Voting on Lisbon - update 2a

I would now rate the Pro-Lisbon side at 53% with the No side at 45% and if it stays like that I believe that the No side will win on the day of voting. Why?

Turnout: it is going to be too low. The fact is that the 'undecided' voters or perhaps we really should call them 'the indifferent' aren't going to vote Yes. The percentage and amount of people I've come across in the last 2 weeks that say they are going to vote No because they don't understand it, because they don't like aspect X, or specific item Y is really surprising. Surprising because these are not No to everything people. Combine this with the reality that it will be a considerable challenge for turnout to break 40% and you've got a committed No vote, a lackadaisical Yes, and a vast pool of indifference for one to swim in and the other to drown in.

The other difficulty hampering the Treaty is that this (the last 4 months or so) is the first most people have heard about the detail involved in the Treaty. Going on and on about the detail of your new wonder product to people who are not in the mood to buy is self defeating. They were none to keen to start with, boring them with information is just browning a lot of them off more.

This lack of prior warning is in part a consequences of the manner in which the Treaty was arrived at. In no significant public forum was the treaty discussed in any detail in advance. There was a European convention on the constitution, but this is not the constitution or so we're told. It would be one thing if the electorate had been engaged before negotiations at EU level took place so that government went in knowing what our bottom lines as a nation were. But they didn't, they simply took the constitution as the template, did some tweaking and reheating and served it back to us. Not once did the government of the day consult the Irish people en masse in advance of the deal being done.

At least some part of the reasoning on the part of a government may be if we as people decide on a set of proposals we like in advance and then we didn't get them in the negotiations that the resultant agreement will prove a much harder sell to the people. That might well be the case, yet the current situation isn't proving to be an easy sell either. People view the Treaty as a weird legalese mutant cooked up out of sight in the elsewhere, and they're not inclined to taste it much less take a bite.

Take two issues the loss of an automatic right to propose a commissioner and the move to more QMV, most people would accept the logic that 30 plus full commissioners is way too many and some means to reduce the number of active commissioners was necessary. Yet why choose a system that excludes 1 in 3 members states for a full term. What other proposals were considered? What specific proposals or arguments were put forward by the Irish government? We simply don't know. The shift to more QMV was always going to impact more on smaller nations, yet no one appears to have prepared straightforward answers that addressed those specific concerns. I do find the No side argument that we need more democracy but they're opposed to the double majorities required in QMV because they bigger countries get more say in the population side (while they ignore the fact that you still need 55% of the countries). I thought democracy meant the more people you had supporting your views the more your views got to prevail. I guess support for democracy goes out the window when there are more of them than of you. The idea of QMV is simple, the big countries can't gang up on the small ones, and the small ones can't gang up on the big ones.

Plus, you just know the government isn't popular when SIPTU and the IFA choose to play hard ball in the final days of the campaign. A popular, well respected government, a government that was feared even would have no problem side-lining the unions and social partners to appeal over their heads directly to the people. Yet 'the people' aren't interested. I think more people would be inclined to vote in the Eurovision at this point than in the referendum. Just as well we didn't qualify for Euro '08 or one bad result for the soccer team and we'd be leaving the EU in a huff.

My Lovely Horse and Bertie

From the people who brought you Bert and Tim's Bogus Finances, a new musical spectacular is to grace our screens as Bertie and a lucky, very lucky member of the equine family star in 'My Effing Lovely Horse'. A story of a simple man, a few spare quid and a fantastical horse that can travel through time and perform miracles of financial wizardry.

Hitting a cinema screen near you soon. A Cock and Bull Story production.

D-Day for Clinton: Florida / Michigan

Dear Daniel,

Millions of voters in Florida and Michigan are depending on you to help make sure they have a voice in this race. Will you stand up for them today?

Thanks to your efforts, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of people who have already spoken out, the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting May 31 to make a decision about whether or not the votes in Michigan and Florida will count.

Now I need you to urge the DNC to make the right decision on May 31. I need you to remind them that in the Democratic Party, we count every vote.

Tell the Democratic National Committee to count the votes of Florida and Michigan.

On May 31, the DNC has a chance to make it clear that the people of Florida and Michigan have a voice in our party. The decision is especially critical given the important role these states will play in November.

And your voice could make the difference for the millions of people who went to the polls in those two states to make their choice for president.


- See here's my problem with the Clinton message, the lesson of 2000 was that every voter should get an equal chance to vote and have their vote counted. And we all can see that in Florida and Michigan many voters did not get an opportunity to participate in a fair and open primary process. To now retrospectively discount the votes of those who could not choose the candidate of their choice is just plain wrong.

And for that reason I believe that to seek to claim the nomination on the basis of a partial primary process in these two states is illegitimate. Senator Clinton has run an inspiring race but to now try and claim the nomination while ignoring those excluded from the Florida and Michigan primary processes is unbecoming the person and candidate that people have come to know her to be.

