Pants on fire!

I apologise for the quality. I'm throwing this up in case people missed the Late Late on Friday with Dunphy and Harris and they want to see it before Rte upload in later in the week. I really need to get a proper card and pipe stuff into the PC from the Sky Plus box and there is some over lap in content as my old camera has a 3 minute limit despite the 2 Gig card. Also I'm discussing nothing here and I will lock the thread so no one can discussion. You can feel free comment on my blog provided you play wish to nice.

This is the key moment for me




The whole thing




Part 2



Part 3

Waiting on Part 3 to process, but I can confirm there are no ewoks! Update, Part 3 is below.



I might think about doing some work on a few prequels and really cash in!

28 days later

29...30! Most people in the Irish blogosphere will be aware of Damien's cry for help/tirade against Fine Gael last month. Well, here is what they don't know, it wasn't true. I chose not to engage directly at the time in order not to leave myself open to accusations of seeking to deflect attention from the Irish Blog Awards which are primarily Damien's creation and for which he deserves considerable credit and which I can well imagine generates a good degree of stress in the organising.

Put as simply as possible his bald assertion that he was being harassed and stalked on and off line is completely erroneous. Some few people may be aware that I had what could be charitably described as a set-do with Damien back at the turn of the year over his use of a particular piece of terminology and his less than elegant reaction to my making my opinion about it known to him. The back and forth on the whole thing lasted a few days, and since then I've had no direct contact with him. Well after I got to make one comment which he proceeded to modify I reckoned there wasn't much point in bothering.

As regards his even more peculiar reference to being harassed and stalked off line all I can say is that to the best of my knowledge the last time I was even in the same city as Damien Mulley was for the blog awards last year. In fact in the week prior to his post about all this Damien travelled to Limerick twice and on one of those occasions was or so I heard inquiring as to my whereabouts. As it happens I was in Dublin on both occasions. Frankly, if that is stalking it sounds much more like Damien is the one doing it. Or if I really am supposed to be doing it I should think about buying a manual. I would very interested in seeing Damien produce the merest sliver of evidence to back up this ludicrous claim.

As regard his involvement of Fine Gael in all this, I'm further perplexed. In his communications with a number of people and organisations regarding his claims he has mentioned my name and that of Fine Gael. Why? The truth is that it would appear Damien is prone to the odd bout of histrionics going from cheerleading for Eamon Ryan to being his self appointment nemesis in the blink of a political eye. Since this was a disagreement between two individuals over the use of language one would wonder why Damien took issue with my membership of Fine Gael at all, rather than say my being an engineer or a Kerryman. Honestly, I would suggest that his repeated harping on about Fine Gael says more about his own indulgence of his biases when approaching any topic than anything else.

I comment on lots of blogs and I suppose one might say we end up playing in the same sand pits from time to time. Let's face it the Irish blogging township isn't quite that large and I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be banished from interacting with people simply because I had fallen foul of Damien Mulley. So I'm sure there have been a couple of occasions when I've commented on the same post as Damien but what reasonable person could characterise that as harassment or even stalking?

Further to this we had his quite excitable jumping up and down about people making threats of legal action. People who were paying close attention from his first post would have noticed that it was Damien Mulley who first spoke of contacting An Garda Síochána and of seeking recourse to legal advice. To date I've heard nothing, nada, faic from anyone to do with his claims and frankly I strongly expect to never hear anything. Any more than I expect to be contacted about the whereabouts of Shergar or the Irish Crown Jewels. Since there was no harassment or stalking there aren't going to be any legal actions forthcoming from Damien. Simply saying something again and again doesn't make it true.

The one quite serious implication from his remarks in his post was that I, acting with others, was in some way seeking to deliberately impact on his health. This is, just like the rest of his post, completely rubbish. As the state of his health wasn't known to me, how was I supposed to be doing this? Voodoo? Incantations? If he is suffering from some form of paranoia and it is somehow impacting his health then I would really suggest that he seek help for it. Strange to think that a simple thing like a relative nobody in blogging not being cowed by Damien's vitriol three months ago would be an scab he would chose to return to on the eve of the blog awards. Retaining a positive mental outlook is vitally important when a person is dealing with a disease like MS.

