Daniel K. Sullivan

Moving the blog! Welcome to danielsullivan.ie/blog

2009-05-29T15:01:00.008+01:00

Image by juanpol via Flickr

So after a good old while here (3/4 years I think) and a year and a half since I got the domain I have finally got around to installing Wordpress and moved over the old content. And all just in time to miss the local/euro/by elections which you might have expected I would be blogging loads on but it wasn't to be. Real life intervenes when you least expect it.

Nanyway, you can get more up to date content over here, once I start to post again with some frequency. Which should be some time over the summer.

If you had been so good as to link to me then if you can update to the new address I'd very much appreciate it.

http://www.danielsullivan.ie/blog/

Otherwise I'd like to say a big thank you to blogspot. It has served me well down the years and like I say chose the tool that does the job in front of you when starting out. Latah!

Compelling audience contribution from Michael O'Brein on Questions and Answers re: the Ryan Commission Report on Child Abuse

2009-05-26T17:26:00.003+01:00

We had a pretty compelling and some might say damning contribution from abuse victim and former FF councillor Michael O'Brien on Questions and Answers last night.

Q&A May 25th

I had wanted to write something more to go with this last night but the hour was late and the spirit weak. This clip was television at its worst and best.

Worst in the sense that it made you feel deeply uncomfortable, even prurient, to be sitting in the comfort of your own home watching someone who was so raw from the pain they had suffered as they and yet this too was its best aspect because it made solid and concrete the real lifelong impact on just one of the many thousands who otherwise might otherwise be merely statistics on a page.

As for the response from the religious that it was left to them to provide these services that was in large part because any attempt to provide a secular option was fought by the church who viewed health and education as their domain. And we must again look to cast aside this mentality in public discourse that if someone or some organisation had done some good that this somehow acts as a counterweight to some appalling activities they may have been involved in.

The party political or that merely more personally political aspect to this is how the process has been managed since the problem came into the public light and the deal done by the then minister Michael Woods is entirely political and so it should be. He was a minister elected to represent us in those negotiations and instead it would appear from the deal that was done and the manner of it being done that he had the interests of the religious closer to his heart than that of the citizenry, and in particular those who had been abused, who he was meant to represent.

The fuller piece from the show is also worth watching on the RTe iplayer.

Local note: I have already posted this to Irish Election last night and had intended posting a more thoughtful post but it was cut short due to lack of time. More generally my posting here and elsewhere has been truncated due to what I'm terming Dadwatch. News on that front is good, the quackerati are happy with his progress and he's up and about a bit more being a cheeky devil. So the long term prognosis is very positive. Might get some time for proper writing in the next while too.

Can't let a whole month go by without a post, or can I?

2009-04-10T19:04:00.003+01:00

Songbird is throwing a lot of Steely Dan at me today. Portents or mere coincidence? Feeling like a I should relieve HMV of some of their cheap music in the next while. Other than that not much to say, other more productive writing to do!

Watching Watchmen

2009-03-11T21:05:00.006Z

I've seen Watchmen and am left with mixed decidedly feelings about it. The best way to sum it up would be that it's a successful adaptation of the novel but not an equally successful movie. Like many others I've probably been seeing a movie of Watchmen in my mind for the bones of twenty years (having borrowed it from a mate in '89 and going through a couple of copies of my own in my travels)

In many ways the cause of the main flaw was mine as I watched each scene with a mind's eye fo "oh look it's the but with X and wow that's so fateful!" But that mindset I feel harmed the overall movie watching experience. One other problem with the length of the novel is that elements inevitability had to be dropped and most of those dropped elements involved minor characters. Yet though they were minor they were for the most part real people, not super heroes and their fates as the plans enfolded through the course of the novel were very much part of what made you invest in the outcome. The newspaper man, and the comic reading kid (that was me for so many years, on the lower shelf in the local newsagents reading Cheeky) the trucker and her estranged lover. I expect they will be restored in the DVD but I felt their absence hurt the movie.

I will watching it again just not sure if I'd do it in the movies and I'll be there with my cash in my grubby mitts to get the DVD if only for the Black Freighter.

Ideas Campaign - grassroots or astroturf

2009-03-06T19:45:00.006Z

I must have missed the original Prime Time appearance of Aileen O'Toole, so the launch last night on Prime Time caught me by surprise. I listened to the piece with some degree of scepticism (well I am a Kerryman reared, even if my Sarf London optimistic nature occasionally bounds in, ahwight!)

I don't have a problem with a genuinely open forum for the debate of and the testing of ideas and all ideas, let's have the crazies in too. Sure who know who is crazy now. Yet there are considerable questions hanging over this initiative.

One is that those behind it seem to have strong links to semi-state organisations and hence to government. And also the seeking after rights to commercialise ideas that people are going to volunteer seems completely unnecessary to me. It seems to me to be primarily if not exclusively PR people who the key movers here. PR people are not my biggest inspiration and I'd have to wonder what role PR needs to play in this.

History is replete with inventors and original thinkers who have never received the reward for their ideas. Far more often business people have become rich off the ideas of others than have the originators. So I have profound difficulty with the terms and conditions of participation in this effort.

"By submitting the idea you are thereby granting The Ideas Campaign the perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, copy, modify, edit, translate, publish, display, post, transmit, distribute or part company with your submitted idea without any compensation to you, anonymously or in the aggregate, for internal or external purposes, alone or as part of other works in any form, media or technology."

See people with ideas start with questions about where we are now, and then they go looking for solutions for well delineated problems. They are awkward to answer by definition but awkward isn't whinging though it might look it to some of the outside. Fact is I don't think there should be any parsing of the ideas (except for profanity or crudity). The ideas should be made available for all to see so that the public can then rate them, not be funnelled through a small number of people who may not necessarily have the expertise to assess their feasibility.

I also have to say that I would question the nature of the categories. For example the retail sector for which I submitted an idea reads more like the ideas should be about helping business in that area make money while I thought a real grassroots effort would be as interested or even more interested perhaps in ideas that would promote competition in the sector and give a better deal for consumer and the average Joe Citizen rather than boosting the profits of retailers. If those managers in Dunnes or Tesco can't come up with ideas to boost their businesses then someone else should be given their jobs, not looking to crowd source solutions to bail them out.

To be as clear as I can I think the basic premise is a good one and is worth doing but the execution for the moment is poor, looking for ideas from others that you could sell on and reap the benefit of it is exploitation. And the motives of those involved are opaque given their linkages to the semi-state and big Irish sector (the banks, Eircom, Aer Lingus, yeah they are really the go-getters that we should be emulating).

Update: this is covered rather well over at Value Ireland. And they note that the reference to selling on of the ideas has been removed. Curious that it has been removed without noting its removal on a blog post or press release while they did find the time to issue a press release about some minor overlap in keywords in Google Adwords.

Maire Hoctor - Not ready for Prime Time

2009-03-06T13:38:00.003Z

Regular readers will know that I've a certain view of Maire Hoctor TD based on my continuing astonishment that she is a minister for state. Following on from her contribution to the Oireachtas, her performance on Prime Time should be compulsory viewing for all media trainers. Here it is for those that missed it.

It is hard to understand how bad the rest of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party must be that she is a minister for state.

P.S. I do apologise for the slight movement in the clip, though it's not on the level of Cloverfield or the Blair Witch. And I did add some very minor commentary of my own.

Playing a long game

2009-03-04T19:33:00.000Z

The FF Ard Fheis with the strong television presence of various young candidates got me thinking about FF’s future; they do have one you know just as FG had one in 2002. It is just all too tempting for most of us (myself included) in writing commentary to simply write them off.

It occurred to me that with all the talk of the impeding collapse of the government that FF might have decided to stay their course and simply ride it out. The Greens appear not to be for moving no matter what the circumstances, I believe that to be a mistake but having made that decision for their own reasons they are determined to see it through. I would still hold that the real weak link come the next budget is the FF backbenchers, however I would have to blind to the reality to ignore the alternative which is that FF are simply playing for time at the moment.

In seeking to ride out the negative reaction to the current economic climate they could decide, much as they did partially in 2004, to throw the local and European elections. This would let the voting public get their venting out of their system and while not damaging the electoral prospects of the party at national level. In doing so it would suit them to get as much bad news and the taste of the awful medicine out of the way ASAP. Hell after all if they are going to lose the locals anyway then all the better reason to lose big at this stage while giving themselves 3 whole years to turn things around. As for the Europeans only in Dublin is the loss of a seat a serious prospect and even there it would require a strange set of circumstances for it to happen. I personally believe that a longer period than the current Dail allows for will be needed to return the country to sound finances. That said there is the small matter of a provision for the Dail term to be extended to up to seven years in emergencies, I wonder if FF might be tempted to go in that direction at some point. It was jokingly referred to back at the time of the FG/Lab coalition in the 80s.

Yet it is not impossible that were things to be looking a good degree more stable 3 years then FF support could be up. And up substantially from their current levels in the low 20s which to be fair are pretty much disastrous. Yet a scenario whereby FF and FG are tussling it out on 30% odd while Labour are floating in the high teens to low twenties would be just fine for FF. That situation would leave SF, the Greens and the Independents to fight over the remaining 20/25% of public support. Might the greens and SF be in a position to do a deal is that were the lie of the land. While not optimum for current TDs, it is considerably better than the prospects for the party at the moment.

Coupled with this is that fact FF’s candidate strategy which has offended so many local activists could also be marking a shift to a UK style central office directed candidate selection process for Dail candidates. Sure all the parties who stand for election want to win seats but FF want to be able to govern too and that translates that some minimum number of TDs has to be capable of being more than glorified councillors. Some of them have to be able to run ministries.

Of course, I can’t say for sure that this is the case but I wouldn’t put it past some element of the FF hierarchy or PtB to have sat down and done the maths and decided to take the long view on the prospects of that party. And part of that long view is that a retreat in support, if it is only temporary, could well suit the party in the long term.

Frank Fahey, Ivor Callely and our moral bankruptcy

2009-02-27T18:29:00.009Z

Like many the home owner wondering if that leather corner piece was such a good idea, I am as curious as I am admiring of the bravery of Oireachtas members who have built up such extensive property empires in these difficult times. There are two in particular who must be hoping like hell that it doesn't occur to anyone renting from them to suddenly up sticks to pastures new in the middle of the night or even for such tenant types to try push hard for a rent reduction. So Frank Fahey and Ivor Callely the laurels are to you this year for being the most confident and committed of all public reps in placing such faith in the world of property.

Now I'm sure that two such men of the world have taken all necessary measures to limit their overall exposure to the downturn. Both strike me as the type to have followed keenly the works of Lord Archer with his interest in political twists and turns. Now I've been doing some rough calculations (who do you think I am the department of finance, rough is the best I can do) and my guess is that both Frank and Ivor are probably going to err on the side of prudence and cut back on the old expenses in the near future. They might even succumb to temptation and break out the old student favourite of beans on toast as an entrée.

Still as the bank ads say so long as they can keep up the repayments everything should be fine, right? It's not like property ever loses value, is it? Anyway if you happen to find yourself at the FF Ard Fheis this weekend be sure and not to embarrass Frank or Ivor should you see them by buying them a drink, let them save face by buying you one instead. And all with the government and let's face it much of the nation suffering from a degree of moral bankruptcy when it comes to the origins of this financial mess it wouldn't do for anyone else to be letting the side down.

Minister in well reasoned and logical decision shocker

2009-02-23T12:38:00.005Z

So minister for defence Willie O'Dea says we're not raising the Asgard II and on the balance of the evidence presented it seems like the right decision. The cost is not certain but would be a minimum of €2 million, nor is the outcome certain as it might not be successful and the ship might not be repairable. The alternartive of a new ship should be more seaworthy and in addition more accessible for those people with disablities who might wish to partake. I'd personally like the notion of a wooden ship but i'd like to live in a castle too but I'm not so foolish as to run out and buy one for the sake of it. It is regretable that the ship is lost to us but it was lost when it sank not when this decision was made.

This decision is based on numbers and facts put in the public domain by the minister and likely outcomes and benefits and so on. It's just a pity we can't do the same for big ticket items like the Metro.

Leave that man alone!

2009-02-23T12:15:00.003Z

Jaysus that post has grown all kinds of legs, and appears to be scuttling across the world and dragging all kinds of folks here from far and wide. So for the record I want to say this I believe in Frank Fahey. I've seen him on the television and people I've spoken with at length have overheard people in conversation, that they know well enough to invite to the afters of their weddings, saying that they have met him and he is 100% real. Yes indeed a real live person. Frank is real.

And I would go further and say I'd be shocked, shocked I tell you if it turned out that someone like Frank Fahey could be in anyway involved with the digout for Anglo Irish or that he would have been himself a member, facilitator, convenor or chief butler to this purported maple ten crowd. I would be absolutely astounded if he were to have so much as helped in the pouring of a cup of tea for such people. Sure anyway Frank is much too busy a man, and much too interested in helping his constituents to be able to do any of that sort of thing. Now I hope I've put that notion to bed.

Desperate Housewives in Space

2009-02-22T21:18:00.003Z

Ok so this weeks's Battlestar wasn't great in terms of advancing the story and it didn't quite have enough of those Gaius being Gaius moments that we all so love, but I think the description given to me that it is Desperate Housewives in Space is a little harsh. Harsh but with that element of truth that is all too genuinely scary.

Still Lost made up for it in our televisual watching "we're not going to Guam are we?" No Frank we're not.

Are the Irish blog awards fixed?

2009-02-22T11:53:00.010Z

There is something rotten in the state of DamienMark and the Irish blog awards. I had simply thought it was a harmless bit of nonsense which had some weird quirks and oddities. But that someone could not post during almost the entirely of the period that was stated as a minimum requirement for nomination and yet still win an award is more than odd. That two would do so goes beyond passing strange.

The fact is that no one can independently vouch for the judges because no one outside the inner circle knows who the judges are. The rules or even mere guidelines are lacking to the point of being vapour but even the most lax of rules wouldn't have had two nominees making the short-list for what is meant to be a year's work when they didn't post for most of the year in question. The bald fact is that one of those winners only started to post less than 2 weeks before the deadline, while another took a sabbatical for 8 months only returning to resume posting less than 2 weeks before the deadline.

With this kind of arbitrary inclusion and exclusion it is hard not to see the awards as being more about currying favour and jumping on bandwagons than any sort of real assessment of quality over the course of a year. It's pretty like crowning the league champions on the basis of a few good matches at the end of the season. Having the accolade of being the best for a particular year should mean that you were the best over the course of that period not that you had flashes of excellence here and there. It must be galling for those who lost out that their entire years work wasn't judged to be as good as a few weeks or a couple of months output by someone else.

Then going beyond that we have the peculiar notion that the winner for best newcomer (a nice young lad by all accounts) was heavily promoted by the organiser and his friends.

Then the winner for best blog from a journalist appears to have provided the goodie bags.

That the winner for best current affairs and ultimately the Grand Prix prize for best blog is also a close friend of the organiser shouldn't in the normal run of events be a matter of any concern but with everything else that is going on one can't not mention it. I don't doubt that it is amongst the best in its category but the absolute best?

