David Hartery

Kevin Myers needs to man the fuck up.

2011-12-05T09:03:00.000-08:00

Stoicism is a virtue, according to Kevin Myers. This is nothing shocking from a man who routinely circulates neanderthal theories, so perhaps his evolution to Hellenistic thought is to be applauded.

In his piece, "Suicide is self-murder and must remain taboo", Kevin Myers perpetuates two myths regarding suicide. Firstly, that suicide is an utterly selfish act. Secondly, that somehow you can "man-up" and decide not to do it.

To address the first (and don't let it be said I am condoning suicide, it is one thing to try to understand, a different thing to endorse the action) - yes, it is crushing to those left behind. yes, it is something that ruins the lives of those closest to you. But - and here's the crux of the matter - some times it seems like the only option. To people who live with depression or those who feel like their choices have been curtailed to leave them only one way out, that is the sum total of options that seem open to them. At the point at which you are contemplating suicide the world is a very small place. It would be lovely and fantastic if everyone had the constant clarity of mind to consider the consequences of every action. But if you've been lying in bed all day for 2 weeks and work has piled up around you, everything seems to be going wrong and the only thing that is certain is that you hate yourself, hate your life, hate thinking all the nasty thoughts that crowd into your head, then perhaps you can be forgiven for wanting a way out. Because it seems utterly hopeless. Kevin Myers decides to champion the cause of Gary Speeds wife and children. I cannot speak for Gary Speed, but when you're in a dark place, other people don't seem like the answer. You become a snarly ball of hate, pushing everyone away, despising their interruption of your obsession and ennui. So Kevin Myers, tell me that anyone who commits suicide is taking a completely rational decision to dick over their family, friends and everyone who cares about them. That's obviously not the case. They don't see them in the same way as they would normally, they don't see the options and opportunities that they would normally. Quite frankly they think the world and everyone in it would be happier if they ceased to exist. They just see a big chasm and are afraid. Everyone's afraid of death. Imagine how much fear it takes before that seems like the only option. Suicide is not "self-murder" because those who commit suicide are the victims. They haven't the intention to be otherwise.

Secondly then, Myers compares what he has decided is the cowardly decision of Gary Speed with the "selfless" decision of Sergeant Olaf Schmid to go to war and die defusing two IEDs. This is part of the general "real men don't kill themselves" nonsense that continues throughout the whole piece. Firstly, Myers is peacocking a very limited definition of masculinity that is actively unhelpful. The parading of stoicism gives the false impression that you can simply take the good with the bad and weather through. The only person I ever knew who said they were a Stoic was a depressive and an alcoholic. No one is an island and no one should be pressured into feeling like they have to go it alone out of some misplaced idea of masculinity. While I respect Olaf Schmid and regret his tragic death, there is nothing inherently more laudable to die defusing a bomb than there is in any other way to die. His family would no doubt prefer him to be able to come home to him no matter how "heroic" his death was.

Myers has this to say;

"These are the real heroes, who gave up a relatively easy death in order to live a far more difficult life, that they might faithfully serve others, in hardship, endurance and despair, when all personal joy had gone, and only a concern for others remained."

Firstly, I would like to think that in his regrettably too short time on earth, Gary Speed did what he could to "faithfully serve others". He was married and had children. That necessitates sacrifice and an acceptance of being second best in order to be a father and a husband. I have no doubt that up until the moment Gary Speed took his own life, he acted as best he could. I don't think his decision to commit suicide necessarily removes that. In addition, I don't think public recognition of his life is tantamount to a public celebration of suicide. I think we can at once recognise the contribution Speed made and also recognise the tragic circumstance of his death.

What we don't need, as Myer suggests, is more taboo. What we don't need is any patriarchal construction of "duty" compelling people to keep quiet about mental health or the fact they're feeling suicidal. When we tell people that it is unmanly to commit suicide, when we publish that it is somehow for those who are weak of heart, for those who simply could not shoulder the burden necessary to decide to live because they are fundamentally selfish and base creatures, we tell those people they are much more worthless than any issue metric of "valueless" that Myers can construct. When we tell people that, we stop them seeking help. When we judge those who are on the path towards suicide or start having thoughts about suicide and tell them that they are wrong, we make it less likely they seek help. Suicide is an absolutely awful thing. Knowing too many people who have taken that option, I sincerely hope for the day when people never feel like they have to take the step of ending their own lives. But telling them that they are failing in their "duty" and should just get on with it is not how we arrive at that day.

We need a society that is open to talking about these things. That shows understanding for those who do commit suicide. That attempts to educate and intervene where we can. That actively seeks to destroy norms and mores that are rigidly masculine and are against men speaking about their feelings. The true test of manliness should be he who is so comfortable in himself that he is willing to share the most deepest darkest of his secrets, to get help when he needs it and to recognise that there will be bad times but those he loves are there to help. That's what being a man should be and Kevin Myers should man the fuck up.

Burqa

2011-10-17T04:33:00.001-07:00

Old post i never put up here:

I think one of the points overlooked in the burqa debate is whether it is in the interest of the state to try foster assimilation and homogeneity. Like presumably in order to try and terraform society there must be an ideal that the state prizes, a “form” citizen abstract from the particulars of any one individual that is what the state views as their perfect subject, the one they're trying to make everyone into. Is such a goal something that the state should be trying to accomplish?

Why is this problematic?

Firstly, states can only pass broad based normative rules. In other to internalise the norms that the state seeks to propagate, there must be an understanding of “self” that those broad based rules apply to. It requires an understanding of your own position within society to translate those broad norms into an instantaneous subjective normative check. This is difficult to do, when your conception of who you are is not an organic one, reached on a journey of self-discovery, but an enforced sense of self that you are not comfortable within. When you are attempting to be this “form” person, you are not reacting as yourself, you as reacting as an aspiration or distinct personality and this distality of characteristic leads to difficulties in the acceptance and obedience of state norms. The state gives you autonomy on the understand that you're the best placed person to act in situations. Are you best placed if you're not yourself, but a shadow of yourself trying to aspire to a state creation? Surely liberalism requires individuality to prosper.

Secondly, rights are necessarily reciprocal and often times antagonistic. In a liberal democracy, your recognition of the rights of others is the only thing that makes a state function. States don't have the resources to intervene in every clash of rights, so a lot the regulatory behaviour is due to internalised norms (see panopticism). Further to this, often when I exercise a right, this majoritively excludes or diminishes the ability of another person to exercise theirs, property rights being the best example. If I exert my right to property, that necessarily excludes another person from claiming that chattel. This requires an ability to view yourself as distinct and separate from others within society. Firstly, in order to understand a reciprocal duty, there has to be a clear delineation between yourself and the person to whom you owe an obligation. If you are both just manifestations of a state “form” then this distinct understanding of self is absent and it becomes easier to become desensitised to the needs and desires that are unique to others, since in your conception they are the same as yours. Secondly, the antagonistic nature of rights also becomes problematic. Once you become unsure as to your own position and idea of self, it becomes difficult to figure out at what point “you” ends and society begins. It then becomes impossible to conceptualise restraints on your own ability to exercise rights that have externalities. If you cannot comprehend the differentiation between “you”, the “form you” and other people, then why should you not just take whatever action is in your own particular interest, since it is presumably in the interest of all parties, since they're conceptually the same.

Possession

2011-10-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

Have been reading/thinking about masculinity a lot lately, doing a module on nationalism and the gender realpolitik is quite interesting, both in the theory and in the participants in the class (who for the most part seem like Jeremy Clarkson-esque reactionaries).

What is quite interesting is the extent to which women are still viewed as chattel; the possessive rhetoric, emphasis on gender binaries and allocation of roles are all things I thought society was moving beyond.

like if nationalism is to be defined as a relationship with the nation qua "Thing", why is it that attacks on masculine authorities are not seen as as existential as attacks on women? Surely the Thing is as easily under threat when any member of that nation is attacked, why does the use of female combatants, attacks on female civilians etc amount to such an "extraordinary" circumstance. Children are understandable, since an attack on children is an attack on the future of the nation, placing the Thing under threat, an acceptable division as it is merely a temporal distinction. Raising the participation of women in nationalist conflict as an exception highlights the gender divide, insofar as the rationale behind it is that the nation is under specific threat when the minders/carers/indoctrinaters are menaced. This underlines the gender roles assigned to women, both generally and in conflict. It should be noted that I'm not arguing for the greater use of women in war, since nationalist struggles nearly always become captured by misogynist elements, but that the writing (even in academia) suggests a level of masculine socialization and even peoples reaction to women in conflict generally suggests a level of possessiveness and will to power that should be noted. It is also important to note that the essentialisation of the nation as a Thing, makes it necessarily exclusionary, insofar as it is "our Thing" defined by its relationship to a determined group called "Us". It is the conflation of the ownership of the Thing with the ownership of women, that I am pointing out.

Another example of this perverse ownership fixation is the reaction of Western male society to lesbianism. I think this is massively interesting insofar as there is a dual perception here. In male orchestrated depictions of lesbianism in pornography, there is little male hatred, however when lesbianism manifests itself in wider society it falls victim to general homophobia and hostility. Again, I think this is to do with male insecurity and systems of power. In homophobia generally, I think there exists what Zizek would call a "theft of enjoyment". While talking about racism primarily, I think it is applicable with how men react to homosexuality in all forms. Generally, society is created along lines of commonality (Andersons "Imagined Communities" is more nationalism reading that helps explain this, check it out yo'). This leads to the construction of an idea of shared personhood, insofar as this commonality leads to a blurring of the individuality of the participating persons, a constructed ideal of an overlap of similarity that leads to an assumption of shared goals and a resulting feeling that they are not a threat. Just as the Nation is a Thing, the state and society feed us an ideal of a Thing also, as a mechanism of both control (insofar as it is required to maintain the functioning of state capitalism, constructing an false idea of solidarity) and indoctrination (as we are penalised from straying too far from the common identity and aspiration placed on access to as close an approximation of this shared identity as possible). We are at once fanatical about the protection of the Thing (see Freuds castration complex) as well as full of loathing for our dependence on it. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons for the hostility to homosexuality, the idea that enjoyment can be obtained while not embracing our Thing.

Since the Thing approximates our own identity, indeed we aspire to correct our identity so it more readily corresponds with the Thing, an attack on our Thing is seen as an attack on ourselves. Seeing as the evolution of this protectionary instinct is primarily sexual in nature (see Lacan), nothing is more intimate an attack on our enjoyment of our Thing than the idea that there exists an alternative way to achieve sexual gratification. The existence of this alternative is seen as a threat to the existence of our Thing. This is the reason for the existence of "gay marriage undermines marriage" arguments, or the idea that the normalisation of gay relationships will somehow undermine the validity of straight relationships, arguments that seem nonsensical in the absence of this analysis. The mere existence of another Thing undermines our shared ideology that our Thing is fundamental to identity and happiness and creates resentment. Notable also is the fixation of bigots on the male sex act in gay relationships, a fetish that is often humorously suggested as being due to latent feelings, but is in fact a repulsion towards the rejection of their heteronormative Thing.

Lesbianism then, falls victim to this in two ways. Firstly is the general rejection of alternative sexual actualisation, which explains the hostility to displays of lesbian affection in public, that's been covered in the previous paragraph. Secondly, is the threat to this idea of possession talked about earlier, both in terms of the implied role of female subjugation to the Thing and also the inaccessibility to that particular male.

The reason why lesbianism is tolerated within pornography is that the role of the female is to be a mere object of male gratification. It is in this way not threatening to the existence of the Thing, as it corresponds with the male understanding of sexual relationships more generally. The lesbian relationship is there to make the man feel better about himself and is therefore not an inhibition to his enjoyment of the Thing. However, outside of this realm, lesbianism falls victim to the "theft of enjoyment" castration fixation in existence within the collective unconscious. This is the reason for the attempt of men in bars to force women to enact lesbian pornographic roleplaying, in order to forceably return them to an approximation of the Thing. Their existence in a happy relationship that necessarily precludes them from male sexual dominance is the most ultimate affront to the Thing, hence the hostility suffered.

It doesn't even have to be lesbianism that is a threat to the thing, insofar as the Thing considers females to be possessions. Sexually assertive women are branded "sluts", a badge that very often has more to do with jealousy and unavailability than sexual promiscuity. The idea that the Thing is under threat by the sexual liberation of women is the driving force behind many reactionary movements, see the Christian right. This is only exemplified by the reaction to foreign "sluts", where the Thing is portrayed as under threat from the glamourisation of sexual freedom abroad, which neatly dovetails the national jingoistic Thing with the sexual possessive one. Arguments that American movies or French pornography are harming our children by increasing their sexual demands are a typical example of hysteria regarding the death of the Thing.

It is for this reason that I think the construction of national identities at present, along with social conditioning and the existence of institutional and cultural priors, necessarily exclude the free participation of women as they are constantly and (even now) pervasively considered both chattel and Other. The existence of this fetish for a national, cultural and state capitalistic Thing means that as long as both property rights and patriarchal mores exist, women will be tarred with this male appropriation as sex objects.