In the Democratic Party, everyone gets to vote for the candidate of their choice, every vote is equal and then and only then every vote is counted.

Social networking and suicide article in IT today

Have a small contribution in the Irish times today on a piece on social networks and suicide, (subs. reqd.). I must get around to posting the larger, longer and more rambling version of my comments here later. Overall, I think the piece steers a careful path through what are very choppy waters for such a discussion.

As many FF Voters as FG are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty

From the poll in last weekend's Business Post a rather basic fact appears to have been overlooked which is that as many FF people as FG people have yet to be convinced of the merits of the Treaty.

Quoting from the Post article. "The intensive campaigning by the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who has risked his political honeymoon on the success of the referendum, is bearing fruit with Fianna Fáil voters who now favour the treaty by a huge margin. For the first time, an absolute majority of Fianna Fáil voters say they will support the treaty.

However, despite an active Fine Gael campaign and the appeal by party leader Enda Kenny to ‘‘put the country first’’, Fine Gael voters are evenly divided between the Yes and No side. This may be explained by many voters identifying the referendum as a proposal from the government and, therefore, something to be opposed."

The full report as posted by RED C

So FG support is supposedly 28% and FF is on 40%, and we heard that FG is evenly divided on the subject while an "absolute majority" of FFers are supportive of the treaty which I believe we are to take to mean 50%+1 of the FF support meaning 20% of the electorate. Allowing for the same amount of undecided voters within FF and FG and the general electorate which is 25%. So we get

FF 40%, of which 20% Yes, 10% undecided, 10% No.
FG 28% of which 10.5% Yes, 7% undecided, and 10.5% No.

Since this is a poll, and we're dealing with a margin of error of +/- 3%, I think it is reasonable to suggest that An Taoiseach Brian Cowen has as many of his own supporters to convince to not vote No as does FG. And he actually has more voters in total to win over than does FG.

After all when you go into the polling station a single FG vote is worth no more that a single FF vote.

Brian Cowen is Michael Noonan 2.0

To paraphrase from Seamus Mallon, "Brian Cowen is Michael Noonan for slow learners". Noonan had an established talent for marking his opposite spokesperson, a neat turn of phrase (read some of his budget rebuttals) and was very popular with the party stalwarts for his willingness to get stuck into people he was debating with. And yet for those same reasons he was the wrong person to lead Fine Gael when he came to the position. Bertie Ahern was the embodiment of the expression "trying to nail jelly to the wall", getting in close and making digs and punches did nothing for your side of the argument.

Noonan as a man wasn't as needlessly aggressive as Cowen can be but his appeal to the party footsoldiers was similar. People in political parties love someone who can take the hits for them and come back out fighting. Yet the floating, middle ground people who pay only superficial attention to politics are completely turned off by what they see as unnecessary antics.

I suspect that someone somewhere within FF will take Cowen off and attempt to do what they must have done to the Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue last summer and get him in touch with some Zen master. Otherwise, he is going to blow his top every other week.

Voting on Lisbon - update 1

After the weekend that was in it, the comments from Brian Cowen, and the mood music coming from the IFA, I would judge that the No vote has breached the 40% barrier and then some, I would even put it as high as 43%. Why?

Well, Cowen has probably with a single comment made a percentage of people from an Fine Gael inclined background decide that they can't be bothered to come out and vote for what they now see as his effing Treaty. It's not a very sensible attitude but it is entirely understandable. This may back to more difficult to

The IFA seem to be itchy for a fight and could talk themselves into a corner that they could only be got out of by Cowen going 12 rounds with Mandelsohn live on telly.

I would rate the Yes vote at 55% and the remainder spoiled - we're going to see a quare amount of spoiled votes in my humble opinion, over 2%.

Shifting the blame so early

I’ve read some attempts to shift the blame for failure in my time but rarely so far in advance of the end of the contest. Noel Whelan’s column, Irish Times May 24^th, followed so closely by the comments from Brian Cowen that the onus for the success of the Lisbon Treaty was on Fine Gael rather than the government of the day has to take the proverbial biscuit.

Let us recall that the main government party spent much of the time it could have spent addressing concerns about the Treaty conducting a swansong for its outgoing leader, while telling anyone who had concerns that they were lulus who were only interested in making a holy show of us by voting no and just stopped short of sending them to bed without their supper.

If the government were serious from the outset about meeting head on the genuine qualms that many people had expressed they would have selected someone other than a man who would cause Americans to harbour doubts about the loveliness of their mothers and the tastiness of apple pie. The smug condescension from the junior minister with special responsibility for European Affairs can have convinced few floaters to choose the ‘Yes’ side.

In terms the Taoiseach might be more familiar with, his comments are like those of a player who never turns up for training, and upon coming back from suspension for ungentlemanly conduct enters onto the field of play at the county final with ten minutes left. He then demands rather then asks that all those who have been there from the start of the championship must dig deep, give 110% and sweat blood all the while he has yet to kick a ball in anger. With ‘encouragement’ to the Yes side like this, does the No side require any more help?

