For legal purposes, the term capacity refers to a person´s ability to make an enforceable decision for themselves, one that has legal significance. In general terms, capacity is concerned with an individual´s competence to understand the potential consequences of a personal decision as well as being able to clearly express her or his intended course [...]

Irish society remains deeply unequal despite massive wealth creation during the Celtic tiger years.   It is estimated that a mere 5% of the population hold 40% of the wealth in Ireland.
Discrimination as experienced by women, Black and minority ethnic people  including Travellers, older people, young people, lesbian, gay and transgendered people, lone parents, carers, people [...]

Book Review: Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists by Daniel Dorling, Policy Press (2010)
Over the last two decades or so, scholars concerned with social justice have offered a number of different frameworks for helping us to analyse the problem. These have included the extensively discussed two-dimensional approach that classifies issues under the headings of redistribution [...]

Book Review:The Situationists and the City, edited by Tom McDonough, (2009) Verso.
It isn’t entirely clear why Verso thought now would be a good time to publish a book of extracts from the writings of the Situationists about the urban environment and experience. Editor Tom McDonough, whose excellent introductory essay renders much of the subsequent material [...]

Arguably one of the greatest surprises of the recent World Cup was the achievement of the German football team in securing third place. In the run up to the tournament, the German team had generally been regarded as one of the weakest in their history, lacking the necessary experience as well as the quality and [...]

Book Review: Living Dolls: The Return Of Sexism, Natasha Walter (Virago 2010)

When the facts changed, Natasha Walter changed her mind. Or so she says in Living Dolls: The Return Of Sexism, a book that describes how raunch culture has co-opted the language of choice and liberation and how the post-feminist cultural politics of celebrating doll-like [...]

Book Review:The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today by Kat Banyard, Faber & Faber (2010)
28-year-old British activist Kat Banyard opens her polemic The Equality Illusion with a quote simply beyond satire from Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks and Spencer:
‘…there really are no glass ceilings despite the fact that some of you [...]

There is big money in oil.  Certainly that seems to be the motivation for people like Sean Fitzpatrick who along with Lar Bradshaw invested €25million in Movido Exploration and Production, an oil company operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
There is also big trouble associated with oil and the people of the Niger Delta [...]

There is a new Think Piece on the TASC website co-authored by one of our regular contributors, Justin Frewen.
Called The Socio-Economic Realities of Mental Health, by Justin and co-author Dr. Anna Datta, the paper can be downloaded from the TASC site here.
“An ever-growing body of research indicates that the failure to adequately tackle mental health [...]

The title of this wee piece scans a little like a football chant. That might, at least at the start, make it easier reading for Ian O’Doherty of The Irish Independent. But it’s mainly a direct reply to his article today on asylum-seekers in Mosney, “It’s not racist to say sorry we’re full“.
There is a [...]