Speech

2011-10-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

“The kind of people that say “political correctness gone mad” are usually using that phrase as a kind of cover action to attack minorities or people that they disagree with. [...] And I’m sick, I’m really sick– 84% of you in this room that have agreed with this phrase, you’re like those people who turn around and go, “you know who the most oppressed minorities in Britain are? White, middle-class men.” You’re a bunch of idiots.”
― Stewart Lee

I am, as of yet, slightly undecided where I fall on the decision of the University Philosophical Society to invite Nick Griffen to debate the motion "THB immigration has gone too far."

Incitement to violence and incitement to hatred are both things that I believe should be criminal, with suitable restrictions placed on free speech to enable everyone to exist within a society without feeling alienated or threatened in their normal life.

I am also a person who, perhaps unreasonably, thinks debating matters. I think there's a value in the discipline required to outline points in a persuasive way and I think it's good that there are still a number of people who reward those who cultivate that discipline with prestige and a certain level of influence. The University Philosophical Society is lucky and privileged to be custodians of that platform.

There are two main issues here, I guess. The first being the abstract legitimacy of the address and the second being the specific responsibility of the Phil.

Free speech is important, I don't dispute that. It's important that ideas get their chance to flourish, that a strong cultural dialectic happens and we challenge assumptions constantly. However, I think, irregardless of the objective value of free speech, we can draw instantaneous and subjective judgments with regard to the value of particular speech. I, for instance, can simultaneously be against censorship in films generally and yet be OK with giving a 15 certificate to a film portraying violence as a tool of conflict resolution. Whether the state should be involved in this is a discussion for another blog post, but in this instance, it is not the state, but a student society passing judgment on the legitimacy of speech.

So then to the responsibility of the Phil. I can understand why they invited him. He's a high profile speaker, will guarantee publicity, headlines and he would be a highly entertaining speaker. He's practically certain to emulate his appearance on Newsnight and be face-chewingly awful. There's very little actual threat that he will be either persuasive or cause any direct harm. In addition, due to the fact that university debating is regimented and controlled with its own set of exclusionary rules, he will not have the nous or experience to succeed in the particular discursive space open to him.

Notwithstanding that, there is an issue with confirmation bias. While I would like to believe debating matters, the reality is that it is unlikely that a debate with such a high profile and extreme speaker will actually change anyone's opinion. In the media and publicity circus that will surround the event, the only thing that will happen is that middle ground opinion will be stifled and actual debate on the issue will not happen. What will happen instead is that the vocal anti-Fascist movement will make a lot of noise and, more sinisterly, the silent nationalist group will totemize Nick Griffen. The BNP is an organisation with a history of victimizing ethnic and other minorities. The only people who will attend this debate will be those who already hate Nick Griffen and those who only go to fetishize him. I worry for those who could be victimized afterwards.

The Philosophical Society has a platform to invite speakers of the profile of Nick Griffen, due to the prestige and history of the society. It goes without saying that such a platform comes with responsibilities.

I am tending towards the belief, however, that this address is an abuse of that platform. Nick Griffen's visit gives such a nebulous and unquantifiable "benefit" to free speech in this instance, that the very real harms he poses with regards to a re-energized and freshly inspired nationalistic rhetoric have to outweigh any positives the Phil can claim. There are surely so many other speakers who can discuss jingoistic restrictions on movement without his baggage. It would be better to invite one of them.

Norris

2011-08-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

This is partially a response t o a column on The Journal.ie http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-why-norris-had-to-jump-%E2%80%93-and-who-pushed-him/

People hear what they want to hear. They select newspapers and media sources based on how closely they re-affirm their own personal views. We all pick and choose facts and examples to back up our own subjective view of the world. Newspapers know this. A basic law of economics is that you cannot set both price and demand. So newspapers have their audience picked for them. And they pander to that audience. Newspapers construct narratives and views of the world and then report the facts in such a way as to support the pre-existing narrative, the narrative that makes their customers feel safe and keep consuming. Any idea that any newspaper is a “paper of record” is entirely ridiculous. Even the corporations that most attempt objectivity are guilty of unconsciously creating a narrative. The selection of facts to report, the necessity of editing and shortening articles means that certain things are prioritised or unreported. The use of loaded language or certain “framed” terms captured by vested interests means that even the words used to convey an idea can lead to the creation of a hyper-reality. One only has to look at the hatred that the British right wing has for the BBC to see that even those who attempt to report impartially create a narrative. I stress the primacy of newspapers and media, because much as I love Twitter, it is a secondary echo of the media narrative. Much in the same way as people seek the newspapers that agree with their opinions, the things that they post on Twitter are those same opinions that they seek to re-enforce by having their ego massaged by re-tweets, much for the same end as they read a newspaper. It is not fundamentally different, other than having a much narrower reach and impact due to the imbalance of authority and pervasiveness that Twitter users have compared to mainstream media.

Senator David Norris is guilty of nothing more than falling victim to media constructed narratives.

Let us look at the facts.

David Norris is a gay man. He is openly gay and a strident activist for gay rights causes. However, David Norris is much more than that. He is an advocate for many human rights causes. Indeed, his much reported relationship with Ezra Yizhak Nawi began when he was advocating on behalf of Palestinian rights. He is a highly intelligent Joycean scholar. He is a man who has been in the Seanad for many years as probably the most outspoken member of that house, passing opinions on a plethora of different policies and bills. However, reporting on his candidacy (and even the rhetoric of his supporters) hung on his sexuality. At no point did his press ever deviate far from references to his sexuality, despite his best efforts to stress that his is a humanitarian and would not be a “gay” president, but a president for all people in Ireland. It was clear that no matter how popular David Norris became, or even if he succeeded in his bid to be president, that the media and public would be fixated on his sexuality. This is how the narrative that would eventually end his candidacy took shape.

I was dismayed when the McGill article was brought up. A discussion of the practice of pederasty in Ancient Greece is something that I have discussed before. It is something that is amazingly important in understanding the history and evolution of sexual mores and also the treatment of sexuality in literature, especially romantic literature which owes a large heritage to Greek romantic influence. However, the predominant narrative was that while Norris was probably just about allowed to have an academic discussion on pederasty, it was “unwise” or “a little concerning”. Sorry what? If any other politician were to discuss the subject, if someone was to publish an academic article on it or if a radio program was to have a discussion of the topic, that would be fine. However, it is something that is silly or dangerous for Norris to discuss? Why might that be? Is it because he’s gay? Yes, that is entirely it. Because absolutely no one else would get the kind of hysterical media reaction for discussing something so banal and un-newsworthy as Norris did. Because within the narrative that society has constructed, homosexuality and pedophilia are roughly the same thing. As far as Irish people are concerned, gay people cannot discuss anything to do with children, because deep down, they just want to sleep with them. That is the narrative that emerged. The reason that story resonated so much with the Liveline audience and got so much coverage is that it fit snugly into everyone’s pre-existing prejudices. “Sure didn’t David Norris already have the pedo-apologist tag after the Cathal O’Searcaigh thing” was the party line. Ignoring the fact, which as two of a very very small number of high profile Irish gay men involved in literature, it would have been more odd if they hadn’t known each other. Also ignoring the fact that the documentary didn’t give O’Searchaigh a right to respond and there were legitimate questions to ask over the way that they portrayed things in the documentary. I’m not saying what O’Searcaigh did was right, only that Norris asked pertinent questions and once again, due to his sexuality, had their validity challenged. Once again, the way it was reported emphasized his sexuality and dismissed his concerns and tarred him with the apologist brush. So now, we see that the narrative very clearly wanted an uncertainty over Norris’ beliefs with regard to child protection, despite him never actually advocating any belief other than those most trumpeting child protection, such as his support for the Stay Safe program and also the Childrens Rights amendment, a position that Norris was much attacked for by people like the Iona Institute and Senator Ronan Mullen. But of course, those facts are unimportant, because David Norris is gay.

So now we turn to the last straw. The thing that forced Norris out of the race. The letter appealing for clemency for Ezra Yizhak Nawi. First things first – it is not an inherently bad thing to write a letter appealing for clemency. Notwithstanding the Fianna Fail vote grubbing that routinely asked for lesser sentences for rapists, murderers and other criminals in the interests of parish pump politics (which is a poor argument at best, two wrongs don’t make a right), it is sometimes a good thing to use the authority of an elected position in Ireland to try and do good things. If Mr. Norris had used Seanad headed paper to request the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, no one would care. No one would harp on about the illegitimacy of an Irish representative interfering in a foreign legal process. Politicians engage in politics. Politics and rights and all those other lovely things do not end at the border of our state. Atrocities, miscarriages of justice and moral outrages do not stop at the border of Ireland and neither should our compassion or desire to fix them. Secondly, there is an issue that he had a personal relationship with Mr. Nawi. I’m sorry, but how does that change anything? If something is wrong, then surely your relationship with the wronged should change nothing, morally? David Norris makes representations on behalf of loads of people. He fights for justice for many people in Israel and Palestine. He advocates against many instances of possible miscarriages of justice on behalf of gay people. Why, if he does this, should he then be forced to stay silent on something he thinks is wrong, just because the person involved happens to be someone he has had sex with? Like I just don’t understand why anyone should have that burden, especially when they probably know more about that particular situation (due to their proximity) than they would their normal representations. And it is perfectly reasonable to have doubts about the way that Israel went about trying Mr. Nawi. There are doubts about the way he was arrested. There are doubts about the veracity of the prosecution and the delay in taking the case to trial. There is the fact that victim didn’t want to testify against Mr. Nawi. While that might be because he, as a victim, didn’t want to relive the experience, but without knowing all the facts we can’t be sure that Mr. Nawi was taking advantage of the boy. Mr. Nawi himself states than the boy told him he was 16 and therefore overage. The idea that Norris is committing some vast child protection destroying outrage is simply false. He had legitimate concerns that yes, he used the powers of his office in a possibly dubious way to try and raise. But the point remains, the reporting on this was terrible. It was merely more fuel to the fire that Norris doesn’t take child protection seriously. That gay people are all secretly sexual deviants. If Norris was a straight man, a pro-Palestinian activist who was merely friendly with Mr. Nawi, this wouldn’t be an issue and he would still be in the presidential race. It is the connotation and conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia that killed David Norris’ bid.

My last point is addressing an even more odd and confusing smear. There are those whose only problem with the current “scandal” is the way with which David Norris handled it. They cite the ”unprofessionalism” of his response, how slow he was to dampen down the news cycle, the lack of spin and his inability to stop key campaign staff from resigning as the reason why it was right that he is out of the race. I’m sorry, but to my mind, his lack of spin, bluster and bullshit was one of the most attractive features of Norris. I like the fact that he took some time to come to a measured noble response to the allegations. I like that as soon as the story broke he didn’t have some polished PR professional dumping news stories or spinning it to minimize the story. Yes, he should have remembered that he wrote the letter and informed his campaign staff. Yes, it was a mistake that he didn’t do enough background checking and come up with was to minimize the fallout. But politicians are human beings, they make mistakes. At least Norris was real enough to own up to them and not attempt to hide behind a screen of trite catch phrases, misdirection and PR babble. It is rank hypocrisy to bemoan the lack of actual policies, the lying, the spin and the covering up that went on in the last election and on the other hand to complain about Norris for not employing those tactics. It is bizarre to me that people would complain about a politician for being too honest and too normal. The point at which FG can lie and spin their way out of a story where Enda Kenny lied to the people of Roscommon in order to get their votes, FG can spin their way out of the story that HIQA basically made up and bullshitted the report that closed Roscommon hospital and get away with it, with some commentators even congratulating them on their deceit, while on the end side of the spectrum Norris gets panned for not lying enough to survive the allegations or not doing more to cover up or pre-empt the stories disclosure, I think that’s the point at which I just want to cry. Like I could say that those objections are probably due to homophobia too, but in reality I think they’re just stupid.

So, in conclusion, the emergence of these stories, the way in which they caught the public’s imagination and the result of Norris having to resign are all due to an underlying bias in both Irish attitudes to homosexuality and the media narratives that pander to those attitudes. Norris never stood a chance, and you can bet that if he had stayed on they would have dug something further out along the same lines. As soon as anything to do with children emerged, Norris (as a gay man) was doomed. In reality, this election is more down to who is more intrinsically inoffensive as a person to the majorities tastes than down to their views being inoffensive. Because, in reality, had Norris not been gay, none of these things would have had any bearing.

So quite frankly Ireland, you should be ashamed of yourself. I know I am.

Judges Pay

2011-07-28T03:38:00.000-07:00

35.5.1° The remuneration of judges shall not be reduced during their continuance in office save in accordance with this section.

35.5.2° The remuneration of judges is subject to the imposition of taxes, levies or other charges that are imposed by law on persons generally or persons belonging to a particular class.

35.5.3° Where, before or after the enactment into law of this section, reductions have been or are made by law to the remuneration of persons belonging to classes of persons whose remuneration is paid out of public money and such law states that those reductions are in the public interest, provision may also be made by law to make reductions to the remuneration of judges.

Wittgenstein states that a sentence is only meaningful when it is used to say something. The drafters of the current amendment proposal would do well to pay heed.

As outlined in numerous blogs, the first 2 sections of the amendment are not objectionable. However the third part is a mangling of the English language that is, quite frankly, bad law.

