’s moment of greatest crisis.

There are also significant differences between US and UK rankings of individual presidents outside the top three.

The most notable case is that of John F Kennedy (1961-63), ranked as high as sixth in some recent US surveys but only 15th in the UK poll. UK academics seemingly faulted JFK for the gap between his rhetoric and his substantive achievements as president.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001), who held a top 15 slot in one US poll slipped to 19th in the UK survey – mainly because of a very low rating for moral authority but also because his legacy, particularly his economic achievement, looks less robust 10 years on.

One of the criticisms often levelled against US presidential surveys is that the participants are driven by liberal bias to give high ratings to presidents who expanded the role of national government.

At first sight, the UK survey looks to have a similar leaning.

FDR, the architect of the modern state, is ranked first. The early 20th Century Progressive presidents, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), are placed fifth and sixth, while FDR’s liberal successors, Harry Truman (1945-53) and Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969), come seventh and 11th respectively (the latter would have been placed much higher in recognition of his civil rights achievement but for the corrosive effect of Vietnam).

However, the UK survey also places some small government advocates higher than in some recent US polls. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) was ranked fourth, Ronald Reagan was eighth, and Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) was ninth (compared with their 2009 C-Span survey rankings of 7th, 10th, and 13th).

No less than their US counterparts, the views of UK scholars are influenced by their own times.

The passions of the present may well have affected the low position of George W Bush, and Barack Obama’s high interim score, which would have placed him eighth overall if he had been included in the poll.

Memories are still raw regarding Bush’s Iraq war policy and his perceived expansion of the “imperial presidency”, but his bottom 10 placing arguably underestimates the strength of his vision/agenda setting and his success in achieving his domestic objectives.

Obama’s score reflects his substantive legislative achievements and his symbolic importance as the first African American president. Nevertheless, it is well to note with regard to his ultimate (rather than interim) rating that no president in the UK survey top 10 failed to win re-election to a second term.

An important similarity between the UK survey and US ones stands out in terms of rating recent and early presidents.

Of the five presidents from 1977 to 2009, only Reagan makes the top 10 and none of the others is in the top 15.

In contrast, of the five presidents who held office from 1789 to 1825, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in the top five and the other three made the top 15 – John Adams (1797-1801) in 12th position, James Monroe (1817-1825) 13th, and James Madison (1809-1817) 14th.

It might be concluded, therefore, that the early Tepublic possessed superior political leaders – but the more likely explanation for the discrepancy lies elsewhere.

The massive political, organisational and policy challenges of the modern presidency make it a far more difficult job than in the past. Our expectations as to what recent presidents could achieve may well be unrealistic when set against the many obstacles that inhibit their success.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.