Who am I

I’m a great many things. Anything you read here or that I post as a comment anywhere is done in my capacity as an individual unless I state otherwise. For the record - I’m, male, an engineer and member of Engineers Ireland, currently chairperson of the An Taisce Local Association for Limerick (City and County), a member of Fine Gael, a Kerryman by rearing and heritage though a Croydonian by birth, not as old as the dirt that Senator McCain claims to be as old as but neither a spring chicken, worked in the States and Japan in the 90s, with some summer jobbing in London in the 80s, a semi-regular blood donor, a Puck Fair steward doing two tours, a semi-lapsed member of the Catholic Church and a citizen of the Republic (Irish 1949). Not exactly Maximus Decimus Meridius I know but attacking any of the above because of something I've said is saying more about you than it does about me.

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.

It's a witch!

Salem, Dreyfus, McCarthy, M.....?

Most people would probably believe that they would recognise a mob gearing up for a lynching if they saw it. Yet if they're part of the mob would they really recognise it then? All it takes is one or two people who have the respect of a group or community to point the finger and say that they had seen Goode Proctor or whoever doing something unsavoury with the Devil around the back of the woodshed or "She cast a Hex on me by looking at me in a funny way and then I fell down". Before you can say "Burn her!" the mob are tooling up with their best farm implements, checking their pockets for matches, and they're are off and running or ambling in the case of old farmer Pat to find Goode Proctor and watch her do the levitation quickstep.

The mob is a strange old beast and doesn't much bother to look for actual evidence if it hears that one of its own has seen a witch or been harmed by a witch. No one gives it seems too much time to pausing and asking what exactly was this 'witch' person they doing? when was this? was it related to anything you did? did you actually see then? or did someone relate a tale to you? Just what is it that causes otherwise rational people to suspend any critical faculties they possess? I honestly don't know. Yet it is strange that mobs can form just as easily today as they ever did, perhaps even faster.

Hypothetically one possible means to start a modern day witch hunt would be to post an allegation in a public arena or by virtue of a public platform a person has. By threading together a mixture of some fact - mostly irrelevant if possible, Goode Proctor is a member of the seamstress union - with some lies and a bit of whatever you're having yourself add in a healthy obfuscation of your own activities, you can cook up a very nasty allegation in no time at all. Then to ensure the mob is properly provoked engage in a parallel whispering campaign via some other means, by word of mouth or txting dropping in bits of other information. Naturally, we have rules and laws involving those with access to the public airwaves or the press to stop them abusing their position. But say if you get on the net and build a profile for yourself it can be very tempting I'm sure to simply post whatever takes your fancy. After all the law does not apply on line does it? Of course the older amongst use have been down this road already with the folks behind Cogair back in the mid 90s when the net was but a pup.

Still, however you do it once you've got your mob roused to action you can avoid due process, there is no need to present a case or even evidence, nothing. Just point your finger and ye're off. Of course it can works in the opposite direction. If you're popular you can accuse someone of calling you a witch and the mob is off in the opposite direction.

Should we really have one rule for a popular individual but another for someone no one knows doing the same thing? Isn't that why we have a legal system to provide for equal treatment irrespective of station? No, equal treatment before the law. Wait for evidence to be presented and then start to make your opinion heard about the nature of the evidence. I believe that some people have and are waiting for the evidence to be presented as it was said they should and are making their voice heard in that context. Even if a great many others in the complete absence of any evidence are happy to decide who is guilty or innocent.

So Salem, Dreyfus, McCarthy? Witchhunts and scapegoats, Yep! Mahon? No.

I'm off to give Goode Proctor a foot rub, all that dancing in the moonlight can tire a person out.

Not a fan of twitter

Must admit to being very surprised to hear about this as after my own bit of unpleasantness two months back I've come to think that some aspects of the twitter/jaiku model leave a certain amount to be desired. I accept it is like a blog for some in handy text size chunks. Yet, I must admit to think that twitter is potentially the devil's work - I'm not actually suggesting those involved in its development are in league with the horned one. For example a private twitter subscription could lead someone to say all kinds of things about someone with the expectation that the person mentioned would never be able to know for quite some time that they had been libelled. Which is always a bad idea. While a public one is...well...public.

In my own engagements on-line with people generally, including Damien on those rare occasions when I have dealt with him, I've always tried to focus on the issue or topic at hand. That is how I prefer to do stuff on-line, say what you like about me but I'm not known for running away from a heated debate or carping from the sidelines. Anything I've got to say for myself I say here or as myself and myself only if commenting anywhere else. I should get around to commenting less and post more though. I hope that everyone enjoys the Blog Awards this weekend I won't be able to make it myself as I think I registered too late. Entirely my fault but there is work to be done in order to complete my research project at UL.

Reading isn't Teasing - is that what Arnold would say?

I got the most charming comment today from a bot in reference to debt consolidation on a very old post about the growth of Irish National Debt in the 70s and 80s.

"Debt can be an absolute nightmare when it starts to spiral Out of control." See with these offers of debt consolidation you are teasing us Mr. Banker.

Now, where did I leave that old drawing of Violet Elizabeth Bott?

New mega union for teachers?

According to the Indo there is a new mega union for teachers to be formed. Being completely parochial about it, I wonder does that mean they will run just the one candidate for the TCD/NUI Seanad panels in future?

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?

What else could FF have done with that 30 grand?

Paying back money is a complicated business at the best of times. Most of us lending a tenner to a mate would simply expect the tenner back at some point but were we to lend the same person a few grand to start a business that makes it big or even back a horse that ends up coming in at long odds we would not be completely unreasonable to expect something more in return that the principal. That in part is why interest exists because someone else is doing something profitable with your money, you are in turn not able to do a similarly profitable thing. There is a name for it that escapes me at present.

Now the trustees of FF in Dublin Central must surely have had a duty of care to their members to ensure that their interests were protected in any financial dealings they had. Not to be leaving their hard fund raised cash lying about the back of a car or not to be backing 3 legged horses. Their money had to be kept safe and yet relatively liquid after all you never know when an election might happen. Lending someone money to buy a house who it seems was not able to borrow this money from a bank (after all that would have been the natural first port of call for most of us wouldn't it?) would appear to mean that person would not be able to get that money back in a hurry if it was needed so this was not the most liquid investment. And then there is the apparent absence of any loan agreement which means the transfer was not very secure, after all in the absence of any paper work it would be entirely possible for Ms. Larkin to claim the money was a gift or charitable donation, a dig out if you will.

Now what other options did the FFers have well. If say the FF organisation in Dublin Central had bought the house and then continued to rent the place out to the aunty Larkin's it would have solved their immediate accommodation crisis while also ensuring that any increase in property values would have accrued to the people who had provided the principle. Instead Ms Celia Larkin is the sole individual to benefit from this transaction in terms of capital appreciation and all for the sum of 30K plus what 30K might have earned resting in a regular bank account. I wonder if Ms. Larkin charged her aunts rent, if she was registered as a landlord, if they claimed for rent relief or rent allowance from their tax/pensions? All interesting avenues of investigation I'm confident that members of the fourth estate are pursuing as I write.

And just imagine if you will how much more secure the FF organisation in Central would be if they had taken my hypothetical advice above and now had a property worth at least 500K instead of 30K plus bank interest which is what they have. Rather than the €115, yes €115, on deposit that some are now claiming they have post the election.

Where should we put the Seanad?

Initial reports that the Seanad had to move because of increasing evidence of excessive decrepitude and what one person described as strange noises were countered when the director of the chosen new venue at the Natural Museum or the dead zoo as it is known to many said it would be impossible for him to move all exhibits out in time.

I thought we should open a book for suggestions of alternatives Dublin venues for the Seanad. Indeed why does it have to be in Dublin or Ireland for that matter. Let your mind roam free.

Feel free to post your suggestions and let's see how prophetic they turn out to be:

Here are couple of ideas to start ye off.

1) The Gateway factory off the M1 is still available.

2) Parts of Tullamore's new hospital wing are still vacant I believe and with the staffing cutbacks unlikely to be on-line for some time.

