Exploring the Disadvantages Catholics Faced in Northern Ireland in the

Exploring the Disadvantages Catholics Faced in Northern Ireland in the Mid 60’s In Northern Ireland during the 60’s Catholics faced a lot of disadvantages, in areas of Employment, Education, Housing, and Politics; there is evidence that even the Police Force was biased in favor of the Protestant community. Employment was a major area in which Catholics faced discrimination. Protestants held most of the civil service, government and local government posts in Northern Ireland and even if a catholic did get employment, many would simply feel too uncomfortable in the midst of all the Protestants. The main companies were privately owned and although anti-catholic prejudice was often suspected among foremen or personal managers, it was a hard thing to prove. One fact that can be confirmed however is that, of 10,000 workers in a Belfast shipyard (the biggest single source of employment in the city), just 400 were Catholic. A similar pattern of employment can be seen in Fermanagh County Council where 322 of 370 employees were Protestant, including most of those in the ‘top’ positions. Within the Education Authority, the most sought after jobs in Fermanagh were for school bus drivers because of the long rest and holidays; all but seven of these places out of 75 were given to Protestants. Such facts are made all the more astounding considering more than half of the population of Fermanagh County were actually Catholic. Education was another area where Catholics faced discrimination. Dr McChuckey’s description of the results in Dungannon in 1964states â€Å"there were two secondary schools: â€Å"St.Patrick’s†, the Catholic institution, and ... ...alled in by the Unionists, to act like a police force/army. Catholic marches were banned. Student demonstrations ended up in violence. They treated Catholic civilians harshly which increased hatred between the two religious groups. Only 14.5% of Catholics were in the police force but they formed 40% of Northern Ireland's population. In conclusion there were many differences between Catholics and Protestants in the 1960s. Most of these differences were in opinion and in Politics. Nationalist politicians were always out numbered by Unionist politicians in large Nationalist areas. Therefore, Catholics could not have their views expressed and always lost out if it came to a majority vote. This unfair treatment halted progress to achieve peace in Northern Ireland and they are still trying to achieve peace to this day.

The Admirable Priest

Leo Buscaglia, an American author and motivational speaker, once said â€Å"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which can turn a life around†. In â€Å"First Confession† by Frank O’Connor, a priest shows compassion when a little boy is scared out of his wits because of his first confession. After the confession is over with Jackie, the little boy feels better about his sins and, because of how the priest dealt with him, Jackie, is no longer stressing his past actions. When dealing with the scared boy’s fear, the priest handles the situation with humor, kindness, and by sympathizing with the young boy. Humor can change ones outlook on a situation as a whole. The priest senses that Jackie is fearful of his first confession and decides to lighten that fear by using humor. After Jackie tells the priest his arranged plans to kill his grandmother, the priest pretends to be shocked by this comment and starts to question his motives. This shows the reader that the priest has a humorous side to his character. In response, the priest leads Jackie to believe that he has seen lots of men hanged for killing their grandmothers too, but none of them said it is worth it. He uses humor in this way by steering Jackie clear of the direction of not killing anyone. Although Jackie cannot tell that the priest is only kidding, this gives off a humorous vibe to the reader because we can tell the priest knows that Jackie is just a child and he means no harm to anyone. The priest is very kind towards Jackie as he acknowledges the boy’s sins. He helps Jackie come to the realization that he is not evil, but that everyone has their bad moments. The way the priest talks to Jackie as if they are friends lightens the mood and gets Jackie to open up more to the priest. After confession is over with, the priest gives the boy candy and even spends time talking with Jackie, showing the readers that there is a fondness between the two characters. Usually priests are thought to be strict individuals, but he shows us that he is still a person too. When handling children, one always needs to remember to be sympathetic because children do not always know the full consequences of their actions. Priests are forgiving people, but the priest in â€Å"First Confession† is so much more than just forgiving. The priest is sympathetic towards Jackie and gives him three Hail Marys as his punishment for planning to kill his grandmother and trying to kill his sister with a bread-knife. Taking into consideration that Jackie is a naive character who has been manipulated into thinking he is a horrifying person, the priest settles with three Hail Marys because he knows that Jackie is a in fact a great person. The priest shows the readers that he knows how to deal with children in a sympathetic manner. By being humorous, kind, and sympathetic towards Jackie, the priest exhibits his admirable character in the story â€Å"First Confession† by Frank O’Connor. With using his humorous character, the priest lightens the fear Jackie is feeling and turns it into an entertaining time for the boy. The priest is a kind individual, and readers can see that in the way he talks with Jackie and spends time with him. He sees that Jackie is an innocent boy who has been manipulated into thinking his actions are pure evil. In result he priest gives him little penance because he is only a boy with harmless intentions. The priest’s way of dealing with Jackie and his first confession turns the horrifying event into an entertaining encounter for both of them.