You should read Paul McMahons blog for a pretty detailed explanation of why the amendment is awful. I submit one further objection. If you are to retroactively make pay cuts legitimate cause for cutting judges pay, I have a problem with that. The amendment sets up criteria for what is a legitimate pay cut. What if the most recent round of cuts does not fulfill those criteria? (unlikely, but as Fiona De Londras explains, the constitution should prohibit bad outcomes from having the possibility to arise.) If that were to occur, does this amendment then give a pass to go as far back as the government deems necessary to find a legitimate pay decrease to enable a cut in judges pay? Also, if at some point in the future, for whatever reason, judges pay is cut by the government - there is no moratorium on how recent the general pay cut must be to legitimize the cutting of judges pay. Does it have to be cut simultaneously within the same act? If that is the case, then a judges pay cut straight after the referendum will still be illegitimate. If there can be a time delay, the general public sector pay cuts took place some time ago, what is the time limit at which you can no longer use that general cut to justify cutting judges pay? These issues all need to be cleared up, especially since if a judge were to take a case accusing the government of illegitimate pay cutting, public backlash would be massive, not to mention how terrible it would look if judges were presiding over a case concerning their own pay. So it is imperative that this is gotten right the first time around, since constitutional “bad law” is even more sticky and pernicious than the normal kind.

Lastly, since I am just about to start my final year studying undergraduate law, I decided I would try and do a better job crafting a constitutional amendment than the people who get paid to do so. Here’s my attempt.

Desired outcomes that the current proposed amendment seems to propose:

1. Make past public sector pay cuts legitimate cause to make cutting judges pay as soon as the amendment is passed legal.

2. Make any pay cut that is imposed on a class within the public service applicable to judges, but not to allow punitive pay reduction to preserve the independence of the judiciary (this isn’t even clear if that is an objective).

3. To only allow such a pay cut in the even that it is in the “public interest”.

Be warned, I have sacrificed it “reading” like a constitutional amendment and the flowery language involved for clarity and certainty. Certain concepts are irreducibly complex and attempting to use ornate language just confuses and reduces the effectiveness of the message being conveyed, one of the reasons why the amendment (and previous amendments) is so awful.

Where, before or after the enactment into law of this section, reductions have been or are made by law to the remuneration of persons belonging to classes of persons whose remuneration is paid out of public money and such law states that those reductions are in the public interest, provision may also be made by law to make reductions to the remuneration of judges.

In the event of a reduction in monies paid to either a class of person receiving pay from the public purse or to the general overarching class of public employees (hereafter referred to as the activating reduction), it will then be legitimate to make provision under law for the reduction in the remuneration of judges. Both the activating reduction and the subsequent reduction in pay of judges must be established independently to be in the public interest. Any reduction in remuneration that can be established to be targeting specific members of the judiciary or intended to punish the judiciary as a whole shall not be valid under this section. Reductions to judge’s remuneration must be made as soon as is practicable following the activating reduction.

Fine Gael and Media try to spin this as sophisticated. It's not.

2011-01-10T04:31:00.001-08:00

I was thinking of letting this horrible misreporting pass, but seeing as Fine Gael are trying to portray themselves as the victim of some giant international cyber-terrorist conspiracy I think this blogpost is needed.

Dear Media, Twitter-users and Fine Gael.

Anonymous are not a group. They are not a thing. The best way to describe Anonymous (hat tip to @PaulMWatson) is a Modus Operandi. They are just people doing things for their own amusement who take on some of the features, cult and mystique of Anonymous to 1. make themselves think they’re badass 2. use it as a diversionary tactic 3. scare people.

Yes, at times there are some organizational structures, like during the Project Chanology episodes where organized wings set up. But that doesn’t make Anonymous a group. Those particular groups are groups, that adopt some of the Anonymous “brand” – but they don’t speak for everyone and they’re no different to a group of Neo-Nazis or similar. They take on the identity because it suits them, not because of ideology or politics or whatever. The Project Chanology and the Wikileaks raids had elements of ideology about it, but the majority of the participants are just in it coz they get to download all the cool scripts people write for them to make it easy to participate, they get to pretend they’re hackers, like in the movies, and they get to boast about it on forums and participate in the in-jokes and the deviant sub-culture. They are, to quote one of their memes, in it “for the lulz”.

So Fine Gael, you say “Last night we regret to report that our website was professionally hacked. The group that participated in this attack called themselves the Anonymous Group. This group has been associated with the Wikileaks investigation and attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard, and Amazon”

No, you weren’t professional hacked. Your hosting company are a pack of idiots who left a basic XSS vulnerability on your site. For those who don’t care for computer hacking, an XSS exploit is a Cross-site Scripting exploit, where you enter in a small amount of malicious code into an input box (like the hundreds on the FG site) that then run longer scripts stored on a different site, to do whatever you want to the site. It’s generally one of the first things competent software developers check for, but still, 80% of all website vulnerabilities are XSS related. (I myself had a lot of fun with the AIG website in the past, due to some sloppy coding)

These weren’t “professional” hackers, these were hobbyists, more than likely Script Kiddies, with a very limited understanding of coding and web security. They more than likely ran hundreds of scripts before finding the one that worked. And they’re not the same people who hacked Mastercard etc. They may have participated in the DDOS, but they are not ringleaders. Because there are no ringleaders. Just people doing things for their own amusement.

But I’m glad that you’ve fallen for their misdirection, when you’re off looking for “hackers on steroids” and chasing down some shadowy computer network 2 lads in rural I don’t know where will be laughing up their sleeves at you.. But it shows there’s some life in the Anonymous myth still.

It's all fun and games until someone loses their economy

2010-12-17T02:20:00.000-08:00

Watch me get all Wikileaks all up in this shit. (I recognise that not all local representatives are doing this, many of them are very decent people, doing a very good job, but to see the structures that some have put in place to effectively *defraud* the taxpayer turns my stomach)

In this time of unprecedented austerity, everyone is being expected to put their shoulder to the wheel? Right?

Civil servants are being expected to find efficiencies and eliminate waste in return for keeping their jobs. Banking sector workers are having their bonuses taken away at the last minute. Carers. Widows and others are having their supports taken away. The minimum wage is being slashed. Surely there is no one getting money for nothing and everyone is being careful with their pennies?

Well no, there is an orchestrated and cynical set up that continues to this day so that local councillors can maximise their expenses. I’m going to show you one of the most maddening documents I’ve ever seen and explain the significance of same.

Note the flashy name. Seems legitimate doesn’t it? Well look at the content. You can see, there’s registration on Friday. Publications to date is a euphemism for “Mr. Kieran Byrne will give out copies of his book”. None of the councilors will go. A talk for an hour and a quarter on Saturday. Then NOTHING ELSE until a “networking session” on Sunday. That means that the councilors that go to this claim 2 overnights in expenses to talk about utter shite for less than an hour and a half. BUILDING A BRIDGE TO ENGLAND? How is that useful to anyone?

You will also notice that they put the meetings on in out of the way places. This one is on in Letterkenny. Other ones are on in Killarney, Bundoran, Clifden. Places that are pretty far from Dublin, so that the majority of the councilors will max out their mileage expenses. It is a cynical and disgusting ploy to try and milk as much money from the taxpayer.

They see the expenses limits, not as a value that it should be an exception to reach, but as a target. They think they are entitled to get their greasy paws on as much of our money as they possibly can. And they’ve rigged the system so they are facilitated in doing that.

Here are some articles from the Independent that explain more about the situation.

Four firms with council links organise 50pc of conferences

By Edel Kennedy and Fiach Kelly

Tuesday August 03 2010

FOUR companies that run up to half the conferences attended by some county councillors have links to sitting or former councillors. Organisers charge up to €245 a councillor for the short conferences which focus on topics ranging from planning to ethics to "effective communication". But then councillors run up additional costs in mileage and hotel claims, sometimes reaching €700 each, when they attend these conferences. One of the tutors at a €225-a-head conference was a sitting Fianna Fail councillor. Last November Esperanza Enterprises organised "Local Government: Ethics on Public Life, Your Responsibility" which had Ger Horkan, who sits on the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown council, as one of the tutors. Seamus Walsh, a Fianna Fail councillor for Galway County Council, defended Ashford Building Services and Esperanza Enterprises, both of which organise seminars; and he confirmed he is a director of Ashford and a partner in Esperanza. "It's a business I identified through my work as a councillor, it's a market that's there," he said. "Are you saying that because I identify a market that I can't use it because I'm a councillor, (that) I have to starve?" He also accused the media of carrying out a "witch hunt" on councillors in an attempt to "blacken our good names". "All the emphasis seems to be on the councillor, you're on a glory trip about hanging the councillor. But the councillor is the poorest, lowest paid. The senators are on about five grand a month, we don't get five grand for the year." However, figures show Mr Walsh received €44,228 in 2008 and €33,314 in 2009 from the council -- with additional expenses earned from Udaras na Gaeltachta. He said councillors attended "what they can" of the conference but sometimes had funerals or other things to attend. He said that partners could also join the participants at dinner during the seminar."You're not talking here to someone like a JR Ewing who has two girls sitting on his lap. I'm actually trying to make a living and keep the council going as well. My job as a councillor is to make decisions on behalf of the people who elected me ... and those decisions must be informed," he said, pointing out that most of the seminars were related to building and planning matters. He described himself as a "fully fledged Christian", adding: "I'm not a blessed virgin but I'm not a seasoned whore either." He said he takes his wife on the trips to do half the driving and buys them both dinner from the allowance he receives."Why am I bringing the wife? Jesus Christ, life's lonely enough. What am I supposed to do? The car is going anyway, I bring her down."Niall Dennehy, a former Fianna Fail councillor and former mayor of Clonmel, is a director of Kadenza Consultancies Limited. His son, Niall J Dennehy, is currently a Clonmel town councillor and managing director of Kadenza. "There's no bar on a councillor being involved in a private business," Niall senior said. "You're not paid to be a councillor, you have to go out there and earn a living. What they get is what's called a representational allowance. And you'll find that for a councillor like myself on a board, that's about €92 a week net." city councillor Patrick Kennedy, an independent, is a non-executive director of TJK Conferences. He said he did not receive any remuneration for the position and that the company was run by his son Thomas. "I happen to be a city councillor, it's my son who is managing director of the company," he said, adding that he was a practising barrister.Councillors go the extra mile: Analysis, Page 23

Irish Independent

Adding up the expense claims

By Edel Kennedy

Tuesday August 03 2010

COUNTY and city councillors receive numerous payments, the largest being the representational payment of around €17,000 last year.

Introduced in 2002, it is subject to PAYE and PRSI, and was subject to the "pension levy" -- the reduction that applied to all public service remuneration from January 2010.

Councillors also receive a fixed annual allowance for reasonable expenses incurred in attending meetings associated with their council business, usually around €450 per month.

They can also claim up to €600 annually for their mobile phone costs.

In addition to these tax-free allowances, each councillor is given a further tax-free annual conference allowance from which they receive travel and subsistence payments. Councillors who are chairs of strategic policy committees get a tax-free allowance of up to €6,000 per annum; while those who sit on VECs, regional assemblies and regional authorities and other bodies may also receive payments.

The Irish Independent compiled this information by sending a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to all the city and county councils, regional assemblies, regional authorities, fishery boards, health forums, universities, colleges and enterprise boards. VECs are not covered by FoI and a number refused to release the information. The figures compiled include the conference fee.

A number of councillors who lost their seats in the 2009 local elections, or retired, received a taxable retirement gratuity. Payments ranged between just under €7,000 to more than €51,000, depending on length of service. The total gratuity payments in 2009 was €4.76m.

- Edel Kennedy

Irish Independent

If you disagree with this mornings ECtHR ruling - you're an idiot

2010-12-16T06:08:00.000-08:00

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE ABORTION RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

I hate the Irish public sphere. At no point does anyone sit down and say “how does this actually impact on the status quo”.

I was born on the 13^th of October 1990 in Airmount Hospital in Waterford. In 1992, when I was 2 years of age, a case came before Supreme Court that held that a woman had a right to an abortion under Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution, if there was "a real and substantial risk" to her life. They directed that it was not the place of the court to make law, but that the Government should introduce legislation to outline what is and is not permissible. That was 18 years ago. I’m now 20. And for 9/10ths of my life women have existed in a legal limbo, where they are allowed to have abortions if it is a threat to their life (read the Doctrine of Double Effect for an explanation of the philosophical justifications behind it) but constructively are prohibited from it by a fear by doctors that the case will not conform to X case criteria and the general culture of secrecy and mistrust of anything family planning related in Ireland. Abortion remains the third rail of Irish politics, with no politician ballsy enough to make a decision *either way*. I’m not going to argue either way in this piece, but I think that clarity is needed, even if that means the public decide to remove any right to abortion in any circumstance, something that I personally would find objectionable.

So what has happened this morning? In short, the ECtHR reaffirmed the view of the X case – that there exists in the Irish constitution (more explicitly due to the new amendment) certain restricted rights to abortion. But that merely having these rights in the constitution is not sufficient, that the failure to explicitly articulate these rights in legislation by the Oireachtas means that in reality these constitutional rights are not capable of being accessed by those who wish to seek protection by them. The Government now has a duty (binding in International law) to introduce legislation to clarify the legal position of abortion in Ireland.

So what is the implications on our sovereignty, our constitution and our ability to self-determine? Our sovereignty is exactly the same as it was yesterday. This is not a Lisbon Treaty matter, the ECtHR is separate and distinct from the EU and we ratified the ECHR before the Lisbon Treaty. The impact on our constitution is non-existent, the ECtHR took our constitution into consideration when crafting the judgment and they haven’t ruled that we need to change it, just enact legislation to allow the constitution to actually protect the rights outlined in it.