Irish Rail - let's sack everyone!

I've been personally of the view for many years now that Irish Rail is simply unrecoverable as a company. This from someone who is a big believer in trains and public transport in general. The only sensible solution is to sack everyone from the CEO down and do a complete rehire, with all of them sign up to a clearly stated policy that it is the mission of the company to transport people and goods, safely and reliably within a predictable timetable to and from the destinations of their choice.

Too many people have had too many poor experiences with Irish Rail in terms of how it does business as a company and sadly how many of its customer facing (hate the expression but it seems apt here) employees treat people. Bear in mind that most people when asking for assistance from Irish Rail employees are away from home, and if stranded will have to go to considerable personal expense and suffer a great deal of inconvenience to make it to their destination by other means. Frankly for many of them it is a stressful enough experience and if they had another choice they would have made. The company and many of its employees continue to behave as if the company exists to provide them with a living and not to provide a service to the travelling public. This attitude perpetuates itself by infecting new employees as they learn from the existing staff what it is you can get away with. Hence my idea for the need for a mass clear out.

Sure, some of the trains are nicer now, but remember we the travelling public and taxpayers paid for that nice new shininess by means of Transport 90210 and other PR efforts such as "We're not there yet, and frankly we're not sure where there is". It isn't like the employees built the new trains as a favour to us crafted out of the goodness of their hearts on their own time while taking breaks from feeding orphans and widows.

Every little change in their work situation they want to be paid for. The time table changes, pay me more, time table changes back to what it was, pay me more again. New trains, pay me to learn how to drive them, and then pay me more to actually drive them. And if you hire someone to drive them but I don't drive them, pay me more to let them drive them instead.

Cowen and the real problem with his f$%ckers

Naturally, the superficial emphasis has been on the use of the word itself. Those with a tradition at this stage for missing the point by a distance greater than the human mind can encompass have praised him for showing that he is cool and down with the kids. The Evening Herald ran with a headline saying as much.

In point of fact, the issue for Cowen is not actually his swearing at all - which the finest of us do (and with some aplomb I meant add) , but the fact that he appears to be so easily rattled. Enda Kenny wasn't placing him under any especially harsh pressure, some might even say it was all fairly humdrum stuff. Until Cowen found himself unable to answer a pretty straightforward question and lacking the armoury of evasion natural to his predecessor he went lock, stock and sinker for the "attack is the best form of defense" approach. All of which meant his temperament wasn't the mae west when he turned to Mary Coughlan to make his now famous remark about" those f$%ckers". Some of the more ill informed, including as a writer for the Sunday Mirror and a letter writer elsewhere, were more appalled that he should say such things to a delicate flower such as Mary, poor innocent Mary Coughlan. Just as well for all our sakes that he doesn't carry around a nuclear button.

Fionnan Sheahan catches it perfectly with his piece on "The Touchy and Tetchy Show", indeed it is hard to see how this works to the advantage of Cowen either Coughlan.

"They don't like it up 'em, Mr. Mannering"- as a noted political commentator once said.

Crewe and Nantwich

As is my wont from time to time, I poke my nose in the politics of other countries. I don't spend any money on influencing the outcome but I do like to watch. So the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich looks to be quite interesting given the national scene in the UK. Basically, Gordon Brown seems to have been caught completely unpreparedby the British public in bed with a naked recession and he had no protection at all. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg is still learning to lead without his stabilisers on the bicycle of the Lib Dems and David Cameron has suddenly found himself faced with the prospect of being behaving like the leader of a major political party with a decent chance of being in government somewhat ahead of schedule. You can peruse the full line up if you wish but the three main parties are where the real action is as per usual.

Last time out in 2005 the final % results were
Labour 48.8
Conserveratives 32.6
Lib Dems 18.6

A shift or swing as they like to call it over there of 9% from Labour to Tory would mean Labour on 39.8% and Conservative 41.6%. However, many people - core Labour people - are likely to find voting for the Tories a bridge too far, and might either stay home or seek out a temporary safe haven in the Lib Dems. Indeed, with the Labour vote nationally appearing to be in free fall, it is just possible that some Labour voters might even decide that the only way to stop the Tories romping home is to vote LibDems. It is alternately possible that if the battle is seen as a straight choice between supporting the government or giving it a bloody nose then the Lib Dems might be squeezed out completely. With that in mind, I've got two outcomes that might result from each of the above scenarios

Scenario (A)

Labour suffer a collapse but as it is a collapse in the core vote many can't bring themselves to vote Tory so they temporarily jump to the LibDems, in fact the Labour campaign doesn't get people to vote Labour but it is effective in stopping people from voting Tory

Labour 34.8
Conserveratives 38.6
Lib Dems 26.6

Scenario (B)

Labour suffer a significant drop but the core vote holds and many including some who previously voted Lib Dems see the risk nationally of a Tory win (especially if it means an overall majority for the Conservatives) so they vote Labour. The Labour campaign gets people to vote Labour but it is still not effective in stopping middle ground people from voting Tory.