As for making threats to radio shows and contacting blog nominees about their eligibility for nomination that did not happen either. Who was contacted and exactly what kind of threats would I be in a position to make to radio shows? Withhold my license? Write to Arthur Murphy on Mailbag?

If people like Damien want to say something about people they should be prepared to be upfront about it. Damien made big play of taking his twitter account private though I suspect the real reason behind that was so he could continue to make snide, sly, underhand comments which are his real modus operandi. It's the web 2.0 version of whispering in class with your hand over your mouth. I'm sure those who do have access to his twitter will know if this is the case. Did he name names? Drop hints? Is he still going on about it?

The really disappointing aspect for me was that so few people looked for any justification for the accusation. Most were simply prepared to take him at his word and instead of calling for habeas corpus, the call went out for a head, any head in fact. I acknowledge that Damien has done tremendous work promoting blogging in Ireland but to suggest that such efforts somehow gives him carte blanche to make accusations about people and then never front up is totally unjustified. I will continue to blog, but as for the Irish Blogging Community I have to wonder who would wish to be a member of a community that reaches so readily for pitch forks at the whim of its leader.

It is worth remembering that a benevolent dictator isn't benevolent to everyone all the time and at the end of the day they really are a just dictator, one more petty tyrant.

Rumours and innuendo

Last week the word was put out about the state of a major bank with the intention of impacting its share price. Yet one week on there has been no announcement of any investigation into improper conduct by those spreading the rumours.

The bank I'm referring to isn't HBOS or Anglo-Irish Bank, it is Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was telling everyone who would listen that it was fine, just dandy, nothing at all to see here and there was no reason for anyone to worry their silly little heads about when it came to its ability to continue to do business in the future. Yet in the matter of a few days, it has been subsumed in JP Morgan Chase. So I guess the lesson is when the institution itself tells fibs that's ok, if someone else does it that is wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke - RIP

One of the giants of science fiction has passed on. His writing was always somewhat dry in my view and to be honest he didn't really do characters but God some of the ideas. Harks back to when the bulk of science fiction came from the pens of actually science grounded people, like scientists and engineers, like Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke . I think his short stories are today somewhat under appreciated though that is where 2001 came from.

While his idea or promote of geo stationary satellites will doubtless get lots of attention over the coming days I think the his use of the idea of the space elevator may end up being the more significant in terms of the exploration of space by humans.

Unemployed black man or employed white graduate - who is to blame for the credit crunch?

The two Johns have tackled the issue of the sub prime market already (see the clip below) but I believe the real problem isn't the unemployed black man in a vest sitting outside a house he can no longer afford, it's the college educated white 20 and 30 somethings who is up to their eyes in credit card and college loan debt.



At the heart of the credit problem is a significant percentage of people mostly white college educated folks who had large sums of money made available to them which they gladly borrowed and spent it on pure frippery, and of course spring break! Average credit debt in the US for those graduates in the 20s is nearly $6,000. And that is just credit card debt, most US graduates have college loans into the 10s of thousands. Now the solution being offered by the Fed is yet more cheap credit which will lead to more spending on frippery (most of it coming from Asian economies rather than the US).

Is there some hope that those being lent to would act to re-finance their credit card debt into loans and take the time to pay down their debts? The problem is that the servicing of the credit card debt is much more profitable to the banks and they are disinclined to alter the terms to medium term loans. This is the time to turn into the tidal wave of financial mismanagement but I suspect most will take the short term option and just spend again.

The Jack Russell - champion sheep worrier

So the topic of worrying sheep came up recently and the theory was put forward that Jack Russell's being a more intelligent breed of beast have their own style of worrying the wooliers. Apparently, they sidle up to the fuzzy ones under cover of dark and start telling them that inflation is up again, that the stock market is screwed and that the building industry is laying folks off left right and centre. That has them worried in no time at all.

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.

Election games

And we have another great instance of a time sucker. Back in 1996 when the net had stopped yelping and it was being to attract attention for other reasons, a number of media outlets tried a number of things out to get people interested in the Presidential contest between Clinton, Dole and Perot (yes cranky old Ross ran again, well it was either that or buy a state for himself).