3) Many of the buildings selected for decentralisation are lying idle

4) There are a considerable number of advance factories dotted around the rural landscape.

Standing about gawking isn't a form of helping

I frequented the "Arts" last night and after the bows had been taken, the lights went up, and people started to leave the call went up for a doctor as it seems one of the patrons has lost consciousness or at least was quite unwell. The theatre was still about 60% full at this point and while a couple of people, with one hopes some first responder* training, moved in. The vast majority of the audience simply stood where they were, in the aisles, in the corridors leading to the exits, basically wherever they could get a good look.

It might be news to people (and these were almost all adults I'd give an age or late 30s if not older) but standing about getting in the way while being unable to render any assistance yourself is

a) no help to anyone
b) going to may actively prevent trained people from coming to the assistance of the person in need of help.

So let's all remember if you can't help then either try and find someone who can help or do what you can to get out of the way of those who might be able to assist and are trying to get in. Crowding in to get a good look is of no comfort to someone who comes round from having a weakness or seizure in public to know that several hundred people stood about make sure they had all the details to tell when they got home.


*I think that's American terminology but it fits well enough.

Guardian Blogger gets taken to task

Poor, poor Max. I wonder if he travels through Ireland or drinks some Guinness will he be eligible for the Irish blog Awards next year?

Update: For full disclosure I should say I came across this while having a piece of p.ie for lunch.

Another first for election '08? Senator vs. Senator?

One aspect of 2008 election race which has slipped all our notice is that this time irrespective of whether Obama or Clinton is the nominee for the Democrats that this is going to be the first election in which the candidates are members of the Senate. None of the main candidates of the main parties (McCain, Clinton, Obama) has ever served in a executive position before whether as Governor, President or VP.

It has been said that it is particularly hard for members of the Senate to run and win as they tend to have voting records with which their opponents can bash them over the head with along with a Governor/President/Veep being able to claim exclusive credit for initiative X

I'm going to check it out in more detail but so far I'm back in the 1800s and still no similar race in sight.

Update: back to McKinley in 1896 so far and can't find a Senator vs. Senator contest.

Update further: Yesterday evening I went all the way back and could not find a Presidential general election which was contested by two members of the Senate. So yep this is a first.

President Mary White?

Part 1



Part 2 - you could probably skip the first 20 secs of Padraic White talk.



The quality of the video isn't fantastic I will admit but the content is just priceless. I'm inclined to produce a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version in short order.

The Manky derby

I have to say that the old style ManU strip really makes one think it is a proper game of footie. Goes to show for me that damage the newer strips with the tassels and sponsor nonsense have robbed the game of some of the

Being a Croydonian and by extension a Londoner I've always viewed the more provincial derbies in the league as something lesser more local contests. The sun on the grass and the colour on display (maybe it was the limited palette that made more of an impression) really made me think for the first time in a while that this was a proper match I was watching. The crowd holding their scarves aloft added to that yesteryear feeling. Not a bad game either.

Edwards withdrawl - the untold story

I have only recently become aware of who it is that John Edwards favours as the democratic nominee.




Telling isn't it...

Hillary vs Who? and What?

My ha'penny on Super Duper Tuesday.

Hillary is going to be the nominee for the Democrats. There I've said it. I know loads of people think that Obama has loads of momentum after the last few weeks and that he is well placed now but the fact remains he has fallen short and he need really big wins in really big states, exactly the type of place he didn't get close to winning last night. It seems that where the Dems are weakest he has been able to gee up the base more. States that have been so red that declaring yourself a Democrat is accompanied by a coming out party and the number of a sponsor.

Obama has to win a clean sweep of the Chesapeake Primaries (Maryland, D.C. and Virginia) next week or else Clinton will simply moving further ahead of him. By March 4th (the old Super Tuesday) Obama would be requiring landslides in the big states after in order to draw level, and I can't see that happening. Some might say that the surge came too late but it might also be that it simply made him viable.

I expect both camps to play nice over the next few weeks as the idea of having a ticket which has Obama on as Veep sinks in, perhaps even with the hint being dropped that he might get to run in 4 years time. If he can bring out the same youth vote, then it could have a big impact in the Congressional races too. It hasn't been done quite this way before but a person on the ticket who plays up their advisory role and ability to assist in agenda setting has happened before and it was Hillary herself who talked up her role with Bill. One of the benefits to being VP for Obama is that he does haven't to say or decide anything allowing him to sidestep many contentious issue that he would have to take a side on in the Senate, the downside is that he is tied to her performance in office not his own.

So despite the initial impression that the Democrats are going to I think their race is almost settled. As for the incumbent party, oh dear

Republicans -

The talk seems to be that McCain is the presumptive nominee and that it is all over bar the shouting. I actually think they're the party with problems that will right the way run to the convention. and remember they have the shorter run from the convention to election day. Usually a benefit but not if you have a pie fight live on television that gets replayed for the first 3 weeks of the campaign proper.

For the Republicans there is a different problem winner takes all states keeps the game alive in that candidates can dream/project/hope for marginal wins in the states that get them up the delegate numbers. McCain is on 559 which while well ahead of the others individually is only 265/169/16 = 109 ahead of them all together.

The problem for McCain is that while he is the candidate to win over the independents required to secure victory in November, he can't be confident of the south. He wasn't able to break 40% in any of the southern states that have voted yesterday and that means if at least some of the 60% who voted for someone else (include 10% for Thompson in Tennessee) decide to simply stay home then he is in trouble. The Republican don't have a solid southern strategy this time especially if someone runs ads repeating the Republican attacks against him regarding pro-choice and immigration.

The difficulty the republican find themselves in is entirely of their own making since no one told the religious right/moral majority that the Republican party is also a coalition of interests and that while they were a significant part and indeed the single most numerous part of the party in recent years that they were not a majority and had no right

Do not bet against the republicans having a war over the convention as the religious try and create a platform that McCain won't run under. Is it more likely common sense will prevail yes but is it a possibility undoubtedly. If the RR/MM think the election is already lost to the party they may come to the conclusion that the convention and campaign should be about what the party is to become rather than chasing after elected office that is speeding away from them.

Super Tuesday

I know my record is all over the place at this stage but I'm going to throw these out there just so I can say "I completely got that wrong".

I think Obama should take Georgia and Illinois handily enough and may just swing
California,
Colorado
oddly enough Utah,
Missouri and
Alabama.

That would leave Hillary with

Arizona
Connecticut
Deleware
New York
New Jersey
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Oklahoma
Tennessee

and the greater number of delegates but not enough to close out the race and there are big states to come like Ohio, Texas, Penn.

Romney may well take California but McCain is going to win too many other states for it to matter, if Huckabee had made this about who gets to be VeeP, he might have swung some more Romney voters in the South.

It's all about character

I find the conniptions that many on the Republican right seem to be having over John McCain being the likely Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States quite revealing. The president is supposed to be the person that the buck stops with. I would expect the person so charged to be able to understand policy but not that they be the fount of all knowledge when it comes to policy. Instead the Limbaugh's of the world want to know what the nominee thinks about each and every issue in advance and is he/she sound on that issue. Rather than consider the concept that the right choice might be the person who can make a judgment call on a issue that is yet to arise. So McCain failure to be onside regarding immigration has made him a villain to the right.

As Sorkin said via Michael Douglas "I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character."

I would also suggest that if someone from Huckabee's team were to suggest in a manner that gets the message out there without being too defeatist that the race for them is now about who would be the best conservative VeeP to keep McCain in line then he might be able to swing some southern states that appear to be out of reach for him at the moment with the conservative vote too split between Romney and Huckabee. It is entirely possible that if McCain runs away with the primaries that he will do his own thing with regard to VeeP. Remember he is 71 and he will know that the VeeP have to be someone that can do the job as McCain would do it. He could even decide to step outside the usual Senator/Governor from a swing state. That might involve plucking a congressman or even a figure outside current mainstream elected politics. Say Christine Whitman, who would put New Jersey in play.

