Battlestar - Irish Government cross over episode

It's not hilarious I admit but it's more a test of what might be possible once the telly card comes out of the plastic wrapping and into the maw of the machine.

Dublin South bye-election

It could be some months yet before we see the writ being moved for the by election in Dublin South following the early passing of Seamus Brennan. None of the early presumptive candidates from FF/FG/Labour had large votes in the general election last year, so they start from a situation where their personal bases are substantially the same.

With almost 42% of the vote FF should be favoured to win easily here but much of that vote is personal to both Tom Kitt and Seamus Brennan and as such more mobile than might otherwise be the case. FG with 27% would seem next best placed here after FF, but Labour's probable candidate Alex White got marginally more than the presumptive FG candidate in the general and has had a year as a member of the Seanad. That said as a local cllr O'Leary would have been on the ground more often than White and in a bye election the local connection counts.

Fianna fail - Maria Corrigan is in the Seanad and was appointed by the Taoiseach so if elected she can be easily replaced. However, if she does run then you can be sure her relationship with Joe Burke and by extension the former Taoiseach will come up. In that sense she may have first call on the nomination but it could turn out as a negative for her if the election was about another referendum on Bertie.

FG - Jim O'Leary must be favoured, he towed the line when required in shifting wards in 2004 and run an effective campaign as the 3rd option last time out. A safe solid choice.

Labour - Alex White may have to fend off Culhane again for the nomination. There again that may be all done and dusted.

Progressive Democrats - Fiona O'Malley simply has to run, whether for the PDs or more spectacularly for FF.

SF - will run whichever of their council candidate they wish to most promote most Most likely in my view to be Sorcha Nic Cormaic who polled higher last year.

Greens - would be best advised to do as SF will do and run someone just to give them a profile for the locals.

The bookies will favour Corrigan out of the blocks but if you see decent odds from the bookies on O'Leary or White throw a few quid at it or bite their hands off whichever you prefer.

Jedi Gym

Much of it is funny in the way you'd expect it to be, but there are less obvious gems too.



Excellent work my young apprentice. Hat tip to Kerry.

Willie takes aim, he shoots, he scores!

I was reading the Sindo on line yesterday (seriously, you don't think I'd paid for it?) and I was shocked but not appalled by the contribution of minister Willie O'Dea. Willie did his usual short, sharp shock job but on this occasion in his sights were the twin arguments commonly raised against Civil Partnerships that they will undermine existing marriages and that God has told some folks that it just ain't right. While I'd personally prefer if the government went further with these proposals I'd not be inclined to vote against them just for the sake of it. The piece is short and well worth reading. Nice one Willie.

Dr. Who prediction

Since the place they've gone to is 2 secs out of phase with normal time it is entirely possible to bring back Christopher Eccleston as a one off. They could even do one of those different person in the mirror things to have David Tennant and Eccleston on screen together. Just a guess mind, the jury is still out on my prediction about the final cylon.

Talking down the economy

Why is Cowen so exercised about this - there is a long and honourable(ish) tradition of it in Fianna Fail.

“	I wish to talk to you this evening about the state of the nation's affairs and the picture I have to paint is not, unfortunately, a very cheerful one. The figures which are just now becoming available to us show one thing very clearly. As a community we are living away beyond our means. I don't mean that everyone in the community is living too well, clearly many are not and have barely enough to get by, but taking us all together we have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amount of goods and services we are producing. To make up the difference we have been borrowing enormous amounts of money, borrowing at a rate which just cannot continue. A few simple figures will make this very clear...we will just have to reorganise government spending so that we can only undertake those things we can afford.	”
—Charles Haughey, January 9, 1980

Christopher Hitchens - water broading

If you've ever had an asthma attack or anything like it then you may have some hint of what water boarding is really like. We are so surrounded by air that we readily forget how frequently we require it. Christopher Hitchens in writing for Vanity Fair decided to see what it was like for himself.

