The economy has sphinctered

It's pretty much official now that the economy is not slowing down rather it is closed for business. I did like that an auctioneer in Tuam on the RTe news was saying that there was a need for the building industry to reduce prices drastically in bring people back into the market and then went on to be quoted as saying there as €15 million in new unsold property in the area. Now was that €15 million in terms of the current asking price or should we read that as really being €10 million's worth? Tom Parlon joined in the fun fest by asking for a direct state bailout of construction. Wasn't he in a party once that believed in the free market?

Yes, indeed the Irish construction industry has truly overdone its reaction to the credit crunch or the fiscal trots as some might term it and we're stuck looking at the rest of the economy sphinctering out of sympathy.

Oireachtas reform

I know I've made some hay previously about reforming the Seanad to make it somewhat more consistent, but what about something more fundamental like reforming the entire electoral system. I believe that the Oireachtas, local government and large swaths of Irish public life are broken ,busted, banjaxed. I believe that the current system has served us badly.

Let's take for a moment the view that the Irish people really do need all these people helping them with form filling and ringing up the planning office and coming to their funerals. So let's keep people in the system to do that but let's also keep them the hell away from the drafting, consideration and voting involved in legislation.

Take the number of TD 166 and for every 3 of them at present let's try and suffice with just the 2 who will become what I would term public advocates. They will sit in a people's chamber that gets to vote on legislation but only to reject it by a 2/3 vote. So, that's 111 of them advocates to be elected by PR-STV. And then we should have 100 members of an actual legislature 80% of whom are to be elected by a list system on a provincial basis, and the remaining 20% by national list.

And those in the latter chamber would actually be the only ones who could draft, debate and vote on actual proposed new legislation. And then members of the cabinet can be drawn from both chambers or none. But they must be approved by Oireachtas committee (much like the US senate hearings to approve cabinet members.

And let's pay the advocates more than those in the legislature so that people aren't tempted to use it as stepping stone to get into the legislature as people currently use the county/city council seats. Pay the advocates 100K (after all they're doing the work of 1.5 TDs and we pay TD's 100K as of today) and the legislators just 80K say. Members of the cabinet get a top up to bring them up to 150K. And the top dog can have 180K and the use of a flat in town along with the lodge at Farmleigh for the family.

Obama vs. McCain - who is better for Ireland?

Does anyone in the media know anything? This piece in the examiner today states that Ireland does better under republican presidents than under Democrats. Really? Did anyone do any fact checking at all?

The 1950s were times of bleakness matched only by the huge rate of emigration with that nice Ike (Rep) what people said they liked in the White house. Most people reckon the 60s were pretty good here economically with Lemass and his plans and the general opening up of the country, but weren't Kennedy and Johnson Democrats? And then when things went to hell in handbasket in the early 70s that Nixon chap (Rep) was commander in chief. We had a brief boom in the late 70s due to the government getting drunk on tax cuts and inflationary public spending but the chickens and most forms of farmyard fowl came home to roost in the 80s. That would be when Ronald the non-McDonald (Rep) was letting things supply siding it up and trickle down.

Times were even tighter here under Bush I (Rep). Most people place the emergence of the Celtic Tiger from the undergrowth (though it's birth pangs were probably felt in the latter days of Bush I) at some point between '94 and '96 when Clinton (Dem) was still paying attention to non-cigar related activities and our recent housing related boom and bust was under Bush II. So, I don't there is any solid pattern there but if you were making any kind of correlation it would be more plausible to suggest that we do better when the Dems are in charge. Though we need a period of republican rule to prepare us.

As for the future it is not completely unreasonable to suggest that if Obama pushes a protectionist agenda that it may will harm our position but there is nothing in recent history to support the actual tone or title of the article.

Banana splits to reform!

The beeb are reporting that the banana splits are coming back. Hurrah, I say. It must have been ten years after I stopped watching it that I discovered there was a dessert of the same name.

Not long now

Is it just me or does the delays in the Russian withdrawal from Georgia proper remind anyone else of a couch surfer you met while on holidays, who turns up on your doorstep to take you up on your inebriated offer of crashage and who then makes themselves more at home that you intended and who appears to have no concrete plans to shift themselves.

"We'll be out of your hair tomorrow! Probably..."