All about the Budget numbers

As the budget numbers fall apart, the media seems to still be buying the line that everything is on track. See the problem with the budget has always been that anyone can add 2+2 and get 4, it's ensuring that 2 is in fact going to be there that is the problem.

Cowen had 20,000 net jobs for 2008, the Central Bank last week said 16,000

Cowen had growth of 3%, the predictions are now ESRI 2.4% Central Bank agrees with the minster .

House prices which according to those in the market would at worst be stagnant dropped 7% last year and now they're saying a drop of 5% (does that translate to a 12% drop? ) the problem is of course not alone one for first time buyers who paid over the odds in 2005/2006 but those who traded up and took on significantly larger mortgages along with the parents of the first time buyers who either guarantor on the mortgages or perhaps took out loans themselves to provide them with deposits. The problem will be that they may come to be much less willing to spend and if so that directly impacts on the service industry.

All this at the very beginning of the year, how much worse could it all become?

http://dansullivan.blogspot.com/2007/12/2007-fudget.html

Again we have to wonder how real the numbers coming from the department of finance were back in Spring 2007.

• GDP will increase by 3 per cent in real terms;
• 24,000 new jobs will be created with the total number at work increasing by a little over 1 per cent;
• Inflation will ease and the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices will average 2.4 per cent

Best blog posts of 2007 - my eye

I was thinking about some of the posts that have been nominated for best post for the Irish blog awards and it struck me that they might suffer from that old Oscar problem of forgetting about anything decent that came out before the summer block busters. So I did some rudimentary analysis and what do you know? Bingo.

Out of 72 posts nominated we have the following run down.

Dec 17
Nov 12
Oct 8
September 4
August 6
July 5
June 2
May 3
April 3
March 4
Feb 0
Jan 0

Plus Jan of 2008 has 7 nominations! I accept that there was no announcement of a specific cut off date but I'm sure some thought the end of 2007 was a natural enough one, while others didn't. Some clarity wouldn't have gone amiss there. So the lesson is to save your good posts for the end of the year and not be writing worthwhile post throughout. As the awards evolve I can see the following coming out from the PR set "Well the comedy stuff sells but never wins awards so Twenty has the real funny stuff penciled in for the early part of the year but he's got much more pointed material ready to go for the end of year nomination season."

More peculiar are the two posts that are from 2006. Or least they appear to be to me, see for yourself. 23 September 2006 and August 18th 2006 I could be wrong. Let me know if I am. They're good post, don't get me wrong but if we can't nominate Twenty's election preview from Jan of last year (which was up for the long list but didn't make the short list) then why would 2 posts for 2006 be deemed for eligible for 2008 awards?

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. It was talked about last year at the awards ceremony that for Best Post the idea might be to have a rolling nomination process for each month so that any posts folks thought were quite good at the time might be flagged. Even a dead mail drop box type of effort wouldn't have been that hard to set up, but I guess it fell on deaf ears or worse yet it never fell on any ears at all because people were scared off from making the suggestion directly to the powers that be in case they were banished.

Of course the instinctive response from some will be to say that there is a lot of work involved and he does his best. Yet if someone chooses to bring a load of work upon themselves simply because they don't want to let anyone else to play a part isn't that just indulging someone's martyrdom complex? There were 2000 nominations last year with somewhat closer to 700/800 this year or so we're told. Does this mean blogging in Ireland is better, smaller, more of a clique than it was, or just a passing fad? Who knows. I wish all those involved and nominated the best but of all the categories Best Post is probably the most valueless this year which is a real shame.

Update: I've attempted to point out the 2006 posts but any comments from me are just modded out from the awards.ie site.

I was in a fight: a man died

The Late Alderman Micheal Kelly of Limerick had a form of words to deal with questions about his criminal past in particular one incident he was involved in. They were "I was in a fight, a man died".

They were words of such pure ambiguity that only a natural born politician could have arrived at them. There was no admission, just the merest hint that his involvement in the fight had caused the man's death. I'm quite sure that the most natural born politician of his generation currently holding the office of Taoiseach will allow some version of them to grace his lips in coming days, perhaps "I received money, a decision was made." Certainly, there will be no admission of anything so base as bribery.

Certainly the phrase would want to be better than this. “It is not correct. If I said so I wasn’t correct. I can’t recall if I did say it, but if I did not say, or if I did say it, I didn’t mean to say it — that these issues could not be dealt with until the end of the Mahon Tribunal." Bertie Ahern in a statement to the Dail Jan 30th 2008

Libel or fair comment - you decide.

Now, I'm pretty used at this stage to my comments being removed, altered, even directed to spam sites by the grand poobah but claiming a mild attempted rib tickler of a comment based on current events involving a public voting process might be libelous is a bit of a stretch.

Below is the original comment complete with the misspelling of "mislaid" as "misled" which was made in the context of the recent problems RTe had with You're A Star and losing votes. The grand poobah has been doing some part-time tech support on RTe recently and he has also commenting publicly about the You're a Star mislaid votes problem on his twitter account hence the references. So, I'd reckon the comment was solidly on the side of non-libelous. Also, given that only Rte and another site are the only entities identified I'm not sure who'd be doing the suing as the publisher would have to be sued, which it would appear might involve someone suing themselves. Or was it all intended to deliberately suggest libelous comment where none actually existed with the intent of lower the public's opinion of the poster? Now what would be the legal term for that?



and here is the altered one suggesting the text above was libelous.



It's all kind of petty really when you consider the source. What can we all expect next altering the comments of contributers so that they are libelous?

Hillary claims victory in Florida

Bold boy that I am I'm signed up to a number of US political mailing lists and I've just got one in from Senator Clinton entitled Victory in Florida. How I would ask if none of the Democrats were campaigning in Florida can last night's result be deemed a victory?

Dear Daniel,

I know I told you our campaign journey would be filled with high-stakes twists and turns. But I never knew it would be quite as dramatic as this. And last night we celebrated another big moment in this campaign with our resounding victory in Florida.

Florida Primaries

I reckon Hillary and Obama run away with the Democratic one not that it is worth much at this stage though that could change if the convention close. Edwards might still get up to 18% or so. Clinton gets 46% and 36% for Obama.

I have this feeling that Romney might surprise us by being closer to McCain than the most recent polls indicate,
McCain 31%
Romney 29%
Guiliani is going to be a clearer 3rd than would be the casemainly because of early voting. Just under 20%
Huckabee 13%
Ron Paul gets 7%

A evening watching the Palace

I was quite surprised today to see a preview mail about Palace playing Leicester. Suddenly it dawned on me that the match was on this evening and after confirming that the match was on the box I was able to settle down to some work content in the knowledge that I would have a ready distraction later in the evening.

Sadly the game wasn't up to much in terms of quality. It was a slogfest throughout and the pitch was so poor the Leicester Tigers Rugby team would have had second thoughts about playing on it. I could honestly swear to you that towards the end there were a couple of trenches out there. I would say it was like the Somme only Kevin Myers is from Leicester and I know he'd make a column out of it. One of the few highlights for me was seeing Sean Scannell get a run out.

To make matters worse Leicester scored a poxy goal in the dying minutes by means of Barry Hayles making contact with the ball in manner that he won't have taken any pride in.

It's a bit like a film

From today's Examiner - "Meanwhile, Ms Harney insisted that she trusted the Taoiseach in light of an opinion poll showing that a majority of people did not believe his evidence to the Mahon Tribunal.

“It’s a bit like a film — you don’t judge it halfway through,” she said as she urged people to wait for the inquiry’s final report into the Taoiseach’s tangled personal fiances.

Ms Harney expressed disappointment that the tribunal had taken so long to proceed with its work, but pointed out this was partly due to the many legal challenges taken against it."

Really Mary, is it like that is it? Certainly, if the director has a track record of producing challenging but interesting work you're inclined to give it that bit more of a chance. There again there are those films that you know pretty quickly that they're complete rubbish. Like Eragon which my housemate had plussed the other night and which got the eye over last night. It is ripe, ripe that is for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment.

