Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Frinl sgtares Dates, duck pouts and dilemmas? Dear Dolly dishes out advice pAGE 17
Aware’s Dr claire talks hope and help for the distressed
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pAGE 19
TALKS ON GAZA BREAK DOWN iN cAiRO pAGE 7
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Festiva talk about the origins of their shows pAGE 13
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DiTch ThE cAR DiTch pOuNDS, cOmmuTERS pAGE 11
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Red, you’re dead: Ginger racism rife MORE than nine in ten red-haired people have been the victims of bullying, according to a new Irish study. Findings from a worldwide survey indicate that people with ginger hair are seen as an easy and often socially acceptable target for insults. A worrying 92 per cent of male redheads who took part in the University College Cork research said they had suffered bullying at some stage. And the experience was little better for flame-haired women, with 87 per cent revealing they had been victimised. The findings of the research – which involved the survey of 1,742 people, 65 per cent of whom had red hair – will be presented at the fifth annual Irish Redhead Convention, which kicks off on Friday in Crosshaven, Co Cork. Kevin O’Regan, who conducted the research for his final-year Applied Psychology thesis at UCC, said the results prove that having red hair carries a significant risk of bullying.
Irish pub is top draw, but is it a stereotype?
by NicK BRAmhiLL By contrast, between just five and ten per cent of the non-redheads who participated in the study said they had been bullied because of their hair colour. O’Regan, 26, from Goleen in west Cork, himself a redhead, said: ‘It’s the one sector in society it’s still OK to laugh at. People with red hair are seen as acceptable targets, because they’re not one group and not a race. ‘If discrimination and hate crime laws were to include attacks motivated by a person’s hair colour that may go some way toward discouraging “gingerism”. ‘The long-term negative effects on mental health may be too significant for this problem to be ignored.’ Red hair is the rarest hair colour in the world, accounting for just 0.6 per cent of the world’s population. Scotland has the highest number of redheads per capita at 13 per cent, followed by Ireland at ten per cent. VISITING an authentic Irish pub is our number one tourist attraction – but it has been claimed our famous hospitality industry may ‘play into an embarrassing national stereotype’. A report by economist Tony Foley, The Contribution Of The Drinks Industry To Tourism, found the top reason for overseas visitors to come here was the Irish pub
experience (80 per cent) – 83 per cent said the best activity was ‘listening to Irish music in a pub’. The Guinness Storehouse was the country’s biggest fee-charging attraction, setting a record with more than 1.1million visitors in 2013. The Old Jameson Distillery was also in the top 20 with 267,800, with 90 per cent of these visitors from overseas. The tax take from
STORM’S A-COMING: TV3 weatherman Deric Hartigan and model Nicola Hughes prepared for some inclement weather as they attended a preview of disaster thriller Into The Storm at The Odeon Cinema in the Point Village yesterday PICTURE:BRIAN MCEVOY
tourism in 2013 was €1.4billion and expenditure was €4.7bn. The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland hosted an event yesterday asking if our hospitality industry is a unique resource, or if it plays into an embarrassing stereotype. Event facilitator Kevin Rafter said: ‘The role of alcohol in Irish society is one that often plays out in the media.’
Keep Dublin tidy – Please recycle this Metro Herald when you are finished with it
Big pull: Irish pub experience