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

Interesting question posed in the pub a while back- what if either of the sets of people who bought the HQs of the two largest Irish banks couldn't continue to finance their operations? Many people thought at the time that when BOI and ABI sold their HQs and leased them back that this was a sure sign that the property market had peaked. And that may well turn out to be the case. Yet what of the finances of those who bought them, what if they were to find themselves over stretched? Would the banks lean on them or ease off for fear that they might seek to renogitiate the leases

Old white dude 0 - Paris Hilton 1

When reading it I thought the idea of Paris Hilton responding to John McCain's Obama - Celebrity ad was really lame. Yet it works brilliantly, in what it has to be her best performance to date she is actually convincing talking about energy policy. Watch it here

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Russell Howards updates Yes Prime Minister

I had mentioned over on IElection that I'd seen a brilliant piece on Mock the Week done by Russell Howard. Well here it is if you missed it.



And this is a somewhat older piece of wit along similar lines.

Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:

* The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
* The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
* The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
* The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
* The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
* The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
* And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

Things I liked about yesterday

Things I caught or saw or hear yesterday.

Midnight in the garden of good and evil - really brings home how the visuals of cinema can shape our feel for a region or place.

Disclosure - not a very good movie, but it has a vaguely engineery feel to it and does suggest a great idea for a sequel. Let Demi Moore come back to try after ten years and try and buy the company but Dear God let the technology it is all tied in with be better than Cd-Rom's.

And then The Stand started with Don't Fear the Reaper by the Blue Oyster Cult. Just how good is that track!

Cuil launches, drops the L plate too.

Saw on the beeb site that Cuill* or Cuil as it now is has launched. I had personally suspected that Cuil was going to go after the search as a service market for big iron folks but it is out there now as a Joe Public service.

Interesting that folks locally seem to be focusing on the Irish connection with Tom Costello, however there is a strong Irish link on one of the other co-founders in the office of the President of Cuill too. She was also in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign around the same time as Marc Andreessen of Netscape. She is a very, very, intelligent individual and quite pleasant too.

The best of luck to them I say. Interestingly, their frontend UI puts me in mind of Searchme.com which is more a search assistant in many ways. Now if cuill were use the Searchme UI as an option I'd nearly count it as love at first site.

Update: Cuill is stated by some as being derived from old Gaelic, it doesn't state it was our form of Gaelic. In Manx legend in Gaelic it would seem that it was a Finn Mac Cuill who created the Isle of Man, and through Fionn mac Cumhaill or Fionn MacCool we get to the Legend of the Salmon of Knowledge. And hence the link to the name. Now, I'm off to the leaba to read my Poirot.

*Just to be clear I'm not the Danny Sullivan quoted in the beeb article. He would be a proper tech-head commentariat person to my amateur dabblings.

It was just good clean S&M!

Max Mosley* has won his case against the NotW which characterised his engagement with five ladies of negotiable virtue as being a 'Nazi themed sex orgy'. As the judge said "The "bondage, beating and domination" that did take place was "typical of S and M behaviour"," So all good clean fun then!

I do wonder some times if we really need to be that interested in every aspect of people's lives. After all Max Mosley is running Formula 1 not a girls' boarding school. Is it in the public interest that every aspect of people's lives. In an age when more and more social activity is on-line and traceable are we saying to anyone that wishes to engage in any role in public life that they must be completely and unbearably open about how they live every aspect of their lives whether it impinges on how they execute that role or not? I would hope not, but I can see it going that way.

*the spell check with Firefox recognised Mosley but not Max! There's a message there I'm sure of it.

Is a big quake due in Japan?

Another quake in Japan today, following on from one off the east coast and another in the north in mid June - the 3rd in about 6 weeks. Quakes are not uncommon in Japan but there is a concern that large quakes can de-stabilise areas as well as relieve tension in the tectonic plates. They can be sort of pre-shocks to a more significant movement.

When I was living there, I remember being told that there are three major faults lines running through the main island and the Kanto region where Tokyo-Yokohama are and that all 3 were due/overdue to hit, that was back in the early 1990s. The Kanto area gets a big one every 70 years and the last one in 1923 caused 140,000 deaths mainly from fire. I think two of the lines were north-south and the other from the north-west to south-east. I don't think was more than a 4.5er when I was there which amounted to more or less a strong tremor where I was living. Still gave me the willies all the same.