This is the article from Vanity Fair which is well worth the read (only 2 pages) and below is some video of part of the experience he had. It is not disturbing to watch in itself but it comes more unsettling once you start to consider how you would feel in the same position.



The key point missed by folks who think this sort of thing is just plain dandy because of the war on terror is that the people it is used on are merely suspects who have not yet stood trail in most cases much less been convicted of anything. It is worth remembering that with all the time and resources available to them compared to the time pressures that the military operate under the justice system in the US has placed people on death row who have been exonerated later. And indeed executed some who were later found to be not guilty. So a goodly portion of those subjected to water boarding are most likely innocent of what they are suspected of.

The reason we have all the safe guards we do in our legal system is not to protect the guilty but to ensure that the innocent don't pay a price on behalf of others. I've long held the view, that when it comes to the death penalty, that those who seek to restore it should offer themselves as collateral in case of mistakes. When a single innocent person is executed then 12 of those who supported the restoration of the death penalty should be randomly selected and added to the line of those to be executed with no leave to appeal. After all, if you believe in the system so much why should you expect another innocent person to pay a price you wouldn't pay to ensure the system continues. So, let's do the same with water boarding. For every person who is subjected to this practice and not found guilty of anything then 12 supporters of the practice should be subjected to it too. I would include in that figure of 12 at least one lawmaker in congress and then work my way down into the state legislatures. After all if the price in civil liberties is supposedly worth paying shouldn't those deciding it must be paid also be the ones to pay at least some of it?

Maire Hoctor - makes a haymes of reassuring people on Haulbowline

Watch junior minister flail about on the issue of the waste at Haulbowline.

I did a post about cutting RTe clips down to size, I meant to get around to doing it sooner but this is one example of being able to get to the part of the clip that you want to talk about.

The C Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comreg do a thing - does it matter?

Comreg have directed (directed no less) Eircom to reduce what they charge to other operators by 65% for the proverbial last mile.

Will this have much of an effect or has the broadband horse bolted for other distribution means at this stage? The drop - in pounds and pennies, sort of - is from €8.41 to €2.94. Of course, Eircom have 28 days to appeal the decision to the High Court.

Who is missing from social partnership?

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

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

Can't someone just shoot Mugabe

I do wonder sometimes at human beings. We have our professed respect for human life raised to such a level that no one but no one will state the obvious and suggest that the primary blockage to people not being killed in Zimbabwe is one man. If some governments were to outline a path out of the chaos that is Zimbabwe today and that if someone will just take an opportunity and shoot Mugabe dead and take him out of the picture that they will be looked after. This is not the idea that if you remove the head the rest will wilt. Instead that if you remove the head and offer an alternative that is attractive and more certain that people might choose it to the benefit of all.

We could have done the same with Saddam, outline publicly to the upper levels of the Ba'ath party that we wanted a 1/2 year transition to democracy and that they could leave Iraq with some mild pilfering of the state coffers. If they didn't comply we would shoot them all and leave their families penniless after an invasion. If they shot Saddam and did what we asked them we might not like it but it would have better than what we have now.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

A trailer for the new Whedonverse show featuring Eliza Dushku - daddy likes!

Clicky - clicky

It been out a while I think but I missed it and so might you have.

Back from Waterville unWebbed '08

Lots done, lots happened, lots to write!

Lisbon:Lisboa - where do we go from here?

Two quick thoughts

One, if other EU members states decide to bully us then I think we should remind them that the EU was founded on the principle of equality amongst member states and we should be prepared to veto stuff up and down the agenda if they want to play the heavies. And we should be prepared to reach out to other members states in the event that some seek to move ahead.

Two, regarding funding and air time for referenda, is it possible that the government is concerned about having the referendum on children's rights because they would have to give air time to people who hate children? I mean the rules aren't that stupid that if we had a referendum on the age of consent that we should have to give time and money to those who would argue for no age of consent at all? Are they?