Bertie is much more Uwe Boll than Ridley Scott or David Lynch so I guess we know how Mary wants this film to end.

Also the misspelling of finances above is the examiner's not mine. All other mistakes are mine.

How to kill a man

Strange pub conversation last night in large part by the murder attempt on the Viper. Given the nature and intent of the attack, our conversation came around to how we'd have tried to do it. With our consensus thinking that the use of a shotgun was a mistake and a pistol at close range would have made much more sense, we have mixed views on whether you were better to approach from the passenger side or from the rear to the driver's side.

Approaching the driver's side from rear with the handgun in your right right and firing the first shoot from a standing position just before this shot should shatter but not necessarily break the glass. Following this shoot with 3 more and you're laughing.

If you have time for four shoots then you have think that reloading a shotgun would be a complete waste of what are previous seconds (particularly if you want to live yourself) . If you had to use a shotgun, then placing the shotgun right up close against the driver's window and shattering the glass with the first blast then shoving hard will break it and then point towards the shadow and discharge at leisure.

It all reminded me of that old joke about the bloke in the north who was stopped at an army checkpoint and told them that he was after coming from Kilnamagh and was off to Kilmore.

Strange conversation right enough but four lovingly pints though.

GSS and the examiner blame Facebook for skiving workers

The article on the cover of yesterday's Examiner which purported to be about Facebook (but which was really about social networking sites generally) gave me and a mate some pause for thought after lunch especially with the level of detail in the various numbers quoted. Some others have noted the peculiar "fact" rich nature of the article.

"Facebook is Ireland’s most popular social networking site with close to 100,000 members. It targets people in the 25-35 age category.

Bebo is aimed at the 13-24 age group and it has in the region of 60,000 members in Ireland. MySpace is aimed at the over 35s. "

I'm pretty sure that Myspace's target market is almost as youthful as Bebo's while Facebook has become the site for the educated and officer class in the US in contrast to MySpace which is for the grunts apparently.

The figure cited as lost productivity was for €700 million for 3 weeks work per year, and the numbers involved were apparently 100,000 people on Facebook and 60,000 on Bebo. Myspace was mentioned in the piece but no numbers cited for how many in Ireland use it, but I guess it most be considerable less than the other two or they would have said what it was.

€700 million for 3 weeks equates to €12.133 Billion in productivity for a full year.

Then when we take the 160,000 or so people alleged involved equates to annual average salaries of nearly 76K per year! Which is nice work if you can get it especially when one considers that most of the individuals on such sites are in the first flush of their working lives. Strangely enough Bebo itself says it has a million users in Ireland. And many of those on such sites do not have office jobs if indeed they have jobs at all (ED - what do you mean students aren't productive?). I'd be surprised if mechanics in a garage or the lassies on the till at your local shop are logging on while working at the day job.

If one takes the time to think about it this way if this half hour per day of wastage at their desk is coming out of the usual time that people will spend in the jacks with a copy of the Sun then perhaps it is a plus for their employer.

It's well over half anyway

"Blogging is entirely negative, entirely cynical", you don't think you were guilty of generalizing overmuch there John Waters? The reason that a great deal of blogs are negative is that they are often reacting to what passes for News in the modern media world and much of it is terribly sloppy. And all produced by the journalists that John holds in such high regard.

According to Waters there is fact checking in journalism. Is there now, like the person who wrote an article for the Village a few years back about the changing role of the news presenter and when profiling the main news anchors in the US referred to Peter Jennings as "still going strong". The man had been dead for a while at that point and for many months have been publicly battling cancer. I emailed the magazine to ask about this quite awful oversight and never received a response. They must have thought I was going to pay them again to read a correction. I did as it happens read a few later copies of the magazine that others had bought but there was no sign of an acknowledgment of such a glaring error. More recently trivially, in a recent copy of Magill just before Christmas there was reference to Mick McCarthy taking us to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 2002. When John was challenged on his percentage figure for the amount of pornography on the Internet, he was unable to cite any source for it other than it being common knowledge and he finally retreated into saying it was well over half. Common knowledge is a great old thing and it has proved so flexible over time. We have folks saying MRSA is down to the gays and it was equally commonly known that black people are great singers but can't swim so well. And let's not forget that old common knowledge that Jews drink babies blood as part of passover. So much for fact checking in journalism John.

Even more worrying in the debate was John's attempt to link the Internet with suicide clustering in Wales. The area in Wales has high rates of unemployment and yet we have a MP talking about people killing themselves because some site allows people to leave tributes to friends who have died. That the site is called Gone Too Soon appears to have slipped the notice of the MP and John Waters. Why not a ban on memoriam cards if remembering people is an encouragement for suicide? Next we'll have columns from Waters blaming people who instruct children in reading and writing for giving kids notions about their lives that may leave some dissatisfied with their lot.

Let's get this man an Oscar nomination!

Jerry O'Connell was in Stand by Me you know.



So this is what he has been doing since Sliders. Good one!

John Waters - it burns, it burns.

57% of the internet is pornography according to John so we shouldn't take anything on it seriously ... Hmmm... interesting argument there from John Waters especially when it comes from someone who works in the err...print media. Now if only he could tell us exactly how long the print media has been free of pornography he'd be done.

The Internet is a medium, you big twit. You give beardy men a bad name and I should know.

Liberals, Libertarians and Lollygaggers

"Freedom is a privilege nobody rides for free" - Steve Van Zandt.

It's a terrible idea to take political ideas or philosophies from song lyrics (especially the 80s) or even off the side of a cereal box but is it really any worse than the schoolboy clutching their recently thumbed Ayn Rand preaching about freedom and the individual and how they don't have to play by the rules because the rules only serve to oppress them and their world altering talent?

True libertarianism properly leads to anarchy, and not the safety pin punk kind either but a totally free society. Such a totally free society that can only exist when it is underpinned by being populated by people who know enough of what they need to do in order to sustain themselves and the freedom that they are exercising. In other words they have to dispose of their rubbish, vacuum the house and make their own dinner. No one else is going to do it for them. With this freedom and personal responsibility come boundaries imposed by the environment. Freedom to listen to whatever you want doesn't mean that you will be able to listen to it at 4am when living in a semi detached house, simply because there is also no law to prevent your neighbour coming round and feeding you hands first into a bacon slicer. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to producing a citizenry capable of living in such a free society even if we can all recognise that it is not going to be possible. Much in the communist pursuit of new Soviet man, though we have enough cop on to know we're not going to get there any time soon. But where does that leave our mollycoddled children of the pseudo right in Ireland?

Most Americans of the centre and even the left are more right wing that most Irish people and moreover most Europeans. However those folks can walk the walk not just quote from Heinlein or Ayn Rand. Oddly enough it seems the Irish software industry is host to many of the pseudo right in Ireland, people who would run a mile from from truly making it on their own. Why is the regulator not doing more for me, why is the state not intervening, why is this state board not doling out more money to me and my chums in funding and why don't people with money give us things for free.

Why not give money to these producers of...what is it again.. ah, solutions? Because most start ups fail, and the best way to make money is at things you know something about. Hell, it is a fact of commercial life that most businesses fail. Though it provides a delicious type of irony that folks who see failure in some spheres to be a mark of shame (I've been unsuccessful at things because I've tried to do things), are aghast at the unwillingness of the hoi polloi to fund their own potential failures.

Some of the more bleating types can barely get through an afternoon without falling over their own contradictions between not believing that agreeing with a license agreement is actually agreeing with it before they're running to their barrack room law books about how some set of terms and conditions they agreed to (or which they might merely have accepted) didn't offer them enough protection from some frightful defilement.

Context is all as they say.

The actual mail that caused my expulsion from Eden. I do note for grammar reasons that I should more properly have said avoided instead of avoid. My intention was to pass on a minor crib to Mr Mulley and that was all, I even explicitly acknowledge in the last line that it was entirely up to himself what language he uses.

Mail history begins here -

To: "Damien Mulley"

A tad harsh I was only saying, not sure who ate your doughnut. And the latter is
anatomically difficult. G'luck.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Damien Mulley" <>
> To: "Daniel Sullivan" <>
> Subject: Re: Happy new year and all that.
> Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:32:53 +0000
>
> Dan, don't bother contacting me again. Go f%&k yourself.