In the normal run of events, one or or two of the above you could gloss over but all of them? Then you have the all organisational strangeness. Why have no confirmation for registration that people made in December until just 48 hours beforehand? Especially, when you consider that many people had to travel to attend and stay overnight? Why is no confirmation mail sent to those who nominate of their nomination choices so that they have some proof that they did nominate and who they nominated? Why was it that registration for attendance opened weeks in advance of opening the nominations, meaning people who were nominated couldn't register to sit at a event that they should have been the focus of? Why is it that we have no publicly available criteria of what is used for the judging? Why is there no confirmation for people that they applied to be judges? Why is it no one can know who the judges are? I applied to be a judge in 2007 but heard nothing back then, other people I know applied last year but heard nothing back. Yet we're repeatedly told that judging is open to all but that is not true, you can offer to be a judge but the selection of judges is not open. I noticed in my own case some touching on my blog from the judging area of the awards.ie site -I was longlisted for political blog - a few hours before the short-list was posted. Only one of which actually looked at the archive for the previous year. I wouldn't have had me remotely near the short list but it would be good to know you didn't make it having actually been really reviewed not just glanced at at the last minute. I wonder how much assessment was really made of other the categories, was it as superficial as that?

Again, none of these things on their own is proof of misdeeds, indeed taken together they might still be a matter of mere coincidence but the absence of any transparency about proceedings must naturally lead to questions. The notion of Ceasar's wife being above reproach comes to mind. When the process is secret all efforts should be made to ensure that there can be no inference of wrong doing. It might sound dull but the process matters, it takes from the winners that such a cloud should exist over the process and for no good reason either I can understand.

When it comes to our electoral process we don't have people vote then take the votes into a locked room to be countred by only a few people who appointed by the government and who we never get to see and then at the end a government representative would come out and tell us the result. Everyone would look at that and shout fix. Yet the process for the blog awards is little different. Judges are appointed in secret, they judge in secret, their votes are weighed up in secret.

Sure it's a fun night out for those concerned but so too apparently are 12th July parades and lynchings in the deep south on the 1930s were very good at bringing the community (some of it at least) together. Of course, this is nowhere on that scale but the mentality that will be used to defend it is much the same. A group who enjoy one another company refusing to answer any questions about the process involved because it is just a bit of craic. A bit of craic which leads to business being generated for some of those concerned? That sound like a straightforward business promotion to me.

Needless to say none of the actual nominees are in a position can say anything because the temperamental nature of the host is well established at this stage and the potential consequences of making any kind of critique is there for all to see. Since my card is marked anyway I'm saying it, I've nothing to lose by asking merely questions. The wonder is will we see any answers, or will it be a case of simply attack the man and not deal with the questions.

In answering my own question I would say that "no the awards aren't fixed" but they sure as hell seem broken.

Curtain Twitching and Twitter

2009-02-22T11:52:00.000Z

In combination with Emerald Discount we've come up a new twitter terminology for tweets that are from those who are the curtain twitchers of rural and small town areas. So if you're twitching back your curtain to be all nosy about what your neighbours are doing and then you twitter about it: that's a sign that you are a twitcher and your tweet is a twitch!

Did he ask or did they tell?

2009-02-18T23:02:00.002Z

The Taoiseach Brian Cowen has stated that no government minister is involved in the €300 million loan for share purchase in Anglo-Irish bank. How does he know this, did he ask them or did they tell him, or has he seen the list of the ten? It's a pretty straight forward situation, one of the three must be the case and we're entitled as the owners of the bank and the ones stuck for the bill to know which it was. But will he tell us?

Frank Fahey TD should invest in a bank.

2009-02-18T15:12:00.007Z

Frank Fahey TD has so many houses he should think about investing in a bank. When thinking back to the register of TD's interests from last year, I can't help remembering all the property Frank Fahey had and the global reach of his interests. There were apartments here and houses there, he had a hairdressing business in Russia at one point if memory serves.

And I wonder to myself that he hasn't thought about getting himself into a bank instead of being in hock to them for so much all the time. I mean we all have to deal with the banks to finance our business but no one likes the idea of going cap in hand to them for another million or two when you've come across the sweetest little deal in some far off land. I hear Anglo-Irish is going cheap, I'm sure the government would let him have it for half nothing at this stage. He could even borrow the money to fund the purchase if necessary. I'm sure someone in the global financial environment that a mover and shaker like Frank moves in would be up for it.

Best blog posts of 2008 - bad dates

2009-02-17T21:00:00.002Z

Last year I got myself into some hassle because I pointed out that the best post category for the Irish Blog Awards tends to suffer from that old Oscar problem of forgetting about anything decent that came out before the summer block busters blinded us. I'm not sure why people decide to take comments about a matter of process so personally but what the hey, I think process is important to warrant the occasional post.

So how does this year's line up compare? Well not nearly as bad though there is still a marked tendency to nominate material from the very end of the year. And as I noted last year unlike the Oscars people aren't deliberately saving their best work for the year end so this means good stuff is missing out. January is still a weird month for nominations, people really don't know which year they should nominate for. Nothing from 2008 makes it into the '08 list but one from 2009 does. Some clarity around dates wouldn't go amiss.

On the topic of dates, the return of the Swearing Lady was long over due to my mind and she was much missed by all but the rules for nomination were that people had to be actively blogging between July 15th and December 15th 2008*. But Sweary only returned to us the first week of December, and had five posts before Dec 15th so I'm not sure how stands up as active blogging Then we've the curious case of the new Irish Economy Blog which on the short list for specialist Blog and which is a work of real quality and something I hope will long be with us but it didn't start until Dec 23rd.

Update: as pointed out by Philip from Irish Economy the first post was Dec 2nd. Which is still less than 2 weeks before the Dec 15th date.

I'm not saying it's all being made up as it goes along but it sure seems like it to even the most causal observer. It is entirely possible that some people didn't nominate a particular blog because they thought they had to follow the rules. Or maybe the truth is only the little people have to follow the rules.

The numbers month by month for 2008 and then 2007 are

December 15/17
November 11/12
October 5/8
September 7/4
August 5/6
July 6/5
June 5/2
May 5/3
April 6/3
March 5/4
February 6/0
January 0/0

Jan of 2008 had 7 nominations compared to this year's 1.

Sadly, I would say based on this that there is a more than fair chance that many of the posts nominated are not even the best posts the individual bloggers have done this year not to mind the best posts of the whole year overall. The idea of the best post of the month has helped, but it still leaves us with a problem at the tail end.

If I was to consider what should happen here, it would not be feasible at this stage to remove either of the blogs involved from the running for their categories. Instead what should happen is the proposed rules for next year should be posted within the next 4 weeks and people given a chance to provide feedback on them. I would also suggest if no questions were asked about the eligibility by any of the judges for those sections that they shouldn't be judges again. I mean how superficial were the criteria and assessment that no one noticed that the blogs hadn't been blogging?

*A reminder of the rules:

A Blog can be nominated in any category by anyone, but the Blog owner can only accept nominations in one category (with the exception of Best Blog Post) to move the blog forward into the judging rounds. To be nominated the Blog has to have been actively blogging between July 15th and December 15th 2008. Winners of each category will be sent forward into the Grand Prix category where they will compete for the title of “Best Blog 2009″

For fans of Half-life - Escape from city 17 the movie!

2009-02-16T18:27:00.002Z

Please someone give these folks a series!

It looks great given it was made for a fiver or $500 Canadian.

Not the final cylon - or I don't think I am at least.

2009-02-16T11:13:00.010Z

I go away for a few days and traffic jumps massively. Why? all because of a few posts about Battlestar I did way back and the mere coincidence of a name. It's all rather odd and yet so obvious we knew there was an 8, why did we presume that the final five were part of the 12 in some sequential order?

One interesting connection between Baltar and Daniel is Baltazar who is in the book of Daniel. The smart money at this stage appears to be on Kara Thrace's father being Daniel though this makes her the first hybrid and apparently they have heavily focused on the primacy of Hera as the hybrid, the opera house and so on. I wonder if someone has parse what was said about Baltar not being a cylon or was it just not a member of the final five.

Given the stretch for Ellen I wonder if Daniel could be someone more minor rather than a major character. Anyhoo, I'm personally not the 7even, though there are those who think me a smidgen otherworldy or a tad alien at times.

Time for Labour/FG to talk to John Gormley directly and cut a deal

2009-02-12T23:10:00.005Z

By now most people have seen the results of the opinion poll from the MRBI published in the Irish Times. Moving beyond the mere numbers, it is clear that the government does not have the support of the public to act. It is time for someone from FG and Labour to approach John Gormley and if necessary cut a deal that would allow them to go softly, softly on the majority of the existing Green seats.

The problem for the Greens in the next election whenever it comes will not be whether they get 4% or 7% nationally but whether or not they get transfers. And if there are any Green candidates out there reading this who are thinking that FF transfers will see them home, either in the general election or more immediately in the upcoming local elections, then they need to wake up and smell the stale coffee of the FF core vote. It simply won't come to their rescue. If they really value their policy agenda, their seats and the long term viablity of their party then they should withdraw now from a goverment that no one explicitly voted for and which now utterly lacks the mandate to act as a government need to given the difficulties we are faced with.

If you did happen to miss them then these are the adjusted figures for party support, compared with the last Irish Times poll in November are: Fianna Fáil, 22 per cent (down 5 points); Fine Gael, 32 per cent (down 2 points); Labour, 24 per cent (up 10 point); Sinn Féin, 8 per cent (up 1 point); Green Party, 4 per cent (no change); and Independents/others, 9 per cent (down 4 points).

Cowen's speech

2009-02-11T11:09:00.002Z

Listening to the reaction to and commentary on Cowen's set piece speech on Thursday night one would be forgiven for wondering if the standard of public discourse in Ireland has fallen so low that the fact of an elected politician being able to string a few sentences together is viewed as a cross between the sermon on the mount and the Gettysburg address.

In all truthfulness, we have a history of generally weak public oratory in Ireland. For the last decade we've had a Taoiseach who couldn't get through a paragraph with causing us to wonder if it might all be so much better if only we could lip read. For all his considerable wit and the logic he presents his points with, I'm not gone on listening to Eamon Gilmore myself . His voice doesn't carry us with him. We're all bold children to him and he's chastising and telling us off. I think that Enda Kenny tries too hard to make a speech instead of just talking to the public, he gave a speech in 2003 in Galway that I think was one of the best in the last ten years. A pity hardly anyone saw it. After that he's been too stiff, almost too focused on not making mistakes instead of relaxing into it. Gerry Adams comes across as just too damn pleased with himself and reminds me a lot of the time of a priest back from the missions with a worthy, worth message.

For sure the Taoiseach said some things that are true and needed saying. Yet they've needed saying for quite some time. So why the delay? The problem as I see it about the Taoiseach's analysis is that there is no element of mea culpa, no admission that the country was unprepared, like a parent who lets their child run about in the nip but then shrugs their shoulders that sure it could happen to anyone when their kid gets pneumonia while other children have the sniffles. We have gotten pneumonia while other countries are down with the flu.

The mantra from the government is everything would have been fine if that blasted turn in the road hadn't come along (the same logic is used by speeding boy racers a lot too). We can debate about when the turn was going to come, but we should all be in agreement that a turn was going to come at sometime. And let's face it this was no 90% corner that came out of the blue. It could be seen easily that we were out of control, and whether it was a deer running out into the road, or a corner or an oncoming car our government simply didn't have their concentration on the road. And that is the fault of the driver.

Taking for example the so-called highlights as selected by the Irish Independent

YOUNG IRISH

"The one thing that characterises their success is their self belief.

If we decide to wallow in a sea of doubt, do not be surprised if we end [up] in the turbulent waters that we are in today."

Ok so young people are confident, jeez who knew? Haven't we been told this for years, in fact we've been told that young people are overconfident on the roads.

STANDARD OF LIVING

"Unless we're prepared to say that we as a country are prepared to step back a few places now and take a drop in our standard of living -- yes, of 10 or 12pc over the next couple of years -- in the perspective of a country that has increased its wealth so much over the last few years, by 70, 80pc; yes it's a step back, but we are in a far better position than previous generations had to contend with."

Ah but did the country really increase its wealth by 70/80%? That is the question? Are we better placed than previous generations yes? Undoubtedly, but that is our own doing mind not the sole doing of the state. We did the overtime and saved our few quid, or some of us did. There again some of the commentariat are overreaching when it comes to which generations to compare us against. Eoghan Harris was comparing us to the Irish at the time of the Vikings and Cromwell. Is this how it is done elsewhere? Do the French console themselves that at least it's not the great Terror, or the Portuguese that it's not the Lisbon earthquake of 1555?

Cowen "If we lose the belief in our own capacity to confront this issue and to do whatever is necessary to avoid putting at risk that which we have achieved so well, and of which we are rightly proud of in recent times, then perhaps we didn't deserve it in the first place."

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

"Jobs, jobs, jobs has to be the priority in the coming years."

The sentiment is ok but the line is awful, 'the coming years' and what would be so wrong with some alliteration. How about this instead?

"Jobs, jobs, jobs are my focus, I know they're your focus, and they must be and will be the focus for all of us for the future. So have they been before and so they should be again." It's not something Jon Favearu would write for President Obama but it trips off the tongue better than Cowen's version.

I found Harris's claim on the late that Cowen had to speak to a few hundred people because he's just not comfortable in front of the Dail or on television a bit like the great footballer who can only do his magic on a small pitch in front of a small crowd on a balmy summer's day, not much use is he? And does this completely invalidate the argument used by FF and others against Enda Kenny that because he's not good in the Dail or on tv that he's just not Taoiseach material. Or is it ok for a FF leader to be hopeless in the Dail and on the box so long as he's ok speaking to the right crowd?

I suspect that Cowen was in part attempting to do an Arnie Vinick last week with all the media appearances. Meet the press in so many guises that they tire of him and move on.

I'm reminded of the words of Aaron Sorkin spoken in the The American President.
Lewis Rothschild: "...in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference. "

Whither the knowledge economy.

2009-02-10T06:45:00.001Z

Over the last few years you could barely get from your front door to the local bookies without bumping into some reference to the knowledge economy, it was on the tip of the tongue of every government spokesperson and half the political class - at least those members that were awake. The knowledge economy was the oft-declared destination that was to be reached by means of our extensive up-skilling and personal mental re-tooling.

Yet in the last couple of weeks it is hard to avoid noticing it's replacement with a new phrase, the 'smart economy'. So sudden is the dropping of the idea of the knowledge economy that I'm genuinely concerned that someone in the government might have broken the 'knowledge economy' by accident, and its replacement with the smart economy is simply designed to avoid the awkward questions that are bound to crop up such as to who was last seen carrying the knowledge economy and if they were impaired at the time in some way by drink or carrying the addresses of too many prospective task force members.

Did former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in fact crack the knowledge economy while descending his stairs in Drumcondra and did he simply fail to mention it when leaving it in the care of the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen. Then one lovely crisp winter morning as Brian was exercising his vocal chords did he hit a note that resonated with the knowledge economy and the crack widened to shatter the entire edifice? Does anyone remember when they last saw or heard of the knowledge economy? Did Martin Cullen bring it to China with him and was it replaced there with a cheap knock off?

Perhaps this was because knowledge required bukkes and they cost money and in this straitened times we can't afford them But what do they mean by a 'smart economy' is it a cheeky economy that gives you back lip,or talks out of turn?

And who in the wider world is likely to give much credence to any further ideas we have when we were so quick to pick up, run with and then drop the knowledge economy for no good reason. Cowen's speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce was peppered with the phrase, but does he actually mean by it? Is it smart to spend when you have it and then to cut back drastically when you don't without bothering to saving for a rainy day in between? Is it smart to judge your construction industry purely by how many houses they build and not where they are built? Or is it that smart in this instance is just short for smartarse?

Doorstep challenge '09

2009-02-05T19:24:00.007Z

A good while back I wrote here about trying to invert the common political process as we know it in Ireland whereby the candidate comes to your home and seeks to impress upon you what it is they are really, really interested in. My idea was along the lines of the public challenging the candidate on the issues that actually concerned the voter, (in particular I was hoping that people might challenge them with some outlandish topics, 'tis the fecking geese have the country ruined minister') and to record and upload them so we 'a merry band of polly anoraks' could get some jollies out of them. It didn't pan out as planned (I do say planned but that is more than a little overstating it, it was an idea that stayed overly on the vaporware) so we've not any content to look back on but the idea itself still has merit.