One time Fine Gael candidate suspected in demonic attack on Ceann Comhairle

I got sent this by someone in the past week or so and I had to plead repeatedly with all the sincerity I could muster that it really wasn't me in the image. This despite it looking very much like something I would do and even something I might wear. Those silky jump suits are such a Gitmo YSL tribute outfit. And that Wizard-Vampire look is so flattering for the more amply proportioned gentleman, and the purple brings out the demonic in the eyes.




Still the resemblance is there, and on reflection it might have made a much better poster that the real deal four years ago.

Where is Brian Cowen?

We've had Eamon, Enda, Patricia, Mary Lou everyone on the box but not a sign of Brian. Will he only appear once it is all over? Is he Royston Brady Mark II, won't come to see the voting if it is against him?

The PDs must be spitting

It is only a minor outcome of the referendum but the Progressive Democrats must be spitting that they didn't go with the No argument. There again the YES side might have won then.

Lisbon:Lisboa - the aftermath Part 1

It’s likely we're going to be picking over the consequences and causes of the treaty defeat for weeks perhaps even months. I’m going to have a quick start here but no doubt I’ll revisit it in more detail and with better grammar over the coming weeks. I voted YES in the end and not with any great enthusiasm. I suspect that now that while the remaining EU member states will continue with their own ratification processes that the reforms in Lisbon are dead. If the EU tries to press on without us then I think we should look to establish a new relationship with the Union I suspect other members states may in time wish to take this new Irish option.

I believe there are a number of questions to be asked from the outset.

Was the Lisbon Treaty lost from Day One? Or perhaps even before Day One?

Decisions on important matters such as voting for treaties, international agreements or sending out for food seem to happen in a particular order in the minds of most people. We have a need to answer certain questions in our heads before embarking on any process or journey and while we don’t have to commit to any one single answer before proceeding to the next question we do need something to build on.

Why are we doing this is the most basic question of all in my view. In the absence of a why we can’t proceed. Once we’ve a working idea of why we’re doing something we can move on to the more specific, almost mechanistic problems, of what and how are we going to do this, and then finally there are the more mundane matters of where and when are we going to be doing this.

Take getting married - you want to marry someone because you love them (there’s the why) and you have to ask them and convince them it’s a good idea (what and how) and the where and when of the marriage itself you should probably seek to work out together or just go along with their ideas for the sake of a quiet life.

Coming back to Lisbon, the government never explained ‘Why’ of we were inviting this treaty in for tea at all. They skipped that step and my belief is that the core lesson of Nice II was that if people were participating in the process they would support complex compromises involved but if they are presented with them as fait accompli then they will refuse to own them. To my mind, the seeds of the loss were sown even before the Treaty was signed. In the lead up to summit there was no significant advance trailing that. Sure the politically involved knew there was something afoot but the regular joe schmoe in the pub didn’t know about it and when the government came home with the legalistic version of Jack’s Magic Beans the public were suitably unimpressed. “You brought home wha now?”

I think the real seeds of defeat lie in the manner of the negotiation and signing of the treaty itself and these factors subsequently fostered the growth of the No argument more than the Yes side. In essence the Yes side lacked a convincing enough narrative as to why we had the treaty at all, not to mind being able to argue about or explain the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the content the document. In some sense, there wasn't a good enough origin myth to the Lisbon Treaty.

I've used Jack and the beanstalk comparison already but it stands repeating. The government never outlined in advance the WHY before it signed up to Lisbon which thereafter made the WHAT and HOW that much more difficult to convince people of. The vast majority of people don't spent their time wrapped up in political matters, they have jobs to do, children to put to bed, shopping to get, cars to drive and so on. So from the moment the Treaty was signed they were wondering ‘why are we doing this?’ And in the vacuum that existed the No side were able to decide the ground on which the battle would be fought and because it took so long to get going the YES side turned up like a bedraggled and uncoordinated army to be picked off piece by piece by the various No factions.