Labour 39.8
Conservatives 44.6
Lib Dems 15.6

We'll know tonight. And there is always scenario (C), (D) and so on and so forth.

Voting on Lisbon

I'm going to give the feelings in my water expression over the next few weeks as we close in judgement day for the Treaty of Lisboa - June 12th.

As of now I would suggest the support levels of

Yes 60% No 38% Spoilt 2%

And the final cylon is...

Admiral Cain!

Seriously, wouldn't that just kick that part of the body that is in most contact with the couch. It is only a guess mind. My guess, all my guess. And entirely consistent with my view that the final cylon is someone already died who would have to be resurrected. And guess what? We're off to a resurrection hub!

Newcomers

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

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

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

Work in progress

Things may look a bit odd from time to time over the next while. Please bare with us.

New directions in Search

A while back I noticed my posts getting visited by something called cuill and mistook it for a company that some friends are in the process of working up called...well, you'd best just wait for that exciting news. Anyway, it turned out not to be those folks but instead cuill (say it Cool!) is a search effort headed up by wife and husband team of Anna Patterson* and Tom Costello. Anna was someone senior with Google for while while Tom had his dalliance with IBM but they're running their own show now.

They got some 2nd round money recently and it would appear their key pitch is that their search takes 10% of the effort that it does for Google. I suspect the intent of something like cuill is to provide back-end search capability as a service to large corporate or governmental environments where the reduced overheard they speak of would really matter. I'm not sure the consumer end of search is all that bothered about the resources required when they are getting to have it for free.

Then I started to notice I was getting felt up as it were by another frequent visitor from Tempe, Arizona called searchme.com. I had a looksee and they're doing what I think are interesting things with the visual presentation of search results. Imagine if they had a client like this for the desktop we might be able to find some of those things we've lost on the harddrive. So it would seem that search isn't as static as some might think, and that old idea of some other new fangled interface for browsing or presenting content hasn't gone away either. There was a suggestion floated semi-seriously by some in the mid 90s that the Doom engine from ID could have been appropriated to give us that 3D world that Gibson et al had prepped us for. It never came to pass that I'm aware of in part because people thought that the footprint of the Doom client would be too large! Anyway, try the public Beta for size, it seemed to not be too keen on Firefox today but ran fine under IE and they have a blog too.

*I met Anna about.. Christ could it be that long ago?... 12 years ago now in Prague. She was at some maths conference and myself and a mate were in the city for sort of a lad's holiday. We were looking for an Irish pub that might have had the GAA results, net cafes being thin on the ground at the time. And we wandered into the James Joyce just of Staré Mesto, and we got chatting to her. I think one of us (probably me) made up some nonsense about working in the Oil industry mainly because we couldn't have looked more unlike some roughnecks in from the fields.

The pubs are calling us back

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

Unexpected opportunties for the disabled in Beirut.

Reading the beeb site for news and mild distraction I was I must admit a little taken aback to see this image of a Hezbollah gunman in Beirut who it seems may have seen action before



Look closely, it is hard to see where his arm ends and the gun begins. Of course some might say that true equality is when the disadvantaged are as capable of doing idiotic things as the rest of us.

Where it went wrong for Hillary

You see I can be wrong! what did I forget in my prediction? I forgot all those smaller states that Obama simply rolled up like so much carpet.

http://dansullivan.blogspot.com/2008/02/hillary-vs-who-and-what.html

Brian Blessed on HIGNFY last weekend : Update

Some buggers have tubed it darlings, They put it on the bloody intercom thingy. Here's where you catch Part 1 and then do the rest yourself you lazy feckers. I do love you all really.

Provisional Driving restrictions revisited.

Anyone remember the introduction of new restrictions on driving on a provisional license last October Bank holiday weekend? It generated loads of topics last on pi.ie at the time and it prompted the creation of the first campaign area for politics.ie. Well, the May bank holiday is behind us and the June bank holiday is fast approaching and that means the issue will be back with us all inside a few weeks. The deadline that Minister Dempsey set himself was the end of June for the full introduction of the new measures. Measures that by and large the vast majority of people around the country support. The problem was entirely with the manner of their introduction. One of the criteria for the introduction of the measures at the end of June was and I'm quoting from the RSA here "By the end of June 2008 all applicants for a driving test will be able to get a test on demand (within 10 weeks)." On demand, within ten weeks. See that, you demand something and you get it within ten weeks. So are they there yet?

The most up to date average times for getting a test would appear to suggest we are some way off that target of everyone getting a test within ten weeks. 15 of the 48 test centres are over the 10 weeks upper limit. Indeed 12 of them are more than 50% over the average.