Now with the local and European elections fast approaching I've decided to revisit it with some novel changes in particular building on what William Wall had suggested with his citizens Manifesto. Welcome to the Doorstep Challenge 2009: for the moment I've just parked the site. The overall idea is somewhat different this time in that I would be inviting organisations, individuals, community groups whatever to send/upload a document/small leaflet that will then be available for any and all members of the public to download, print off and hand to the politician along with their contact details should they so desire. Or we could link to such documents that advocacy organisations already have on their sites. The site should be a sort of one stop shop for the concerns of voters.

The outcome should be that politicians can more easily gauge what it is that is really concerning people in their specific electoral area, and what they need to do in practical terms to get support. Rather than simply relying on the intensity of one or two doorstep experiences they have something measurable to work from. Of course, it would be my personal view that someone standing for election should be resolute enough to stay the course and not be deflected from doing the right thing or arguing for the right thing simply because they encounter some element of organised resistance. That said our system of governance is meant to be a process of constant engagement with lots of back and forth between the led and those purporting to be doing the leading. This initiative is very much about facilitating the public in providing their input to candidates in advance of making their choice about who to vote for.

The paper leaflet of course should be recycled by the candidate, and the content should be designed to be easily printed and, I think at least, be no more than one page of a leaflet (DL sized say) in size. Non-colour images might be best for now. We will perhaps to begin by limiting the file size of the content and we would stress that the content should be issue/topic based, and not about attacking individuals or even particular parties. I would very much prefer that it would be non-partisan to that regard.

As this is a dotcom we will be looking in due course to branch out beyond the local Irish political scene and in time offer different sections that might be used to cater for different countries and their electoral systems and set ups. Not much need for a doorstep challenge for list based electoral systems or might there be even more?

Anyway, it will be a little while before the site goes live but I'd be very interested in hearing comments.

Warship meets its match

2009-02-03T08:48:00.000Z

An old joke in new clothes

The coming of dapper Dan

2009-02-02T08:01:00.001Z

I'm not known for my sartorial elegance, or elegance period. I'm a bloke, I regard clothes in almost all forms as coverings and were they skins or pelts of some sort then I'd be fine with that too. I want the coverings to be warm, roomy, practical, and come with a weapon of some kind.

However, since we're just about still in the new year predictions aura I think there is one general point I could make about personal clothing choices. It was fine for all and sundry to wear tracksuits and hoodies when it wasn't a sign that you couldn't afford to wear anything else. Now that not having a job is a real prospect for many more people, being able to mark yourself out as not being unemployed is going to matter more. So expect a new dapper style of dress especially for men, New Edwardian dandies even, though if Charles succeeds to the throne across the water I would expect it be the Neo-Georgian. So over the next 2 years I expect us men to brush up our appearance and for make a real effort. A pity if it were all to become about presentation and that is not a scenario that would suit me personally (I don't carry the suit look off well) but still I suspect it will happen.

Phases of the 'net

2009-01-30T06:01:00.002Z

It would be my view that the history of the 'net can be described by breaking it into a number of phases. These phases aren't cleanly distinguished from one another - you can't say that one ends here and thus the other starts - nor are they intended to suggest that the last few decades can't be broken up into other differentlt flavoured segments. Not alone is there more than one way to skin a cat but you can use a dog or bonobo if you prefer, and instead of skinning it you could just stroke it. This is all just a means to take a semi-logical speculative look at the future.

The first phase of the net was primarily focused with connecting things, and people and places. This manifested in the development of URLs, Mosaic and so on. Following on from this, the 2nd phase, once people were able to link to one another, this phase was when people concentrated on the creation of vast amounts of user generated content, much of it rubbish or duplicates of what already existed admittedly. But for all that still very necessary. People were made to get to places, now they needed places to go and reasons to go there.

The 3rd phase which is the one we've seen over the last decade or so was next addressed to the problem of finding that content, or sorting the wheat from the chaff- in essence search. Finding what you wanted to find. You're no longer doing Lewis and Clark cross country discovery journey across the country but are focused on going from downtown Boston to the Drake hotel in San Fran. How do you do that?

Still for all the indexing and vast trawling and spidering that has gone on we are still left with a problem. That is that Google or whatever search engine you use might well find what you're looking for, but will you actually recognise it when it is shown to you? It's why something like Searchme or CoolIris is a sexier prospect than Cuil for the common or gardener user because it mirrors more closely how we as people already flick through artefacts when searching for things that we don't know about. That Cuil might find what you're looking for is less important if you can't recognise that they've found it.

In my opinion, there are two broad types of search. There is the looking for your keys type - you know what it is you are looking for but not quite where it is - and then there is the looking for a present for your nephew if you're an aunt - you know sort of what might suit but don't have a solid idea in your mind.

This is why I reckon that the phase we're heading into now or are already in is mostly about presentation. Showing us what is there. Of course, this is all conjecture on my part, and I'm sure that others are or have already written about it in more depth or greater insight. It is odd how the desktop is still just a mess of a thing, though the likes of BumpTop are seeking to do something around that. We have had connecting, making, finding and now showing. Where after that? I think deciding comes next. How do we choose...

The personal aspect for me in this idea is that I think I've found a way to marry my concerns about the expression and fostering of opinion via blogs and also how to present divergent views in such a manner as to allow a genuine exchange of views to take place, and for those who are reading those views to be able indicate support or dissent for all or merely part of the content. Rather than a Parliament, might we one day talk perhaps of a visualment or scribblement, or just pure divilment! Anyway, the idea would be that there will be more come from The Afterword at some point. Just not quite yet.

Maintaining demand in the ecomony

2009-01-29T07:29:00.000Z

A representative of the CPSU was on the 6.1 News two weeks ago saying that we should have no pay cuts in the public service because above all we must "maintain demand in the economy!". Not a bad idea but is paying public servants the best way to do that? I mean following his logic we could get out of this if we were to pay them all 20% sure that would help us no end by increasing demand by 20% or at least that's what he seems to think.

Only 1/6 of the workforce are in the public service which is roughly 17%, so a 10% cut in those salaries would only amount to a 1.6% reduction in demand while saving 2 Billion for the budget. This potential 1.6% drop in demand is as nothing compared to the actual drop due to people losing their jobs in the private sector. But hey let's all focus on making sure that we don't have that killer 1.6% drop.

In contrast to the above I tend to agree that lying off loads of low paid public servants wouldn't save that much money when you consider that we take back about 1/3 of their pay in taxes and PRSI and it would lead to greater reductions in services. Yet would cutting pay by the same amount have the same effect? If one in ten jobs went it is reasonable to think that even with the remaining 90% taking up some slack that there would be less people around to do the same work so that same work wouldn't happen. However, if you cut salaries by 10% across the board would the people affected really work 10% less? Would members of An Garda Siochana guard us 10% less, would teachers teach 10% less well? There is no requirement that a 10% pay cut should lead to any substantive cut in services while a cut in numbers employed almost automatically means a reduction in services. And haven't many of of those providing public services been telling us that their jobs are vocations? like teachers and doctors and nurses?

Gender proofing legislation - a one way street?

2009-01-28T19:26:00.000Z

I'm coming to this late but it is interesting to consider that the mother in the Roscommon abuse and neglect case could only be sentenced to seven years for her crimes because the legislation as it pertains to women is over a century old. This despite legislation for the same crimes having been updated in the last ten years but only it appears it was only updated as it applies to male perpetrators.

I had understood, perhaps incorrectly, that when new legislation was being proposed that the relevant department engaged in what is termed 'gender proofing'. Such gender proofing is supposed to work so as to ensure that any new laws don't unduly affect one gender over the other. Yet it would appear from this example at least this works primarily in one direction when it comes to the criminal justice system, new legislation must not impact negatively on women but it can do so on men. In fact when revising the law it doesn't occur to anyone to check that it applies equally to men and women.

It does make one wonder if the state (or those working for the state) realises that both genders are capable of committing crimes. Even if the incidences of particular crimes may be more prevalent in one gender than the other, both are still able to commit them. There again looking at the response to the C case should we really be all that surprised at the distinction?

As Brendan Howlin noted at the time "That is above and beyond the bizarre and absurd position that girls will be criminally liable for foreplay but not for sex. To put it bluntly, the incoherence behind the present proposals is demonstrated by pointing to three conflicting propositions, each of which the Government is seeking to advance in this Bill. Each of them relate to consensual acts between two 16½ year olds.

· If they engage in sexual intercourse, the boy is guilty of a serious offence but the girl is not.
· If the girl performs oral sex on the boy, they are both guilty of a serious offence.
· But if the boy performs oral sex on the girl, then neither of them is guilty of anything.
Most bizarrely of all, where a boy attempts sexual intercourse with a girl but fails, she is guilty as well as him. But if he succeeds in sexual intercourse with her, she is innocent of any offence.

The Minister is, for reasons that defy logic, on rewarding a girl who insists, in order to protect her legal innocence, on proceeding to full penetrative sexual intercourse." And we're coming up on the third anniversary of that piece of sexist legislation.

Political blogs - guess who is not coming to dinner

2009-01-26T07:13:00.004Z

I’m only going to talk about the political blogs that are nominated as they are the ones I'm most familiar with. A good representation from our friends in the north. And a decent number from local election candidates too. Nice to see the political journalists joining the fun. And the entries from the journalists new and not so new are very strong too, quality writing, consistent posting and a key aspect for me - good engagement and discussion with their readers. I would take the personal view that it is very hard for the solo blog efforts to compete with the group efforts, and let's face it the likes of Slugger and CedarLounge are simply fantastic reads and resources. Still that which does not destroy us makes us strong, eh!

Yet looking at the list I can’t help feeling there are a good few missing that you would really expect to have seen at least one or two of: the likes of Damien Blake, Dominic Hannigan, Ciaran Cuffe and Richard Delevan spring to mind. Does this mean they will now be banned from the top table for blog events in future? Have they been shunned by the politiarati who long only for the delights of the new and shiny, or did people just reckon they would be nominated anyway and people instead sought out those who might not be so popular. That would be a real pity if they were lost for good from the scene but if the awards are genuinely meant to be a reflection of the current state of play for blogging then the logic of doing exactly that would appear hard to avoid. Of course, by saying "banned from the top table" I am being more than a little facetious.

I've said it already but if there was a live nomination process so you could see who was already nominated then this sort of situation would be avoided. After all, this is just the nomination stage and it would be good for the categories to be as inclusive as possible. There again they could have been lost or mislaid, my own nominations for example don’t appear to have made it through even though I did get a confirmation mail. But adding those mentioned above in now would have all the appearance of favouritism so I guess they'll be missing for this year.

Green Party email spam, EU email good!

2009-01-19T12:21:00.005Z

It would seem that a number of people continue to be outraged by getting an unsolicited email from the Greens. But was it really the method that outraged them or was it the messenger? Now I'm pretty self evidently not the Greens biggest fan (keep it under your hat but I'm a member of Fine Gael off and on since the early 80s) but I suspect that the outrage was a little overdone in some cases given their response on a prior occasion to receiving exactly the same form of contact from another political organisation.

So was it the method of communication or was it in fact the messenger that got the noses of some out of joint? I think the latter and here's why. The EU had a get together of bloggers back in October of last year, and quite a nice day it was too. I was alerted to it by an unsolicited email, as it would seem were the others who posted about it. This mail was not personally addressed, it went to multiple recipients and from their posts on the topic the great and the good had no problem with this method of initiating contact when it came to them from the offices of the EU. So no outrage at all when they are favourable towards the endeavour - indeed they straight out encouraged people to attend - but all sorts of moral indignation when it was the Green Party who contacted them. At least in Michele's case, there is no evidence that he hasn't been consistent.

If we're going to grow the use of the net as a means to increase political participation and involvement it would make sense to have some degree of consistency from the bloggers when it comes to complaining about the method used to contact them. Being all flirty with the EU but getting all huffy with the Greens when contacted in exactly the same manner shows that there is an agenda at work here.

Below is the mail from the eu about their get together.

From: Philippe.CARR@xx.xx.eu
To: undisclosed-recipients, :
Subject: Advanced Invitation: Organise, Activate, Influence: Social Activism Online in Ireland
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:53:49 +0200

You are cordially invited to the 1 day conference Organise, Activate, Influence, Social Activism Online in Ireland on the 4 October 2008.This is a conference put together by bloggers for bloggers. The European Commission Representation and European Parliament Office in Ireland are acting as facilitators for this event.

Please click on the bellow link for the days program and how to register.

http://www.euireland.ie/conference/

Spaces unfortunately are limited and offered on a first come basis.

We look forward to seeing you on the day

Philippe

Philippe Carr
Press Officer
European Commission Representation
European Union House
18 Dawson Street
Dublin 2
tel: 00 353 1 634xxxx
fax: 00 353 1 634xxxx
email: philippe.carr@ec.europa.eu
internet: www.euireland.ie

Why Obama couldn’t happen here

2009-01-18T20:54:00.002Z

Many commentators and the public generally have been wondering in recent weeks given the disastrous absence of anything resembling leadership from the government why is that we do not have our own Obama on the horizon. I find it surprising that people like Vincent Browne forget so easily that we have a cabinet system of government that sits on top of a parliamentary system. For me the question is really an answer in search of an appropriate question. They start with Barack Obama as the answer and try to work back from there. It is a bit like wondering why you can’t have somebody with the foot skills of Pele playing in the front row of a rugby team.

The plain fact is that different sports favour different types of players. Different political systems favour different types of politicians, The US constitution provides for a strong executive presidency that has to work in tandem with equally strong legislature and justice systems. All of this exists on top a system of governors, Mayors and down to the local sheriff who are accompanied by state senates, city councils and so on. In other words their system is designed to have a strong executive which has the lead in setting the direction but which then has to work with a larger legislative body to work out the details.

In the US the primary system, this works by means of selecting the candidate with plurality of the votes, aids in the ready adoption of new ideas and different candidates. Choosing the candidate who has the most support rather the majority of support means that an idea can move up through the system more quickly. It is true it can also favour fads and even facilitates a movement towards the extremes of the ideological spectrum. Yet this too favours a wider range of choices being on offer to the electorate or at least that portion of the electorate that is inclined to get involved at the primary stage.

It is much later on when it comes to the general election that the candidate needs majority or close to majority support. In the general election, you as a voter are faced with a choice of either/or and you vote for the candidate you like most or dislike least, but is a straightforward piece of comparison shopping. The time to have picked and worked for your particular flavour of left or right wing candidate is the primary stage. When it comes to the general election, you put your differences with the winning candidate from your party aside to ensure that the party platform is in a position to be put into effect.

In our system the stage when such majority support is required in the candidate selection stage of the process but then the candidate does not require majority support in the election itself. In an election with multiple parties and multiple candidate the people when faced with a choice between candidate A from say a left wing perspective or candidate B who is proposes solutions from a right wing perspective, the voters more often than not simply chooses candidate C. Candidate C who doesn’t give any concrete proposals but does the best impression of just wanting to help.

This process which we must remember is driven by the voter leads to the denuding indeed complete absence of policy from candidates resumes, instead replaced by their captaincy of the local football or camogie team and their winning rosette for best in show. Avoiding policy distinctions during the election campaign naturally lead to a clustering around the centre ground by all the candidates. It is then doubly hard for the parties to forge strong ideological positions if their TDs have spent their political existence expressing in the strongest possible terms their support for happiness, goodness and that people should have jobs in a spirit of equality and fairness.

