Moving the blog! Welcome to danielsullivan.ie/blog

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

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.

Who has been telling porkies

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.

FF's poll implosion

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.

Where did all the money go?

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.

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

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.

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

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

Cuil launches, drops the L plate too.

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.

The C Word

Audits, prioritisation, efficiencies, savings, even reductions but Brian Lenihan just wouldn't say we're looking at cutbacks. If you deliver less services than you did the year before or if you deliver fewer services than you planned while still spend more money than before then you've cut back.

I did enjoy the little visual joke when Adrian Lydan was reporting that no department would be spared which was accompanied by a clip of a few cows in a field - no sacred cows geddit!

And on the topic of the RTe Nine o'clock news, why are they showing the prosecuting lawyer for the Collins Howard conspiracy? Is it normal to identify the prosecution in such a manner? I'll post on the trial itself once its done.

Prostitution in Ireland - does the Indo have a stake in sexing it up?

Looking at the Indo today, there is an article about sexual exploitation and an image is used and credited to AXEL SCHMIDT of AXEL SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images. A quick search shows Aexl to be photo journalist based in Berlin, Germany.

So why title the image as "A Ukrainian prostitute" in an article about the trafficking of women in Ireland without noting that the image is not of a Ukrainian prostitute in Ireland but one who is in fact somewhere else. In Germany perhaps where prostitution is legal or maybe she was in the Ukraine where there would be no trafficking aspect at all. There is a serious issue about sexual exploitation to be talked about here but that doesn't appear to stop the Indo from getting in a shot of a woman in a see through slip. Is this what happens at an Eds meeting, "hmm article about foreign prostitution? Any chance we can work a sexy pic into this?"

Who is missing from social partnership?

As IBEC and the unions go toe to toe as a prelude to the opening and hard bargaining of the partnership talks, it is interesting to consider who doesn't get to be represented at the partnership talks. You! if you work in the private sector.

For the most part people in the private sector aren't members of unions (for reasons both negative and positive) and people in such positions get absolutely no say at all in this process. This is entirely a discussion by unions on behalf of those working in the public sector, employers - which includes the government - and the social partners and the state about how to manage the money that is generated from the productive endeavour of others and which is collected by means of the taxes they levy on these productive sectors of the economy i.e. those who make things that people buy and small businesses who sell their services locally. Makes you wonder doesn't it? We're baking the pie but the people above are deciding how it is sliced up and how big a slice we get.

Lisbon:Lisboa - holding my nose and voting...

It's not a bad treaty, it's also not a very good treaty. I don't hate it, I don't much love it either. Yet I've got to have an opinion on it and I've got to vote. So what to do, well I suppose I should go over some of the basic arguments in my head.

It's long and complex: Yeah so what? Do you think a legal document should be written in baby speak? Or on the back of a cereal box?

You don't know anything about it: Then read it, Ok I read it. Perhaps I skimmed most of it. But I got the gist of it. (we're the good guys right?)

You don't understand it, then find someone you trust and listen to what they have to say on it and then think some more about it yourself.

So, where does that leave me? Blurry eyed and owing people pints.

There are specific things I don't like about it. The absence of a commissioner for 5 out of 15 years is one. I think my own proposals on a rotating commission with seniors and juniors would be more workable that the idea of reducing to 2/3 (after all we could be back up to mid twenties commissioners inside of 10/20 years). That said, there may be other better ideas, the problem is that we didn't hear about them in advance and make a judgement on what we liked or disliked.

I think the lack of engagement by the government of the day with the public prior to setting off to negotiate the treaty was a mistake, bringing this sheaf of paper home like it was Jack's Magic Beans is so 19th century.


Gov: "Look we signed a new treaty isn't it great!"
Voters: "I thought you were going out to get milk and sell the cow?"


We're getting a President of the EU sure but it is not a US style president who gets to declare war and do things on his own. Rather it is one who is there to provide continuity between the Presidencies of the circus that moves around from country to country every 6 months and who does what he is told by the heads of the member states. Less of a President and more of a butler with travel privileges.

And as for the foreign minister, we've had Javier Solano wandering the world the last few years and he's not exactly embarrassed us by setting off fire alarms in buildings or nuking Pakistan.

I think there is a basic contradiction in the no argument about democracy when they talk about QMV and how awful it is that larger countries with more voters get a bigger say than we do. Democracy is all about giving those with more votes, more influence.

And then it comes down to this. Last night's Q&A was useful in demonstrating that there is no Plan B for us, rejecting the treaty because we might get something better is not a sensible option. We could actually get something worse and the li(n)e from Mary Lou MacDonald that she believes the government capable of getting a better deal next time when she doesn't believe they were competent to get an even passably good deal in the first place. Doubling up might be the way she rolls but there is a time to cash in your chips and sometimes that is when you're way up, and sometimes it is just when you're marginally ahead. Also, with their excessive tales of woe the No side lost me last night because if they're seeing all these things that obviously aren't there then maybe the more plausible things aren't there either or simply aren't as solvable as they claim. That said, many serious and genuine issues have been highlighted during this campaign and I hope to God that we learn or relearn in some cases the lessons of Nice I which were that public engagement during the process is as important as the last 3/4 weeks of the campaign.

A key point for me was the impression from the No side that we would be just renegotiating with the EU as an entity, when in fact with Lisbon dead, it would be all 27 member states negotiating with each other and God knows where that will lead us. I don't much like this treaty but I can live with it. The idea that we should say No just so as to spin the wheel again in the hope that we might get something better is fine for members of gamblers anonymous but is irresponsible in grown political leaders.