There was something about that average number which intrigued me. How are they calculating it I wonder? It's not by treating all the centres as if they handled the same amount of people is it? Because that would be plain silly. Yet, it seems that is how they are doing it. The average time is calculated by summing the waiting times for each test centre and then dividing by the total number of test centres. That approach would be fine if each test centre was dealing with the same volume of tests but since we appear to have just 4 test centres for Dublin, while 2 for Kerry and even 3 for Galway I'm guessing those volumes at each of these sites aren't the same. So the magic figure quoted at the bottom of the report of 10.5 weeks average wait time is not the average time a person will be waiting. We are meant to be talking about the average wait time per person. And for that you need to fact in the number of people processed at each location. There again a failure to think of people is what has us in this mess in the first place.

Also, in the world of letters from employers and such like to expedite the process some folks get tested much earlier than the average at present. Since we are still dealing with averages that means for every person that gets the test in 2/3 weeks where the average is in fact 10 weeks that some other poor eejit must be waiting for 17/18 weeks for the sums to be correct. Or perhaps there are two people getting it in 13.5/14 weeks but you see where I'm going with this. The average wait time is plainly not at the 10 weeks barrier that Dempsey set for himself. 10 weeks was to be the outer limit not the average. A 10 weeks average is explicitly not the target that the RSA and Dempsey set themselves they said "The Government has already committed itself to providing the necessary finance to the Road Safety Authority to ensure that all 122, 000 applicants currently on the waiting list will have been tested by early March 2008. This will have eliminated the current backlog as promised. By the end of June 2008 all applicants for a driving test will be able to get a test on demand (within 10 weeks)."

I should say that I don't personally view getting a test within 10 weeks as being on demand but since it is the measure Dempsey set himself it's only fair to start by measuring him against his own goal. On demand in my view would be 2/3 weeks max. I'm guessing the true average wait time is more than the 10.458 weeks you get if you divide the sub totals by the total number of test centres.

So the questions are

Have all those 122,000 sat the test since last October?

How much extra cash was splashed to sort out the problem of the backlog?

How long is the back log now?

What is the true average wait time per person nationally?

Update: I had started this last week back and was just finishing it when I read this in the Indo today. Seems the RSA is back-pedalling faster than ice cream melts in the lovely weather we're having.

Brian Blessed on HIGNFY last weekend

A instant classic, you should try and catch it on the repeat thing on the beeb site but only if you're in the UK. As for the rest of the world, I guess people will have to wait for it to appear on some Tube or other.

Eagles soar - but how high?

So we made the play-offs with a 5-0 spanking of Burnley who to be fair had nothing to play for. So we're playing Bristol City next Saturday and Tuesday and if we get past them we play the winners of Hull-Watford on the May bank holiday weekend. I'm all a quiver.

Mayoral predictions - how did we do?

The actual result in London Mayoral Election

Johnson	CON	1,043,761	42.48
Livingstone	LAB	893,877	36.38
Paddick	LD	236,685	9.63
Berry	GRN	77,374	3.15
Barnbrook	BNP	69,710	2.84
Craig	CPA	39,249	1.6
Batten	UKIP	22,422	0.91
German	LL	16,796	0.68
O'Connor	END	10,695	0.44
McKenzie	IND	5,389	0.22

Our prediction had Boris Johnson on 39 % Ken Livingstone on 37 %, which was reasonably close, within the margin of error for Boris at the worst. We did overstate Paddick on 14 % and Berry at just under 5 %. We were damn close with the BNP at 2.5 % (and that's as close as we ever want to be to the BNP. And we understated the others at 1.5 % when they closer to 4%.

New Carlsberg ad - Have it!

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



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

Local Elections England/Wales - how bad?

Really bad, really, really bad. The beeb are still insisting on going more and more down the road graphically orientated tom foolery with Jeremy Vine when what they really need are Charlie McCreevy and Ivan Yates arguing over the direction of the transfers of the Ballydehob local bigwig on the anti fish scale tax party.

One problem for me is that they only report seats gains and losses not the % that a party got in which council area. With 1st past the post it is possible that a disaster decline can be masked or that a minor gain can translate into a large seat gain. The national vote share projection is some help but for the really nerdy amongst us (I'm saying us so I must be including myself in that number) we want to see how the % vote has changed in each council. And nowhere on the beeb site can I find that. And they appear to be completely at a loss as to how to report on the Mayoral count with the only semi useful quote being "With 27% of votes counted in each of the 14 electoral areas - Mr Johnson has the lead in 9 while Labour's Ken Livingstone is ahead in five." how big are the 9 areas compared to the 5 and ahead by what margin! God help me but with a few dozen Tallymen we'd have a projected first count at this stage on 27% of the vote counted, and we'd have some idea where the 2nd choices were going. And this in the birthplace of parliamentary democracy.

Update: according to the Guardian blog there are screens at the count centres that are giving the 1st preferences and 2nd choices as they are counted. So why is no one reporting the actual numbers? Do they think people can't understand them?

Boris the blade or Red Ken

While I'm technically a Croydonian by way of being a Mayday baby, I do on occasion social climb a tad by regarding myself as a Londoner by association. So by that reckoning I'm as entitled as anyone to be taking an interest in the mayoral election across the pond.

