Marking Time

Labour and the Greens criticised reports that the main Government party is selling membership for a ‘Forum of Opportunity’ scheme to business people in a bid to raise funds for the next General Election.

A promotional leaflet promises members they will receive “networking opportunities” with ministers and TDs if they pay membership fees of €1,500 a year for three years.

Irish Examiner, 29 March 2005

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Mr. Dillon: Might I inquire how much of this particular commodity was consumed at the last dinner given by the members of Taca and might I further inquire whether it was the draught or bottled variety?

The Taoiseach [Jack Lynch]: A good few pints, if the Deputy wants to know, and we are well able to drink them.

Mr. Dillon: Were they pints of beer?

The Taoiseach: Murphy, Beamish and Guinness, in that order.

Mr. Dillon: It is a comfort to know that they are getting something for their £100. I was afraid that it was pure benevolence.

Dáil Exchange, 11 April 1967

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Former Kerry footballer, Deenihan, had stood toe to toe, and occasionally traded blows, with Heffo’s Army, the uncompromising Dublin side in the 1970s, and come out on the top.

Liam Lawlor was a GAA star of the hurling code for Dublin and Leinster, a fact for which the Kingdom man admitted, yesterday evening, that he is eternally grateful.

“Thanks be to Jesus he didn’t play football,” remarked Deenihan, who retired rapidly to the Dáil bar to recover his composure after his successful, if traumatic, call on Lawlor to resign his position.

The record will show that Deputy Lawlor resigned his position as Vice Chair of the committee which will shortly discuss new proposals on ethics in public life.

Karl Brophy, Irish Examiner, 2000

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Deputy Kenny and I have been Members of the House for long enough to know that there is a code of ethics whereby those who have been elected to the House try to remain elected. That is the code of ethics in this House.

Bertie Ahern, 09 Dec. 2003

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You think you have joined the democratic club only to find there is an inner circle club which will cost more to join. This whole process undermines proper standards of political conduct.

Under Fianna Fáil’s rules if you have the money you will gain exclusive access. Fianna Fáil are now offering the chance to buy influence.

Trevor Sargent, 29 March 2005

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They talk about free enterprise, or at any rate some of them do; and they all talk about democracy. But they don’t believe in it for a minute. They belong to a club. You’re not a member of it and you never will be.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

With acknowledgements to Billmon.

Man walking dog, Lahinch, Clare, Ireland

Here’s a sight that we may not see for much longer as Clare County Council introduce by-laws to prohibit dogs on beaches between the hours of 11am and 6pm.

Clare County Council sure like to throw their weight around. When the NRA said that they may withhold funding for roads if Clare County Council continued their policy of allowing one-off houses to be built willy-nilly on national routes the councillors blew a gasket and called it an affront to democracy.

Democracy apparently means being able to build houses anywhere you want without consideration for any supporting infrastructure, cohesive community, increased traffic volumes and greater numbers of road deaths.

And now with the restriction on dog walking on the beaches we can look forward to more road accidents as dog owners run the gauntlet of the highways and byways of Clare in their attempt to keep their pets in shape.

And who are the first people that the councillors will point their finger at when the issue of the scandalous number of road deaths is raised. Why the NRA of course.

Democracy, isn’t it great all the same.

Inch Beach, County Kerry

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When asked on RTE News tonight what he thought of the results of the North Kildare by election, Brian Cowan reiterated the Willie O’Dea view on government policy by saying that now that the people of North Kildare had no government representative they would find it hard to come by much in terms of government largesse. Put another way, government policy is to redistribute tax receipts according to who votes for the government party. Put yet another way, government policy is to blackmail the electorate and buy the election.

The big story of the North Kildare and Meath by-elections is not that of the winning and losing candidates. It is the disappointing voter turn-outs of 37% and 40%.

If any two constituencies could be said to have felt the worst effects of government mis-management and incompetence over the last ten years then North Kildare and Meath fit the bill better than most. Both have felt the pressure of economic centralisation in Dublin. As more and more Dublin-based workers are forced to live and commute from ever greater distances, the effects on infrastructure, services and community cohesivenes in the towns of Meath and Kildare have been huge. Overcrowded schools, underserviced housing estates, and massive traffic congestion are everywhere to be seen. Many communities have turned into dormitory towns with their populations rising in the early hours for the long commute to the city centre and arriving back home after dark just in time to go to bed and get a few hours sleep before starting over the whole circus again.