Our ability to self-determine is the first thing I’ve noticed Euro-sceptics jump on. (I’m treating it differently to sovereignty as I believe they’re two discrete and different state functions often conflated). The argument is that this is a personal matter for Irish law to be decided by Irish people. They say that this is an imposition of foreign morality.

Two responses. A) As far as it is a matter for internal Irish decision, the ECtHR only rules on cases where all domestic recourse has been exhausted. It was ruled in this instance that a fair hearing on this matter was not possible in Ireland and that the ECtHR was the only way of vindicating these rights. Take from that what you will, but in my opinion, the 18 year wait between the X case and now shows that another Irish decision saying the same thing would be unlikely to vindicate the rights of these women.

B) Yes, the Irish people have voted to protect the rights of unborn children 3 times. However, if you read the ratio, it’s precisely the changes brought in the last amendment to Article 40.3.3 that part prompted this cases’ success. Also, while the Constitution remains the basis of all Irish law, we are signatories of the ECHR and when we opted into this system we took a decision to acknowledge their moral authority. That’s kind of the point.

Whether you be pro-life or pro-choice this is the right decision to be made. No one benefits from the legal quagmire that exists in the “right” to abortion at the moment. If you’re pro-choice then it is possible that hundreds of women a year are having their rights needlessly violated and are being forced to go to England to vindicate their human rights. If you’re pro-life then it is possible that hundreds of babies a year are being needlessly murdered by mothers and doctors who are uncertain about the permissibility of their actions. Neither of those is a good outcome and in both instances pressure groups should be lobbying for change. Unfortunately because we have a broken politics system we had to wait until a European Court told us to.

AIB Bonuses

2010-12-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

Wife:
Arrest him!

More:
For what?

Wife:
He's dangerous!

Roper:
For all we know he's a spy!

Daughter:
Father, that man's bad!

More:
There's no law against that!

Roper:
There is, God's law!

More:
Then let God arrest him!

Wife:
While you talk he's gone!

More:
And go he should, if he were the
Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper:
So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More:
Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper:
Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More:
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

-A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt

So to say there's been a bit of a furore over bankers pay and bonuses would be an understatement. What i found was very interesting, was once it was announced that those bankers would have their bonuses taken away, there was outrage. Lots of comments regarding whether AIB would have to go into examinership to avoid their obligations or that the government was retrospectively legislating to catch the bankers out.

I'm not going to give any analysis to examinership laws, but i think it's safe to assume that AIB will not be doing that, for all the OMFG DEFAULT reasons that have been trotted out. Even the impression of AIB weakness would do damage and for a government that is so dedicated to administering CPR to the zombie that is the banking system, to let 40m of bankers bonuses undo all that work is insane. Secondly then, making law to punish things ex post facto. I think we can all agree that we think that's a prima facie bad, slippery slope etc etc. (see the quote above)

So what is *really* going on?

Well the High Court still havent released the ratio decidendi for the Foy case, so we don't know the exact terms and conditions of the legal obligations that AIB have. The Irish Times published sections of the obiter dictum and from what I've been able to piece together, his case was just a test case among 90 others. What normally happens in these instances is that the test case is won or lost and then depending on the outcome of the first case a settlement is reached with the outstanding cases.

In this instance the Times reports

"AIB did not oppose the order in favour of Mr Foy. Mr Foy is one of 90 traders in the division who have taken similar actions arising from the withholding of bonuses under the Government’s bank guarantee scheme.
The action by Mr Foy was regarded as a test case for the other claims. Mr Foy said he was notified in January 2009 by his line executive Michael Cronin that his contractual bonus for 2008 would be €160,000, which would be paid in full in February 2009."

However, as reported in the Journal.ie - AIB did not enter a defence. This means that the judge would automatically find for Mr. Foy.

This means, that if AIB were to actually enter a defence next time, the case could be sufficiently distinct not to be bound by strict precedent.

This is backed up by Brian Lenihans letter where he outlines

As AIB could not be in a position to pay without State support, past, present and to come, I believe that this condition is reasonable and proportionate.
Nothing in this letter is intended to prevent the Bank meeting its obligations on foot of a Court Order already obtained.

My interpretation of this is as follows:

1. AIB will pay out the €161,000 as mandated by the court. No new laws will be enacted and no previous laws will be altered.

2. AIB will litigate to attempt to prevent themselves from having to pay the next 89 bankers their bonuses.

3. The circa 700 other people awaiting bonuses who havent filed suit will be told to sod off.

As you can see, it's all largely uneventful, mostly arising from AIB and Government incompetence. No retrospective laws, no undermining of the tenets of the justice system, no underhanded deals.

Can you stop going crazy about it on Twitter now? THE APPRENTICE FINAL HAS BARELY GOT TALKED ABOUT AT ALL GODDAMMIT.

PS. Some people have had an issue with the fact that these are contractual bonuses. As I said already, the ratio has not been made public, so we don't know the exact terms, but I would presume that the contract has a clause preventing bonuses being issued in cases of insolvency etc, so would presume the new cases could proceed on that basis

PPS. as pointed out by @clairedaisy most contracts contain a Force majeure clause. something like

A party is not liable for failure to perform the party's obligations if such failure is as a result of Acts of God (including fire, flood, earthquake, storm, hurricane or other natural disaster), war, invasion, act of foreign enemies, hostilities (regardless of whether war is declared), civil war, rebellion, revolution, insurrection, military or usurped power or confiscation, terrorist activities, nationalisation, government sanction, blockage, embargo, labor dispute, strike, lockout or interruption or failure of electricity or telephone service.

as you can see, nationalisation is in there. So the contracts could possibly be set aside due to that, however it must be stressed that this is all very theoretical.

(I will update this post with the ratio, when i can find it)

Incentives in Political Pay

2010-12-12T05:07:00.003-08:00

It probably isn’t too controversial to complain about politicians wages. In these times of economic uncertainty it probably isn’t controversial to say that they should definitely be reduced. I’m going to talk firstly about why we shouldn’t pay them expenses (or at least reform the system). Then to the controversial bit, I’m going to talk about why we should consider not paying them at all. I’m going to use mostly an examination of incentive structures to examine that thesis.

So firstly, to expenses. In no other job do you receive an allowance to go to work. Extraordinary expenses, yes. Mundane expenses are expected to be covered by your salary. That’s why you’re paid one. The furor about Ivor Callely is made all the more ridiculous when you think, why exactly was he allowed to claim these expenses at all? They receive a handsome salary in the first instance; do they really need to have this topped up further? Not going to put a lot of analysis into this, just thought that it needs to be said.

Secondly then, what is it we desire in politicians? Intelligence, charm, wit, local issues at heart, ideologue, polite and goes to lots of funerals? I’m going to qualify my examination of what kind of politician is good by stating that I am in favour of a strong local government and I believe that many of the current “parish pump politics” carried out could easily be transferred to a strengthened local government. My conception of what makes a good politician is someone with ideals, cares about their locality but has an understanding of national concerns, who is representative of their electorate and flexible enough to do what is best for them. I would submit that most of the politicians operating today do not fit this description. We have on one extreme, Jackie Healy Rae who displays a frightening ignorance of elocution and matters out of Kerry. Let’s take him as the paragon of the regionalist. On the other hand, we have many senators who are completely out of touch with everyone. The talking shop of failed politicians all drawing salary from the public purse. Both of these are problems are due in part to the fact that politics is seen as a career and not a vocation. This will be the main crux of my third point.

As anyone who has read Freakonomics will know, incentives are strange and wonderful things. With the correct incentive structure you persuade people to conform, to jump through hoops or to brave untold perils. The arguments for the current wages of politicians are – 1. High wages attract the best, we would lose the smartest people to the private sector without them. 2. High wages prevent against corruption by making sure they have a high enough salary that any bribes will be less attractive. 3. It acts as a balance to enable poor people to enter politics and not be bankrupt by it. I will deal with each of those in turn.

Firstly, this “brain drain to the private sector argument”. I’m going to argue that money is not the correct incentive to use to attract the smartest people. Lets look at exactly what a politician receives now – a salary, expenses but more importantly power and influence. A pre-school in Tel Aviv brought in a charge for parents who picked up their kids late. Instead of dissuading latecomers, it allowed parents to rationalize their lateness, leading to a worsening of the problem. Even when the charges were removed this shift in social mores lead to the problem persisting. What this shows is that the standard model of how humans respond to incentives is not immediately obvious. People think in interesting and devious ways. MP wages in the UK are low and yet they have a plethora of talent that Ireland could only dream of. Why is this? The problem with the current conception of politics over here is that it is an alternative career move in many areas of Ireland.

With TD wages starting at €130,000 it’s also a quite lucrative career choice. Just like the parents in Tel Aviv, this view of it as a job has enabled politicians to rationalize their existence as one that is fundamentally self-serving, forgetting their primary duty as an elected public representative. Just like the parents thought, “$5 for an extra 15 minutes childminding, great!”, Irish politicians have become consumed with getting more for themselves. If everyone is trying to get as much as possible for themselves, does that mindset then easily transfer to doing the best for everyone? So what would be the effect of removing TD wages, or at least sharply reducing them?

We might see a mass exodus of the current political cadre. (That’s not necessarily a bad thing.) But who would take their place? A group of malcontents, cranks and morons? I doubt it. They wouldn’t get elected. The disincentive of public embarrassment and the incentive for better candidates, which I will explain shortly, would remove their ability to get votes or even to run. More than likely it would be a mixture between highly paid people with free time (so non-executive directors, academics and trust fund kids) mixed with people from lower socio-economic backgrounds that are legitimate activists – trade unionists, civil rights activists and outspoken local people. So not a massive difference from today.

One of the reasons for this is one of the reasons why capitalism has been such a resounding success – the backward bending supply of labour. Despite the disagreement of Environmentalists, Socialists and Anarchists, capitalism has enabled unprecedented environmental protection, living standards and activism. This is due to the ability of people to devote their free time to things they love, as well as the generation of tax revenue that can be spent on them.

Why is this the case? Well at low incomes, work is the most pressing priority. Each marginal addition of labour earns a high proportion more living standards. However as income levels rise, the marginal addition of labour has an opportunity cost of fun, which at this point increases living standard more than earning money (you have to have some time to spend all the piles of cash you earn). So as people earn more, they start to take free time. And what do they spend their free time on? Things they are passionate about. This isn’t a new idea (read Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) but this is what has allowed capitalism to let people devote time and energy campaigning for causes like environmentalism; which lead to the establishment of the EPA and other watchdogs. This kind of action is politics at its most desirable and we need to gear the conception of politics as a public service once again. Because throwing money is an incentive at its most infantile; conceptions, duty and social conditioning create the best incentives.

Secondly, this idea of cognitive surplus. People in the Developed World have so much free time and communication ability that increasingly they are not just passive consumers of information, news and policy – they create it. It turns out that if you give someone a lot of free time and an ability to reach people they immediately start to churn out original matter. Whether it be a LOLcat, this blog or crowdsourcing information like Ushahidi – people like to help other people, they like to create and they like to do it for free when given the chance. The modern world is often bemoaned for its loss of the local. By making politics more like the internet, ironically, we can recapture the essence of what politics should be.

Ok so, quickly to round up the other two – Bribe and Poor people.

Bribes – no matter how much you pay someone there will always be someone with resources that will pay more. Politicians have something that people will always be willing to pay for – hands on the wheel of power. This isn’t an argument to pay them more, it is an argument for more checks and balances on them.

Poor people – politicians as we have them today are mostly lawyers, academics and teachers. Hardly the poorest of people. Those who aren’t predominantly come from political dynasties or the middle class anyway. There is an endemic problem in Irish politics as it stands regarding the involvement of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This doesn’t solve that, but since the status quo doesn’t solve it either, I’m ok with that. Perhaps a grant to politicians below a certain income threshold would help them. I might be ok with that.

One last thought – I may have dismissed the constituency clinic and local issues concern a little lightly earlier. I think that it is possible to do these well and yet not receive pay for them. But I honestly believe that a lot of the constituency work can and should be left to local politicians. A politician in the Dail should not be interfering to get a Council to fix a broken window in a council house.

Delta Politics

2010-11-25T04:27:00.001-08:00

A conundrum that faces many household brands is the problem of becoming generic. Once use of a certain brand name becomes synonymous with an item then it cannot enforce copyright for that usage. Google valiantly try to get people to calling searching the web "using Google" instead of "googling it". The Xerox company has consigned itself to defeat in its bid to stop people referring to photocopying as Xeroxing. Any sort of SUV you see in Ireland is referred to as a Jeep.

The movement for change has hit a similar speedbump. The word change is a genericised brand now. The Tories trumpeted "Change" in the recent general election, but what do they mean? A different party in charge? That certainly is a change, but surely is implied in voting for the Tories. So it is an idea of making a tangible difference to every voters life. Presumably a positive change, since all the banners looked so sunny. But how real is change in politics? How do you provide a sense of difference that the voting public will acknowledge to help over come the strengthening "anti-politics" that is gripping everywhere.

What can we do to make politics better? Well, the little formula I posted at the top of the page may be a joke, but it is also a good explanation tool. The ideal political system to enact some form of change. Proportionality, incentives and desire.

