Marking Time

Back to reality. I start my new job Monday week. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into something. We’ll see how long that lasts.

No more afternoons sitting in watching Jakers. Maybe that’s a good thing.

The storm-in-a-teacup media controversy over Michael McDowell’s problems with planning permission relating to his new holiday home in Roscommon remind me of something I’ve been meaning to come back in relation to the issue of one-off housing.

The violations of McDowell’s planning permission primarily relate to aesthetic issues regarding the appearance of the house. And while I am strongly opposed to one-off housing in principle I cannot accept that the appearance of a house is any justification for denying planning permission. It smacks of snobbery and a law dictated by so-called good taste, and leads me to question the motives of those who suppport it.

My objections are based on the lack of social and economic viability and sustainability of one-off developments. Objections made relating to the appearance of one-off houses seem to come either from a group who regard rural Ireland as some kind of safari park where they go walking at the weekends or else from a group who have got their own piece of rural paradise and don’t want to let anyone else spoil the view.

These objections distract from the real problems that one-off housing brings to rural communities and make easy strawmen for local gombeen councillors eager to use the simmering rural resentment against the ‘green welly crowd’ to avoid taking responsibility for anything.

(The lazy journalism relating to the McDowell’s planning permission problems also give the Minister for Justice a little more ammunition in his bid to introduce the ill thought-out press council. Nice one lads.)

Moore Hall Lough Carra, County Mayo, the home of John Moore, the first (and only) President of the Republic of Connaught during the ill-fated 1798 rebellion.

The house was burnt down by the IRA in 1923. They mustn’t have read their history books.

Note the blue skies in October. Summer is here.

Note to the people of Ireland: it rains here. It doesn’t rain all the time but it does rain a lot and with such unpredictability that it’s almost predictable. Today is a sunny day with blue skies and fluffy clouds but the smell of rain is never too far away. A few lonely drops fell on me for a few seconds as I walked through the town today.

But back to the people of Ireland. Walking around the town and observing how the people are dressed I notice that very few are prepared for the possibility of rain. An unscientific poll would suggest that about one in ten people are wearing a rainjacket with a hood or carrying an umbrella. I see people walking around in suits, jackets, jumpers, and even t-shirts. It’s October for God’s sake. You’d be lucky to get away with a t-shirt in July in this country.

Are we the greatest bunch of optimists or what?

I am currently reading We The Media by Dan Gillmor. I’m not overly taken with it so far but I don’t think that’s a reflection on the book. I am already familiar with most of the ideas, concepts and events that he writes about and I think most people who are interested in the subject would be so there’s very little new in it for me so far. It would be more useful to someone with less experience of on-line media.

The main idea of the book is explained in the title which is a modification of We the people… taken from the US constitution. The idea is that with the rise of the web and in particular personal publishing tools such as blogs and discussion forums, the ordinary people have more potential to be part of the media circus, making and breaking stories that were previously the preserve of newspapers, television stations, and big media corporations.

I decided to try and put this into practice. I was having problems with my connection to the internet and despite assurances from the ISP helpdesk that there was no problem at their end I was convinced that it was a problem with congestion in their server.

So after getting nowhere with the helpdesk I decided to post a description of my problem on the discussion forum on my town’s website and requested that other people with the same problem call the helpdesk. I felt that the only way they would listen was if they got a lot of complaints.

I got some responses from people who had similiar problems and it seemed to do the trick. The ISP contacted me and admitted that there was a possibility that the problem was at their end and that they would look into. It seems to be working OK now.

Anyway, I open my local paper today and what do I see but a big headline about the issue and a story sourced directly from my comments on the discussion forum.

Apparently they have sourced a number of stories from the discussion forum over the last few months.

We the Media in practice.

Last weekend we were shopping in Curry’s electical goods store in Limerick and we bought a packet of printer paper priced at 4.99 . When we went to pay we handed over a 5 euro note and were informed by the cashier that she had no 1 cent coins in the till.

That’s what you get when you round down the price of everything in your store to the nearest 99 cents.

This rounding down technique is supposed to be a psychological tool to make customers think that they are getting something for a lot cheaper then it really is e.g. 4.99 is supposed to sound alot cheaper than 5 euro .

In Ireland we’ve taken it one step further. Now it seems that 4.99 is equal to 5 euro, at least as far as Curry’s is concerned. The cashier made no attempt to compensate us for our loss, she just shrugged her shoulders and looked at us until we walked off, two more compliant suckers to add to the pile of post-Celtic Tiger Irish consumers.

Some photos from Kilkee, County Clare.

They’re calling it The Return of the Celtic Tiger or Celtic Tiger II.

Government tax receipts are coming in way ahead of budget estimates ( +1.6 billion euro) and government spending is 334 million less than predicted.

Everyone is jumping for joy at the economic miracle that is Ireland. Just how do we do it? We’re the envy of Europe (in our own minds, anyway) for our prudent and intelligent management of our economy.

But hold on a sec. Put the champagne on ice for a moment before we lose the run of ourselves altogether and talk ourselves into an even bigger housing bubble.

What the figures say to me is that Department of Finance forecasts and estimates are not worth the paper they’re written on. These estimates are the primary input to the government budget for the year and are used to decide how the government allocates funds to the various services. It’s pretty important that the predictions are at least in the neighbourhood of the reality that follows.

There have been severe cutbacks in services left, right and centre over the past year - mostly affecting the weaker and poorer members of society - as the government attempted to balance the books according to the estimates. Estimates that now appears to have been off to the tune of almost 2 billion euro.

So while the government pats itself on the back for so-called prudent management of the economy, hospitals and schools around the country are suffering from lack of investment and people on half the minimum wage cannot get a medical card (the number of medical card holders has fallen by 100,000 since 1997).

The government has overcharged me. They have taken more tax then they have budgeted to spend and they have actually spent less than they budgeted for.

I want my money back.