One sub site put up was called Dark Horse, in which you played as a virtual candidate, picked your platform, spent some money on ads and campaigned like crazy. Dear God, it killed some amount of time while waiting for my machine to churn through stuff. I'm sure we'll get even more of these as time goes on, I've got my own on the drawing board but...well can't really say too much. One thing that strikes me is that each of these 'games' says as much about how people understand or would like politics to be as it is about how politics might be made more interesting.

And naturally I have this old stager in the electoral politics stakes too! With the dollar the way it is, it is excellent value.

The coming blog deluge

Was chatting to someone over lunch a while back about a side project on blogging and conversation and I mentioned my aside over on Kathy Foley "What happens if the Beboers decide to move on?" At least a few may decide that they have more to write than Bebo allows for. If even 1% of the purported 1 million Beboers in Ireland were to start blogging over the next year it would truly represent exponential growth in blogging in Ireland in a very, very short period of time. We were thinking about what that might mean to blogging in particular in the Irish context with all the talk of a 'community' and also the nature of comment, discussion and conversation around and within blogs. I suspect it may well feed in our thinking and planning on the side project, which is sadly lacking a code name at present.

A project without a codename isn't worthy of a back of beermat business plan.

Not planning on killing a man

It is odd how a simple enough post can end up bringing you to the attention of all sorts of peculiar folks from near and far. A short while back I created a post based on a pub conversation about the attempted murder of a man in Dublin while he was sitting in a car outside a gym. We were surprised at the hash the assailant had made of the job and it recounted our views on how we might have gone about the job with the view of prosecuting it more successfully. However, I would just like to clarify that I'm not offering services or specific advice on how to kill someone, male or female. I don't generally favour killing people as a solution to a problem.

World Book Day

I'm a library brat, my dad was the caretaker for the local library so the library was sort an extension of my living room. I never paid much in library fines in large part because I would have returned any books borrowed long before the deadline. Sitting on a comfy chair surrounded by bookshelves is quite a blissful way to pass a dull rainy afternoon. And there were many of those in Kerry. The playground was round the back of the library so we could run about kicking a ball and then when it got too wet, we wheeled into the library en masse.

A survey of British librarians gives us this list of 30 books to read before you...well, find yourself in a place where you can't read them anymore.

The Top 30

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible (by God!) - True, I've not read all of it.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Blog talking at UL

So the auld blog talk to the baby journos at UL went well enough, along with myself present to speak were Alan English- Editor of the Limerick Leader representing the print media and Mike Knightson - from Newstalk 106 on behave of broadcasting I guess. Dr, Eoin Devereux- bailed at the last minute apparently. I'm guessing he is still reeling from my response all those years ago at his introduction to Anthropology lecture of "what is wrong with that?" to his comment that all Kerry people answer a question with a question.

I won't rehash but I said but one question that did come up was in reference to libel and yep you can get sued for what you write or what someone else writes...just cos it's on the internet doesn't let you off. I am available by appointment to help cure insomnia.

McCain is the nominee but will he have the right to himself?

With all the focus we seemed to have glossed over the fact that McCain barely got over 51% in Texas as I suspected he might. Of course people may just be blowing off steam secure in the knowledge that McCain was to all intents home and hosed. Aren't there still signs of problems there for McCain there?

It won't be Huckabee, it may not even be a Republican but I suspect we will see a 3rd party family values, social conservative emerge in the next few months. Someone will do the rounds of the talk shows, write a book, pick a fight with Hollywood and generally seek to defend their view of the family.

Paisley to stand down - in May

While there has been a lot of talk about this in the last few weeks, it is quite hard to take in as being real. I know that he do make the final jump into power sharing but I can't help thinking that his role for so many years kept the mess in the north going for much longer than was necessary. I would have much the same view of SF for that matter.

Blog talk

I have to give a talk to the journalism society in UL about Blogging. Also on the panel is someone from the dead tree press, someone from telly, and someone from a college department. Naturally, it would be remiss of me not to refer to recent events and I'm going to be using all my own words as is my wont. Well, technically the actual words themselves belong to the English language but the particular order they are placed in will be entirely my decision. Should make for an interesting evening.

This is Super Tuesday!