See the point is this, there are aspect of the Treaty I don't like and there are aspects you probably don't like but the areas I would change you might leave the same and the things you would change I would be loath to touch. So we end up with some middle ground document that we all can live with and that is what this treaty is. It's not exactly what we wanted but when do you get that when you're an adult?

So I'm not crazy about this treaty but rejecting it because it ain't perfect doesn't make much sense. Do I think we could have done better? Yes! Do I think that by voting No we will on the balance of probability get a better deal afterwards? No! For that reason, I'm voting Yes.

Newcomers

In recent weeks it has become very noticeable that various public bodies and figures have a new word for people not native to these lands. Newcomers! It comes up quite a lot where issues around schools and education are concerned and the provision of services to support "newcomer" children.

Now the word stirred a memory in me and I had a rustle about in the old brain pan for a while and what did I find only that it has been used before. Only then it was used to describe fictional aliens, by which I mean real live aliens from another planet! Who got drunk on sour milk and for whom sea water was like acid! And their lady folk could do interesting things to human males that we never quite found out about. It could just be me but I've not noticed too many kids with lumpy heads about the place. What lazy bones think tank came up with that name I wonder? What next are we going to start calling the opposition the Rebel Alliance? Or make references to a minister being of the Hutt persuasion... hang on I think that is already being done.

In related news, RTe had a report that a GAA club in Gort had managed to get a local lad of a Brazilian background to play hurling. Just an FYI for the GAA but I've had a slogan for an anti racism effort floating around in the back of the trunk for a few years now. What matters is not the colour of your skin, but the colour of your jersey.

The pubs are calling us back

The publicans are going to spend money! to try and get people back into the pub. I've got a crazy idea how about killing the noise and encouraging people to talk to other people in pubs again. To people they don't already know! And if there is music, let's not be too holy about it. I can't stand being in a bar and then some live music starts and everyone is told to keep quiet.

New Carlsberg ad - Have it!

I never did find out what happened to my application for the Ireland job but here is what some others are doing about it.



They really do like to play with a big pair up front.

P.ie offline - is Fianna Fail seeking to gag discussion?

Pi.e has gone off-line this afternoon and one wonders if the legal notice regarding a matter tangential to the Tribunals is being used by members or representatives of Fianna Fail as a means to prevent any and all discussion for matters concerning Bertie's problems.

After all, we're repeatedly told An Taoiseach has nothing to hide. What have they to fear? What do they not want people to hear?

New Blood Alcohol - another fig leaf effort

I believe the new blood alcohol limitations are a waste of time and a fig leaf to really dealing with the abuse of alcohol and driving.

The report below (which is from 2003, I've been unable to find more recent figures) shows those with blood alcohol between 50 and 80 to be just 5% of fatal accidents. And those with no alcohol at all in their systems were 30%, another 20% were not tested.

http://www.healthintelligence.ie/publications/updated%20report%20fatal%20crashes%202003.pdf

while those over 160 mg/ml are involved in nearly 30% of fatal accidents.

The numbers involved in accidents who are between 50mg and 80mg would not indicate that this is the area that needs most attention. A more sensible approach would be punish more severely based on the degree to which you are over the limit. We should do the same with speeding and link fines to a % of income.

What are we doing about the bigger problem of those who are completely ignoring the existing limits and effectively driving while hammered? The answer is - nothing.

Blood Transfusion data loss

Amongst other things, I'm an irregular blood donor. Though I think they must have an out of date address as I've yet to get my own version of the letter telling me they lost all my details.

I've played around with large data sets from time to time in the line of work and if you were doing involving altering the format of the data presentation or storage you don't actually need access to all the existing records all of the time. So, it is highly likely that it was completely unnecessary to give all 170,000 records over to the person doing whatever work was being done in New York. You could just have taken the records of just 170 people*, blown the entries up 170,000 by automated replication and then performed whatever work to be done on that. Then when it was finally ready to make the port or transfer or whatever the changes were, get the person to come over, do it and send them back. All without putting such a large in the Irish context data set at risk. There again look at the care the BTS took with people's actual lives and should we really be surprised?

* Why not say 170 people who worked or had worked for the Blood Transfusion service?

It could so have happened.

While poking around doing some work on my "secret project" (all to be revealed this weekend!) I came across this.



Still brings a tickle to the tummy.

What are we voting on: Lisbon or Bertie?

Back during the Irish general election in May of 2007 we, as voters, were repeatedly asked to suspend judgement on the Taoiseach's financial dealings. Yet since the election result we've had practically every government representatives tell us that the election result which saw Bertie re-appointed as Taoiseach was the people's judgement on Bertie made manifest.

The cold hard truth is that vast majority of the Irish electorate didn't have the name Bertie Ahern on their ballot paper so they never got the chance to pass judgement on him. They voted for the local person, the party person, the experienced and able young lady, the nice gentleman that they wanted to have as their public rep. What they didn't vote on was Bertie's guilt or innocence on the matters before the Mahon tribunal or at least that is what they were told not to vote on by FF in advance.

Now we are being asked to vote for the EU Reform treaty purely on its merits: a view I happen to agree with. However, with the hijacking of the election results by FFers far and wide what guarantee have we that afterwards they won't be telling us that the Treaty vote was in fact another judgement on Bertie?