As pointed out in a wonderful piece in the Irish Times[1] while there are continued complaints about issues such as the blasphemy law and, possibly more importantly, the rights of the child; there is a massive amount of political apathy towards pushing for changes. Why is this?

Well, I strongly believe it is a lack of accountability for decision making. This blog is supposed to have some public policy leanings and here is the first bit: We need create incentives for free voting. I would be in favour of a right of recall. Not just for politicians caught "with their hands in the till" but for politicians who vote along party lines for things that their constituency deems unconscionable. There was much made of Theresa May's voting record on gay rights (it's not good) but at least such a thing exists. In Ireland it seems that people don't ever stand up for what they believe in, content to obey the party whip. What is the point in proportional representation when it is just proportional and they forget about the representation? Keeping voting records of members of the Dail would be a big step forward, so you could see exactly what your local TDs were voting on your behalf. Yes, it's open to abuse, with racist constituencies holding their TD to ransom in order to extract xenophobic legislation, but I would have more faith in people than to think that would actually happen. Even if it did; that's democracy in action, no matter how base.

Free voting of politicians, with elected representatives doing what they think is right, rather than what the party tell them is a fundamental tenet of republican ideology. The founding fathers of the USA feared partisan entrenchment stagnating politics. Proportional representation is the means by which we get the representation the people want. Only through a combination of the two of these can we get a change that people want and not change for changes sake. The speed bumps that such developments will have stem from the growing anti-politics movement, symbolised by what is below the divide line in my pretend equation. Because such divisions could be harmful to the political system, if left to fester. I think steps need to be taken to increase the credibility of Irish politics.

It may be just a small change in politics, but hopefully if we do have change; we could have useful change in politics. And because the word change has lost all meaning in the modern world (and possibly in that last sentence), perhaps we could call it: Delta Politics.

Finally, on a related note:

Stephen Kinsella, a lecturer in Economics in UL, wrote a paper recently[2], which observed that often constitutional changes lead to suboptimal outcomes. I thought it was extremely interesting and reminded me of a quote from Mary Robinson when she was a senator, regarding Article 40.3.3:

"The basic flaw in this Amendment is that it is so uncertain in its scope and so potentially contradictory in its meaning and so potentially damaging to existing practices in the area of family planning and medical treatment…”

I think that Constitutional reform is something that should be handled with grave respect indeed.

___________________________________________________

[1] Fiona De Londras - De Valera's Constitution continues to serve us well

[2] Stephen Kinsella - Does Ireland need constitutional reform?

Childrens Rights

2010-11-25T04:25:00.001-08:00

“The “Stranger Danger” program that was widely shown in public schools was the most damaging campaign ever in terms of child abduction. It taught children about the “scary man in the trench coat hiding behind the tree” instead of warning children that strangers are only a fraction of the offenders. Most people who hurt and abduct children are family members, teachers, neighbours, people they see every day.”

- Dr Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds Season 1 - “What Fresh Hell”

RTE ran a “damning” exposé of paedophile rings in Ireland, determined to show that the creeps are just a click away. Posing as a young child they proceeded to try and entice paedophiles into soliciting them for sex.

There are ethical and taste issues with such a practice (Just watch “To Catch a Predator” to see every single one of them) but while I personally found the show crass and distasteful (the quotations from the paedophiles in trying to solicit the “child” were particularly unnecessary and disturbing) my main issue is with the blatant scaremongering that the show was based on. Your children are probably least at risk, statistically, from the pervert behind a webcam. Who you really need to be wary of is the pervert teaching them history, the pervert who lives next door, the pervert who trains the football team or the pervert that you're married to.

You may say, this isn't a problem. We can at once warn parents about the dangers of predatory paedophiles and explain the warning signs of child abuse at home. Except we don't. We don't run the same type of dedicated program to shining light on child abuse by people in these situations. The whole paedophile priest fiasco typifies the Irish attitude to such circumstances. It took years and years for those abuses to come to light. And they were far more prevalent than instances of child grooming online.

And what if both the parents are abusive? What if they haven't the concerned mammies and daddies who look through their MSN chat logs and secretly check their bebo; like many internet safety advocates have trumpeted during the week since the program. What if it is the parents who are neglectful or sexually abusive? Well due to the disgraceful anachronism which is the Irish constitutional regard for children, many of them get away with it. Our constitution is a document that places a higher regard for the stability of the “family” than it does for the children being damaged within that unit. A relic of the days of strict Catholicism, children in Ireland can often be left in horribly abusive scenarios due to this ridiculous line of precedent. Even the reforms introduced after the Kilkenny Incest report in 1993 haven't stamped out the issue – as illustrated by the continuing appearance before the courts of issues of failure in the protection of children, many of which are based on the absence of adequate rights for minors.

But in the week following this Prime Time program, were the airwaves flooded by well spoken Bernardos officials, experts in Constitutional Law and people who work with the abused? No. The week immediately following was filled with under informed members of the general public terrified that their children were inches away from abduction and rape on Facebook. Has the campaign for children's rights ever gotten the level of attention that the Prime Time program managed to attract this week? Not once.

It is a sad day, when a much more moving, realistic and valuable story is left to one side for a cheap sensationalist dig at the Gardai for not catching the online predators. It's over a year since the Ryan report called for a referendum on children's rights. Surely it is time for a cheap sensationalist dig at the Government for not catching the real predators.

Let them In.

2010-11-25T04:22:00.001-08:00

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different
results – Albert Einstein

This will be the first and only time I link to a socialist blog for a purpose other than ridicule. But this post is inspired by a post by Aidan Rowe over at http://redwriters1.blogspot.com/2010/07/fences-borders-and-dehumanization.html and the discussion I had with people about it. For once I agree with my Anarcho-Communist friend. Though for different reasons. I’m going to loosely stick them into 3 main headings; Moral, Economic and Cultural. I will try my best to be brief but this is going to be a long post (8 pages of A4 I’m afraid). I would also recommend reading “Immigrants – Your Country Needs Them” by Phillip Legrain for more detailed analysis of what I’m saying. I will link to World Bank reports later that are also useful.

Before I get onto the heavy stuff, a little history. Anti-immigration legislation is a relatively new phenomenon. The British had a absolute right to come to England for anyone who lived within the Commonwealth. This persisted until the 20th century, when laws were enacted to prevent German Jews from coming over to England. So the origins of immigration laws are shrouded in xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Other countries followed suit for a variety of reasons, mostly Mercantilist and ideological, as the concept of modern statehood became more defined. Mercantilism has since been shown to be bollocks economic policy and I hope to show why their labour protectionism is as illogical as their “beggar thy neighbour” policies.

Firstly, morality. By maintaining our current immigration policy we damn hundreds of people a year to suffocate in containers, be shot by border police or be exploited by unscrupulous employers once they get there. We have tried ever and ever more elaborate mechanisms to prevent people getting into our countries. As Matt Santos from the West Wing points out, the US government tripled the border patrol on the Mexican border, to no avail. East Germany constructed a massive wall with armed soldiers shooting people, and yet people got through. No country in the developed world is willing to go that far to deter people, so it is inevitable that people will get through. Perhaps it is time to try a different tactic. Because an action can’t possibly be moral when it creates such immoral outcomes. Hundreds of people die for negligible benefit every year. Is a vague sense of economic security (which is a fallacy in and of itself, as I will explain) worth these peoples lives, when it doesn’t even solve the problem and never will?

The second moral issue is the fact that we owe them. We built up our country through exploiting their resources, taking their gold, using them as slaves and generally treating them like crap. And we still owe them, because we haven’t stopped. Developed countries interfere in LDCs like Rwanda and the Congo, stirring up antipathy and strife so they can (in this particular example) exploit coltan reserves. You can’t say you have never oppressed an LDC, because coltan is an ingredient in mobile phone batteries. Anyone and everyone who owns a mobile phone has blood in their pockets.

Moreover, our trade policies continue to subjugate the developing world. We band together in rich country clubs like the EU and dump our excess on them, undercutting their development in a way that they cannot reciprocate. We use our clout to get better and better trade deals. The IMF in the 1980s gave out loans on the caveat that LDCs open themselves to the free international trade market and we plundered them mercilessly. Even countries like Germany with their export led economies are harming LDCs. Trade is a zero-sum game. You don’t just push your exports over the border and hope someone finds them. There has to be a buyer and a seller in every transaction. And by continuing to run massive trade surpluses, we crowd out the developing countries. So we owe them a duty to come over here and at least profit from some of the employment generated by their misfortune.

Secondly then, economics. Freeing up immigration will help us and it will help them. Before I go on to explain all the wonderful, world economy quadrupling effects that immigration would bring, I want to dispel some untruths – namely that our economy and services would not be able to cope, they will take all our jobs and our wages will be deflated.

Israel operates an absolute “right of return” for Jews all over the world. This is all fine and dandy unless it is 1989 and the Soviet Union is collapsing. Between 1990 and 1994 Israel accepted 1.4 million immigrants. This did put a short term strain on infrastructure and it did lower wages temporarily. But by 1997 all 1.4 million of these immigrants had been housed and wages had returned to their pre-1990 levels, adjusted for inflation. The economy even grew, due to the massive capital inflows caused by the surge in demand.

Secondly, the “DEY TUK AWR JAWBS” argument. Two problems with this, namely A. that there aren’t a constant fixed number of jobs in the economy at any one time and B. immigrants do different work to natives.

this is relatively intuitive. If economies were bounded by only having like 10000 jobs, every time someone had a baby they would be forcing someone into pensioner status 18 years later. Employment is cyclical governed by boom and bust cycles, just like other business cycles, not influenced by immigration.

A Mexican high school drop out is not competing with a Texan steelworker. Most unskilled immigrants have a low grasp of the language and because of that are consigned to the lowest forms of labour. So immigrants naturally gravitate towards jobs that natives don’t want to do. Even skilled workers (who would be directly competing for jobs) are a benefit, why do you think those are the kind of immigrants that Western Governments are actively seeking?

Ok then, on to the main constructive reasons as to why letting immigrants in would be good for the economy; benefits of globalization, benefits of transient workers and the changing age profile and economic needs of the first world.

So, I mentioned mercantilism earlier. It was bad. It favoured protectionism and tariffs to try and grow each countries economy at the expense of one another. But what it ignored was the laws of comparative advantage and also the ability that people being free to move their factors of production gives to compliment the production of goods and services. When free trade took over as the dominant force in orthodox economics and globalization was given free rein, the world economy grew faster than it ever has in human history; it has more than doubled since 1950.

So what effect would opening the border have? Some economists predict that the world economy would quadruple if labour was given the same mobility as other factors of production. The World Bank was not quite as optimistic, but thinks that it would lead to massive increase in global prosperity. In fact if you have any issues with migration, I would recommend reading all the PDFs on this page http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTDECPROSPECTS/0,,contentMDK:21121930~menuPK:3145470~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:476883,00.html

Since pretty much every single one of them explains a benefit of migration.

Onto the benefits of transient workers then. Basically, existing economies have unemployment because of structural deficiencies. Some jobs are for certain skilled individuals that we have not trained yet, some jobs are too unpopular with the natives or some jobs are in locations that there isn’t a high enough indigenous population to fill. Every job vacancy is a drain on the economy – the wages they would have received are not entering the economy and costing other people business. Migrants enable us to fill all these jobs – they can fill jobs like nurses or doctors, which we have not enough graduates to satisfy. They can take jobs cleaning streets or toilets, which Irish people turn their noses up at and they will gladly move to smaller towns and cities in search of work, not stay in Dublin, just because they are born there. And when they earn the wages in their new jobs, they spend them – boosting consumption and generating more jobs. Consumption that would not happen otherwise, as these jobs would remain unfilled.

Also, cheap services like childcare (lots of foreign nannies providing competition) enable natives such as career women and single mothers to go back to work in higher paid (relative to the immigrant) employment. One of the main reasons for voluntary redundancies resulting in long term unemployment presently is the high cost of childcare. (which bizarrely is still at pre-recession levels) By reducing or mitigating against these costs we can help facilitate a stronger economy.

Immigrants are also more likely to become entrepreneurs. Nigerians are statistically the highest ethnic group for starting their own businesses in Ireland. There are many reasons for this; Irish people being attracted to stable jobs in public services and academia, Irish people not having the drive due to being overly comfortable, the relative loss of earnings being lower if a Nigerian business fails or the business opportunities presented by catering to their fellow immigrants. New business is something we should be advocating and if Irish people won’t do it, perhaps letting our immigrants innovate for us is a positive step.

Diversity is also proven to boost productivity. Cities with a high level of ethnic diversity have a higher standard of living and production. Some of this is the availability of ethnic cuisine and services, as choice increases standards of living. But a lot of it is also the clash of ideas and backgrounds resulting in new better ideas. One of the reasons touted for Japans stagnation and deflation is its restrictive immigration policies and ethnic homogeneity. Cities like London and New York on the other hand are vibrant and highly productive. The diversity of the workforce also helps grow trading links. The growth of Taiwan as a microprocessor centre is due in part to the huge Taiwanese diaspora located in Silicon Valley. These kind of links are beneficial to both parties.