I would probably vote for Brian Paddick or Sian Berry No.1 and then give my No.2 to Ken Livingstone. I don't agree entirely with everything Ken does but the city is in his heart. I think he has been proved correct about efforts like the limitations of the Public Private Partnerships in funding public works and also he has shown a willingness to embrace some aspects of the market like the idea of a bond issue for the Tube. Boris is a likeable enough bloke and would probably make for good company on a night out but that is no reason for vote for someone to have executive power, whether Boris or Bertie.

We seem to get few enough people who are proud of living in cities these days. For all our love of the arboreal or pastoral ideal, I think cities, properly run are the true apex of human civilisation. It's not a popular view in the modern world and especially not in Ireland where everyone appears to want to live in the subrural splendour of the detached bungalow on the edgetown.

My Predictions? I've not had a good hit rate this year but sure why not...

Boris Johnson - 39 %

Ken Livingstone - 37 %

Paddick - 14 %

Berry just under - 5 %

BNP - 2.5 %

Others 1.5 %

At the end of the chain

With the building industry apparently stalling it is worth noting who it that is going to get hit hardest. It will be those small contractors and suppliers who are owed what are for them quite large sums of money. Loads of tradesmen, the plumbers, the carpenters, the landscapers the ones doing plastering and gangs of labourers will be left out of pocket at the last minute. You can bet it won't be Tom Parlon's boys at the CIF. God no Those lads will simply go to the wall, let the banks and by extension the savers at those institutions take the hit and be back in business a few weeks later with another name and the same faces in places.

The Examiner today appears to link financial problems in the business of Dermot Flood with the deaths of the family. Whether there is a link or not - the article and the details of the turnover and outstanding monies owed to the business is illustrative of the problems that many at the end of the chain are faced with. According to what they found the accounts showed money owed to creditors increased from €27,660 in 2006 to €49,421 in 2007. And over the same period, the amount owed to the company by debtors nearly trebled from €40,111 to €118,202. Owed by debtors, that would be people he did work for, they owed him more than twice what his own debts were. If this was a factor in his actions (and it seems at this stage that the deaths were as a result of his actions) then I wonder what part concerns about money had to play in his state of mind leading up to this. Where is Tom Parlon to talk on behalf of the small traders and ensuring they are getting paid by the big boys in the building industry today?

Another week to go

A last minute (ok it was in the last 5 minutes) goal sent us down to a defeat against Hull. That said with Ipswich and Wolves drawing it means we retain our sixth place and the final play-off slot going into the last game of the season. At home to Burnley. If we make the play-off I think we have a reasonable chance against any of the likely opposition.

In other news, I see that Eamon Ryan minister for communications and de facto supremo of An Post is upping his harassment campaign of his stalkers. Next we'll be hearing that he has set up a facebook group targeting some poor divil and is opening and reading their mail.

You beauty!

So last Saturday we win away against one of our play-off rivals Watford, and Wolves and Ipswich who are on our tails draw with each other. This, with two games to go, leaves us 3 points clear of Ipswich though we have 4 more goals in the old difference column. There again 2 goals in their favour and 2 against us and it would be down to goals scored and that would favour them. So it is that the bum is decidedly squeakier than usual.

With performances like this Moses really could be leading us to the promised land.

The table in full

Awesome speech - dude.

Bush expresses his appreciation of the Pope's speech as only he can



Later his showed the pope around his crib and let him play the preview version of GTA V on his 50" plasma while his old lady Laura mixed drinks and served pork scratchings.

Ciaran Cannon elected leader of PDs but how?

Congratulations to Ciaran Cannon on a personal level but asking the obvious question but how did the votes really play out? Because that is what will determine if the party unites behind him or goes its separate ways. I acknowledge that I'm guessing here but if I'm wrong about one area then it has a knock on for the others.

Baseline information that we know at this stage.
Oireachtas members 40% - I think we're guessing a 2:2 split here
Cllrs and senior figures 30% - we were told that the cllr were breaking for Cannon 2:1
Party members 30% which would imply the membership broke for O'Malley 2:1

Alternative scenarios
Alternative A
Change in the Oireachtas members 40% - I can't see Grealish or Cannon voting for anyone other than Cannon so the only other possible outcome here is 3:1 for Cannon with Harney supporting him. Which means that O'Malley just have won both the membership and cllrs vote by almost 2:1 to come as close as she did. Which would be a major turn up and a problem for the party if those lower in the political pyramid on whom the party depends had chosen one person but it was undone by the sitting leader and minister. I would rate this option as unlikely.

Alternative B
Oireachtas members 40% - I think we're guessing a 2:2 split here
Cllrs and senior figures 30% - we were told that the cllrs etc were breaking for Cannon 2:1, but maybe that didn't happen as was suggested and he just won convincingly more here than O'Malley did, but not 2:1. However -
Party members 30% - that still implies O'Malley won almost equally more of the membership. And they are the ones relied on canvass leaflet drop etc, will those that supported O'Malley come out if they suspect that their cllr went the other way?