Greening The Budget essays

Greening The Budget essays Earning a Double Dividend in the Process Q1. How Do you reconcile the introduction of environmental-based tax rate differentiation as well as new environmental taxes with the traditional objectives of fiscal reform: tax simplification, fiscal neutrality (not affecting behavior)? A1. This has to be done very carefully, as introducing new taxes that are related to the environment, can dramatically affect peoples behavior. If you levy new taxes on vehicles that produce high amount of pollution, like Sport Utility vehicles people are no longer going to purchase those vehicles. This tax is something that has to be eased on to the public and the public has to be educated as to how these environmental taxes will work. The bottom line is that the public needs to be educated as to why these taxes are being levied. Q2. With the exception of a lump-sum tax, all conventional taxes have distortion cost in the form of affecting the taxpayers economic behavior: work-leisure choice, consumption-savings allocation, etc. Wouldnt environmental taxes have the same dead weight loss by affecting consumption and production behavior? A2. These taxes would not be a dead weight loss because after the public was educated, I believe that they would be aware the there was considerable environmental benefit involved with these new taxes. They also might make people think twice before polluting the environment, because they may realize that the end result is that they are paying to clean it up. Q3. What is the distributional incidence of environmental taxes? Or, Who benefits and who loses from specific taxes, how can distributional concerns, a major constraint to the acceptability of environmental taxes, be addressed in a satisfactory way? A3. The general public are those who will benefit from these new taxes, due to the fact that pollution will be reduced and the environment will become cleaner and a better place to live. This tax als...

How to Construct an Index for Research

How to Construct an Index for Research An index is a composite measure of variables, or a way of measuring a constructlike religiosity or racismusing more than one data item. An index is an accumulation of scores from a variety of individual items. To create one, you must select possible items, examine their empirical relationships, score the index, and validate it. Item Selection The first step in creating an index is selecting the items you wish to include in the index to measure the variable of interest. There are several things to consider when selecting the items. First, you should select items that have face validity. That is, the item should measure what it is intended to measure. If you are constructing an index of religiosity, items such as church attendance and frequency of prayer would have face validity because they appear to offer some indication of religiosity. A second criterion for choosing which items to include in your index is unidimensionality. That is, each item should represent only one dimension of the concept you are measuring. For example, items reflecting depression should not be included in items measuring anxiety, even though the two might be related to one another. Third, you need to decide how general or specific your variable will be. For example, if you only wish to measure a specific aspect of religiosity, such as ritual participation, then you would only want to include items that measure ritual participation, such as church attendance, confession, communion, etc. If you are measuring religiosity in a more general way, however, you would want to also include a more balanced set of items that touch on other areas of religion (such as beliefs, knowledge, etc.). Lastly, when choosing which items to include in your index, you should pay attention to the amount of variance that each item provides. For example, if an item is intended to measure religious conservatism, you need to pay attention to what proportion of respondents would be identified as religiously conservative by that measure. If the item identifies nobody as religiously conservative or everyone as a religiously conservative, then the item has no variance and it is not a useful item for your index. Examining Empirical Relationships The second step in index construction is to examine the empirical relationships among the items you wish to include in the index. An empirical relationship is when respondents’ answers to one question help us predict how they will answer other questions. If two items are empirically related to each other, we can argue that both items reflect the same concept and we can, therefore, include them in the same index. To determine if your items are empirically related, crosstabulations, correlation coefficients, or both may be used. Index Scoring The third step in index construction is scoring the index. After you have finalized the items you are including in your index, you then assign scores for particular responses, thereby making a composite variable out of your several items. For example, let’s say you are measuring religious ritual participation among Catholics and the items included in your index are church attendance, confession, communion, and daily prayer, each with a response choice of yes, I regularly participate or no, I do not regularly participate. You might assign a 0 for does not participate and a 1 for participates. Therefore, a respondent could receive a final composite score of 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 with 0 being the least engaged in Catholic rituals and 4 being the most engaged. Index Validation The final step in constructing an index is validating it. Just like you need to validate each item that goes into the index, you also need to validate the index itself to make sure that it measures what it is intended to measure. There are several methods for doing this. One is called item analysis in which you examine the extent to which the index is related to the individual items that are included in it. Another important indicator of an index’s validity is how well it accurately predicts related measures. For example, if you are measuring political conservatism, those who score the most conservative in your index should also score conservative in other questions included in the survey.