As for the campaign itself did the Yes side lose it or did the No side win it?

Let's be honest here all the protocols in the world don't convince the voting public when we've got a government addicted to taking a mandate to do X and going off and doing Y instead. They stated quite baldly that we wouldn’t be joining the Battle groups arrangement without a referendum, whether you agree with the decision or not that seems like bad faith. And since the general election we’ve been repeated told that the result really being a referendum on believing Bertie’s account of his financial accounts. I’m 100% certain that option of believing him or not simply wasn’t on the ballot and the general the population are equally certain of that too. People are just plumb tired of voting for one thing and getting another. So all the promises in the world that article such and such will protect concern A or B didn't wash. Working from the premise that this was just another great thing brought to you by the people they couldn’t explain their finances and told you that the economy was just dandy stretched people's credibility.

The wrong tone overall- The fact is the government used tactics that were suitable if the mood music was inclined to dance with the Yes side when in fact they were wary to start with and instead of those concerns being treated as genuine (even if not necessarily always based on fact or reality) they decided to mark everyone inclined toward No as being crazy and hope that the sensible people would be scared off from associating with the No side. There is a thin enough line between persistence and harassment.

The wrong pitch on specific issues - The discussion on the commission was a classic of the type, the argument about why the commission needed to be reduced was taken as read by the body politic, and the win for Ireland and smaller states that all being treated equally wasn't highlighted from the start. Other alternatives proposals such as a permanent commissioner for the large states with rotation for the smaller ones were never teased out in public.

The absence of the personal touch - I wonder to what extent the campaigning on the ground (or the apparent lack of it in many areas) by various party representatives had an impact. And the extent to which all political parties have become dependent on the personal armies of the local representative of the political pyramid to do the footwork. And many reps may have decided there was nothing directly in it for them, and so they didn't have their feet on the gas to the same extent. They were happy to have few posters but they tested the temperature of the water and decided they didn’t want to leave themselves on the losing side. I'm aware of a strong local campaign in a few areas and I can see that swung the vote in what was not fantastically fertile territory. However in other areas there was no local campaign.

Parties do not talk only to their own supporters or just to their own members. If the defeat is 55/45 as seems likely and with a turnout around 50% then I can't see how FF can claim that their supporters voted YES but that it was all down to the fault of others.

I voiced my concerns a good while ago about the mood of the electorate, and the likelihood that many people wanted to give the government a slap. I was sadly proved right in that regard.

Cutting RTE clips down to size.

Loads of people find the RTe means of putting their shows up on-line a bit tight in the crotch or perhaps somewhat restrictive is another more polite way of saying it. A wiser personage than I ,in the form of Jazz Biscuit, has advised and demonstrated how to get RTe clips into a blog and even created a helpful thingy. However as another sage mentioned you link to the RTe content and the people who are trying to watch end up spending most of their time trawling or even skipping and jumping over 30 or 50 minutes to get to the one good bit you wanted them to see. I think the technical term for this good bit is the shot where everything pretty much comes together. That said it is very reminiscent of some other viewing delights that I won't bother to detain you with just now, but I'm a single male and a man has to have some pleasures in life.*

Anyway, my guide below is based on FireFox but the same logic should apply in IE too without any real pain.

First up, RTe store the smil files for their Realplayer content at this default location

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/

i.e. http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2385780.smil

And what you really need to highlight the specific point you've decided is important for your viewing public is to find out the number assigned to your particular show. You do this by going to the show on the RTe site and once you're on the page where you could click on the links to open the slip in RealPlayer, you look up the page source from the browser. This is under the View Menu list as Page Source and it will open the generated source code for the webpage in a basic editor. You then need to search for "showplayer" and you will be taken to an area of the code like this

"javascript:showPlayer('/news/2008/0610/primetime_av.html?2385780,null,230'"