So who is it to be? On the traditional date for Super Tuesday, we've got 4 races for the Dems with the two smaller ones Rhode Island and Vermont expected to split one a piece for Clinton and Obama. The big delegate counts are in Ohio and Texas. And I think that Clinton will win both but she won't make that much of a gain delegate wise. If Obama wins both then I think it will be curtains for Clinton, though she may hang in there with one last throw of the dice until Penn.

The complicated nature of the polling in Texas (it's both a caucus and a primary!) will mean that irrespective of who wins the margin of victory would need to be huge or it won't change much. Ohio represents the much better chance for Clinton to make some proper gains but even there it is a mess. A 60%/40% in a 4 seat district gets you 2 seats a piece. It is almost as if the Dem never thought they might end up having a tight two horse race because their systems teams neither candidate can really break away. For more detail check out the guru.

The Republicans are still going through the motions of a primary race. I do have to wonder what the Ron Paul supporters will do if he breaks 10% in Texas! Probably declare victory.

Update 5.39pm local time: I have a feeling that McCain might not break 50% in Texas.

Things are different in Russia

Anyone who saw Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in jeans and black leather jackets walking across Red Square after it was announced that Medvedev had won would have realised that democracy is a different beast in Russia. I think a strong, confident Russia is good for the world. For sure it has to be better than a paranoid insecure Russia. Yet there is no denying that it would be even more preferable if they could see it as a mark of confidence to allow their critics have their few moments. After all if your argument is better you still win. Only the truly inadequate would deny their opposition any type of a voice.

Incredibly landing attempt by A320

See what happens if you avoid TV for the day, you miss stuff like this.



Amazing work by the pilot. And on RTe's 6.1 News Bryan Dobson got his Superman on by telling us that air travel was still the safest way to fly.

Predictions - Blog Awards

If I've enough presumptuousness to be picking Presidents why not winners of the Blog Awards? Where I'm torn I've left in 2/3, where I don't know enough I've left the category out completely.

Best Blog

• Bock The Robber

Best Blog Post

Fustar - To Whom it Concerns… It’s The Manky Toy Show (Live)!

Most Humourous Post

Twenty Major - Tonight’s Debate

Best Arts and Culture Blog Sponsored by Poetry Ireland

• The Sigla Blog
• Tuppenceworth.ie

Best Political Blog Sponsored by Digital Revolutionaries

• Slugger O’Toole

Best Group Blog Sponsored by Salesjobs.ie

• The Dublin Community Blog

Best Personal Blog Sponsored by Microsoft Ireland’s Developer and Platform Group

• Hangar Queen
• Head Rambles
• Avoiding Life

Best Technology Blog Sponsored by Bitbuzz

Tom Raftery’s Social Media

Best Sports and Recreation Blog Sponsored by Boards.ie

• Arseblog

Best News/Current Affairs Blog Sponsored by Irish Broadband

• The Limerick Blogger
• Gavin’s Blog

Best Newcomer Sponsored by Edelman Dublin

• Irish Taxi
• 73man

Best Music Blog Sponsored by DownloadMusic.ie

Cheebah

Best Popculture Blog Sponsored by Weeno Media

• UnaRocks
• Why, That’s Delightful!
  

Best Blog from a Journalist Sponsored by RedFly Marketing

Present Tense

Blog Awards - break a link, everyone!

Just a quick "Best Wishes" to the good ship Irish Blog Awards and all who sail in her. A lot of work goes into such events and that effort can't be denied, that hair doesn't fix itself. Not able to attend myself for reasons that may emerge over the next while, but have a good one, one and all.

Here's to speeches profound and profane.

To dancing odd and elastic.

To glasses clinked not smashed

And hearts lifted not broken.

Now where did I leave my comet controller?

New Iron Man Trailer

I always found Iron Man and Tony Stark to be a bit on the dull side, but Robert Downey makes it look like this could be a real hoot. Com'on the Merchant of Death!

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

Add to My Profile | More Videos

And I agree it's not the worst thing any of us have been caught doing....

Who will win - you predict.

Massive Hat tip to Electoral Vote for this complete time sucker for the political nerd in all of us. Basically you can predict how you think the remaining primaries will work out for Clinton and Obama and it calculates the delegates they will get.

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?

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.