B is the more likely scenario in my view

Alternative C
Oireachtas members 40% - I think we're guessing a 2:2 split here
Cllrs and senior figures 30% - we were told that the cllrs were breaking for Cannon 2:1, but maybe that didn't happen as was suggested and in fact was a very even split.
Party members 30% and that means we almost have to have a very even split in the membership.

C is a less likely scenario in my view than B but marginally so.

Alternative D
Oireachtas members 40% - I think we're guessing a 2:2 split here
Cllrs and senior figures 30% - we were told that the cllrs were breaking for Cannon 2:1, but maybe that didn't happen as was suggested and in fact it was all nonsense and O'Malley romped home amongst the cllrs etc. Some of whom may now decide the jig is up and depart the scene between now and 2009 locals
Party members 30% but that means that Cannon won the membership convincingly. And that if cllrs depart he has eager members ready to enter the battle next year.

Alternative D is the most hopeful one for the PDs but it seems bar far the the most unlikely.

I'm open to people giving alternative options but can they relate them to how the numbers played out in the electoral colleges?

Glad all over.

I'm like some bloke watching his rivals kill each other off while doing almost nothing myself other than my normal work week to advance my cause. Sort of a footballing Francis Urquhart. Last night Wolves lost to WBA to leave themselves 3 points behind the 6th and final play-off place which Palace currently occupy. Wolves still have a game in hand but since they are also 9 goals off our goal difference it would seem that, for the first time this season, making the play-offs is entirely in our own hands.

We have Hull and Watford, both of whom are above us, to play away from home over the next 2 weeks and then finish up with a final home game against Burnley. The team is shockingly young, with the likes of Clinton Morrison looking like an old stager at this pint. Victor Moses, Sean Scannell (Irish u21) and the lads we've brought in on loan, in particular Scott Sinclair looking like they have real quality. He really stands out as a prospect and reminds me of a young Mr Ashley Cole that we had on loan about 8 years ago. I doubt Chelsea will let us have him long term.

The final Cylon

I've been thinking about what would be the most unexpected thing to do with the final Cylon and what occurred to me is that all the speculation is focused on the living. So why couldn't the final Cylon be someone that has died in the Series to date that they happen to come across on some planet or base in the final episode of the first half of the last series. And then we get some back story on them as the start of the 2nd half of the series.

After all we should be able to presume that the final five can resurrect just like the other 7even flesh jobs. And so this final member of the final five may have died and gone to some place where they were resurrected (where a place had been prepared for them as the Testament would say), and we've had a small bit of foreshadowing in that Lee Adama asked his father what if it had been his brother that had returned rather than Kara. So my wild guess is that the final Cylon could be the other younger Adama boy Zak. Or more probably but still on the same theme another character who has been killed in the series so far, like the President's old PA - Billy Keikeya.

Amazing uses for the Wii remote

Ted as ever as another excellent short (5 minutes or so) clip demonstrating someone taking something we've quickly come to accept as background and upgrading it to be so, so much more. I don't normal post tech stuff here, that really belongs either on the personal blog or the work proper one but this deserves a bigger audience.

Hat tip to Giuseppe Torre.

What is better than Gaius Baltar?

Why double Gaius of course! I think the sign for the deep end must have been some way back, cos the place he has gone in off is way beyond deep. "She's a sexy lady"

Christ, Breakingnews.ie has gone all schmancy

Just have a quick check and I know they've been trailing this for longer the Navan rail link but they've revamped the site completely. Now if they could take that extra 30 secs to spell check and proofread posts they could be really onto something. I like the time of the updates being displayed. I'm like the PSB's Disco 4 for that matter but that is for another time.

Inanimate carbon rod vs. Olympic Torch

"The torch was taken on a surprise route through San Francisco" according to the BBC. I've been to San Fran just the once and with those hills you'd want to be pretty carefully planning your routes or you could have yourself a coronary. As for the Olympic Torch...well...at least the old Inanimate Carbon Rod could make it through the streets without being guarded by armed troops and anyone that did want to get it would be doing so out of adoration. Most people appear to want to snuff out the dear young Torch.

Are Irish blog awards really like the WWE?

Are changes really afoot in the Irish Blog awards? In 2007 the nominations were voted on for the short list and the award winners were judged. In 2008 the long list, the shorter list and the final short lists were all judged. Why the change? No one really knows. And the sad truth is people are made wary of asking because if you fall foul of the main man, you'll find yourself blamed for making him ill by such occult means as applying to attend the event. For the record, I think that by in large the right people have won over the first few years of the awards but that doesn't mean they won for the right reasons. The vast majority of people who are blogging have no idea what criteria were used, who chose them, and how any inconsistency in judging was resolved.