So you as a voter can pick candidate C safe in the knowledge that you didn’t have to commit or subscribe to any particular viewpoint of how anything is to be done. You were after all simply endorsing a general set of goals or aspirations. Yet politics in a participative democracy is meant to be about the people making fully realised choices not just in personnel who will man the ship of state but also as to the specifics of the direction; how do we get there, at what cost, what do we place a lower priority on and why do we make this choice. Instead in our system we (the electorate) tend to vote for someone who has articulated best that they share the same vague general goal as us and then we can tune out when it comes to talk about the details. So we have candidates who want to help, to achieve equality and fairness, to give a voice to local people and so on.

Furthermore this tendency, evidenced in both elected and prospective members of the Oireachtas, to sit around the middle ground suffocates and impedes the movement in the placement of that centre ground. We forget sometimes that the middle ground doesn’t stay in the same place nor is it meant to. The one time centre ground of Irish politics is no longer so popular.

In stark contrast to the US, our entire political and electoral system in Ireland appears designed for us to have candidates who are not the least bit radical or all that often concerned about the maddening detail of ‘How’ a goal is to be achieved. It is as if politics was merely about stating a goal aloud. After which all would simply be magicked into place. Even those few radical candidates who do struggle through the system have had to be the best local exponent of clientism possible. You think that Joe Higgins wasn’t getting medical cards or helping folks out through their travails with the planning process while he was working on his latest witty put down of evil capitalists and their ilk?

So in querying why we don’t have an Obama we should perhaps spare some time to be wondering about the system we have that has given us the people we do have rather than simply bemoaning the failure of the people in the system to behave like those in other systems. Fact is in Ireland (Republic 1948 edition) Obama wouldn’t have been elected to the local council not to mind the state senate or US senate because he wasn’t from the area! Not to mind how with all that education he’s just not in touch with the common man and he doesn’t come from a big enough family to go out canvassing for him, and all the internet stuff is great but he never called to the door and asked about our auntie Mae who has terrible trouble with her bunions.

(Also posted over on Slugger)

Battlestar speculation

2009-01-18T14:50:00.005Z

I think that a resurrection hub or hyper/sub space connection to a particular type of resurrection hub close to Kobol or the colonies or even on one of the Colonial worlds is in orbit around the earth or maybe even located on Mars or the Moon, or Alpha Centuri . This type of resurrection facility can resurrect anyone who is of Cylon heritage which includes all the Colonials. (Surprise!)

If we remember back Kobol was actually quite inhabitable, a bit of a fixer upper but the Colonials have time on their hands and no fear of hard work. Just look at what they managed to do with New Capricia and that was a hole of a place. The big reason at the time to run Kobol was that the Colonials were being chased about the galaxy by the Cylons and were following the belief that Earth would be a safe haven from those awful toasters. That is no longer case if the Colonials have win out against the remaining Cylons in the civil war.

So now they could return all to Kobol and start anew. Cylons and humans alike. However, we would also be in the know that the process would really just be starting all over again. We know that in time Earth would (remember the plant that Roslin picked up), as will the Colonial worlds, be inhabitable again, and so the cycle can begin anew. They seem to be all about the cycles in Battlestar. Remember even the series itself is a re-imagining of something we've already seen. So in my view the remainder of the series will see them win out against the bad Cylons and settle down with the good Cylons on Kobol.

So it seems the Final Cylon is

2009-01-17T19:05:00.004Z

someone who falls broadly under my initial prediction though it would appear I was wrong as the specific instance. Or at least that is what we're lead to believe. Avoid clicking the link above if you don't wish to be in any way spoiled.

That said I think they may play around with us a bit more, indeed I was half expecting to get some straight up visual clue that undermines that this is really Earth. To their credit they're being much more subtle than that.

Judging the Irish Blog Awards

2009-01-16T16:07:00.004Z

I thought the Irish Blog Awards were based on of what people had done in the previous year. Especially this year when they supposedly limited or focused on activity between July 15th and December 15th 2008. You can be a Johnny come lately but don't do your good work in the early part of the year and then think you can coast through the rest of the year. Yet it would appear there are those who think the judges can be easily influenced by increased activity in January 2009?

Really? Could it be true that the judges are so superficial and lax that if asked to judge a Blog for awards being given in 2009 for activity in 2008 that they will simply work back from the most recent posts in January. Aren't people really being judged on their entire year's output? Personally I'd be more inclined to think that the increased activity has more to do with new year's resolutions and a revitalised desire to give their blogs a renewed effort. There again, I'm not quite so privy to how the judge(s) do their job for the Irish Blog Awards. So I could well be wrong.

The Government Trio

2009-01-16T15:33:00.005Z

Does anyone else think that the Trio at the top of government are like teenagers left in charge of the house while their parents are abroad? They know that mundane daily tasks like the washing has to be done and they've even seen their parents use that square looking white machine with the nice porthole thing that lives in the utility room but they don't really know what buttons to push or where the magic dust that you feed it lives. So they look at all the rubbish and associated problems as they pile up, shrug their shoulders and tell each other that 'it's so unfair!.'

Even stranger is the fact that they remind me a bit of another Trio. These Trio were by far and away the weakest Big Bad ever that the Slayer had to deal with. Still there is a resemblance, Andrew the whiny one is Mary Coughlan, Jonathon as Brian Lenihan the little one that loads of people thought was going to turn out to be on the side of the angels, while Warren is Brian Cowen.

Above Mary Couglan is on the left, Brian Lenihan in the middle and Brian Cowen on the right.

Bumbling, incompetent, ineffective. Three really ain't the magic number.

As Tony the Hotdog Vendor in Highlander might ask, "What does incompetent mean?"

Obama's Inauguration

2009-01-16T11:45:00.004Z

The fact is that, unless President-Elect Obama gives a speech that causes all who hear it to experience a moment of transcendence that place them, if only temporarily, in harmony with the universe, before breaking into song that moves them to tears while performing a dance that sends all present to levels of sexual climax unheard of in all human history before finally taking to the air and flying the entire dais filled with the assembled dignitaries back to the White House under his own steam, people are going to be disappointed.

These have to be the conditions for the biggest case of performance anxiety ever. Still, I'm going to be watching in case he can pull it off.

From Hell's heart, I stab at thee

2009-01-15T14:08:00.007Z

To many people he was best known as the damper dressed chap in Fantasy Island, but for some of us he will always be Khan!

spam, SPAM, spAM, and Damien

2009-01-15T07:11:00.001Z

There has been considerable talk about spam in the last week on foot of a mail from the Green Party about a competition they are running or trying to run. What is surprising is the rather superior attitude of some of those commenting, especially Damien Mulley when you consider that he did the same thing himself when it suited him. While much of the comment was quite considered, though some was perhaps a little less so, the commentary of Mr Tubbs stands out as it verges on the hysterical, swerves into the lunatic before careening back up the road into plain rudeness. Indeed such is the virtual rending of hair, that one almost expects talk of personal violation. Below is a self admitted bulk mail I got from Damien. It reads

"Howdy,
As you may or may not know I'm organising a training day in UCC
next Saturday (March 24th). The training will cover the basics for an
IT company or IT person that's just setting out in business. Details
are available here: http://url.ie/388

If you are interested in coming along, please do come along or if you
think someone you know in the Cork/Munster area would benefit from the
training, send the details on to them. All training is provided free.
After Cork it is hoped there'll be on in Dublin around April 28th.
Yes. this has been a mass email but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

Damien
-- blog: www.mulxxx.net
Mobile: +353 86 xxx xxxx
Projects: www.IrelandOffline.org www.awards.ie
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dxxxx "

At the time (a bit under 2 years back) the only contact I'd had with Damien was via the blog awards for which I had been nominated shortly before receiving the above mail. So harvesting email addresses from the blog awards and then bulk emailing people to advise them of a training event he was running was par for the course for Damien back in the day. Since it would seem that training courses are now a significant earner for Damien it would be reasonable to think of this now as an email was for an event that provided him with a grounding in what is a commercial activity. I can't really say I was especially put out by getting it but it would seem if I was to follow the lead that Damien sets for those who send mai lto him, I should have contacted the Data Protection Commissioner and scweamed and scweamed the blogophere blue with how someone had contacted me about something I wasn't interested in using an address they had garnered purportedly for other purposes.

The rather dull fact is that there is spam and there is SPAM, and if you can't tell the difference then I'm not sure what I can say to help you see it. To top all this for all the talk of the need for the personal there is the notion put forward that you can bulk email people but if you make sure to use the bcc field so that it appears to be just to them as individuals and then use some automated process to include their first name at the top then that's all fine and dandy. That this might signify to anyone with half a brain that the intent was somehow significantly less impersonal than doing the same but without their name shows that for at least some of the offended it's all about the perception not the reality. It's still a bulk email, but you put their name on it - oh - that's so much better. On a scale of one to SPAM this was probably a two.

Job Losses, Pay cuts, or reduction in services

2009-01-11T14:13:00.009Z

We need to reduce the amount of money that is spent by the state. If the choice in reducing public spending is to be either one of job cuts, a reduction in services or pay cuts across the board then the latter seems the more equitable choice.

What if we were to ensure no cutbacks in pay for those under 30K, but a 3% cut for those between 30 and 50K and 7% for those between 50K and 80K and 10% cut for those over 80K. This would be an across the board pay cut. Overnight everyone in the public service would be taking home less money. See the same thing may well happen but it will involve job losses and as a consequence as loss of services.

People will argue that this will suppress demand, but so too would job cuts. Which is worse for the economy: fewer people working for the same money who are in fear of losing their jobs and so afraid to spend or more people working for less money but who are confident that they will have jobs next year and so can spend on the domestic economy? Not all aspects of living have gone up in the last while, the cost of servicing mortgages has dropped in the last 12 months, so people won't have quite. True there will be those in negative equity but the value of your house doesn't matter in the short term if you don't have to sell and you would be more likely to be selling because you lost your job not because your take home pay went down by 3%.

In combination with this, the state should actually step in to reduce the costs borne by the public by actually delivering the services it is suppose to instead of the public having to source those services privately or even having to contribute cash to themselves. Imagine an education system where parents didn't have to organise money to pay for the upkeep of the school, ho

And we should push hard for reforms in those areas of services where bottlenecks exists and in which costs spiralled out of control over the last decade. Solicitors for example, and isn't it odd that the auctioneering business allows the same person to act for the buyer and the seller? I mean whose interest is the priority there I wonder?

If some of the burden was lifted from the working public then we could all live on a few quid less.

Duffy vs. Carmel

2009-01-09T17:28:00.006Z

With all the attention Duffy has gotten over the last twelve months, it is worth remember those who have travelled the same ground but without the same level of coolness. Not that she doesn't deserve it but there can be a tendency by the more youthful to believe such voices came out of the blue. About two decades back we had Carmel who sadly in my view was overly tagged as simple easy listening.

Carmel - Sally

Carmel - Bad Day

So Duffy isn't the first nasally twanged chanteuse we've had to delight us.

Click below for Duffy's: Rain on your Parade (Polydor have disabled embedding from YouTube) for comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cfu9ojyCJw

Imagine if Carmel had had a Mark Ronson type around at the time to produce her stuff.

Why Barry Andrews is wrong on Cloynes

2009-01-07T23:39:00.005Z

Last night in Vincent Browne, minster with responsibility for children, Barry Andrews said that the state could stand over the schools that the Bishop of Cloyne is patron of. I'm sure this is news to Eileen O'Keeffe who found when she sued because she was abused while attending primary school that the state doesn't in fact want to stand over the safety of children in our national schools. Schools that others such as bishops are patrons of and which many parish priests are the chairs of boards of management. Where is the standing over that the minister talks about?

What needs to happen is that the state should thank the religious for their work over the decades and then take all national schools into state ownership. This would have almost no day to day impact other than that of the state being the body properly charged with ensuring the safety of children.

I am not on a DHS watch list!

2009-01-07T21:50:00.005Z

I got a mail and I thought I'd try out the new authorisation system for entry for the US. It has the largest (and let it be said one the most poorly laid out) warning messages I've ever seen. I've worked on a considerable number of software projects and you should have seen how some of the warning messages looked, especially once they'd been localised to confirm to the legal lie of the land where they were being sold but this one beats them all hands down.

Seriously, are paragraphs illegal at the department of Homeland Security? Is there a tariff on excess spacing? There again my brief engagement with the IRS taught me that the US government likes its text to be dense and filled with foreboding.

Still the thing hops along at a decent pace once you've got all the details typed in, and it came back rather quickly (perhaps too quickly) saying I'm authorised to travel to the US. Not necessarily that I will get in mind this isn't the visa application process but at least I can get on the plane.

While I can understand the mindset behind this I still think it is the wrong approach, seriously minded terrorists are just going to nick someone's passport. It's a bit like the question on the form that asks if you are or were a member of the Nazi government of Germany or one of her clients states.

I also think that we in Europe should have done what the Brazilians did and instigate reciprocal arrangements with the US, oif they want our credit card details then we should ask for theirs. Also, what is this about the 'DHS may conduct monitoring activities with further notice', are they going to access my PC on the quiet? Given that I'm in a country surely that is illegal?

Ten Irish political predictions for 2009

2009-01-07T20:04:00.001Z

Taking my key from Cllr Forde, my ten predictions at random are

1. Fianna Fail to fail to overtake FG in European Parliamentary representation. They could even lose in Dublin though it is unlikely, fact is I think Labour are more vulnerable.
2. Obama's first foreign policy military crisis will involve an attack on US territory but not the continental US. Guam or somewhere like that.
3. Greece continues to suffer from serious civil unrest. A national government or even a military coup could be in prospect
4. Ireland fail to qualify for the Soccer World Cup.
5. Lisbon Treaty is passed in November by 55% to 45%
6. Irish Unemployment for 2009 peaks at 11%. but then stabilises at that level rather than significantly falling back.
7. Teachers and ESB workers strike.
8. The waning of immigration
9. Anglo Irish ceases to exist as it is taking into state control. BOI and AIB bob along. Eventually I expect RBOS or Santander or even a sovereign investment fund, someone foreign at least, to hoover up a lot of the smaller banks including Anglo. Oddly enough this leads to the emergence of a genuine 3rd player in Irish banking
10. FG to do the double in Dublin South and Central! Those elections to be held the same day as the European and local elections.

A modest possible solution to the middle East.

2009-01-07T15:54:00.005Z

I've always thought that the only way forward would be one that required both states that would emerge post a settlement to actively guarantee the integrity and security of the other and to defend it. In the light of current events I believe we should move rapidly to entrench this idea.

It's probably the Philip K .Dick influence in my thinking and it even sounds a teeny bit nuts to me but one idea that has potential could be for both states to randomly select some of its own people (and let's not stop with just adults, include everyone. After all no one is being that selective at the moment) by lottery. Then say if a suicide bomber from the Palestinian side kills X number of Israelis then the Palestinian authority would execute the same number of Palestinians. Naturally, this would also operate in the opposite direction of course. For every Palestinian killed in the course of this particular security operation such as Operation Rolling Blunder or whatever they are calling the current then Israeli should be prepared to execute the same number of Israelis, after all isn't Israel's long term security worth a few hundred lives? and who better to pay for it then other Israelis.

Think of it, it would be like Instant Karma! Let's beat the recession by cutting out the middlemen of mayhem. There would be no more terrorism if the state was killing its own people.

Beverly Cooper Flynn - because she's not worth it.