Damien,

Hope your health gets sorted in the new year and that you're in fine fettle
throughout. One minor crib but would it be at all possible if you avoid
using the R word in future.

- EDs note: Note the following text is taken from Damien's site as linked to below -

But there’s more!
But hell, with P.S., I’m a Retard doing so well and Irish accents being all
hot again, let’s give them quality stuff. Glenroe. Dinny and Miley and Fanny
and Biddie and endsinYie and their Billy Barry kids with D4 accents.

- EDs notes: my quoting from his site ends at this point -

http://www.mulley.net/2007/12/29/the-irish-yet-again-miss-another-obvious-opportunity

I know it sounds terribly nanny state of me, and it is entirely up to yourself.
Anyway have a good'un.

Mail history ends here!

A heresy

I'm not interested in starting a war, not even a minor police act or peacemaking intervention or whatever people ended up calling the thing in Iraq. However, once it appears that one man's consumer right advocate decides becomes tomorrow's whinger or the smug man's George Carlin I'm disinclined to hold fire. Course I didn't actually instruct anyone to stop using any particular word, I was merely enquiring if the use of one word could be avoided by way of a crib or comment; passing comment supposedly being the lifeblood of blogging. There are naturally going to be times when no other word will do but the word that one has chosen with such care and consideration as Billy Connolly so perfectly illustrated in his timeless comparison of "fuck off versus go away - exclamation mark". Yet there is the world of a difference between Billy Connolly swearing and some spotty teenager repeating the same word again and again at the top of their voice for their own amusement . Most of us can tell the difference.

Naturally, when you've built yourself up and been built up by others so that you've got the loudest platform the tempting idea when someone says something that you disagree with is to misrepresent what the other person had to say so as to portray the other person in the worst possible light and then seek to drown out this other viewpoint. This all serves to ensure that you're always going to be the one seen in the right. There is an expectation amongst the hoi polloi that the great and the good don't stoop so low, perhaps in truth it should be less an expectation and more a means to identify the great from the merely well known.

Nanyway, Turns out that in reality once the individual's voice is loud enough it's also a cracking good way to ensure that the voice of other individuals isn't heard. Of course presenting yourself as an advocate of debate but then cutting someone's access mid-stream so as to prevent them from responding is a pretty contrary way to go about such things. But to do so without actually letting on to everyone else involved in the conversation that you've canceled their ticket creates the impression that you've won and they've simply retreated with their tail between their legs. At least in sports everyone else gets to actually see you taking your ball away with you. Not so for the high priest of Irish blogging who nixes your access on the QT and professes himself more than adequate to be the impartial judge of all that it is good or bad in Irish blogs. Could the same person really have said

"... I think that the philosophy of blogging, with everyone allowed to comment on what you write and point to what you write and quote what you write will be assimilated more into mainstream. I'm a big fan of Jeff Jarvis and his ideas of the newsroom of the future are well worth a read. As I said earlier, blogs are a great way of enabling the voice of the individual to be heard." ?

Bad words for the beautiful people

Just in case some folks are being given the impression the thought police have come down on poor Mulley.net and are trying to suppress his right to party or some such I thought I post the briefest of background since I’m not allowed post any comments in response.

I mailed the newly crowned journalistic technology supremo of the Irish internet scene suggesting I had a minor crib about the use of the word “retard” in a post of his and if it’s use could be avoided if that were at all possible. Not wishing to be needlessly Michael Howard about all this but I did not at any point instruct anyone (and who the hell would I be to be to instructing or telling anyone what to do) to stop using particular words, I was simply making a comment. And it was only a minor crib and as far as I can see people are all over the place talking up the idea of social networks and collaboration and a key aspect of that effort is the value of feedback. Sad fact is that when you’re on the receiving end you're not going to agree with much of the feedback and you plain might not like some of it. But that's the point of it. For my own part, I had honestly thought that the word had largely disappeared from conversation in this side of the Atlantic, not that it had even been as common here as it was in the US. Now, I wasn’t offended by the word or upset; I will admit to being somewhat surprised to see it. I got a mail back which succinctly told me “Dan, don't bother contacting me again. Go fuck yourself.” Well, that's me told then isn't it. Of course what some like to term Political Correctness is what others would might just call simple decency.

The follow up response on-line has been to declare that he will not be stopped from using whatever words he wishes, though how exactly someone just saying something is remotely going down the road of “stopping” them I’ve no idea but there ya go. And the post naturally has to include a variety of words to show how Damien is reaching for his ready pack of Twenty Major to defend saying fuck or whatever but Twenty is genuinely funny and quite pointed in his comments; the post I was commenting on was neither funny nor very pointed.

And most odd of all in the heel of the hunt is that someone who was quite recently carping about the fact that someone that he had occasion to pick a bone with had the temerity to ban his comments is very quick to use the same tactic once someone else’s shoe is on another foot entirely. Yep it seems so sensitive is Damo to any kind of negative comment that it turns out that I’ve been “banned” from posting comments on the site of the great and all powerful Wiz. Not that I posted much of any use in any case, so no loss to anyone there.

So by all means keep reading Mulley, he posts some really interesting stuff, but for God’s sake don’t dare say anything negative about him or it’s the stocks or the badlands for you.

US primary predictions - Republicans

I think that the Republican race has changed very significantly in recent days or over the holiday period as people call it stateside. And I think it has happened as people come to the conclusion that Giuliani isn’t the guy when it comes to facing off against terrorism and that McCain fills that role much better.

Huckabee may well still win Iowa but my personal inclination is that it will be Romney and that win will serve to insulate Romney from too much damage from losing New Hampshire to McCain but Romney being involved in a close finish with McCain will allow McCain the airtime to get his experience and

So the race is now between Romney and McCain, I think Romney will win Iowa but either lose New Hampshire to McCain or that McCain will be so much closer to Romney than expected that he is the one to come out of New Hampshire with more Mo’. Huckabee should win South Carolina but his campaign could implode if he doesn't do as well as many have come to expect him to do in Iowa. A possible Howard Dean for the '08 Republicans? Probably not but it is possible.

Giuliani will still win Florida I suspect but not especially convincingly and Super-Duper (and what a mistake that has been for the states that wanted to play a role in deciding who is the nominee) Tuesday will see the departure of Thompson.

Ron Paul isn’t going to bother departing the race as his real aim is to shape the platform (manifesto) at the convention. The winner take all nature of the Republican primary should insulate the party against that but he could still have influence. Huckabee is in large part really running for the VeeP slot though and he could get it from McCain as a means to reassure the religious conservatives. Though I think Romney would have a better claim on the ticket given his likely performance but I wonder if he will view it too much as beneath him still Romney would put Mass in play and some other New England states.

US primary predictions - Democrats

Democrats:

I think Iowa won’t decide anything for certain for the Democrats other than confirming that all the big three could win the nomination. (Now how is that for a hostage to fortune?) Clinton is still the favourite at this point for Iowa and the nomination but so was Dean four years and just look at what that got him. What the democrats have learned from the 1988 election is that they have to pick someone who will reach outside their base and honestly Clinton doesn’t do that. The other odd thing about American politics is the boredom factor, people are to some extent bored with the coverage of Clinton and Obama, if Edwards can get come out of Iowa as the little candidate that could and if Obama wins New Hampshire and South Carolina then Clinton

If Edwards is over 20% in Iowa (before the divvying up of the remainder votes) he is still well at the races, if Hillary is under 30% then it proves she can be caught nationally and the post vote writing will be about how vulnerable she is looking and if Obama goes over 30% on the first count and wins then he is going to get the Big Mo’ into New Hampshire. However, I don’t think Obama will win Iowa because I think he lacks the organisation comparatively speaking of Clinton and Edwards in turns of getting people out to vote. And getting people to come out is the problem that did for Dean in the end.