Finally then (on this topic) to the changing age profile of the Developed World. We’re getting older and our birth rate is falling. We need immigrants to just keep our economy ticking over. We need hundreds of thousands more than we presently let in, just to keep the EU in the same shape as it is today. Italy needs 650,000 immigrants a year to stop its economy plummeting by 2050. We need them to earn money to pay our pension, to act as doctors and nurses and to staff our care homes when we’re old and incontinent. The workforce to do all this is out there and willing, we just wont let them in because of our jingoistic attitude.

So now that I have covered all the selfish stuff about how we will be better off, I’m going to quickly chat about why it will help 3rd World Economies (more on this on the World Bank links earlier). After that I’m going to have a quick look at the benefits to culture then I will stop typing, I promise.

Going to look at the benefits under a controversial two headings; Remittances and Brain-drain.

Firstly remittances – wages in the Developed World are on average 14 times higher than those in the developing world. Immigrants generally send one sixth of their wages home in remittances. Some countries can have up to 40% of their economy based on the receipt of remittances (such as Poland until recently). The benefits of this are obvious – the increase in demand, increase in wealth within the economy and the ability to pay for things like education and healthcare that they would otherwise be unable to afford. Remittances also increase after natural disasters, as the diaspora send more to combat the increase in reliance. Facts from after the Haiti earthquake and the Boxing Day Tsunami back this up. These payments are also more reliable than the often ad-hoc employment offered in LDCs. The benefits of certain payments are explained quite well in The Economists article on conditional cash transfers. Some countries, like the Phillipines (again see the World Bank links for more details) have programs designed to maximize emigration and remittances to grow their economy, such is the benefit to the recipient country. Remittances take the best factors of foreign aid and microloans and then make them self perpetuating and targeted. As for any arguments regarding the use of remittances for consumer goods and television, television ownership is firstly proven to increase womens liberty and reduce domestic violence in LDCs, as well as increasing popular democratic involvement, and secondly, think for a second about the irony of the first world consumer like yourself critiquing what a poor African spends their 20 dollars on.

Secondly then to brain-drain. Yes, the best and the brightest will leave. Some of them at least. But that is not the end of the world. In a world without borders, it is easy to return to your country of origin. That is where your family is, your roots are. The best skilled people will go abroad, but figures show that most of them will return. Most illegal immigrants say that they would return to their country of origin if they could. Once they have saved enough to return they generally wish to. Most immigrants are unaccompanied males, who leave to earn money to put their kids through college and then wish to return home. Most immigrants to the US from Honduras that were surveyed expressed a wish to return home some day. When they do, they return with new skills picked up in the developed world, as well as the capital and resources to start projects and companies in the LDC as well as the ability to forge trade links with their former host country as I discussed earlier. So it is not all terrible, in fact it can often be beneficial to the native country. Again the Phillipines is an example of a country using brain drain to their advantage, purposely training doctors and nurses for “export”.

Lastly then to culture. No hard facts here, just an ideal. What is a national identity? How do you sum up what it means to be Irish? Catholic, Anti-Abortion, Rural, Farmer? Only one of those applies to me (and only insofar as I refuse to consider Waterford “urban”), The reality is that we share very little with our fellow compatriots, disagree with them on most things and only have a bond because we were randomly thrown on the same piece of rock with them. A respect for our differences and embracing other culture can only enrich us all. The ability to have a full Irish breakfast, Subway for lunch and a Chinese for dinner is something that most people would not have conceived of 50 years ago and it is something that is fundamentally enriching for all parties. We have to stop seeing foreigners as the enemy, invite them over here to be equal partners in our success and we will all benefit from the results.

Bad Law - Paul Chambers, TwitterJokeTrial

2010-09-02T12:21:00.001-07:00

DISCLAIMER: NOTHING CONTAINED HEREIN SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE, IT IS MERELY MY OPINION ON A PARTICULAR JUDGEMENT AND THE STATE OF ENGLISH LAW AT PRESENT. I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO PROVIDE ADVICE ON LEGAL MATTERS (Especially not UK law). IF YOU FEEL THAT ANY PARTICULAR PART OF THIS POST STRAYS TOO CLOSE TO LEGAL ADVICE PLEASE CONTACT ME @shabouwcaw AND I WILL REMOVE THAT SECTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

I was really interested when David Allen Green (@JackOfKent) started posting about the #twitterjoketrial. To me it seemed an anachronistic judgement that displayed both ignorance of the medium and of the law Paul Chambers was prosecuted under. For background do check out Davids blog, it really is excellent. The judgement can be found here and the details of his upcoming appeal are here

Public policy issues are often overlooked when articulating judgements, I think there has been a separation of powers misunderstanding here.

If you examine the burden created by the present judgement it is too onerous to be intention of the legislation. This is, in effect, the creation of a new scope and breath to the legislation that cannot possibly be in the interests of public policy.

Firstly, the law is obviously (by common sense and as a reasonable person would interpret it) intended for closed and monitored mechanisms of public communication, more akin to the traditional radio broadcaster or telephone network, where both input and output can be monitored easily and there is a recognised end user and intended target. (I will return to intentionality later)

The reason for this is purely public policy. In these closed systems there is relative inability to select away from this particular communication method if it should turn offensive or threatening. The personal or controlled nature of these technology (and the pernicious harms arising from the invasion of life using them) imputes a higher standard than mere free speech, which is the intended problem that this legislation is to fix.

Secondly, the burden placed on the courts, the police service and the public to carry out the duties placed on them by this judgement necessitates clear language to give them that burden. If the intention of the legislation was to create such a burden it would explicitly state that. The act makes no such explicit imperative. What imperative am I talking about?

There is a plethora of content on the internet that is offensive, malicious, intended to provoke hate, intended to provoke criminality and that is pornographic or in other ways “immoral”. Where appropriate the State has taken steps to criminalise such activities on the internet. However, if this judgement is allowed to stand it places a burden on the police to monitor and record all tweets that could full under the banner of being “malicious” and to press charges. Otherwise they are not doing their duty to uphold the law and leaving Twitter users to flout our legal rules with impunity.. Obviously had this been the intended consequence of this legislation it would be expressly stated. This is a ludicrous burden to place on the police and amounts to nothing more than judge made law in the manner of DPP v Shaw (1962) HL and an ex post facto re-jigging of the law for convenience.

“The vigour of [the] juristic and professional controversy [after Shaw's case] is a salutary reminder that ex post facto punishment is still a problem even in the legal order which was the progenitor of 'the rule of law' ” - Stone

Thirdly, examine the internet. Examine Twitter in particular. It is not akin to radio broadcasting, if anything it is the nearest thing to a conversation in a pub that technology has been able to replicate. There are two things that flow from this – the interpretation of the word “menacing” that is appropriate in this sphere and the end user/blue sky dichotomy.

Mr Justice Jonathan Bennett submits that in order to be “menacing” something must just be of an inherent “threatening” quality. I would politely disagree, using loitering as an analogy. The vague “threatening” quality of remaining in one area was seen as not sufficient to override the constitutional rights of citizens in Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41(1999) to stand around in any area of the United States. However, loitering with intent is still held to be constitutional. Why is that? Because merely looking scary is perfectly within your rights. In order for something to move beyond an acceptable subjective interpretation of “threat” - we examine the intention of the act that is being called “threatening” and see if it is to cause a threat that is unacceptable. The reason for the emergence of mens rea in the criminal law is to stop subjective misunderstandings taking shape in the legal system and convicting people of “threats” that were in fact completely innocuous. The public hysteria that surrounds so many aspects of the criminal law is just one reason for needing such protections. I would propose that in this instance the mere existence of the form of the tweet is not an inherent menace. The intention of the tweet must be considered when examining the menacing qualities of the communication, again for public policy reasons.

Lastly then, the difference between an end user and a blue sky based communication. In the case of menacing phone calls there is obviously an intended target and a pernicious harm to that person that they cannot opt out of. In the case of a menace transmitted by conventional television or radio there is a reduced ability to select away from this menace, to ignore it and to go about your business. This is the reason why there is an enhanced duty on people who operate and use these services to prevent against the transmission of content that may be construed as menacing. However in this instance, the point of Twitter is to communicate with a void. Tweets, other than @replies, are aimed at the cloud and not to any one particular person. They are intended to be read by any one of the rag tag bunch of people who follow you. It is as if Paul Chambers had written his message on a sheet of paper, put it in a bottle and let it drift out to sea. Should he be accountable for the emotions of the person who chances upon it and reads it? If a tweet falls in a forest, does it make a sound? What Paul Chambers is in reality being penalised for is not making the tweet, but for being unfortunate enough that a certain individual read it. This is hardly a fair basis on which to put forward criminal charges.

The final characteristic of the Internet, and Twitter in particular, is that content is easy to ignore or screen out. This is completely dissimilar to the types of communications that were intended to be covered by the act. The particular “menace” of this tweet is obviously understood by Bennett J to be the causing of externalities to those who read it, namely fear and unease. “The context is we live in a society where there are huge security concerns particularly in relation to airports and air travel.” However it is completely disingenuous to suggest that a tweet would bring about these reactions. If this was said on the radio or if Paul Chambers had rang Robin Hood airport to make the threat there would be a sufficient proximity between the general public and his act to say that any fear caused was his fault. It is also incredibly difficult to put distance between the chance of you encountering the tweet (should you not wish to) and yourself due to the limited number of radio stations or the fact that he is targeting your individual phone. But in the case of Twitter, you must take active steps to encounter the tweet. As I said earlier, it is like a conversation in a pub. If you were a particularly devout person, it would be remiss of you to scold someone for swearing if you were eavesdropping on their conversation, because had you not taken the step of listening in, you would not have overheard the swearing. That's not a perfect analogy, but it is close enough. In order to have encountered Paul Chambers tweet you would have to follow him, google him or google something sufficiently close to the content of the tweet and, in addition to that, choose to read that particular entry. Rather than being forced into the “menace” by factors beyond your control, you have taken active steps to encounter that menace. I don't think it is too much to ask that a certain spirit of caveat emptor should apply.

Bennett J has only succeeded in formalising the burden on twitter users into an unwieldy pseudo-journalistic code of conduct that he has not even had the grace to define. He has left the law regarding these “breaches” wide open with no clarification as to what defines an unacceptable tweet and what defines a menacing tweet. He has placed a ridiculous burden on law enforcement, used powers that do not exist within the legislative framework he is working in and created the worst kind of judge-made law. I leave you with a quote I think is pertinent.

“Some think that the law already goes too far, some that it does not go far enough. Parliament is the proper place, and I am firmly of opinion the only proper place, to settle that.”

Lord Reid, DPP v Shaw

My thoughts on the Energy Levy

2010-08-10T07:32:00.001-07:00

Just some quick thoughts on the new energy levy being introduced by the Government. Ronan Lyons posted an incredibly interesting blog post on the tiny harms it would do to FDI in Ireland. I agree with most of what he says. However, I have some problems with it that are unrelated to FDI, and then I am going to look at some of his assumptions.

The first of my problems is with the indigenous SME sector in Ireland. Is it insane of me to think that we should probably stop fetishising FDI and look at what is best for sustainable Irish jobs. The fact of life in the 21^st century (in, as Lyons concedes a massive services based economy) is that supply of services are incredibly footloose. FDI can up sticks and leave when things go bad. However, indigenous industry through normal bounds of rationality tends to stay in its country of origin, putting up with a larger hit to revenue before it offshores. The RTE article that Lyons links to in his post is almost half comprised of warnings from ISME about the harms to SMEs.

Secondly are households. Already hit by unemployment, interest rate hikes and falling wages they are now being milked to subsidise the failings of a semi-state company. Normal people should not be penalized more for the inability of the ESB to modernize or run its business effectively and competently. The ESB should be forced to reform and improve without taxpayer assistance, even if the introduction of “competition” has not yet managed to do this.

Thirdly then, what exactly is the subsidy for? It is to pay for energy security, in the form of subsidies to the peat industry and the creation of more windfarms and other sustainable energies. Firstly, why are we subsidizing the peat industry? Karl Deeter put it very succinctly in this tweet.

Peat subsidy (part of PSO) is behind ESB price increase, here's an idea: Fuck off. stop digging up co2 reducers & subsidize something else

Peat bogs are very good at fixing CO2 in the atmosphere, due to plants and stuff that live in them. Instead we give subsidies to people to dig them up and burn them, releasing CO2. And this is a progressive “Green” policy? Madness. At the same time any thought of investing in nuclear technology is laughed at. While I have read that Ireland is too small to make investing in nuclear technology feasible, we could at least build a couple of interconnectors to the UK and, if we’re going to subsidise anything, part fund a nuclear reactor over there. One nuclear reactor could provide the energy needs for the whole country, cheaply (After the admittedly massive capital costs) and cleanly.

So lastly then, to things I didn’t agree with in Ronan Lyons post. He basically used an argument of relative irrelevance. That since energy costs are the 4^th most important factor in attracting FDI it doesn’t matter that they’re going up, since everything else is so high already. I don’t agree with him that getting upset about the harm to competitiveness of utilities hikes will distract from fixing the overpricing problems of the other 3. I think that just because land and labour are overpriced in Ireland it gives a free pass for the government to make utilities overpriced also. If anything it is more of an argument to not introduce the levy, since it is merely compounding the overpricing problem. He quite clearly argues that Ireland has a competitiveness problem particularly among the 3 more important factors Lyons identifies. That problem isn’t going to go away if it is compounded by a disregard for other factors (no matter how small).