I posted some simplistic analysis a while back on some of the problems that can arise from having annual awards with nominations only at the end of the year with the intent of simply highlighting that the individual posts nominated might not have been the best examples of each person's work. Instead of someone thinking, hhmm that could be something of a difficulty, maybe we're not seeing the best posts being nominated, how can we solve this problem. I was castigated and it was incorrectly stated I had contacted blog nominees informing them that they were ineligible.

We were all told that there was a crying need for judges but I'm aware of people who had been blogging longer than the awards have been going who never even got an acknowledgment to their offer to judge. A case of knowing the wrong people rather than the right people? People were apparently sent blogs 'as Gaeilge' to judge despite a self admitted lack of even the basics in the language.

An all powerful committee presiding over events isn't necessary by any means but some quite basic, and clearly transparent rules are at this stage. Best posts to take one example should be those from one date to another say 01/01/0X to 31/12/0X encompassing the preceding 12 months and not some make it up as you go along effort temporally dribbling back and forth into previous and future years. Set some minimum requirement for how a nomination is to be accepted, tell the public what the criteria are going to be for each category. And do all this well in advance. Anything done in secret is going to lead to suspicions no matter who is doing it.

As for the end of year Best Post problem, my suggestion still stands that a dead letter email address for Best Post that all Irish bloggers could have embedded it in their layout would be one really simple means to overcome the end for year bias in the current system. The inbox wouldn't need to be looked at until the year but we might just get better spread of nominees. Or at the very least have a degree more confidence that nothing really good from the early part of the year doesn't get missed out.

As regards the suggestion that previous winners should be barred I would think that a bad solution to what may be a temporary problem (remember Real Madrid won the European Cup 5 times in a row and the Kerry Ladies footballers won the initial 9 All-Ireland titles). I have mentioned it to a few people that those who make the short list each year should perhaps form the basis for an "Academy" type scenario, so that those passing judgment are peers of those they are judging. One could also give different weighting to each college within the Academy 30% to a public vote, 30% to the Academy and 30% to selected judges and 10% awards a la the Eurovision based on traffic.

What really lies beneath

Fine Gael's bestest friend has a new website and facebook group called Take Enda with you, aimed at getting Bertie to ...well...convince or kidnap Enda Kenny into resignation - it isn't made clear. What is peculiar is the same person never signed up to the Resign, Mr Ahern Facebook group, he reckons Bertie is a ledge and lets on to people that he has joined this Facebook group when in truth he started it. Why so coy about his motives? Where was the ResignMrAhern.com? Could it be that all this is really about providing cover to Bertie during his tribulations? Why not take Cullen with you? Or Dempsey? Or Hanafin?

Of course, it's still a free country and people are entitled to have their opinions and express them but what actually is the opinion being expressed here? Is it really that Bertie is a ledge? A man who has more stories about multiple sums of money equivalent to half a years salary being lodged all over the place by a man who claimed to have no bank accounts. That is a 'ledge' in his view. Paul O'Connell is a ledge as are Mike Frank Russell and the Puck goat. Bertie is no ledge. Or put another way if telling 'stories' about receiving large sums of money makes you a ledge in someone's book what does that make the one whose book it is?

Too bloody right I can

dream. Yesss. 2-0 to the Eagles away against Stoke. A lovely cross from Sinclair to set up Soares and a deft volley from Fonte (a defender mind). Glyn Whelan for Stoke got in what was in all fairness an excellent volley with 5 minutes of normal time to go, and with 5 minutes of injury time added on it was indeed squeaky bum time. Yep, we were lucky. But sometimes you need luck.

Palace vs. Stoke

So the big run in starts here, Palace have an outside shot at the play-offs aided by the fact that we play 3 of the teams above us away from home. That means the pressure is on them to get wins to stay on course while we're outsiders and not expected to do as well.

Mon 7 April 20:00 a Stoke City SKY
Sat 12 April 15:00 H Scunthorpe
Sat 19 April 15:00 a Watford
Sat 26 April 15:00 a Hull City

Sun 4 May 15:00 H Burnley

Realistically, I would favour Wolves for the final play-off place but a man can dream, a man can dream.

Appeared to have some very unusual thoughts in relation to race, music and golf

A rather sad murder case is currently going through the courts, but it has in the manner of things provided me with one the strangest comments I've ever come across. The last line of the report I've linked to says "Mr Gageby said Mr McLaren appeared to have some very unusual thoughts in relation to race, music and golf."

Race, music and golf. I'm stumped.

Unmistakeably German

An interesting play on national stereotypes



Interestingly there are a series of viral mini ads with the cast and crew. Between you and me, the old Wagner is quite stirring.

Minster for Defence channels Colonel Abrams

The Limerick Post has a real contender for Photo of the year for this article.



Seems like the minster for Defence is channelling semi one hit wonder Colonel Abrams



Oh, oh he's trapped.

And we're back!

After the little problem earlier, P.ie has returned by means of a trip to the home of President G.W. Bush (oh God what have we done!)

In other news, legal action is to be take against people pubs discussing the Late Late.

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

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

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

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.