My prediction for Iowa before the departure of the non-viable is

Clinton 27% Obama 26% Edwards 24% Richardson 6% Biden 4% Dodd 1% Kucinich 1%

After those under 15% are eliminated I think Edward wins and Clinton finishes 3^rd.

Edwards/Obama

People might well ask could Obama go on the ticket as VP if Oprah has come out for him. Clinton as nominee running against McCain/Huckabee would be Godsend to the Republicans as they don’t have to do anything much after that to motivate the religious conservatives to come out and vote, McCain/Huckabee against an Edwards/Obama ticket would look old and cranky.

Again Clinton will win Michigan but with Obama a very close 2^nd and Edwards not a million miles away) he might be a few thousand miles off)

January 3, 2008 Iowa^[7] caucus 29 10 6 45 11 56

Edwards to win, Obama 2nd

January 8, 2008 New Hampshire primary^[8][9] 14 5 3 22 8 30

Obama to win, Clinton 2^nd, Edwards get over 20%

January 15, 2008 Michigan primary 83 28 17 128 29 157 [0]

Again Clinton will win Michigan but with Obama a very close 2^nd and Edwards not a million miles away) he might be a few thousand miles off)

January 19, 2008 Nevada caucus^[10] 16 6 3 25 8 33

Clinton wins but Edwards out shades Obama for a distantish 2^nd.

January 26, 2008 South Carolina primary^[11] 29 10 6 45 9 54

Obama wins South Carolina, Edwards does better than expected but Clinton is a close 2^nd to Obama.

January 29, 2008 Florida primary 121 40 24 185 25 210 [0]

I think that Obama has a lower ceiling in Florida than Edwards and if Clinton weakens Edwards might be the one to benefit most. I would still expect Clinton to win Florida.

US primary predictions

This time four years ago (ok it was about a month from now as the primaries were later in the year then) I watched John Kerry on Meet the Press and realised that he had made the necessary changes to his message ere: the War in Iraq to win the Democratic nomination and to win Iowa. At that time most people thought Dean had a lock on Iowa and while they thought Kerry could still come back they were all wondering how and where he would do it. That he would head off the challenge in Iowa was not considered by most people to be at all likely. I texted a few friends “to call” Iowa for Kerry and left it at that.

Given that my intuition or reasoning turned out to be correct I’ve chanced a few other predictions not all of them correct but it’s fun for me at least and no one gets hurt. So turning my attention to this year’s election race in the US I’ve had a gander at the line up of the two main parties (what? you don’t want me to look at the Libertarian race too?) and my predictions follow here for the Dems and the Reps.

HorrorStoriesÉireann

Ah for feck's sake, it's worse this shower are getting not better. Read this account of a women's dealings with the HSE.

Note to the HSE- when you try and fix something it's an idea not to break loads of other things in the process.

Eoghan Harris has caniptions over Bertie and Mahon

It was one of those you had to be there moments with Eoghan Harris on last Sunday's (Dec 9th) Political Party with Ursula Halligan on TV3 (Jessica Fletcher's daughter) only thanks to the web you can be there now! I love the bit where she has to try and coak him into continuing. "we'll move on, we'll move on, do you want to move on?". I'm convinced she was on the verge of offering him a biccy if he was a good boy...

Fine Gael and the Reform Treaty referendum - don't move a muscle

I'm not unsure myself about what my own view on the European Reform Treaty will be. However I do have a very certain view as to what Fine Gael as a party should do. I strongly believe that the government parties should be allowed the space to campaign for this treaty that they have negotiated on our behalf. I think that FG representatives should be able to agree the case for the treaty on the national airwaves if that as seems most likely is the party's position. The party can put up a few billboards and YFG should do one of those poster campaigns that they've proved so adept at.

However when it comes to the vast armory of the party organisation it should be kept in reserve. Just as we did not fall for the false battle of the citizenship referendum in 2004 we should avoid being dragged into the hard slog on this one. Not a canvasser, not a door knock should the local party organisations do. Nor should local representatives feel in any way obliged to do much more than a few pieces in support in the local newspaper.

The 2007 Fudget

The problem for me with is budget this the numbers. See the numbers can add up all they want but we can't have that much confidence that the numbers will actually pan out as presented.

The 0.9 deficit is completely dependent on spending actually being controlled at an 8% rise for current expenditure and tax revenue growing according to the prediction, and all that with BenchMarking 2 coming down the pike (as the yanks would say) along with a housing slump sitting in the sidecar.

24,000 new jobs is a massive drop from the existing figure, Cowen said 72,000 was the previous number I think. It's not about applying the brakes instead the hydraulics are seizing and the vehicle of the national economy is starting to drift across the road into oncoming traffic.

It sounds like a reasonable budget in many ways but there is the problem, who really believes that with benchmarking 2 coming that spending increases of 8% will be achievable without cutting existing services?

My friend - Bertie.

Myself and a housemate used to drink in the Goose quite a bit and from time to time we'd encounter Bertie in there. Once I was even in the jacks just after he had gone in. Little did I know that this level of interaction makes me his friend, perhaps even a close friend. I'm a terrible person despite the closeness of our relationship, I haven't ever sent him a Christmas card and I completely snubbed his daughter's wedding. And not once did I offer to lend him money.

I'm a bad, bad person.

We win the internet - Seanad reform to start with 3rd level seats.

According to reports in two of today's papers the IT and the Examiner ,

So next time we can vote too!

Fair dues to John Gormley, even if his election observers were somewhat uncover at the count he has pressed on with actual reform.

Now if only I could get some movement on the issue of charges for disabled adults I could claim 100% victory.

Have I heard some of this before?

Interesting to look at what the BBC's man covering the Australian elections has to say about the themes of the election campaign.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/2007/11/political_junkie.html

"If you’re interested, here are the some possible themes to have emerged this time round.

• The obvious importance of green issues, and their impact, crucially, as vote-shifters. John Howard’s salutary policy announcement during the televised debate focussed on climate change. The all-important seat of Wentworth has almost become a referendum on green issues.

• Housing affordability. Targeting first-time buyers and possibly the parents who are still providing a roof over their heads, Kevin Rudd kicked off his campaign on this very issue.

• Broadband speed is looming larger as a political issue (which is not surprising in Australia, the land of the sluggish internet connection).

• Ditto the availability of hi-tech teaching materials to schoolchildren, like lap-tops (or the “tool box of the future”, as Kevin Rudd calls it).

• Water shortages have featured, but, in this drought-ridden country, not as much as you might have thought.

• This election has been less about big ideas than managerialism: essentially, who is most capable of running the economy, and, arguably, finding practical solutions to meet the challenge of climate change.

• Does Kevin Rudd’s fluency in Mandarin herald the day much later in this century, or perhaps the next, when it’s a much more common diplomatic language?

• This is not Australia’s first internet election but it is its first YouTube election. Is the reason we are seeing politicians ambushed so frequently now because within a few minutes the material can be uploaded onto the web? Political performance art is here to stay.

I am sure there are others, but I had better go. I missed the debate the other day between Treasurer Peter Costello and Labor’s deputy leader Julia Gillard, and I’m hoping to catch the re-run. Honest."

Why someone has to resign - Mary Harney

I'm only following on from the early coverage others have given this as I've been offline for a wee bit with work.

Anyone who would have worked in any work area that looks for problems or defects (such as the software industry or whatever) knows that you write them up and report them as soon as you find them, you don't store them up for weeks until you feel like letting them loose on those who have to deal with them. Yet the HSE do seem to take the view (and it is all the more peculiar when you consider it is actually real life and death issues in which timely intervention is of the essence that they are looking at) that they should wait until they've done with one thing before moving onto another. All that multitasking that we hear might be possible with so many people working in the HSE seems not to be possible. Are members of the HSE still covered by that old civil servant unsackability?