#WestSkep - How to win an argument with Joe Public

2010-08-07T04:25:00.000-07:00

"I love my friends cos they've got no standards,Morals or ethics in the quest for braggin' rights.We take a plane to a foreign country,Loaded with [booze] and a head of white lies. Trust me, trust me, I'm a doctor.Trust me, trust me, I'm a doctor.I know, I know what I'm doing.I know, I know what I'm doing girl."
-"Trust Me, I'm a Doctor" - The Blizzards

Before I get into any great detail in this post, I'm going to explain a little of who I am, as i think it contextualizes where these opinions are coming from. I am a 19 year old law student who is very active in University level British Parliamentary style debating. I studied both Biology and Chemistry for my Leaving Cert (Irish equivalent of the A-levels) and have had an interest in science since i was very young. I fell into these whole "skeptic" thing in a roundabout way, following Jack Of Kent since he was interesting from a legal sense and was afforded the opportunity of a peek into the weird and wonderful world of science skepticism.

So what is this blog about? Basically, I listened to Frank Swain's talk to WestSkep and agreed with it. In my short time observing and avidly reading everything skeptical, I have come to the opinion that within limited boundaries it can be a powerful force with occasional successes. But as a mechanism for enacting change it is severely lacking. In my opinion this is due to a combination of 2 things: falling victim to the follies that it despises and secondly creating new follies that everyone else despise.

An example of the former is the reaction to the SciencePunk talk. People who are very invested in skepticism seemed to collapse in paroxysms of rage. I don't they particularly examined what Frank had to say, a lot of it was knee jerk reaction to what they took statements to mean, without putting them into context or examining the deeper. We (the skeptic movement) often deride people for their inability to think beyond their accepted worldview, no matter how fragile and illogical it is. I think the last week has shown that there are elements within skepticism that are equally as blind in their faith in the methodology.

Phoebe: Ok, Ross, could you just open your mind like this much, ok? Wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the world was flat? And, up until like what, 50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this like, whole mess of crap came out. Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?
Ross: There might be, a teeny, tiny, possibility.

The main new folly that everyone else despises is the hubris to presume that science is always right. While that is perfectly reasonable from our point of view, the general public doesn't agree. I saw many tweets in the last week saying "We have done stuff, MPs listen to us" or "We don't need to talk to normal people - MPs are where all the action is". Well, I'm sorry if that fits with your particular brand of self importance, but in a democracy that rewards people who pander to their electorate (who have votes) and not to scientific fact (which unfortunately has no votes) the MP is always going to pick the former. So unless you convince actual real people, there is only so far skepticism will get as a public policy maker.

So what needs to be done? Skepticism has an advantage. I do disagree with Frank Swain that arguing with facts is cowardly. Arguments grounded in fact can be a lot more persuasive to most people than arguments that are not. What i do agree with is that arguments based on facts are limited.

When I'm debating I hope for debates that are not about law or economics. Because i get bogged down in winning the facts, grabbing all the truth and forget to win the debate. Facts are a great place to start out from, but they're only the content of the argument. You need a lot more to convince people that you're right.

Unfortunately I can't go to England to a Skeptics in the Pub meeting, where I could try and convince you all in person of the benefits of proper argumentation. But here's an interesting thought. I am willing to debate (over Skype) against anyone from the skeptic community on any subject. They can rely purely on empirical fact and I can rely purely on philosophy and argumentation. I would be perfectly happy to then have that debate recorded and shown to a lay jury. I'm pretty sure I would win. While this does not withstand the full rigors of proper scientific experimentation, I'm pretty sure it would be persuasive. Which is the point really, isnt it?

Proportional Representation in the UK - the d'Hondt System

2010-05-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

OK, So this was made by a good friend of mine Harry McEvansoneya, who has a lot more free time than i do. Feel free to share :) Also, due to the popularity of this post (over 2000 hist in 24 hours!) myself and Harry have just started a new blog - check it out www.epp-blog.blogspot.com

So as some of you already know, I've been running a simulation of what the outcome of the UK election just gone by would have been if, instead of using the First Past the Post system, it had been calculated using the d'Hondt List system.

I have done this on a regional rather than a national basis, mostly because this is how the British do it for the European election and I see no reason to change that. Other options were to do it nationally or county by county, but I considered both to be too time consuming, and I wanted to get this done while it was still highly relevant, rather than a week or so down the line, as well as the fact that I am in the middle of exams.

Regional vote % here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/election2010/results Click on regions to see the vote breakdown.

Current seats (a more accurate map than the BBC's): http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/2015/mapse.png

The regions are as follows: Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, North-East, Yorkshire & the Humber, North-West, East Midlands, Eastern, West Midlands, South-East, South-West and London.

Northern Ireland

Actual Seats: DUP 8, SF 5, SDLP 3, AP 1, Ind Un 1

d'Hondt: DUP 5, SF 5, SDLP 3, UCU 3, AP 1, Ind Un 1

Under d'Hondt, Northern Ireland's overall Unionist/Nationalist balance remains more or less unchanged. What it does do is redress in favour of the UCU, who failed to win any seats despite getting over 15% of the vote, more than double that of the Alliance Party. This more accurately reflects the SF/DUP balance - indeed, SF were marginally ahead in the popular vote. The two Independent Unionist candidates who did well, Hermon and Connor, would have had enough between them to gain one of them a seat, an list alliance that would to me make sense, the alternative being another SF seat.

Wales

Actual Seats: Lab 26, Con 8, LD 3, PC 3

d'Hondt: Lab 16, Con 11, Lib 8, PC 4, UKIP 1

In FPTP, Labour, in spite of losses, still won an overwhelming majority of Welsh seats with just over a third of the popular vote - a microcosm of the situation that frequently emerges in Westminster. The d'Hondt system rebalances this extensively, as it does for the significant under-representation of Tories and, to a greater extent, Lib Dems. Interestingly, the support for UKIP in the south is enough to scrape them a seat at the expense of a 5th one for Plaid. The outcome here is pretty much as close to proportional to the popular vote as possible.

Scotland

Actual Seats: Lab 41, LD 11, SNP 6, Con 1

d'Hondt: Lab 26, SNP 12, LD 11, Con 10

Like Wales, the biggest party - Labour - benefits disproportionately under FPTP. The SNP, who have the second biggest vote-share but suffer under the system double their number of seats, and there's a massive gain for the Tories, whose votes are not insignificant. The result under d'Hondt gives a better feel for the actual strength of support for the SNP within Scotland.

North-East

Actual Seats: Lab 25, Con 2, LD 2

d'Hondt: Lab 14, Con 7, LD 7, BNP 1

Labour dominate most urban constituencies, but their popular vote is around the combined Tory/Lib Dem total, rather than over six times greater than it - something that is again reflected by the d'Hondt figures. The BNP would also win a seat fairly comfortably in this region, and UKIP would only miss out on one by an extremely narrow margin.

Yorkshire & the Humber

Actual Seats: Lab 32, Con 18, LD 2

d'Hondt: Lab 19, Con 18, LD 13, BNP 2, UKIP 1

Labour hold a majority of seats here despite only being marginally ahead of the Tories in the popular vote. d'Hondt shows the source of that - Lib Dems being closed out in a lot of Labour seats, the Tory vote actually being reflected in the FPTP figures. This area is the heartland of the BNP and as such it is unsurprising to see them (and UKIP) claim a couple of seats.

North-West

Actual Seats: Lab 47, Con 22, LD 6

d'Hondt: Lab 31, Con 24, LD 17, UKIP 2, BNP 1

Not much different here to the previous two constituencies - a grossly inflated Labour majority due to FPTP, largely at the expense of the Lib Dems and the nationalist parties.

East Midlands

Actual Seats: Con 31, Lab 15

d'Hondt: Con 20, Lab 14, LD 10, UKIP 1, BNP 1

Bit of an FPTP travesty here - in spite of getting over 20% of the popular vote, an increase from last time, the Lib Dems failed to win a single seat in this region - indeed, they actually lost one. That is handily redressed by the d'Hondt system, as is the Tory false majority in the region. The BNP recieved a massive swing in this area, sextupling their vote since last time and as such would win a seat.

Eastern

Actual Seats: Con 52, LD 4, Lab 2

d'Hondt: Con 29, LD 14, Lab 12, UKIP 2, BNP 1

This area is hardcore Tory and Labour were as good as wiped out here with FPTP, though if it had been d'Hondt they would only have lost one of their seats from last time's FPTP results. This area also swung heavily towards the nationalist parties, which again would have been reflected through the d'Hondt system.

West Midlands

Actual Seats: Con 33, Lab 24, LD 2

d'Hondt: Con 25, Lab 19, LD 12, UKIP 2, BNP 1

The two big parties are both fairly over-represented in this area, which is fixed. Not much else interesting here to remark on other than that even if he had formed a list with every other independent candidate in the area, the Health Concern bloke from Wirral still would have lost his seat.

South-East

Actual Seats: Con 75, LD 4, Lab 4, Green 1

d'Hondt: Con 44, LD 23, Lab 13, UKIP 3, Green 1

Conservatives absolutely dominated this area under FPTP and still have a majority of seats under d'Hondt, though their gross over-representation would be eroded, mostly in favour of the Lib Dems. The Greens would comfortably still win a seat in the region, and UKIP would get three, the relatively high number due to the high-profile presence of Farage.

South-West

Actual Seats: Con 36, LD 15, Lab 4

d'Hondt: Con 24, LD 20, Lab 9, UKIP 2

d'Hondt far more accurately reflects the relative closeness of the Lib Dem and Tory votes in this region than FPTP does. Other than that it's the same story as it was in the north of England, just with all the parties swapping positions.

London

Actual Seats: Lab 38, Con 28, LD 7

d'Hondt: Lab 28, Con 26, Lib 16, UKIP 1, Green 1, BNP 1

Labour and Tories are actually very close in terms of vote share in the capital, hence the tightening of the gap between the two under d'Hondt. The three smaller parties gain a seat each due to having plenty of candidates doing relatively well - all three got over 1.5% of the total vote - but no one candidate doing well enough to win in a single region.

OVERALL

Actual Seats: Con 306, Lab 258, LD 57, DUP 8, SNP 6, SF 5, PC 3, SDLP 3, Green 1, AP 1, Ind Un 1

d'Hondt: Con 238, Lab 201, LD 151, UKIP 15, SNP 12, BNP 8, SF 5, DUP 5, PC 4, SDLP 3, UCU 3, Green 2, AP 1, Ind Un 1

The d'Hondt outcome is actually extremely close to being proportional to the popular vote, though the smaller parties still lose out a bit - however they do gain massively compared to FPTP - and the NI parties continue to benefit disproportionately. It is worth noting that these are FPTP figures - if a d'Hondt sytem were to be used, smaller parties would probably benefit accordingly, as there would be less pressure on finding and fielding candidates in all constituencies, and there would be less of an element of tactical voting to keep party X out of constituency Y.

Regardless, on the basis of this simulation I feel the UK could probably do a lot worse than go with d'Hondt.

All original material (c) 2010 Harry McEvansoneya - Any material relied upon is copyright of their respective owners.

EDIT: Was linked to the following on twitter - Graphical interpretation of a few forms of PR and the results under all of them. (cc) oledoe flic.kr/p/7ZrYpv

Actual UK results for comparison:

"Pure" proportional representation:

Spanish system:

German system:

d'Hondt system: (Based on Harry's workings)

Would like to thank @oledoe for these results. Follow him on Twitter if you like these graphs :)

Issues with Bretton Woods

2010-05-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

So there is much made of the Bretton Woods conference and particularly a continued attack on my personal hero John Maynard Keynes in the media lately. The Bretton Woods conference is seen as a failure - putting in place an economic system that was fatally flawed. Keynes, as the "mind" behind the IMF, is thrown in with those who constructed this system and has his name blackened by association. I hope to vindicate him to some extent. In doing this I will explain the purpose that the negotiators at Bretton Woods wished to achieve, why this failed and also propose a system that could replace it.

So firstly, what was the point of Bretton Woods? The conference was organised after the humiliation that economists worldwide had suffered in the 1930s. "Beggar-thy-neighbour" policies and isolationism led to a collapse of the international monetary system and an inability to trade internationally. On top of this, US policy makers were convinced that poor economics performance was one of the reasons for the Second World War - convincing themselves that European economic stability would provide the US with "economic security". Thirdly, the rise of Keynesian economics made people believe that government intervention was needed in the world economy - necessitating a mechanism for governments to exert these controls. The Bretton Woods conference sought to create such a mechanism.

So why did it come apart? Well firstly, the issue of establishing the dollar as the international reserve currency. This enabled the US to run massive balance of trade and current account deficits by passing currency changes onto its creditors. But these massive inflows of foreign capital led to the current financial crisis, enabling the bubble to inflate for much longer than it would have naturally. The use of a national currency as a international reserve also poses issues. This is known as the Triffen Dilemma: to get what the US wants money has to be flowing out, to provide liquidity for conversion to gold, however, when this happens people begin to speculate, thinking the dollar is overvalued. This led to people converting their dollars into gold and taking it overseas. This exacerbated the problem as less gold led even more people to think the the dollar was overvalued.

