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

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

So next time we can vote too!

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

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

Have I heard some of this before?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why someone has to resign - Mary Harney

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

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

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

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

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

Light rail in Limerick

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

Hollywood writers strike is good for something

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

Financial Crisis, what Crisis?

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

Show me the way to go home - by Dublin Bus

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

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

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

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

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

A firing offense?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am a member of the human race

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

And here we are.

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

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

The new provisional car movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peition on the implementation of new driving restrictions

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

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

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

From my former life

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

Too scared to take the stand

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




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

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

More pics here

Best election program ever!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are watching us - from a distance

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

URuGuAY

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

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

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

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

Bertie Ahern "Liar in Chief" - Sue me.

So it turns out that Bertie has being lying all along in the lead up to the tribunal, he told everyone who would listen and many who preferred to have the chance not to that he had fully cooperated with the tribunal, that he was eager to get into it and have his day in court so to speak. As we have seen over the last 2 days that is emphatically not the case, he has dragged his feet on every occasion, he asked that the tribunal only look at his accounts from 89-92 when they were in fact dormant as a consequence of his separation and his lawyers asked on his behalf that only amounts over 30,000 should be examined. That would hardly constitution full and fair disclosure if he were in the business of selling houses.

It is worth noting that when you consider all the months and months it apparently took Bertie and pals to unearth all those tedious details about his bank accounts that right from the "get go" (as our American cousins would say) he and his lawyers were adamant that the threshold should be 30K. How did they come to pick this monetary sum unless they in fact knew that he made it a habit to deal only in the amounts less than this figure.

So let me be quite plain about this Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach of Ireland, has lied and he has lied about his lying. It's time for the truth. If Bertie can prove otherwise let him sue me.

Ripoff Art.E

The recent coverage of the proposed new statue / scuplture by Antony Gormley has missed a basic fact, it's not new at all. It is one he did earlier and in Ireland too. I should say I rather like the Angel of the North, or the "what the fuck is that?" as it was known for the first few months of its life.

Look at this forlorn lad, head downcast, hands by his side. He is known locally as the Rusty Man and is set in the plaza of UL.



and then look at the proposed chap standing in the Liffey



It's the exact same frigging dude, down to the stance and the hands in the pockets about to mooch a fag look. A moppy looking student type is all well and good hanging around the plaza in UL but standing next to the quays in Dublin peering down the blouses of our tourists?

The strange thing is that yet again something that is meant to be about the docklands as a new area bringing together the north and south of the city ends up turning his rather ample arse to the northside. Now what we should really get is something like this spanning the river!



Come on you know you'd like it. And those things do look like cool sabres or should that be sabers? Hmm....