There was a glaring inconsistency yesterday between the comments of the HSE rep John O' Brien to the Dail Committee that surgical revision did not mean mammogram or ultrasound and the HSE local rep from PortLaoise that women being recalled would have new mammograms and ultrasounds as well as possible biopsies. There again that is the same man from PortLaoise who said they were waiting until they had enough of a cohort before starting, starting mind to contact the women concerned. And let's consider for a moment this whole "contacting business" which it appears involves writing to the women affected today (watch the man on RTe), does writing to them today mean those letters will be posted today? And even so is he aware that most places have no post over the weekend, and with the unreliability of the post many of those women will not get the all clear until Tuesday or even Wednesday next. I'll bet if they were cheques to builders for work done that the HSE would have couriered them to their homes. I also would question the value of tomorrow's special clinic which since it won't involve any tests will be working on the visual and consultation assessment of the doctors involved.

To add insult to injury not being contacted by the HSE today or tomorrow does not necessarily mean you are in the all clear as you could be part of the 170 that they haven't got to looking at yet. I wonder if they have been working a straight forward 9-5 on this issue or was any overtime approved in order to expedite their efforts?

The core problem for Mary Harney in all this is pretty simple, she is (just all our other ministers) more than happy to associate herself with any success stories that come out in health services say a reduction in deaths from heart disease for which she is not directly responsible (she isn't the one doing the actual work) for yet when any sort of downside presents itself she is magically immune from any sort responsibility as is everyone else in the HSE.

Light rail in Limerick

A possible alternative route for trams or light rail in Limerick as suggested by me!

Hollywood writers strike is good for something

At least there has been one positive outcome from the current WGA strike.

Financial Crisis, what Crisis?

The sub prime markets turmoil explained, is it for idiots by idiots?

Show me the way to go home - by Dublin Bus

A strike or is it just a picket that no one will cross at Harristown over the changes in rostering involved in the new 4A and 128 services from Dublin Bus.

So ,what is it all about? Well, that is kind of hard to find out in any great detail. It seems some what digging about I've been able to do that Dublin Bus wants some of the drivers to clock in at Harristown but to actually start their shifts on the buses in Dublin city centre, which is not that much of a problem except that they must get into the city in 45 minutes and it will be their "ass in a sling" or at the very least their responsibility for any failure of the buses to keep to their timetables. So how does a person get from Harristown to the city centre in 45 minutes? Buses? Some chance. Basically, they will have to be clocking in at Harristown well in advance when of they need to simply to make sure they get into the city. So why one wonders have the requirement of having to go to Harristown at all?

Siptu tell us some things about the dispute but again not that much of the meat of the issue.

God help us it's not like the NBRU are trying to keep up to date with what is going on.

And Dublin Bus aren't giving much away other than telling folks what the impact is.

A firing offense?

HERE'S a man who can't be accused of talking down the property market: auctioneer Ken MacDonald (right) of Hooke & MacDonald has had his Blackrock bungalow on the market for 13 months . . . and he hasn't budged an inch on the 2.4m asking price, so he can't be accused of adding to the nearly 4% drop in house prices this year.

MacDonald put the 2,100 sq ft home up for auction with Sherry FitzGerald in October 2006 with an AMV of 2.4m, but evidently found no takers at the price. That didn't stop him listing it for sale by private treaty without a discount, though.

Everything the brochure says about the place appears to be true . . . it's charming, bright, attractive and generously proportioned . . . everything, that is, except the kicker: "Sure to be of instant appeal to a variety of discerning purchasers, from young families to those seeking to trade down alike". Leaving aside the visitor-from-Mars belief that a 2.4m house represents an opportunity to trade down, MacDonald and his enablers at Sherry Fitz have proven themselves to be way off on the "instant appeal" judgment.

Still, he's sticking to his story: "There's real confidence out there, " he told the Irish Independent last Thursday.

Judging by change of address documents he filed with the Companies Registration Office, MacDonald got tired of waiting for the market to produce a willing buyer for the Blackrock albatross and decamped to a new pad in Sandymount. Perhaps he doesn't need the money that badly, even in these leaner times for auctioneers.

(Thanks to astute commentators at thepropertypin. com and the anonymous blogger at arandomwalk. com for producing this story. )

I am a member of the human race

And though I may disagree with you about many, many things I will defend your right to be a member with my life even if you might not do the same because though you may doubt it within you I will live again.

And here we are.

All Gods love us equally, and in their eyes we are all their greatest fear.

We will never die, never grow old and never have a secret never to be told.

The new provisional car movement

The last 48 hours have seen an unprecedented level of political outrage pouring out in the main from folks under 30 in Ireland, why?

Because the government announced it was going to enforce the law fully with regard to those on provisional licenses and also change the anomaly with regard to those on 2nd provisional license. Not a bad idea one would think except the same government has spent years turning a blind eye to the underlying problem with Irish driving behaviour and who is responsible for driver behaviour, well I would guess that would be drivers. The odd thing is this should not be in any way a party political issue in that there is no aspect of ideology unless we allow for the purist of the pure libertarians who would reckon that all and any regulation is wrong.

Should these people be unaccompanied on the roads? Of course not, but when you ask why are they on the road, ah well that is a question that no one wagging their figures about the problem appears interested in addressing. Those with licenses will tell you it is because they are lazy or stupid. Most people do not pass the test the first time, yet all those with licenses appear to acquire a common degree of self satisfaction that they have passed the test. Passing the test does not mean you are a good driver, you are merely competent. The truth is that too large a number of those with full licenses are bad drivers and at the heart of what the RSA is proposing to do is to change things so that people will no longer pass the test and somehow still be bad drivers with bad habits. In effect they are abandoning all hope of reaching the existing full license community and that is just plain wrong.

Why is it so bad? Well, we've got a cultural problem obeying the law when we think it isn't sensible. The fact is that in Ireland we have a poor standard of driving across the board. It has been poor for decades and by and large nothing by anyone has been done about it. Let us look at some of the reality of a moment or two: there is a tranche of people (something like over 200,000) from the mid 80s who got full licenses because they had been on the waiting list for a test for so long that they were on a third provisional, so the solution was to give them all full licenses not as a temporary measure but for good. They've never passed a test but all have full licenses; that is almost half the number of people on provisional but we don’t hear any calls for them to be made pass the test. Why well most of them would be in their late 40s, and according to some the fact that they have been driving for years now means they must be reasonable good, which is the sort of logic that leads some to believe that because they have been on provisional licenses for years that they shouldn’t need to do a test. Throw in those from about twenty years prior to that who never had to do a test because they simply had to but the license and we’ve got a number nearly as large as the number of provisional licenses driving around unaccompanied never having passed the test.

Those on provisional licenses make up 25% of all those on the roads but account for much less than that in roads deaths. Of course this is because not all of the 420,000 are on the road at all. And why are there 420,000 people with provisional licenses? Again let us be sensible about that figure of 420,000 provisional licenses many of them are held by people who are not driving at all, it could 50,000 it could be 100,000, who knows not the RSA. These people may have got them so they could learn to drive but found they didn't have time or the finances to afford driving lessons so they do not use them, but once you get one the clock is ticking.

The test does not make you a better driver it simply states that on a given day that you were sufficiently competent. No one is magically a better driver the day after the test than they were the day before, the really sad fact is that most are never again as good a driver as they were that day. If the problem we are addressing is evidently with the vast bulk those involved in accidents namely full licenser holders then the idea might have been to retest them all when they renew their licenses. Of course we couldn’t do that because the testing system is clogged to choking already.

The fact is that the majority of fully licensed drivers in Ireland never took much in the way of formal lessons. Everyone acknowledges that the system is flawed and is consistently producing bad drivers but instead of dealing with the problem of poor driver behaviour the RSA has ignored doing something that might cost money like ensuring proper standards in the instruction and tester of drivers. Learning to drive should be a serious business and lessons should be comprehensive. Another aspect that we need to look at is our attitude to when in your life you learn to drive, we allow for people to start while still children so we suggest that driving is something a child can do when it should be obvious to us all that while control of a car might be straightforward enough for a child that the decision and risk assessment isn’t. And driving lessons aren't something you should be treating like some of us treat confession something you do every once in a while when your mother gets on your back about it. You can't take a 2 hour lesson and then another set of lessons 2 months later. Also one hour lessons are a waste of time especially in built up places like Dublin as you spend 15 minutes driving the previous person home and the 15 minutes driving to the next person's place, not much time to get to one of the areas that schools use as practices areas (and why have we never thought to allocate some land to driving ranges in the sense of places that people learn the basics of moving a car about off the road system). The state has a view of who is learning to drive which appears to suggest they think the typical learner driver is on working and living at home with their parents with access to a car for lessons and a support network of friends and relations who can help out, the reality is probably more likely that the typical learner is just after starting work, living away from home and with friends living spread all over the city and not in a position to assist in the learning process. Throw in a 3 hour commute per day on public transport and I’m not clear where they will find the time to take lessons with sufficient frequency to get the confidence to drive.