The number after the ? is what you're interested in here (you can also find the number by rolling over the clip link without clicking it. And when the location appears at the bottom of the browser, you could simply note the number with a pencil and paper (but I didn't tell you to bring those at the start so I'm working off you being in a complete machine environment))

You can then open the smil directly by replacing the XXXXX below with the number

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/XXXXX.smil

and hence save it locally to your hard drive. Once saved, make a copy of the file and open the copy in some basic text editor, (for God's sake don't be opening it in Word or you have all sorts of formatting characters making their home in it)

You then search for the place in the code where the RealPlayer protocol rtsp is invoked. Do this by searching for "rtsp", some example code you may come across below


src="rtsp://od2.rte.ie/2008/0610/primetime-184171-230.rm"
clip-begin="00:12:24.9"
clip-end="00:17:49.3"

You can see above quite clearly where the clip-begin and clip-end settings are. Those are the time marks from the beginning of the entire clip and you can change those to be where in the actual clip you want your version of the clip to start and end. Save the file and run it to see if it starts and ends in just the right place and once you've got it nailed, save it. Then the more awkward bit you need to store the smil file itself somewhere on-line so that you can link to it. I put my few files on missteps.ie

* still if your team wins in the end what do you care if the preceding 90 minutes were turgid rubbish broken only by lightening and pitch invasions.

I did this myself back when I was electioning because I wanted to draw attention to some of the inconsistency of the views of a particular government junior minster. On the more general pint, I've finally got that TV card and S-Video cable on order so watch this space for much better video commentary in future. It probably won't be Jon Stewart but what is!

Most of the credit for the tech stuff should really go to Braz. He even had some suggested reading which I promptly ignored. All the same though I've included it here in case you're more sensible than I.

intro - http://service.real.com/learnnav/wb1.html
http://service.real.com/help/library/guides/realone/ProductionGuide/HTML/htmfiles/embed.htm
http://service.real.com/help/library/guides/production/htmfiles/smil.htm
see plugin sample at http://www.realnetworks.com/support/education/samples/embedded.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voting on Lisbon - update 3

So we've had two polls and a deal with the IFA and a "don't be chancing your arm" for SIPTU since the last post. I would rate things as YES - 53% NO 47% with a turnout in the range of 43 -46%.

Which doesn't seem a great shift since the last post I agree, but it seems to me that the positions are, as one would expect with less than one week to go, hardening. And the hardening of positions means that the possibilities for further advances are reduced. The first poll from TNS-MRBI will have spooked the horses a good bit not only in the body politic but in the main body of the electorate who were most likely thinking of staying home and doing a bit of work in the garden come Thursday. And the 2nd poll will have will have both increased that spookage but also reaffirmed that the cause was not lost for the Yes side. That voting can make a difference. The prospect of a close poll is usually like a rouge handkerchief to the voters. So I suspect polling could bob over the 45% mark and with that bring the Yes side home and dry. Yet only just, and it will be interesting to see the regional differences and to try and interpret what they may mean for future votes and the elections scheduled for next year.

I probably do a final one of these on voting day and if I'm honest a post mortem or two.

Because he could die...

In the West Wing during season 3 , the idea was tossed around that they could replace the VP John Hoynes because he won't be able to bring in his home state of Texas. The discussion is ended by Bartlet deciding that Hoynes will be their guy "because I could die".

In the real world, with all the other considerations such as ideological balance, bringing in another state, forcing your opponent to campaign somewhere they had taken for granted, for selecting a VP, the oldest and indeed the original reason for the position is that the President might die or be killed in office and then the vice president has to assume the office and the quite rightly awesome responsibility that goes with it. We live in a pretty strange world and all too sadly a world that has some pretty strange and violent people in it. For that reason, both John McCain who could just as easily succumb to disease and Barack Obama because some nut job might decide he must die, the vice presidency selection of both parties may be more important to the election process than at any time since a former shoe salesman from Missouri joined the Democratic ticket in 1944.

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!