2009-01-06T18:11:00.006Z

A bit of storm (composed of unsavoury farmyard material) has blown up over the weekend concerning the revelation that Deputy Flynn (FF) will receive an allowance of almost 50K per year because she was elected as an independent deputy in 2007. What appears not to have been so deeply probed so far is the validity of her standing as an independent.

I seem to recall that she made much of her FF involvement and her long history with the Micheal O'Morain Cumann during the course of the campaign. "Asked if in the event of a hung Dail, where Fine Gael-Labour was one vote short of forming a government, would she vote for her fellow Mayoman, Enda Kenny, as Taoiseach, she said her sole concern was to get herself elected. "If I found myself in that situation, I would do what is in the best interest," she added, reminding me of her Fianna Fail background."

Also, as you can read here it was reported prior to the 2007 election that FF HQ were threatening party members with expulsion if they supported her, note if they were threatening them with expulsion then that means they were still members of the party. So how was she an independent if nominated by members of political party?

I think this is worth giving the Western People and the county offices a call tomorrow looking for a copy of the nomination form for deputy Flynn for 2007. Then I'm going to go looking for FF to provide membership lists for Mayo for the last decade and I'm going to compare the two. If she was nominated by people who were in fact members of FF. FF did disband branches in Castlebar after her departure but it is not 100% clear if they actually voided the membership of those people). If the people who nominated her were still de facto members of FF then her entitlement to this allowance is in question.

Greyfield sites required

2009-01-06T17:59:00.007Z

People have been commenting on the predictions, trends, pointers towards the future whatever you want to call it article by Karlin Lillington in the IT last Friday. Some of comment seems to me at least a tad overly sensitive but that could be more for other reasons than the mere content of this particular piece.

My own few cents is that I reckon two of the likely trends in the probable upcoming consolidations and the need for better support for new enterprises are very much related. Consolidation typically leads to lay-offs and hence people with redundancy cheques. It's not a fun time for anyone yet for those who are still young enough and willing to live on ramen for a while (perhaps less encumbered with dependents might be a better way of saying it) this might represent a chance to make a break for it.

The fixed costs associated with going out on your own should (and I admit that is a 'should' not a 'will') be lower now than 4/5 years ago in terms of office space and some other costs. We've loads of empty buildings lying around which the banks should be forcing developers to open up to start ups for short term leases at least. And it would give the banks some cash from those currently dead developments, and provide us with a local version of the brownfield sites in other countries. Let's call them greyfield sites (just think of all that bare concrete!), we have loads of them but there is no pressure on the developers to put them to use. There again maybe only some people in the blogosphere are allowed to call for the risk takers to sieze the opportunities that are still out there.

Minnesota Challenged Ballots Review update

2008-12-19T15:52:00.003Z

Minnesota Senate Count review of challenged ballots

I think this should work, you should be able to see the widget above. This is tracking the up to date state of the review of challenged ballots.

Breaking News - Equality Authority CEO Quits

2008-12-11T14:48:00.000Z

More here as it unfolds.

Seanad Reform - After 30 years can we have our votes now?

2008-12-11T07:28:00.001Z

It has been 12 months since this announcement and we've seen no action taken to advance the reform of the Seanad. In particular the rather straightforward reform of the university panels to give effect to the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution.

I've recently written to the 6 university panel senators asking that they do rather than talk when it comes to this matter. I'm currently awaiting their responses, and will post the letter and responses if I receive them. In the continued absence of any movement I've decided to try and get some traction via other means. Hence this facebook group

Seanad Reform - After 30 years can we have our votes now? | Facebook

I also hope to be announcing in the new year some events as part of a rolling campaign to culminate in the period of the 5th of July when the referendum was held 3 decades ago and the 5th of August when it was signed into law.

Is wider reform of the Seanad needed? Yes, in fact it is long overdue but this is the necessary first step in that process.
Are there more important things? Indeed, but we have a parliamentary and cabinet system of government so that more than one problem can be tackled at any one time.

The cause of the finanical crisis revealed!

2008-12-08T07:57:00.000Z

A good number of years ago I had a not very demanding job in a land very far from home. My employer wasn’t doing great things for me and the young lady I was interested in at the time wasn’t interested in me. She did think I was quite lovely though. So I created a fantasy job, a diversionary daydream if you will. It was of the road not taken variety. In contrast to the road I was on which was well and truly of the dead end variety.

It evolved from a series of aptitude tests I and others had done for a company in the final year of college. The results had been incredibly, perhaps some might say even freakishly positive for me. There again it was very reassuring at the end of my time to discover that yes engineering was for me! As for the daydream position I would have magically acquired it upon leaving college by means of similarly interesting aptitude tests and other probing physical examinations that would have revealed my undoubted brilliance and suitability for the role.

The job started out being somewhat vague as these things tend to do in daydreams. It did involve a very nice office based in the IFSC if I recall and such excitements as a PA and a well appointed apartment. I was on a promise that I was to be extensively trained in many interesting skills, foreign languages, how to handle the media, high finance, fighting skills and so forth. It was a daydream after all, and I wanted to leave it open enough that some spying/espionage might be involved. To assist me with achievement of all this I had access to many quite peculiar and very futuristic looking pieces of technology that seemed quite out of this world. As is my wont with any such fantasy I create, I came quickly to undermine it by introducing various unsettling and disturbing elements. The excessive secrecy about my eventual role in the organisation, the origins of the top people, the disappearance of colleagues or indeed what it was the company actually did.

Later on in the daydream, (which at this stage was evolving into proper movie serial mode) I was to find after a number of worrying signs and interesting scraps that in my superior’s office was a hidden cupboard which in fact contained a teleportation device. This chamber brought me to a very substantial but largely unmanned spaceship in orbit around the earth. Yep, we were firmly back in my usual comfort zone of sci-fi territory. I snooped about the ship as one does in these things and discovered that the organisation was seeking to become the overlords of the Earth. This they would do by taking control of our financial system and by extension our political system and petitioning for the Earth’s entry into a galactic trading system whereby they would be recognised as de jure and de facto Rulers of the Earth. I’m not 100% sure that the R and E were capitalised in the fantasy but they seem sort of appropriate now. This state of affairs once ratified by the galactic authorities could not be overturned and would be enforced by the other worlds.

It was in some sense all in the best traditions of Western European colonisation - a West Spiral Arm Trading Company if you will. I was to be one of the front men (my tests had revealed a certain detachment from my fellow man, well I did say at the outset that I didn’t much like my job and so I was of a mood to feel a tad disconnected) as they declared to the leaders of the world that they had, in the parlance of the times, the financial system by the balls and having brought it to the brink of collapse they could cast our world into the abyss.

They had over the last few centuries progressively invested in those new technologies that they knew from the experience of other similar worlds would ultimately succeed over the long run. They had gotten their initial seed capital from their superior mineral assaying abilities which had given them local mineral wealth and then they had simply waited for humanity to discover the obvious to them scientific advances, with the very occasional nudge, that they could invest in and turn into even more wealth and influence. After all, transporting millions of troops across space is a very expensive way to take control of a world. If your lifespan can be measured in centuries why not just find a world that is close to making the jump to space travel and simply entangle yourself in its affairs such that its ascent becomes the engine for your own wealth.

They had completely embedded themselves in the stock market and the global financial system. Just at the point that I had been hired they were finally in position to leverage their position in the financial system such that they could readily collapse the world’s economy if our leaders decided to choose incorrectly.

Now, let’s get back to the beginning here. This was just a wish fulfilment exercise on the part of someone with a not too demanding job and too much time on his hands. Right?

I mean I was just daydreaming; not exhibiting pre-cognitive abilities like my auntie Mary had...

Who has been telling porkies

2008-12-07T18:27:00.008Z

I am half expecting an outbreak of cannibalism within a week if rumours spread that human flesh is the closest thing to the taste of pig meat. And was it really necessary to destroy all pork meat? Sure I can understand in general saying destroy it instead of eating it, but couldn't it wait in the freezer for a few more days until we're sure what the specific problem is and how extensive the impact is?

And God help us but it was bad enough that this was uncovered by another country's authorities but that it was Italy makes us like even more like eejits. A country run by Burlo backhander has better standards of food enforcement than we do. OK, they do have a proper culinary tradition and they like their food.

RTe were reporting in their coverage that in Belgium 3, count them 3 government ministers resigned on foot of their dioxin scandal there in 1999. Which little piggy in cabinet will go wee-wee-wee all the way home from this?

Update: I started the above post on Sunday but am only getting around to posting it now. In the light of the review from the EU. As I said above - what was wrong with just telling people that they shouldn't eat pork until the relevant authorities had decided on whether there was a real risk to public health. By all means tell shops to take it off the shelves and that restaurants should not serve it, but to advise people to throw it out was reckless and as it is now revealed completely wasteful.

New concepts in Laptop design

2008-12-04T16:56:00.003Z

Hat tip to Cristiano, these look very sexy indeed. Not entirely sure quite how functional they all would be especially on the road but surely we can expect to see some of them popping up in the new series of 24!

Are we seeing further evidence of corrosion in the FF base?

2008-12-04T16:40:00.003Z

With the outburst from Cllr and 2007 General election Noreen Ryan of FF in Limerick against the mighty local political totem that is Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, are we seeing the strain of the negative national mood beginning to tell? Many of those commenting are missing the local context in the timing of all this as the FF local selection interviews were talking place in Limerick over the last week or so. It may simply be that the new interview based and HQ driven selection process may not be proceeding as painlessly as had been hoped for. It was noted in the Limerick Leader recently with suitable expressions of disinterest in the process from local FF heavy hitters (in their own minds at least) such as Eddie (I could still get into the Dail) Wade and Jack (only a council seat makes me feel complete) Bourke. I think Wade said something closely along the lines that they could shove their interview process up a certain place and get a proctologist to examine their prostate while retrieving it. (this post is also over on sluggerotoole)

I strongly suspect that Noreen Ryan* has had her interview and picked up a definite vibe that she is not likely to be reselected. I particularly think her GE performance where she got barely 200 more votes than in the locals and she canvassed wearing sunglasses (was it the British Army that did the ad about the importance of making eye contact? Perhaps that is why she didn’t see it). That she should shoot her mouth off isn’t surprising, that the minister would retort by referring to her “as a person, utterly without credibility.” and continuing to say that “This is a grab for cheap publicity to conceal her utter inactivity and lack of performance as a councillor,”. Hmm....I can’t quite see how FF could have her on a ticket come next summer.

Fianna Fail ran 6 candidates, including cllr Ryam, in the 7 seat Castleconnell ward and they picked up 3 of the seats which was not a bad performance at all against the backdrop of the national picture. In fact it represented no change on the 1999 results. This time Labour and the Greens are making a really big push to gain a seat and with the demise of the PDs the future direction for cllr Brigid Teefy remains unclear. Might she now be looking for a home in the government party? And then we have to add in the likes of bright young lad Brian Stokes (who works with/for Peter Power TD and junior minster) who is bucking to get on the ticket in Castleconnell.

It is hard to see FF holding 4 out of 7 seats with the mood as it is now. This is moreover the case if they run too many candidates who fail to transfer amongst each other. The plain fact is FF as a party aren’t going to hold their seats by nominating imperious lads and ladies who lunch. They want them hungry and eager, and they want to have a tightly controlled panel of candidates. People who have a proven record of going off message and spending their time engaged in solo runs might well save their own seat but cost the party its other seats. While the national mood could change between now and election day, it is more likely that the government will choose to concentrate on the larger national picture and ensuring that they get things right so they can be returned to power in a few years rather than the immediate needs of cllrs. Of course, extrapolating too much from one ward is not without its dangers.

That said it may well be that this sort of radical surgery is needed if FF are to stave off the prospect that FG might pass them on. The story of the 2004 local and European was regarded at the time as being primarily about the increase in the SF vote. Yet in the longer term the vote retention and piecemeal seat gains by FG on what they had won in 1999 was of more significance. The 1999 results for FG were thought of at the time as a high water mark and later as something of a false dawn for the party in that those local successes didn’t prevent the tide going out in 2002. So sometimes it is not about the numbers of seats won but the overall context of the result.

It now seems that the FF brand and logo may even be more toxic than it was five years ago. I could tell from my own canvassing in the lead up to Christmas ’03 that many people were annoyed, disillusioned with the then FF/PD government and that they would take a hit come the summer but it was very unclear where the votes would go. In the end the votes spread out amongst the opposition parties in such a pattern as to please all concerned. The same could happen again, or any one of the opposition parties could take the lion’s share of the spoils. Only the campaigns and time will tell.

As for Cllr Ryan herself it is perhaps better for her to leave the party in a dramatic huff because she was standing up for ‘de local peeple’, run as an independent and if elected to return to the fold triumphant. With the FF logo more toxic than a tax demand on a poster it could be the only winning strategy for her and many others. No one ever said FFers were thick when it came to looking after themselves; it’s only when it comes to looking out for the rest of us that the brain tends to fail to engage.

* her site has been suspended, it would seem.

Where Mary Lou McDonald gets it wrong on Lisbon.

2008-12-04T13:01:00.005Z

In an article in the Irish Times, SF’s MEP for Dublin Mary Lou McDonald makes the case that the Lisbon referendum must not be rerun but that the Treaty must be renegotiated. The thing is she then goes on to make the same mistakes of overreach and presumption that the government did when campaigning for the treaty to be approved. What was rejected was the proposal to allow the Oireachtas sign up to Lisbon, not the content of the Treaty per se especially when so many citizens said they didn't understand it. Their response to vote No was in the circumstances quite sensible.

However, renegotiation requires that both parties are interested or able to do it. Mary Lou MacDonald argues that SF wanted the committee to look at “the future direction of the EU itself and how Ireland could shape that future”. I’m not sure how such an undertaking could possibly have reported back in any sort of realistic time frame and perhaps that was SF’s intent.

She states “There were also repeated attempts to scaremonger the public about the implications for the economy following the Irish people's rejection of the treaty. No evidence was presented to the committee to back up their claims.” The idea that the people’s rejection of the treaty has no implications for the economy is nonsense. If Brian Cowen had a bad flu, it would have implications for the economy for good or bad. That somehow our rejection of a EU treaty would have no consequences is complete overstatement of the position. Something she has rightly criticised elements of the Yes side for.

I do wonder at her suggestion about all the members of the public being given the chance to contribute in open session. It is unclear what ideas were not considered by the committee and what would have been the real value of every Tom, Dick and Harry having a chance to rant and rave at politicians on whatever their particular hobby horse, often only tangentially related to the EU is. “Sinn Féin also argued that the subcommittee should proactively engage as broad a section of the public as possible, that it should meet in open session, in and outside of Dublin, and listen to the opinions of ordinary citizens.” A halfway house idea that might have been worthwhile would have been to facilitate more engagement via the web, but the travelling road show idea as evidence by the Forum on Europe is past its best.

In talking about what needs to be addressed Mary Lou McDonald makes further missteps in saying about the report that it “sets out in detail the challenges facing Ireland and the EU and the mechanism for addressing the concerns of the Irish electorate on key issues such as maintaining our political strength, protecting neutrality, workers' rights, public services and taxation. It is clear that these issues can only be addressed in a new treaty which includes legally-binding protocols and not declarations of clarification which are not worth the paper they are written on.” There is nothing to suggest that all of the above must be addressed in order to win the support of the majority of the electorate. In a referendum all the government is required to do is gain the support of 50% plus 1 of the voters on the day. If they had adequately addressed the concerns of any one of the above issues they would probably have tipped the verdict from the vote last summer. The board scope of her argument that “...opinion polls,...demonstrate that people's concerns over neutrality, workers' rights, public services, democracy and Ireland's influence must be addressed in any future EU treaty” is also wholly incorrect.