The aims of the RSA report are laudable and we should be intending to achieve them, but you don't start by demanding that people take lessons without first making sure that lessons of a sufficiently quality are available. You don't demand that people take a test that isn't available to them or the quality of which is questionable. Surely it is part of the remit of the RSA to find out why we have such problems what the consequence are and how do we deal with the problems in order alleviate the problems.

And how is it that we can't cope with the numbers of people looking to take the test after all it is a roughly predictable number. Taking a rough figure from the leaving cert we probably have somewhere in the region of 70,000 people coming onto the driving scene each year. A test takes about 45 minutes which means each tester can get through 10 or so tests per day on average so 50 per week that means 20 testers would do a thousand per week, which is 52,000 and we have far more than 20 in the country. So why does the backlog exist? Because the state wasn’t bothered enough to tackle those involved in the testing process and then gave the same type of nod and wink to those on provisional licenses as Dempsey did yesterday that it wouldn’t matter if they drove. And some people think he is taking a lead on the issue?

Peition on the implementation of new driving restrictions

This petitions ask that the implement of a crackdown on those driving on provisional licenses be postponed until such time as the problems in testing and training of drivers is sorted out.

http://www.petitiononline.com/moretime/petition.html

Update: I posted the petition on p.ie and then left it while I did some work and it has garnered over 600 signatures in just under 3 hours.

From my former life

A classic of the type and pretty much summed up the feeling of some at the time, major hat tip to Gabriela for finding it. That said feeling was muted by the offer price being 2.5 times the stock price at the time, and the frank that IBM turned out to be as much interested in becoming more like Lotus than simply buying the technology.

Too scared to take the stand

I was at the SOS rally in Limerick this weekend and for all that it was interesting to see what people had to say for themselves and who turned up it was also interesting for those that couldn't bring themselves to face the music. As expected the fearless defender of his political career Willie O'Dea stayed away but John Cregan (FF - Limerick West) tried to make the case for Fianna Fail and effectively took a bullet for the party by being booed off the stage. Oddly enough RTE appear to have chosen not to report the fact that Cregan was actually booed off the stage preferring to simply say the crowd was anger at times. Timmy Dooley TD (FF - Clare) on the other hand decided to sit it out in the crowd (I guess by doing so he can say he was at the event even though he wasn't quite brave enough to face the music by taking the stand with Cregan), dressed casually as you can see in th picture below he can't claim that he was perhaps intending to take the stand but was somehow delayed by traffic and found himself so late that he didn't want to disturb those on the stand it. Even the very young in attendance thought the guff from Cregan about reporting back to the Sun-Taoiseach with our "concerns" a bit of fairytale for this hour of the day.




Curiously the local mayors who spoke weren't referred to by their party membership in an effort to spare the blushes of the likes of Kevin Sheehan Cathaoirleachof Limerick County a FF stalwart. Sheehan in his speech managed to blame the people of Dublin, faceless bureaucrats and most bizarrely called for people to vote against the European Treaty referendum, I guess it's one way to get people to vent before the local elections in 2009. we couldn't have people holding the government responsible for running the country now could we? and he asked the Taoiseach great man that he is after bringing peace to the north to come to Limerick to broker talks to allow us all to live in harmony.

As the Claw noted at the end some local representatives "lacked the balls" to even show their face and and someone else stated that we have no need Saturday night fighters who come Monday morning are more Minnie mouse than Mighty Mouse.

More pics here

Best election program ever!

I caught this on the beeb during the week part of their Why Democracy season and it shows up so many aspects of Democracy that it is scary.

I think it is one of the instance classic documentaries that come along every few years and is perhaps the best political program I've ever seen bar none!

Ok the West Wing is still class but this is just so brilliant.

Heroes - top of the flying man to y'all.

I've been looking at the 2nd series of Heroes (don''t ask how, but I promise to watch it when it is on big telly if that's ok with the advertisers).

It is proving interesting viewing but I have major bone to pick with the producers, if you're going to have Irish characters it might an idea to source some Irish actors or at the very least people who can do an passable Irish accent. In this day and age I would have thought they might have been able to score an Irish actor or six to play the parts.

Just the facts, Ma'am, just the Facts. Lies and the Irish Health Service

We are told that people are on waiting within an average of 2-5 months. Now you'd have to admit that is a pretty broad average even by the standards we tend to see in the health sector. A real average would be something like 3 months 17 days and not something that is more than 150% the size of the shortest time period involved.

We are also told that reducing staff numbers will have no impact on patient care, yet we are contrastingly regularly informed that increasing staff numbers is only undertaken if it will result in an improvement in patient care.

We are also told that of the 40,000 on waiting lists that 12,000 are waiting over 6 months.

We are told that 6,000 fail to turn up for their procedures and that this is entirely their own fault. Now, I've had personal experience of this circumstance of not being able to make an appointment as my father who is in his 70s was consistently only informed late on the day before that he was to be in Cork city at a hospital early the following morning for a procedure that he has to under go on a regular but not too frequent basis. Traveling to Cork for this procedure means a journey that he has to undertake by public transport, and public transport is something he can't access at a sufficiently early hour to be in Cork for 10am. Cork can't provide him with a bed overnight prior to the procedure and yet keeps scheduling the procedure for early in the morning. There is no political ideology at work here between public and private it is down to competence and work practices. It has been repeatedly pointed out to the people Why not schedule appointments for those closest to the hospital early in the day and those from further away for later on allowing them to travel there any back? It has been repeatedly raised with the folks on the front line who have we believe passed it on to the administration people yet it never seems to affect his appointment times.

They are watching us - from a distance

What did I do? I noticed when doing the usual old trawl through my stats that I had a visit from a genuinely interesting place in the form of the Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate. All are more than welcome to visit and contribute, just don't be expecting me to stop watching The Daily show, cos I won't God damn it.

URuGuAY

Did you know that there are 202,000,000 matches for URuGuAY in google but 365,000,000 for Ireland? And the difference can't be all down to entries for Stephen Ireland's bebo page.

Like the turning of the leaves and the resurgent urge to finally turn the gas on in the evenings RTe visits us with portents of economic doom and despair - David McWilliams is back on our screens. At least Dickens had the decency to leave the morose stuff until Christmas when we could get drunk and vent at the relations about our lot in life. Dear old Dave is at us before we've lost our fake tans.

This time out he is telling us about what he terms "The generation game" whereby the property market has enriched the old at the expense of the young and allowed us all to think that the Celtic Kitty is still purring along nicely when it is in fact the burrowing and munching of a teeming bellyful maggots that is creating the low hum. now, I don't fundamentally disagree with the lad but did he actually have to go to China to find out there are loads of people there, that it's dirt cheap compared to here and that oh man but are some of the ladies tasty - ok I was noticing that last bit all on my own. Won't someone think of the planet? One thing that doesn't get mentioned too much is if the lads on the factory floor in the middle kingdom screw up you can't sue them worth a damn.

In terms of the rest of the presentation, I have to wonder what the bright spark in the development in Ongar was thinking when they thought it a good idea to be letting David and pals sneer about their apartment development. And I thought that there must be something more behind the fact that the Uruguayan collapse than just that they couldn't make cows as cheaply anymore and the "do you feel Irish" comment to Conrad O'Neill that mets the ear. We might find out next week, at least it fits in more naturally to the RTe comedy profile for Monday nights than Prosperity.