You would think these areas more than anywhere would see the consequences of bad government and mobilise themselves to do something about it. But over 60% of them don’t. Either they don’t see any connection between their low quality of life and government incompetence or else they do see it but don’t believe voting will make any difference.

But voting is the only way to make a difference, however small that difference is. Voting won’t make everything rosy overnight but it might force the likes of Brian Cowan and Willie O’Dea to treat the electorate with a bit more respect rather than the sheer contempt they seem to have at the moment.

Did I mention before that we only have ourselves to blame?

One of the reasons I don’t post here as often as I’d like is that I don’t have an internet connection in my home. Some people complain about lack of broadband, I don’t even have a POTS connection. No bits and bytes cross my threshold. Normally I’m posting here using two cans and a piece of string.

Until today that is. Four short weeks ago I phoned up eircom and ordered a telephone connection and lo-and-behold after 4 more phone calls to 1901 and much anxious waiting, today the phone connection arrived. Sure it was a little later than their advertised connection time but who cares. With service like that I can’t wait to purchase more of eircom’s irresistable offerings.

The experience left me nostalgic for the old state-owned P & T and its mid-eighties semi-state reincarnation Telecom Eireann which served us so well in the pre-privatisation days. Those were the days when you could expect to wait over a year to be provided with a telephone line and you’d be happy to get it at that.

Oh eircom, you take me back to my childhood days.

The post title ‘Disconnect’? Oh yeah, it’s the disconnect between the promise of those annoying Kathryn Thomas ads with their free everything, everywhere from the garden to the toilet seat, and the reality of me waiting 1 month for a basic telephone connection and getting a bill for a 120 euro connection fee even though I had been told I qualified for free connection.

If there’s one thing worse than a state-owned monopoly, it’s a privatised monopoly. At least with the state I have a vote.

When asked to justify the poor state of the schools and roads in North Kildare on RTE’s Prime Time last night Fianna Fáil TD and Minister of Defence Willie O’Dea said that no, it wasn’t as a result of government mis-management and lack of planning but rather that it was the inevitable result of our huge prosperity in recent years.

So the next time that you’re sitting for two hours in the morning traffic having dropped your child off at the sports hall that has been converted into a temporary classroom, spare a thought for the poor members of our government as their meticulous plans for the future development of the country are swept away under an avalanche of tax receipts. You really only have yourself to blame for the situation. You’re working too hard.

Later on in the same interview we got a glimpse into the level of quality on offer from the government as it attempts to hold the country together despite the onslaught of its citizenry who just don’t seem to know when to take a break. When asked why should the people of North Kildare vote for a government party member rather than a member of the opposition or an independent, Willie replied that the people of Kildare need to make up their mind whether their interests are better served by someone inside the government circle lobbying on their behalf or by someone outside with no connection to those who hold the reins of power.

So there you have it. Rather than any cohesive and coherent vision or plan for the development of the country, we have a policy of divvying up the hard won prosperity to those who stamp their feet, throw a tantrum and shout the loudest.

As I said, we only have ourselves to blame.

Mobhaile is Irish local government’s vision of how it will provide electronic access to services for its citizens.

It strikes me as a luddite’s vision of what the information age is; it’s the vision of someone who does not use the internet in their everyday lives but who at the same time enthusiastically embraces it as the solution to everything.

Even the name is confusing. Not only is it in the minority language and difficult for non-Irish speakers to spell, remember, and pronounce ( muh-wal-yah is close) , but it’s not even consistent in itself. It uses the modern spelling in the url and the old-style spelling (where the séimhiú replaces the ‘h’) in the logo. The meaning of the phrase mo bhaile is not strictly what they say it is either. Sometimes it means ‘my town’ but not always. It may be a trivial point but it says a lot about the mindset of the designers. Ease of use is not high on the list of priorities.

The implementation strategy is a variant of the well worn ‘boil-the-ocean approach’, attempting to deliver the whole wide world of local government services to your desktop, filtered through a one-size-fits all information model. It’s bound to fail. All the knowledge and money in the world will not give you the ability to predict how a service as complex as this will be used by the various service providers and end users.

Somehow I don’t think they’ve read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Small pieces, loosely connected is the only way to manage the level of complexity inherent in applications of this type.

The Mobhaile Developer Blogs don’t offer much hope either. Seems like they’ve all taken a long holiday. Go figure.

Old Head Pier and Croagh Patrick, Mayo, Ireland

Originally uploaded by Mark Waters.

Old Head Pier and Croagh Patrick, Mayo, Ireland, October 2004.