She finishes by referring to our political goodwill with the EU while leaving aside the fact that much of this goodwill has dissipated in the aftermath of Lisbon. “It is time that the Government stood up for the interests of the Irish people and used the political goodwill which we have built up over many decades.” In essence the campaign strategy of SF and indeed Libertas was one giant blackjack hit, ignoring the possibility that we might be just as easily be bust as to hit 21.

As is her wont, she makes her point well, but doing it well does not in and of itself not make her point correct. Lastly, and of course, it is to be expected of me, given my own political leanings, to be saying this. It is quite poignant for a representative of SF to constantly refer to the democratic will of the people. It was the democratically expressed will of the people which they chose to ignore, election after election for 75 years, when it came to the republican movement’s campaign of violence which was supposedly in the name of the Irish people.

Commitment to extend Seanad voting rights should be acted on without further delay

2008-12-02T16:37:00.004Z

NUI Seanad Candidate, Daniel Sullivan, has called on the Minister for the Environment, John Gormley to explain why he has still not taken a single step towards fulfilling his commitment to extend voting rights to all third level graduates. (I sent this - well a variation on it - out as a press release last week and it got the usual amount of attention that matters related to the Seanad tend to get)

‘Minister John Gormley made quite a splash for himself in a highly publicised speech about Seanad Reform on Nov 28th of last year. In particular he drew attention to the extension of the franchise to all 3rd level graduates.’ said Daniel Sullivan ‘He said that should the Seanad impede his efforts he would plough ahead anyway. Strong words, yet 12 months on we see no legislation in the pipeline. Almost one third of the way through the life of the 30th Dail and the legislative pen hasn’t even been dipped into the inkwell of lawmaking.

The minister addressing the Seanad on the issue of agreeing a consensus on the topic said “I will not be deterred from pressing ahead with the university changes if that co-operation did not materialise.” Minister Gormley specifically committed himself to reforming the university constituencies, as a first step in a complete revamp of Seanad Éireann that will allow all citizens to have a vote. For all the fanfare there has been no action to date.

Next summer will see the 30th anniversary of the referendum where the people expressed their opinion that the state should act to extend the franchise. Dan Sullivan says “Had I been elected in 2007 I would have looked to have had legislation before the house during the current autumn session. I have previously explored the option of taking a constitutional challenge regarding the failure to legislate as the people at the time were led to believe it was about taking imminent action on the matter. If the costs of such a challenge were more within the reach of someone with modest means I would already have taken the risk that the Supreme Court might view it as a matter of public interest and award me costs. I am still actively considering that option“

An amendment to the Constitution to widen the university franchise was passed as long ago as 1979 but successive governments have failed to implement the change. The 2004 report from the committee chaired by then Sen. Mary O'Rourke proposed the abolition of the Trinity College and National University of Ireland constituencies and its replacement with a single constituency of 6 seats. It’s really that simple. The same 6 Seanad seats as present but voted on by a single constituency of all Irish graduates of an Irish education institution with a level seven qualification. Close to 400,000 people or 20% of the adult population would be given a direct say in the Seanad if the registers were properly updated to include all graduates. Not the whole journey towards a fully reformed Seanad by any means but a simple first step that could be taken immediately.

Further reform of the Seanad beyond the electorate of the university panel would require another referendum. Among the proposals in the 2004 report were that the Seanad be increased to 65 senators, from 60. Some 26 of these seats would be filled from a single national constituency under a list-PR system, with a further six elected by a reformed higher-education constituency. Under these proposals another 20 senators would be indirectly elected by county and city councillors, deputies and senators under PR-STV system while 12 senators would be nominated by the Taoiseach.

Is this the most filmed fire in Irish history?

2008-12-02T15:39:00.002Z

I got this in my mail yesterday and when you look at it, you will notice the many, many other views of the same incident listed beside it.

Don't be surprised if the overall viewing figures pass the 100K mark by the end of the week. And would this be some sort of record?

Prime Time turns its lens on Declan Ganley, burns self.

2008-11-28T11:37:00.006Z

Well, that was one hell of a piece rubbish television especially compared to other investigative programs Prime Time have done in the past. The overall flavour was of the Rowdy Roddy Peeper segment in the Simpsons. Actors in shadows, dark moody music. I was half expecting a black and white clip with a damsel laid out on a train track with some high tempo piano tinkling going on in the background to surface but it didn't.

A couple of weird things did strike me during the course of it though. Katie Hannon told us the wife of the man murdered in Albania told her stuff but wouldn't do it on camera (don't they have the blurry face thing anymore) but we were lead to believe she was fine with Hannon standing outside her house quoting her, not even to voice record her? And we're to take Hannon's word for it that the wife actually said X Y or Z. That's very strange for an investigative program. Usually if you can't get something on the record then it simply isn't used. Whither Woodward and Bernstein.

Ganley also made reference in the program to a phone conversation that Katie had had with the former junior Latvian minister and which the minister (now forester! how exciting) also said that he wouldn't be adding to when she went to visit him but we didn't get to hear any of that phone conversation. Why was that? What was the content of it? Was it any cop? And yet she played a recording of a conversation in the guys office. I take it she recorded that legally, I mean some countries do allow you to record your own conversations, others require the permission of both parties. In some places you can only do it in a public place in others it is ok to enter someone's home or place of work and record without their knowledge. I presume RTe confirmed what the situation is in Latvia and I can only presume that is why couldn't she try to do the same in Albania? Or did they simply make an editorial choice.

Over the course of the show a lot was made of claims by people that claims by Ganley had been overplayed or that people's roles were more than they actually were. So while it was possible that Ganley had overstated his role in Latvia but it wasn't apparently possible that the person in Albania had overstated their role in Anglo-Adriatic or that others were overstating it now. The Albania voucher scheme sounded like all kinds of interesting weirdness but despite this tease we magically didn't get any concrete detail on what happened. We seem to have been told that the state gave out vouchers which were to be linked to priviatised state assets and Anglo Adriatic collected these vouchers but then the state didn't honour them and along the way people started trading in the vouchers. But was Anglo Adriatic involve in that trading? RTe never said, nor were we given to understand why Anglo-Adriatic were even collecting them or were they buying them? The picture presented was as clear as soft-focus image taken by someone with a shakey hand of a murky lake waters, at dusk, in winter, in Lapland.

So the view from the show is that Declan Ganley embellished his role in advising the Latvia government at some point in the early 90s and that some people lost money on some strange voucher scheme in Albania used to privatise, and that his company may have engaged in overreach in contract negotiations with the US CPA in Iraq.

Now I wouldn't personally be inclined to become too involved in business dealings with Mr. Ganley simply because he strikes me as too much of a shrewd operator and Kerryman that I am, we know a hoor that's too cute for us.

Overall, the program gave us nothing you could call concrete or a smoking gun, only rumours and impressions. If this is something that RTe is doing to assist in securing a Yes vote next time (something I would on balance like to see) then God help us all.

As for the talk of the Standards in Public Office. The current SIPO set up doesn't give you any real idea where the money for the major parties comes from as they simply work around it with small donations. People should read some of Elaine Byrne's articles in the IT to see what I'm talking about. There may well be questions from SIPO for Libertas to answer about funding but the question is why would Libertas be expected to provide this information ahead of all other organisations that campaigned for/against the Treaty. One can only presume that Coir and the Alliance for Europe have gotten similar letters at the same time that Libertas did or has Libertas been singled out?

Update: it now appears that Libertas are saying they have not yet received the letter that RTe showed as coming SIPO. Where did RTe get it from?

Take my wife, please!

2008-11-27T11:30:00.002Z

What is it about Irish business people and high ranking public servants that they can't spend a few days away from their spouses? In the reporting of the trip in 2004 of Minister Mary Harney we're told that she travelled "in a party that included the former director general of Fás, Rody Molloy, and his wife, and the then secretary general of Ms Harney's department, Paul Haran, and his wife."

Why, why were their wives brought along? Are these top-executives unable to make their way in the world without their wives? Or are these menfolk mere proxies for their more capable other halves? Evidently it has been going on for years. Sen. Mary White sought to regale us with her foreign policy credentials in her quest to be president by telling us about all her trips with her husband then head of the IDA.

So cats are smarter than dogs eh!

2008-11-26T15:53:00.003Z

I saw this over on Andrew Sullivan (no relation).

In my view both cats and dogs are capable of stupidity, it's merely that some owners can't see it in their furry house guests. I've been thinking about getting a cat but it would have to be one of these bombay black types as they don't shed so much.

Is Ewan McGregor A Basque Terrorist?

2008-11-25T12:50:00.004Z

Is Breaking News.ie seriously trying to tell us that Ewan McGregor is a Basque Terrorist? Or do they think we need to be told what a terrorist looks like? Or is this just another one of those unfortunate image/story screw ups that happens from time to time. I think the still is from Incendiary but I'm not 100% sure.

What to do about crime in Ireland

2008-11-17T23:45:00.001Z

I find myself wondering about how often are we going to do this rehashing of the term watershed. Purely coincidentally I was opposite Donna Cleary's house the morning after her murder as I was doing a NEAR fm radio panel show in the Northside Civic centre. As a few readers would know I was a candidate in that area for the 2004 locals. There is an awful feeling of despair and helplessness that comes in the aftermath of such a senseless act. And senseless it was, shooting up a house because you weren't let into a party.

Part of the problem is that the guys involved have no fear that they will face real life altering consequences in response to their crimes. In fact, most of them have seen the same response from the system each step along the way as the seriousness of their crimes has escalated. 2nd chance after 2nd chance. I'm a believer in 2nd chances but not in 10th or 20th chances.

As for what I think we should do I would suggest the following

that we need to end the lax mentality of granting free legal aid without properly ascertaining someone's financial situation.

We should have a microCAB unit to investigate the circumstances of people who appear to be living very well yet are only on welfare and who obviously appear to have other sources of income.

an end to concurrent sentencing for violent and crimes related to the supply of drugs, as it creates a loophole for those on bail that when convicted they can plead guilty to other offenses while in prison and serve no further time. Each crime is different and should be deal with separately.

an end to automatic unearned remission.

a recall capacity vote for judges by the public every 5 years perhaps run to coincide with the local elections whereby the public can remove those judges from the bench that they feel are not reflecting societal norms in their sentencing policy.

There are judges in Limerick who appear to fall for every sob story going. And yet no one chases up these tales of woe or references to million euro contracts to verify whether they're true or not. If people were neglected as children then charges should be brought against their parents and those involved should be prepared to act as witnesses.

This is a small country and Judges should be rotated around areas more frequently. It is very odd that with only 4 million people and given the size of the country that so many bench warrants are outstanding.

A new prison or the building of an existing one specifically designed to provide hard time for those prisoners who are no interested in rehabilitation.

Put an end to the practice an automatic right to rehousing in the private rental sector by the HSE. If you abuse a local authority house then that should be it for you.

I'm sure that there will be those that read the above and judge it harsh but harsh is part of what is needed and even deserved.

FF's poll implosion

2008-11-14T07:31:00.000Z

I've been banging on for quite a while now that FF have been suffering the same decline in core support as FG as the generations shifted but that in their case it was covered up by the fact that they were considerably more adept at hoovering the significantly larger floating vote. In the aftermath of the 2009 budget that is what has changed and is now being reflected in the polls.

The ice shelf of floating voters has calved from the frozen continent of FF and is now in open water. Currently it is located solidly in the territorial waters of FG and the Independents. Whether it stays there is an open question but it is very definitely drifting away from FF who seem not to understand that it is even loose.

Just a quick bit of context but both George Bush and Nixon had at their lowest ebbs higher satisfaction ratings that this government currently has. And at 18% satisfaction barely half of the government parties own supporters are satisfied with their performance to date. That is pretty damning stuff.

Unpopular decisions aren't necessarily right.

2008-11-13T23:42:00.002Z

I find it odd that government representatives appear to believe that the mere fact that a decision is unpopular is somehow proof of how right and appropriate it is. A wrong decision can be unpopular just as easily as a right one,. A popular decision is equally likely to be wrong or right. There is no intrinsic link between the two concepts. Either a decision is right or it is wrong. Revelling in the unpopularity as some marker that you're on the right course is all kinds of dense.

And let's face it the recent government decisions on medical cards, on class sizes, on cervical cancer vaccines are just plain wrong. Oddly enough a subsequent decision on the medical cards for the over 70s that the same amount of money would be paid by the state to doctors for treating people over 70s irrespective of their reasons for qualifying for the card is a correct decision. And while it is likely to be unpopular with doctors the government are due some credit for making it. Even if they've been damn slow to get around to it.

Vincent Browne's double standards

2008-11-11T11:32:00.006Z

Watching TV3's VB show the other night I was struck by the insistence on the part of VB that the reaction to the murder of Shane Geoghegan somehow meant that the populous valued different lives differently. It doesn't. People simply react differently to the murder of someone in a gang to the murder of someone not involved in any such criminality at all.

For the same reason that people react differently to the death on the road of someone who was young and made a habit of driving fast and reckless to that a pedestrian teenager killed by a car mounting the footpath. It's not that one life is worth more but that one is more unexpected. People reacted in horror at the murder of the young plumbing apprentice Anthony Campbell just as they are doing now to the murder of Shane Geoghegan. These were lads who had done nothing but go about their business as we all do. It has nothing to do with social background.

I really wish Vincent would stop stretching different events as he attempts to shoe horn them into his world view. One other related crib with Vincent Browne is he often seeks to bring in the state and society's rather woeful treatment of travellers not matter how tangentially related. Yet in his coverage of the murder of Shane Geoghegan he makes no reference to the likely individuals involved membership of the traveller community. To Vincent the killing of John Ward by Padraig Nally was all about him being a traveller and not about him engaging in criminal activity yet we see extended families engaged in turf wars who operate omerta in a manner that would do the Scilians proud and not a mention of they being travellers.

Think tank: Let’s all have a vote

2008-11-10T07:18:00.001Z

I had an opinion type piece in the Sunday Times a few weeks back. It's a step up from my usual letter writing. I was mainly trying to talk about something that might be feasible rather than using the chance to have a crack at something that already exists. This is the slightly longer and somewhat less well edited version.

Think tank: Let’s all have a vote.

Are we seeing the emergence of a real democracy?

In the aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty campaign considerable attention has been devoted to the apparent disconnect between the electorate and the body politic. During the course of the campaign it appeared that the public were engaged in one type of conversation while the professional political class seemed to, many members of the public at least, to talk amongst themselves. The travelling road shows of the Forum on Europe and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs, despite considerable expense to the public purse, failed utterly to engage the people drawing small crowds of political anoraks. And if I’m being completely honest I would have to include the likes of myself in that last grouping.

Yet the wider public were quite eager to talk about Lisbon or at least what they thought Lisbon was about. When they sought to do so, all too frequently, they were not so politely told to ‘Hauld your whisht’. Rather than be silent some decided to take their views elsewhere. They went on-line.

As European Commissioner Margot Wallström noted in a recent report the on-line discussion in Ireland had a tendency to be negative towards the treaty. Yet the EU and the state’s efforts in this area, again at cost to the taxpayer, did not provide for discussion not to mind dissension. Sites such as lisbontreaty.ie singularly failed to engage the voting public. They existed purely to carry a line to the public, much as posters and even television and radio ads to. No questions could be asked, in some cases not even the dead letterbox of the email us to contact.

In contrast there existed outside the state sponsored sector a veritable free for all. There the discourse was perhaps all too reflective of that taking place across the country. It mirrored in all its gaudy chaos the woolly thinking, messiness, unpredictability, bald inaccuracy, prejudices and tendency towards hyperbole, all the while exposing a broad spectrum of viewpoints both for and against the treaty. The general confusion in the public mind was manifest on-line long before it came to the notice of the mainstream media. That this was the case and that the mainstream media missed it is something they appear to be unable to forget not to mind forgive.