Of course the averaging out of hits from quakes is rough work at best. I sincerely hope that the current quakes are simply relieving tension in the plates and not precursors to something major brewing in mother Earth's tummy.

Boston of all places has a risk of a magnitude 6 quake every 500 -900 years but the last was in 1755. However New England gets more moderate (magnitude 5) quakes happen every 50 to 90 years. And their problem is all the building that was done on the BackBay which is infill!

5 minute cake takes Web by storm!

The five minute cake recipe appears to be taking the male lazy cook world by storm. Load of folks are trying it and sending pictures of the results to their mates. And it looks moist and delicious. Now about those seven minutes abs.

Who watches the Watchmen? All of us I hope.

Watchmen trailer.



Got to say the Vietnam imagery is excellently realised, makes one realise why people would want to surrender to the good Dr. themselves. Pass it on.

Same sex relationships - won't someone think of the aunties?

Breda O'Brien returns to the topic again today 'It is the belief that wherever possible, a child should be reared by a mother and a father, and that children have the right to know and have a relationship with their biological parents.' I wonder if 'wherever possible' is the 'wherever practicable' of social thinking amongst the new Christian right. I say new right but they sound a lot like the old right to me.

I'm sure my own individual mail (see bottom of post) had nothing to do with her returning to the topic but I suspect she got lots of mail over the week and that fact probably did have something to do with her response. I had mentioned in my mail that I thought a more important fact was that 'Children have the right to be raised in a loving home, ...'

First though, let's start with the above comment she made' children have the right to know and have a relationship with their biological parents' - is she in truth suggesting that all current adoptions should follow this route with biological parents being required to play an active part in their children's lives? I would wish that she would be clear and state that she is also objecting to the adoption of children by single people and also objecting to IVF. David Quinn has mentioned that a few times but hasn't banged that drum too loudly as most people are inclined to be sympathetic to those who go for IVF. They're no eejits these lads and lassies.

Moving on from there she doesn't mention at all that more important than being 'reared by a mother and a father' is that you are reared in a loving, nurturing and supportive environment. the mere presence of a male parental unit, and a female parental unit is not sufficient to ensure that those elements are going to be present. Shouldn't we think more about the importance of children having loving and caring parents at all than what their sexual orientation is?

This is what I'd sent to her last week, I'm sure she had other comment too during the course of the week.

'I’m not at all clear how asking a straightforward yes or no question like “Are you homophobic?” is a "have you stopped beating your wife?" type of question. Surely a version of that question would take more a form like “When will you stop persecuting homosexuals?”. I suspect Matt Cooper was as interested to know what was behind Senator Walsh sudden interest in
the topic (or in legislation more generally) given that he is one of the more laid back Senators when it comes to debate within the Seanad. He is more known for his work tending to the needs of those cllrs who vote for him than a strong interest in the legislative role of his office.

I don’t doubt that people use the term homophobe as a battering ram in many a discussion but it is also the case that the rights of children is being used to serve a similar purpose. Children have the right to be raised in a loving home, while I would have my own bias that it may well be a family unit with a mother and a father, aunts and uncles, grandparents and even siblings has the benefit of long practice. But the absence alone of some component of that ideal family is not a sufficient reason to preclude someone from the adoption process. I wouldn’t seek to prevent single people or those in same sex committed relationships from adopting simply because of their sexual orientation or the fact of being single.

No one has argued for the right to adopt children that I aware of. In fact no one has the right to adopt a child. They merely have the right to apply as people should be only able to adopt if they are suitable to provide a safe, secure, loving and nurturing environment to the particular child. The greatest challenge to traditional marriage is the attitude of some of those entering into it that it should come as easy as pie, when in truth all relationships require work and are all the more rewarding for it.'

Dublin South bye-election - Part 2

This could be the PDs Bootle byelection, if Fiona O'Malley runs (and she simply has to given that she announced she was targeting this constituency once DL went to 4 seats; she can't choose to nor run now in a constituency where they had a seat up to the last election and then try to run in the next general election) and if she gets considerably less than what Liz O'Donnell got - say under 5% - then the party would have some cause to simply wind itself up much as the SDP had to do after coming in behind the Monster Raving Loony Party.

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.