Adidas Company Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Adidas Company - Assignment Example They possess strong control over their channel of distribution. Their customers have strong competence to promote the company’s development. The brand reputation and recognition are an added advantage that causes competitive nature of the other companies (Borowski, 2013). The strategy of pricing of the Adidas products makes the company more competitive. The Adidas Company is the second largest maker of athletic footwear and sports equipment worldwide. The company has revenues of E10, 381 million, which enable it not to ever run under debts. Its strong brand such as Adidas, Reebok, and Taylor Made are the portfolios (Borowski, 2013). They build the company’s leading market position. Leveraging is done on the brands to establish strong retail availability and get an increase in profits limits through the increment of retail sales as a percentage of sales in total. The company has successfully grown due to its own retail. It is currently operating over 2,200 stores for its brands worldwide. It is also operating its business using the e-commerce, which other companies have not discovered yet. It is successfully expanding the retail stores across the contents, which makes it more successful compared to other

Microeconomics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 13

Microeconomics - Essay Example the loss incurred the bank has to pass forward the effect of this incident to its other customers which are charged higher interest rates on their future loans and their current money deposits receive a lower interest rate return. The money supply of the banks is also diminished due to event of a loan investment that is not recovered. Corporations in America follow similar financial decisions to individuals concerning their outstanding debt. Whenever market conditions are favorable corporations look for ways to refinance their debt. The difference between a corporation and individual is that companies utilize different mechanism to achieve refinancing. Corporate debt can be refinanced by utilizing a bond mechanism. A bond is commercial paper sold in denomination of $1000 to individuals or business which allows the corporation to raise money. The bonds have a fixed interest rate called the coupon rate. If market conditions changed corporation can issue a set of bonds at lower interest rate in order to eliminate its outstanding bonds and pay less money in the long run. Downgrading of debt occurs when the chances of recovering the outstanding debt diminishes because the debtor has not been paying their payment or time. If a loan goes beyond 90 days without a payment being received the debt is said to have gone in default. At this time the chances of collecting the money goes does down significantly. From the perspective of an outsider these financial assets of the bank represent a downgraded asset. The $700 billion bailout plan targeted these types of downgraded assets which the government would buy up to create greater liquidity in the banking system. Another way downgrading of debt occurs is when corporate debt such as bonds are downgraded by agencies such as Moody’s. Moody’s has a system which gives a grade to the commercial paper issued by banks and governments. If the organization is having financial problems the grade of their outstanding debt is

Drug cartels and us involvement Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Drug cartels and us involvement - Research Paper Example In addition, other significant activities of the Gulf cartel are present in Monterrey in Nuevo Leon and Morelia in Michoacan. Finally, there is the Tijuana cartel which is approximated to be spread in 15 states. It conducts most of its operations in Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, and Ensenada in Baja California and in parts of Sinaloa. In the past years alliances have been established by the major cartels. An alliance was formed between Tijuana cartel and the Gulf cartel as a result of prison negotiations made by the cartels leaders. Other cartels came together and established the federation alliance. This alliance is mainly under the leadership of the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Valencia cartels representatives. In most cases the cartels still remain independent even though they work jointly. The availability of the illegal drugs has also been on the rise in the United States. The expanding activity from drugs cartels in Mexico has contributed greatly to this condition. These cartels are the m ost drug trafficking threat to the United States (Stich, 123). The Mexican drug war is considered to be a continuous armed conflict among the drug cartels that are competing for regional control and the Mexican government forces that are battling to bring the drug trafficking to an end. Mexico as a country is popular for production and transit of drugs. It is considered to be the leading foreign supplier of marijuana and also top supplier of methamphetamine to the United States. Most cartels in Mexico have been in existence for a longer period but their power has become significant in recent years especially after Medellin and Cali cartel’s in Columbia came to an end. ... Even though Mexico produces a smaller percentage of heroin in the whole world, it is the leading supplier of heroin in the United States. Most cartels in Mexico have been in existence for a longer period but their power has become significant in recent years especially after Medellin and Cali cartel’s in Columbia came to an end. The cocaine traffic was moved to Mexico after the trafficking route in Florida was closed. This resulted in tremendous increase in the trafficking of cocaine by the Mexican cartels (Friesendorf, 130-132). The Mexican cartels have also grown marijuana in the United States, and are located in the federal land in California. Currently they are increasing their drug production to northwest in the pacific area and a small portion in the eastern side of the United States. All those involved in these different areas have joined together to form strong ties. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, the American illicit drug market has been dominated mostly by the drug cartels from Mexico. The center also reveals that the cartels have a transport network which is well established. This helps them in the transportation of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin to the various destinations. There has been continuous balanced power in the different cartels as others are introduced and the older ones are weakened. In most cases their system is disrupted when the key leaders are arrested or even killed. The top rival’s takes an advantage and tries to occupy the power vacuum and this in most cases results in bloodshed. Leadership vacuum in some cases is as a result of successful law enforcement against a specific