Though much of the discussion on-line has many, many flaws, it does demonstrate that we have at our fingertips the means to extend democratic involvement beyond what Americans term ‘the beltway’. We could if we so chose seek to move away from the stale binary mentality that sees people as either passive voters or active politicians. It’s a world of gray.

Pres. Jed Bartlet, “You know we forget sometimes, in all the talk about democracy, it's a Republic. People don't make the decisions; they choose the people who make the decisions.”

In a democracy, it’s not alone the citizen’s role to ensure that they are as informed as possible when casting their vote but it is their responsibility to continue to hold to account and to actively challenge those we elect to positions of power. This is meant to be an ongoing process not just saved for election time.

The ideals of democracy are rooted in the principle that all the people or 'demos' should be involved in both the discourse and decision making process. The parliamentary forms of representative democracy that we are used to were created in large part because of limitations in travel and communication that along with the lack of educational attainment meant that only a minority of citizens could gather in one place and understand the issues being debated. That is no longer the case.

Public participation in the political process as evidenced by voting, party membership and attendance at public meetings has entered a steady decline in recent decades. The focus in addressing this disengagement has primarily on making voting more accessible, simpler and easier. This is to address the wrong problem.

By and large voting is popular with the public. Participation by the Hoi Polloi in even in the most trivial reality shows such as Big Brother, X-factor, and Fáilte Towers demonstrates people have no problem with voting. Voting is not the problem; public participation in all that comes before a vote is cast is the crux of the issue.

What we need to do is extend the arena of the political discourse to embrace the general public. Our system of parliamentary procedure has changed little from the time of Gladstone and Parnell. A day in the chamber typically consists of ritualistic jousting with press releases. Most Deputies aren’t even present to listen to what others have to say. Genuine debate, a real contest of ideas or even limited constructive argument is substantially absent from the Dail.

The majority of the population have neither the time nor even the inclination to get involved but they could be afforded a significantly greater opportunity to be involved than at present. For example, why not allow citizens to submit parliamentary questions or to have ministers address their questions in committee? Or participate in the scrutiny of legislation? A broader spectrum of involvement would be possible especially to those who do not feel the party political format fits to their range of views. This is not to eliminate the final voting power of representatives but to instead embed it more directly as the penultimate steps in the decision making process. Those who vote must lead by convincing those who would support them that the course they will vote for is the correct one. The public similarly should vote for those whose ideas and votes reflect the course they believe to be the correct one.

In the mean time, online forums and group blogs such as politics.ie, irishelection.com and sluggerotoole.com appear to be hot housing embryonic communities that may evolve into more participative forms of democracy. If a potential transition is in prospect, it must be one that serves to underpin democracy rather than merely leading to a form of e-mob rule. It is all too easy to see technology means being used like the radio was by many in the 1930s as a means to whip up a crowd and for the leader of the mob to surf to power on this wave. Let a hundred thousand flowers bloom through experimentation. In due course the public will select what works best for them once the limitations in our broadband infrastructure are overcome.

This idea/exercise in thinking out loud is intended not a magic bullet to solve the problems democracy is faced with; rather it is a diet and exercise regime that can help it revive if there still exists the will that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

‘We have the technology, should we seek to rebuild democracy?’

Update: I mentioned e-mobs and a mate of mine asked if I was coining it. Little did I know that we were about to see the media overwhelmed by some e-mobs.

I think these chaps said it quite well.

RED C poll numbers for Oct 26th 2008

2008-10-25T17:41:00.000+01:00

FF 26% down ten percent, FG up 5 to 33%, Labour up 5% to 15, SF on 10%, Greens on 6% PDs on 2% and others on 8%. Those numbers if true, and given the source I'm strongly inclined to believe them, mean the government.

With independents like Jackie Healy Rae moving on to education the terrain isn't going to get any easier for the government and this moment probably represents the Green's best moment to hold FF to the pin of their collar and force concessions in the budget. Failure to do so will leave the Greens tied to this budget as closely as are FF right now.

And if FF don't revise the budget massively on foot of Green party pressure they should cut and run. It's the punch that FG should have thrown in '94. An election while FF are completely on the back foot could be the only chance to get the mandate an Irish government needs to take the actions that are necessary. Will they take the chance or like Gordon Brown fluff it?

Update: poll numbers confirmed on RTe News

What if McCreevy had continued to extend medical card threshold?

2008-10-23T11:09:00.003+01:00

I mentioned yesterday that I'd take a look at a counter factual where instead of abolishing income as a factor for the allocation of medical cards to those over 70 that the minister of finance had simply continued to aggressively extend the income threshold.

In 1999 the income thresholds for medical cards even for the over 70s were much lower than they are now. Of course, governments had considerably less revenue in those days before the Celtic Tiger and also had more outgoings in respect of unemployment etc. The thresholds were subsequently increased as per a budgetary commitment by roughly 33% each year until March of 2001. In Budget 2000 McCreevy announced that the next and final step would be to remove the income threshold completely for those over 70. Yet what if he had persisted with his original measure?

Taking the lower of those over 70 figures for 1999 of £133.00 which equates to €168.87 as our base point we see the intended increase of 33% or €55.72 per year in the threshold would have been up to €337.74 in March 2001. Note this is more than the initial revised threshold from last week! And it’s the figure from 7 years ago. So had Charlie McCreevy continued with the same level of increase annually (not % wise but in flat cash terms) the threshold would have been

March 2001 €337.74 (this is double the initial 1999 figure)

March 2002 €393.46

March 2003 €449.18

March 2004 €504.90

March 2005 €560.62

March 2006 €616.34

March 2007 €672.06

March 2008 €727.78

So think about that for a moment, the income threshold would now be higher than that most recent ‘final proposal’ of €700 per week gross to come from the government on Tuesday of this week. Plus, it wouldn’t have involved any re-negotiation with the IMO and consequent explosion in the cuts of the scheme which apparently cost us €254 million last year. Just imagine for a moment what else we could have done with the billion plus Euros over the last 6/7 years? How many more children in lower income families we could have offered medical cards to in that time or funding for nursing home care?

What am I saying sure they didn’t know what to do with the billions for Euros they did have so given them more would have only have lead to throwing good money after bad.

*Figures as from a Cork/Irish Examiner (it's TCM anyway) article in 1999

Medical card means test thresholds:
Up to 66, 66 to 69, 70 to 79*, Over 80*.
Single - living alone: £92.00, £100.00, £133.00, £140.00
Single - living with family: £81.50, £86.50, £115.00, £120.00.
Married couple: £133.00, £149.00, £198.50, £208.50.
Allowance for child under 16: £16.00.
Allowance for other dependants: £17.50.
Allowances for outgoings on house:
Excess over £16.00 a week
Reasonable expenses necessarily incurred in travelling to work
Excess over £14.50 a week
* These are the thresholds likely to apply from March 1, 1999.

What McCreevy hadn't given the medical card to everyone?

2008-10-22T07:28:00.001+01:00

Back in 2000 when Charlie McCreevy announced the plans for the extension of the medical card in Budget 2001 to all over 70s irrespective of income he was introducing it as the next step of a process by which the government had doubled the income threshold necessary to get the medical if you were over 70. The question we have to ask now is why didn't he stick with that idea, extending coverage in a progressive indeed aggressive manner but all the while based on income and ability to pay.

Charile Dec 6 2000 - Medical Cards for Older People In my 1999 budget, I announced that the income limits for medical cards for people aged 70 years or over would be doubled over three years, commencing in 1999. That process will be completed next March, and it is now proposed to take the next step. I am pleased to announce that, from 1 July 2001, entitlement to the medical card is being extended to all those aged 70 years or over.

What was wrong with simply progressively extending the threshold for the card and the benefits associated with it year by year? Oh I forget we were due a general election and McCreevy reckoned the older members of our society could be bought off. And if you look at the raw polling data he was dead right. Later today, I'm going to try and extrapolate why we might be now in terms of thresholds if McCreevy has stuck to his guns.

There's a hole in the budget, dear Brian. A hole!

2008-10-21T10:37:00.004+01:00

So it seems the threshold for the over 70s medical card is to be raised again. And FF (or the cabinet at the very least) must be hoping that this will lower the temperature enough that they can get through the week without more people going overboard.

However, at first reading one has to ask if most of those receiving the benefit of the card will now retain that benefit then the government has close to 100 million of a hole in its budget calculations. To be added on to this is the possible/probably changes in the income levy, we're told that about 800,000 people who work don't pay income tax, but they would be paying the levy as it is on all income. So let's at a minimum scenario and presume they're all earning the minimum wage that means they could be paying €180 per year under the Lenny Levy. If all 800,000 were to be exempt from the levy that would be another €150 million missing from the budget. A hundred million here, a hundred and fifty million there and soon we'll be talking about real money!

Update: It does sound from the statement that the government has adopted the idea from Fine Gael that savings could be made in the drugs area by more use of generics. I wonder if the media will even notice or acknowledge this. Also it now appears the government is modifying the competition act in order to make it possible for it to negotiate with the IMO in future, that might work locally but what about European competition law. They really are making it up as they go along.

On the radio this morning

2008-10-21T07:35:00.000+01:00

I'm due to be on the Joe Finnegan show on Shannonside / Northern Sound about 9.30am this morning, Oct 21st. You can listen live, I hope. I'm meant to be talking about the fit or suitability of our politicians as compared to their actual jobs but you never know. This is live radio after all.

Will Bertie be there?

2008-10-20T15:59:00.003+01:00

So with the not unexpected announcement that pairs will be offered by FG only for those government TDs on actual proper business for the state, in this case the trip to China, the arithmetic for Wednesday's Dail vote on the Fine Gael motion starts to look somewhat interesting. For example, where will Bertie be I wonder? Is he even in the country? I've mailed them at his office to ask, I wonder if I'll get a reply. After all, I am a citizen, this is a republic, he still works for me, or is collecting a salary at my expense.

Possibly solution to the over 70s Medical Card mess

2008-10-18T19:42:00.002+01:00

I'm talking out of turn here, but if anyone is interested in a practical solution to the over 70s medical card fiasco, there's my tuppence worth.

I might be asking a rather obvious question here but if the GPs charge the state €640 (the figure itself isn't really relevant at the moment) for giving people over 70 a level of card consistent with a medical card then shouldn't it be possible to set a number of bands of support and tailor the subvention from the state towards that 640 annualised figure that would relate to your income (we could look to factor in assets too but that would be really messy to administrate).

So let everyone under 17K (or whatever the annualised figure for the minimum wage is) per annum get 100% of that GP yearly charge paid by the state,
those between 17K and the average industry wage gets 75% of the figure paid by the state and pays 25% themselves (which at 100 odd quid for as many visits as you like isn't very bad value.)
Those at the 130% of the average industry wage pay 50%
those at 150% of the AIW pay 75% and
those on pensions over twice the AIW can pay the full whack or pay per visit.

I wonder if anyone will take the idea up, I've also no idea how much it would save. But this is the sort of pragmatic idea that our politics lacks. I believe that the government has acted in bad faith by removing the cover, but it also acted badly by providing the cover in such a profligate manner by giving the cover to all and sundry irrespective of income or wealth. I've long believed that the all or nothing status of the medical card is just plain wrong.

Perhaps someone from the department of finance might look to run the numbers...

Cowen on HIGNFY

2008-10-18T18:53:00.003+01:00

Taoiseach Brian Cowen made an unexpected appearance in Have I Got News for You last night

Doesn't he just look like a little lost lamb?

Stop the lights, Bunny.

2008-10-14T14:14:00.006+01:00

I've heard some nonsense in my time but this is really of the biscuit taking variety. Reported by the Beeb yesterday a council in Wales is switching off street lights. It's for the environment don't you know. Seriously. Just as an aside are the savings of 250K from the council budget.

Street lighting along with sewage, the police, fresh drinking water and the town crier (an early version of a mobile RSS feed, ask your granny) was one of the most basic services that local city authorities undertook to provide in the pre-Victorian era. Even the bloody Romans provided street lighting.

Live Blogging of Budget 2009

2008-10-14T12:26:00.006+01:00

I know there's a good few others having a crack at this, but the more the merrier I say. You can do a sort of speed read of the previous budgets here as homework if you like.

NB: This is a kind of test run for me for other events. Feel free to add comments as I go along. Next time I will try and add other folks into the live feed itself using the panellists feature

Alternative budget proposals

2008-10-13T15:20:00.004+01:00

With all the talking down of the budget prospects, I've been thinking about a few silver bullets of my own.

a) create an immediate slave caste from those under 5' 6" tall.

b) designate 1 in 40 taxpayers as 'the unfortunate b'stard', and impose a tax rate of 80% on all their earnings past and future.

c) create a new currency local to each county.

d) make the amount of spam you receive indicative of your 'net profile and tax accordingly.

e) tax people based on their site traffic. You know they must be making money somehow from it all even if they say it's not for profit.

f) a time based entry charge for those travelling south from the north while in possession of a GAA county jersey.

g) a charge for the temporary export of silverware. Might make those bearded lads think again about going for 2 in a row.

h) make language a revenue producer by rationing terms like 'property bubble', stagflation, resurgence.

i) nationalise 4x4s to be used to bring feral children to school.

j) charge those under 40 'an old geezer' levy to be written off by spending time listening to someone over 65 regale them with tales of the misery of the old days.

k) require licenses of people under 65 to complain about how the youngsters won't know what hit them.

Feel free to add your own suggestions.

Where did all the money go?

2008-10-12T18:03:00.009+01:00

At this point, we all know that people in the financial sector (I think the technical term is fecking eejits) paid over the odds for assets that we now refer to as toxic. But where has that money gone? After all, if people paid excessive amounts for their stinky soggy ex-hot potato parcel and that parcel isn't worth what the buyer thought then at least the seller has the cash right? right?

The core issue we are being repeatedly told is that loans were given to people to buy their homes and these are people who can't now afford to make the repayments. Yet it is worth remembering that not all of those people will default and even those that can't make loan repayments will be able to pay rent which has to be worth something more than nothing.

In part I suspect that by painting the situation as bleak as possible serves to allows some people who are directly responsible for this way of doing business to pretend that there was nothing they could have done differently. That this is, in words all too familiar to users of the Irish health service, a system's failure. It's not, it's a failure directly attributable to those same individuals who were collecting the bonuses for how great they were doing. Those who made the decisions should be fired.

Does Sarah Palin read adult magazines?

2008-10-02T14:21:00.005+01:00

Katie Couric asked Gov. Palin in the last few days what magazines and newspapers she reads and she wasn't able to name any. “Um, all of them, any that have been in front of me all these years.” Now, Sarah Palin studied journalism at college. Yet when called upon she can’t name a single newspaper, magazine, or periodical that she’s ever read.

Could it be that she was just embarrassed by her choice of reading material? But why? Then it hit me, was Gov. Palin suggesting in some very roundabout way that she reads adult magazines? I mean after all they are available in lots of good book stores across America even in Alaska. As has been noted down the years a few of those publications have some damn fine articles.

EU is none too pleased at how the Irish government acted - Sod'em!

2008-10-01T15:15:00.003+01:00

Well, would you get her?
The EU seems miffed that the Irish government acted what they view as a unilateral manner to deal with the situation in Ireland vis-a-vis the banks. I've personally got a lot of qualms about the way in which the government's underwriting of the banks had been handled but one thing I don't have a problem with is that they didn't wait around for the EU to have a conflab about it. As McCreevy pointed out later on member states don't have the luxury of waiting forever and a day while Brussels ponders. In truth I sense the hand of McCreevy in all this, he was in Ireland on Monday and I suspect he was consulted at least to some extent on the options.

Potential flaw in local election expenditure limits

2008-09-26T08:12:00.000+01:00

John Gormley's announcement that he is looking to establish spending limits for the local elections should be something to be widely welcomed. However from what he has said so far there are a few problems with the approach he is suggesting should be followed. He mentions one area of consideration "Should different amounts apply in elections for city and county councils, and town councils;". On the surface that seems a sensible distinction to make but that's not quite the case when you look at how it would play out on the ground.

The thing is that different counties have different ratios between councillors and voters. I'm using 2004 numbers for electorates but the comparison holds up. In Dublin city council for example the Artane Ward had an electorate of 26, 000 compared to Limerick Ward 2 which was only 9,000, both for 4 seats, both city councils. Or more extreme Ballinamore Co. Leitrim a 6 seater for just 6,000 voters as compared to Midleton a 6 seater in Co.Cork but for 40,000 people. Being a city, county or town council should not be the point of divergence in spending limits. In truth it must be linked to the number of people each candidate is seeking to represent. And in doing that it is likely that we will see a reopening of the can of worms that are issues of pay in proportion to the number of people being represented and perhaps too the fact that members of the Seanad are elected by councillors who represent varying numbers of people.

Couple this divergence in size with the absence of any reference to date to the use of publicly funded facilities by incumbents (photocopying in city hall can save a candidate quite a pretty penny in paper and printing costs in the lead up to an election campaign, especially when you know for certain the date of the contest) and you've got a recipe for a tidy little legal mess come next year. That isn't to say the topic shouldn't be gone into, just that it is about more than set caps on spending.

Eurovision to be fixed!

2008-09-15T19:56:00.003+01:00

The folks behind the Eurovision have announced that they are to re-introduce jury voting to run alongside the popular votes. Hurrah, that should finally restore some much needed credibility to the world's premier kitsch fest. Might Terry come back?

N.B. I still reckon Sopho was robbed last year.

Jean Claude Van Damme as

2008-09-12T08:37:00.000+01:00

Jean Claude Van Damme. I only became aware of this tonight via pop la femme chien. And it's absolutely brilliant!

Teaser below

and the Trailer is below

It's a tasty fish, I've nothing against it.

2008-09-12T08:30:00.001+01:00

George C. Scott gives his views on carp. Yes, carp! I was attempting explain the magic of George C. Scott's voice to someone recently and used this as an example.

It is, in my view at least, a piece of cinema brilliance. And I can recommend Exorcist III for rental as an overly neglected and underrated movie. It's based on the actual book sequel to the Exorcist by William Peter Blatty and was directed by him. Honestly, the dialogue crackles along at a brisk pace and it is much more of a suspense movie and thrill ride than a horror.

On the subject of neglected movies, might I also offer The Hidden with Kyle McLachlan. It's an off beat cop movie/sci-fi mashup which I reckon has one of the best openings ever for a movie. "What'd he do rob a bank?". I've got a minor beef with Sky in that they keep showing the same films again and again on sci-fi when there are underrated classic, they could get for half nothing and show during the night for us to Plus and watch the following evening.

One of the weird but wonderful aspects of the 80s was that we were hit with a deluge of sub mainstream movies that never got close to being movie releases over here but which were quite passable of a dull winter's evening when we had no jobs or money.

It wasn't me!

2008-09-09T19:18:00.003+01:00

It seems some eejit took it upon himself to rush the stage at the V festival when Oasis were playing and ended up shoving Noel Gallagher into a monitor speaker and damaged his ribs. Even more bizarrely for me it seems his name is Daniel Sullivan. Well, just for the record it wasn't me. I wish Noel a speedy recovery and that other bloke is right off the family Christmas list.

I will say that I have seen Oasis play, it was in Dublin at the Tivoli in 1994, good, good gig. First time I'd ever been offered way over the odds for a ticket as I'm going into the venue.

Who is running Alaska?

2008-09-08T16:21:00.003+01:00

A big deal has been made of the demands of running Alaska in recent weeks. How it gives one such rounded executive experience. It naturally begs the question who is running the place right now while Gov. Palin is criss-crossing the lower 48 campaigning to be VeeP?

Hang on, it’s got to be the Lt. Gov - Sean Parnell right? but hang on a minute he’s in a slow death march of a count for the republican primary for a congressional seat. If he wins through there then he's got an election campaign for the congressional seat to work at between now and election day in Nov. So, if Alaska can be let on auto pilot for so long then is being Governor of the place really all that demanding? After all, if it's not a real full time job, if it is like a time share thing then how much worth can we put in doing it for 18 months before become your party's nominee for the vice-Presidency? The last Governor the US elected who wasn't a full time hands on type of guy was W. and look where that got the US.

Seriously, if McCain was really all that gone on executive experience then that nice Mike Huckabee chap was governor of Arkansas for over a decade and his views on many social conservative issues overlap with those of Governor Palin. And Chuck Norris had endorsed him so he had the gun club folks too.

A cinema giant passes on - and you won't know his face or his name.

2008-09-03T13:40:00.004+01:00

Don LaFontaine the king of voiceovers has died aged 68. How can we go on "in a world where" this man can no longer guide us through the troubles of life and the power of imagination. This winter and next summer things will be just that little bit bleaker. That really was a voice to launch a movie, you can hear more here. Volume is a tad loud mind.

Things you hate to love

2008-09-03T08:40:00.001+01:00

Caught this at the weekend* on Dave!, Stephen Fry talking about things you hate to love, like in his case, Darts! (the game/sport, not the band) and ABBA, and Georgette Heyer and gibberish and swearing. It was a fantastic concept for a show. I hope it was real and not one of those things that your brain does while you're sleeping. Read more here.

*I was tired, I'm writing a paper on something and I had nothing to wear so I stayed in, it happens.

The economy has sphinctered

2008-09-03T08:37:00.000+01:00

It's pretty much official now that the economy is not slowing down rather it is closed for business. I did like that an auctioneer in Tuam on the RTe news was saying that there was a need for the building industry to reduce prices drastically in bring people back into the market and then went on to be quoted as saying there as €15 million in new unsold property in the area. Now was that €15 million in terms of the current asking price or should we read that as really being €10 million's worth? Tom Parlon joined in the fun fest by asking for a direct state bailout of construction. Wasn't he in a party once that believed in the free market?

Yes, indeed the Irish construction industry has truly overdone its reaction to the credit crunch or the fiscal trots as some might term it and we're stuck looking at the rest of the economy sphinctering out of sympathy.

Oireachtas reform

2008-09-01T12:54:00.005+01:00

I know I've made some hay previously about reforming the Seanad to make it somewhat more consistent, but what about something more fundamental like reforming the entire electoral system. I believe that the Oireachtas, local government and large swaths of Irish public life are broken ,busted, banjaxed. I believe that the current system has served us badly.

Let's take for a moment the view that the Irish people really do need all these people helping them with form filling and ringing up the planning office and coming to their funerals. So let's keep people in the system to do that but let's also keep them the hell away from the drafting, consideration and voting involved in legislation.

Take the number of TD 166 and for every 3 of them at present let's try and suffice with just the 2 who will become what I would term public advocates. They will sit in a people's chamber that gets to vote on legislation but only to reject it by a 2/3 vote. So, that's 111 of them advocates to be elected by PR-STV. And then we should have 100 members of an actual legislature 80% of whom are to be elected by a list system on a provincial basis, and the remaining 20% by national list.

And those in the latter chamber would actually be the only ones who could draft, debate and vote on actual proposed new legislation. And then members of the cabinet can be drawn from both chambers or none. But they must be approved by Oireachtas committee (much like the US senate hearings to approve cabinet members.

And let's pay the advocates more than those in the legislature so that people aren't tempted to use it as stepping stone to get into the legislature as people currently use the county/city council seats. Pay the advocates 100K (after all they're doing the work of 1.5 TDs and we pay TD's 100K as of today) and the legislators just 80K say. Members of the cabinet get a top up to bring them up to 150K. And the top dog can have 180K and the use of a flat in town along with the lodge at Farmleigh for the family.

Obama vs. McCain - who is better for Ireland?

2008-08-30T17:30:00.004+01:00

Does anyone in the media know anything? This piece in the examiner today states that Ireland does better under republican presidents than under Democrats. Really? Did anyone do any fact checking at all?

The 1950s were times of bleakness matched only by the huge rate of emigration with that nice Ike (Rep) what people said they liked in the White house. Most people reckon the 60s were pretty good here economically with Lemass and his plans and the general opening up of the country, but weren't Kennedy and Johnson Democrats? And then when things went to hell in handbasket in the early 70s that Nixon chap (Rep) was commander in chief. We had a brief boom in the late 70s due to the government getting drunk on tax cuts and inflationary public spending but the chickens and most forms of farmyard fowl came home to roost in the 80s. That would be when Ronald the non-McDonald (Rep) was letting things supply siding it up and trickle down.

Times were even tighter here under Bush I (Rep). Most people place the emergence of the Celtic Tiger from the undergrowth (though it's birth pangs were probably felt in the latter days of Bush I) at some point between '94 and '96 when Clinton (Dem) was still paying attention to non-cigar related activities and our recent housing related boom and bust was under Bush II. So, I don't there is any solid pattern there but if you were making any kind of correlation it would be more plausible to suggest that we do better when the Dems are in charge. Though we need a period of republican rule to prepare us.

As for the future it is not completely unreasonable to suggest that if Obama pushes a protectionist agenda that it may will harm our position but there is nothing in recent history to support the actual tone or title of the article.

Banana splits to reform!

2008-08-18T14:30:00.003+01:00

The beeb are reporting that the banana splits are coming back. Hurrah, I say. It must have been ten years after I stopped watching it that I discovered there was a dessert of the same name.

Not long now

2008-08-18T14:03:00.007+01:00

Is it just me or does the delays in the Russian withdrawal from Georgia proper remind anyone else of a couch surfer you met while on holidays, who turns up on your doorstep to take you up on your inebriated offer of crashage and who then makes themselves more at home that you intended and who appears to have no concrete plans to shift themselves.

"We'll be out of your hair tomorrow! Probably..."

What if the landlords of the banks couldn't pay their loans?

2008-08-07T11:18:00.003+01:00

Interesting question posed in the pub a while back- what if either of the sets of people who bought the HQs of the two largest Irish banks couldn't continue to finance their operations? Many people thought at the time that when BOI and ABI sold their HQs and leased them back that this was a sure sign that the property market had peaked. And that may well turn out to be the case. Yet what of the finances of those who bought them, what if they were to find themselves over stretched? Would the banks lean on them or ease off for fear that they might seek to renogitiate the leases

Old white dude 0 - Paris Hilton 1

2008-08-06T13:38:00.002+01:00

When reading it I thought the idea of Paris Hilton responding to John McCain's Obama - Celebrity ad was really lame. Yet it works brilliantly, in what it has to be her best performance to date she is actually convincing talking about energy policy. Watch it here

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Russell Howards updates Yes Prime Minister

2008-07-31T13:37:00.003+01:00

I had mentioned over on IElection that I'd seen a brilliant piece on Mock the Week done by Russell Howard. Well here it is if you missed it.

And this is a somewhat older piece of wit along similar lines.

Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:

* The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
* The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
* The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
* The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
* The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
* The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
* And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

Things I liked about yesterday

2008-07-31T03:09:00.004+01:00

Things I caught or saw or hear yesterday.

Midnight in the garden of good and evil - really brings home how the visuals of cinema can shape our feel for a region or place.

Disclosure - not a very good movie, but it has a vaguely engineery feel to it and does suggest a great idea for a sequel. Let Demi Moore come back to try after ten years and try and buy the company but Dear God let the technology it is all tied in with be better than Cd-Rom's.

And then The Stand started with Don't Fear the Reaper by the Blue Oyster Cult. Just how good is that track!

Cuil launches, drops the L plate too.

2008-07-28T21:37:00.009+01:00

Saw on the beeb site that Cuill* or Cuil as it now is has launched. I had personally suspected that Cuil was going to go after the search as a service market for big iron folks but it is out there now as a Joe Public service.

Interesting that folks locally seem to be focusing on the Irish connection with Tom Costello, however there is a strong Irish link on one of the other co-founders in the office of the President of Cuill too. She was also in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign around the same time as Marc Andreessen of Netscape. She is a very, very, intelligent individual and quite pleasant too.

The best of luck to them I say. Interestingly, their frontend UI puts me in mind of Searchme.com which is more a search assistant in many ways. Now if cuill were use the Searchme UI as an option I'd nearly count it as love at first site.

Update: Cuill is stated by some as being derived from old Gaelic, it doesn't state it was our form of Gaelic. In Manx legend in Gaelic it would seem that it was a Finn Mac Cuill who created the Isle of Man, and through Fionn mac Cumhaill or Fionn MacCool we get to the Legend of the Salmon of Knowledge. And hence the link to the name. Now, I'm off to the leaba to read my Poirot.

*Just to be clear I'm not the Danny Sullivan quoted in the beeb article. He would be a proper tech-head commentariat person to my amateur dabblings.

It was just good clean S&M!

2008-07-24T12:30:00.003+01:00

Max Mosley* has won his case against the NotW which characterised his engagement with five ladies of negotiable virtue as being a 'Nazi themed sex orgy'. As the judge said "The "bondage, beating and domination" that did take place was "typical of S and M behaviour"," So all good clean fun then!

I do wonder some times if we really need to be that interested in every aspect of people's lives. After all Max Mosley is running Formula 1 not a girls' boarding school. Is it in the public interest that every aspect of people's lives. In an age when more and more social activity is on-line and traceable are we saying to anyone that wishes to engage in any role in public life that they must be completely and unbearably open about how they live every aspect of their lives whether it impinges on how they execute that role or not? I would hope not, but I can see it going that way.

*the spell check with Firefox recognised Mosley but not Max! There's a message there I'm sure of it.

Is a big quake due in Japan?

2008-07-23T20:33:00.006+01:00

Another quake in Japan today, following on from one off the east coast and another in the north in mid June - the 3rd in about 6 weeks. Quakes are not uncommon in Japan but there is a concern that large quakes can de-stabilise areas as well as relieve tension in the tectonic plates. They can be sort of pre-shocks to a more significant movement.

When I was living there, I remember being told that there are three major faults lines running through the main island and the Kanto region where Tokyo-Yokohama are and that all 3 were due/overdue to hit, that was back in the early 1990s. The Kanto area gets a big one every 70 years and the last one in 1923 caused 140,000 deaths mainly from fire. I think two of the lines were north-south and the other from the north-west to south-east. I don't think was more than a 4.5er when I was there which amounted to more or less a strong tremor where I was living. Still gave me the willies all the same.

Of course the averaging out of hits from quakes is rough work at best. I sincerely hope that the current quakes are simply relieving tension in the plates and not precursors to something major brewing in mother Earth's tummy.

Boston of all places has a risk of a magnitude 6 quake every 500 -900 years but the last was in 1755. However New England gets more moderate (magnitude 5) quakes happen every 50 to 90 years. And their problem is all the building that was done on the BackBay which is infill!

5 minute cake takes Web by storm!

2008-07-23T18:09:00.002+01:00

The five minute cake recipe appears to be taking the male lazy cook world by storm. Load of folks are trying it and sending pictures of the results to their mates. And it looks moist and delicious. Now about those seven minutes abs.

Who watches the Watchmen? All of us I hope.

2008-07-18T01:07:00.002+01:00

Watchmen trailer.

Got to say the Vietnam imagery is excellently realised, makes one realise why people would want to surrender to the good Dr. themselves. Pass it on.