WILL FINISH AFTER POLITICS EXAM TOMORROW

Cows, Crops and a Free Market Tort System

2010-05-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

Books I'm reading and relying on for these ideas:
"The Economics of Tort Law - Volume 1" Alan O. Sykes
"The Problem of Social Cost" - R. H. Coase - The Journal Of Law and Economics Volume III October 1960

Interesting thought experiment - used too many hypotheticals to make it a working solution, but it does ask some questions of the status quo.

Corporate litigation is a multi-million dollar business. Every year thousands of businesses sue one another for everything they can due to the damages that they have caused one another. I'm attempting to write a paper on the Irish tort system where I will compare the costs accrued in a perfect, costless externality-compensating system with the actual Irish court system and ADR; the in-vogue conflict resolution service.

But in writing this paper I have began to question whether a tort system brings about the best possible outcomes. Surely in the instance of one productive company suing another, what matters the most is an efficient outcome. Why is it that when a company, through the necessary operation of a value-adding service, causes a harm to another - we immediately penalise that productive company?

To pick an example from American caselaw - Sturges v Bridgman in which a confectioner was operating a mortar and pestle that caused noise and vibration hindering the performance of the a doctors medical practice, the court held that the doctor had a right to protect himself from "nuisance". Surely from an economic point of view it is highly unfair for a productive business to be prevented from operating where it sees fit on the basis of such an externality.

Rather then concentrating on the loss that the doctor suffers, surely we should look at the opportunity cost of granting an injunction to stop the confectioner using his machinery. If the confectioner is producing 100 euro worth of chocolate, but the doctor is only providing 80 euro worth of medicine per hour, surely it would make sense for the confectioner to be allowed to continue operating, possibly paying the doctor up to 20 euro per hour to relocate.

This is the main thesis of the argument - that sometimes pure tort leads to inefficient outcomes.

So how would a free market system operate? Firstly I'm going to explain how the present system would operate if it were to operate without cost. This is presumably the optimal system - externalities are compensated for without either side being penalised for seeking redress. I will then explain why even an "ideal" tort system has failings. Hopefully in doing this I will prove why the present, far from ideal system, is also similarly unneeded.

Imagine I own a herd of cattle. I decide that it is cheaper to let my cattle roam unenclosed, so I don't have to invest in fences and other capital. My cattle don't have a concept of a social contract, so they happily wander onto your land and eat all your carefully cared for corn. (In the words of Sean Butler - you want to stop people stealing all your corn, you give up some of your rights to secure protection for your corn - Voila, State) Now, intuitively, you think; "I should have some form of redress. That man's cows just ate a load of my corn". That seems to be the fairest thing to occur.

Since it seems to be the done thing in economics, I will use a arbitrarily decided table of figures to illustrate my point.

Number of Cows Crop Loss Marginal Crop Loss

1 1 1

2 3 2

3 6 3

4 10 4

Lets assume that the cost of fencing the property and maintaining that fence is 9 euro per year and the price of the crop is €1 per unit.

In this example, the farmer who owns the cows will be forced (by the tort system) to pay damages for any damage his cows cause. As a rational person the farmer will factor in any marginal damage into any decision regarding herd size. He will not increase his herd if the marginal damage exceeds the marginal gain of that 1 cow. Since the annual cost of fencing is €9, the farmer will pay for a fence if his herd reaches 4 cows or more. When the fence is completed the marginal cost for damage becomes zero, since the cows are contained.

So what is the reaction of the corn-farmer. It may seem that the obvious course of action is to plant more to compensate for the inevitable loss. This isn't what would occur in perfect competition. The increase in production would shift equilibrium unfavourably for the farmer, since the price of expansion would have outstripped the increase in income. In this instance, the farmer will sell less on the market, but still have the same income, since the cattle-farmer is compensating him for his loss. So the harm to the corn-farmer is perfectly compensated and no detrimental increase in corn production has taken place. So what is the impact? Well, most likely, a decrease in corn production.

WILL CONTINUE LATER

the EU at its Worst - The Failings of the CFP

2010-04-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

I chose this picture because I think it sums up the failings of the Common Fisheries Policy quite well. The criminalisation and bureaucratic nightmare that is the CFP has resulted in much bad publicity for the policy and heartache for people in Ireland who are dependent on fisheries to make a living.
The EU Commission has acknowledged the failings of the policy and yet the continued vilification of those who choose not to abide by a failed system is a problem that has not been addressed. In a report outlining issues with the CFP, it was found that EU waters are overfished by 88%, compared to 25% in areas that do not operate such a quota system.
The Telegraph, where this picture was sourced, has an interesting story about Cliona Coneely (pictured), who has suffered criminal prosecution for her continued operation outside of the regulations laid down in the EFP. One such regulation is that French fishermen can fish up to 16,651 tons of monkfish in Irish waters whereas Irish fishermen can only catch up to 2,128 tons, around 8 times less. This is obviously unfair to the indigenous fisherman and coupled with the failings to provide the environmental protection that was lauded as one of the main reasons for needing this policy, it suggests that a serious examination of the CFP is needed.
So what brought about such a skewed system of common fishing waters? Well firstly, Ireland and the UK lost out when brokering the fishing deals, when it was decided that membership of the EU was more useful to the economy than protecting indigenous fisheries. parliamentary secretary at the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr. Jackie Fahey, stated in the Dail at the outset that issues regarding fisheries had been resolved upon accession to the EU, but it was soon clear that the accession treaty did include a agreement to become part of the common fisheries policy.
Secondly the system that allocated the quotas ('Total Allowable Catch' or TAC) is fatally flawed. Firstly, it takes no account of proximity to the fishing ground. Ireland's apportion of the catch is 4.4%, with Belgium (at 2.1%) the only other country on the Atlantic with less of a share. From a conservation point of view, the quota system also doesn't work. There is an annual struggle between fisheries minsters to get the best possible deal for their country. This competitive incentive has meant that the quotas have ballooned beyond what scientific data has said is acceptable and led to massive overfishing.
Lastly, and most obviously, fishermen have little control over what they catch. Since the landing of fish that are over quota is illegal, this leads to a widespread dumping of caught fish back into the sea, at which point they are dead. This is a massively wasteful system, resulting in an annual ecological disaster and the continued depletion of fish stocks.
So where for Ireland now? Ireland needs to get a deal that is more fair for Irish fisherman. The EFP is so fundamentally broken it should be abandoned, each provision and institution geared towards a negative outcome. It is economic protectionism dressed up as environmental conservation and maybe, in the interests of ecology and efficiency, it is time to let the market solve.

Failure is a Suir thing.

2009-08-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

This piece is being written as a favour for Stephen Byrne of http://whatthefeic.com/. I apologise beforehand for the pontificating tone.

Waterford traditionally has a chip on its shoulder. We constantly feel hard done by as Irelands 5th city. The frantic quest to have our hometown recognised on weather forecast maps and radio broadcasts is just one sign of the fundamental sense of inadequacy the pervades the Waterford psyche. We whine and moan that "Cork has this", "Galways got that" or worst of all "Kilkenny is getting something AND Kilkenny isn't even a CITY". Freud would call it penis envy, except in our case we desire facilities, employment opportunities and infrastructure. And just like in Frued, we need to move beyond the envy to grow up as a city.

This piece is about how while we may have achieved something of the last of those; bad planning, idiotic citizens (a minority but nonetheless there) and our fundamental belief we are inferior means we have missed the Celtic Tiger gravy train and will have to live with the consequences for at least a generation.

The last 10 years have been a decade of unprecedented prosperity and wealth for Ireland as a whole. The next 10 may not be, for a multitude of reasons, the most prominent being the misallocation of our sudden numerous resources. We need to ask ourselves, as a county and as a city, what have we gained in the last 10 years? Admittedly, due to Martin Cullen being a minister we have gained quite a bit in the way of roads and motorways, but in terms of regional development we have been very wasteful.

One just has to look around John Roberts Square at the moment to see the toll the recession has taken on the city. More shops than ever closed, store fronts abandoned, crowds non-existent and a general feeling of melancholy pervades the city centre. Why is this? Because of the lack of choice and development that has hampered the shopping district in Waterford for years. When plans were submitted serial irritants blocked them. When people tried to open things, to be entrepreneurs, the initiative was not grasped, everything within our power was not done. We missed out on chances to become a vibrant shopping hub. Kilkenny now has the massive shopping centres. Clonmel has the Marks and Spencers. We have the old stalwart of City Square and not much else.

Oh, how it could have been so different.. There were visions of regeneration of the derelict sites across the river. There were visions of a huge shopping complex near the city centre. None of these became a reality. Slowed, derailed and stifled by a small group of people that exploited the Irish planning system and retarded the growth of Waterford, possibly irreparably.

The fact that shops that did go ahead (Like TK Maxx, regrettably, miles from the city centre) are thriving, even in the recession, shows that the demand is there in Waterford. It was merely our inability to get these projects green-lighted in strategic locations that hurt us. We needed to get these projects built during the boom times, so they will be there when we emerge from the recession. When we emerge from the recession we will have to start again from scratch. Prove once again we are a place worthy to be invested in. It will be harder after a generation of neglect.

We had the chance, during the Celtic Tiger, to play catch up with the places we envy. We had the chance to improve ourselves and get some urban regeneration going. But because of the views of a minority, important developments were stopped in the planning stages and not enough people stood up and said "This is not what the people of Waterford think". Hindsight is wonderful, as I was one of those who just ignored the rampant serial objections, but we need to learn for next time. We need to actively seek and embrace any building that will take place, we need to actively silence those who oppose developments in the best interest of regeneration and job creation and we need to make sure we get what we need to keep growing and expanding as a city. Next time this country has money, we should not except second best as some kind of normality. We need to seek parity with towns and cities. We should be firm on things like University status for WIT. Then Waterford can shrug off the surly second child philosophy and start behaving as one of the family.

Hopefully there will be a next time.

Implied Terms

2009-07-28T11:05:00.001-07:00

Lisbon 2 is approaching rapidly around the corner. No doubt we will hear more drivel from the anti-Lisbon lobby as October approaches. This blog is not about Lisbon. It is about the trend of the politically retarded to emotify (don't know if its a word, but if its not i want to create it) mundane pieces of legislation.

What is Lisbon?

Lisbon does very little but simplify administrative practices in the EU. One would wonder how Ireland got the guarantees we asked for with such ease and speed.. the left (and the recently deceased Libertas) say it is due to the guarantees not being worth the paper they are printed on, but the real reason is that the was never any intention to alter the Irish stance on these issues through Lisbon. The concessions came quick and fast because they make no difference. Lisbon is not about forced abortion or tax harmonisation.

Why is there such a fuss then?

One would think, since Ireland has proportionately more of a say in a post-Lisbon Europe, since the European Parliament is strengthened to decrease the democratic deficit and since administration in Europe is generally streamlined by its acceptance that most in Ireland would just say "it's not really a big deal, ill vote yes". But no, the dribbling pile of mongs that make up the "alternative" parties in Ireland had to try and say that in this new Europe the horrible horrible foreigners sitting in Brussels would have carte blanche to pass legislation legalising abortion, a hike in corporation tax, "baby murder" (and not just an emotive word for abortion, Kathy Sinnott actually specified "infanticide" in her campaign literature) and the other nasty things that the evil bureaucrats in the EU are renowned for.

And of course, in the absence of a decent government pro-Lisbon campaign, any voice of reason in Irish politics and a rational electorate the referendum failed.

So what are the lessons to learn?

Basically the world is fucked. The loony fringe is growing everywhere and any sort of mundane piece of nothingness can be jumped on and hyped up to "This law will make it it illegal to carry babies to term unless you are an ethnic minority" level. If this keeps happening then eventually it will be impossible to get anything done unless it appeals to the reality TV zombies that are swayed by people like Sinnott and Ganley.

The first petition i'm going to start under the post-Lisbon Treaty system will involve forced sterilisation of the No To Lisbon campaigners. I think the irony would be delicious. (and i'll easily get a million signatories)

Local Politics - A microcosm of hypocrisy

2009-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

Democracy seems to be something that is only prized when it suits us. The Republican Party in the US, well known for it's monumental hard-on for the right to bear arms, liberty, fraternity and the rest of it, is also the party that passed widescale legislation curtailing personal freedoms in the PATRIOT act. Much is made in the UK of Gordon Brown being prime minister, when the party was elected under the guiding hand of Tony Blair.

In our own emerald isle, the opposition makes much of the fact that Brian Cowen is Taoiseach under much the same circumstances. He is elected without a mandate, they say. The local election results show the mood of discontent amongst the people, they say. They attempt to force a general election by sniping at the unpopular head of state without providing an iota of promise for change. I think the latent hypocrisy of FG and Labour is most evident in the first class snakery that played out in my local town council.
To set the scene I would first like to remind the readers (of which there ARE actually a few misguided people who come on this, I have the 1 euro Google ad revenue to prove it) that FG and Labour value, above all else, the will of the people. For are they not, at this very minute, heralding that the will of the people must not be denied and the FF government must stand down? And should they not, in this case, view the will of the people as the most important determining factor in selecting people for elected offices?

In my hometown of Tramore, over the previous electoral term, there was a system devised, where the top five pollsters shared the mayoralty, each getting the chain for a year each. Effectively splitting the 5 years among the 5 elected representatives. This was fair enough. It was a system people could understand and there was an element of fairness to it. When the people voted, they understood that this would be how it would work and voted accordingly. What they have done to the system this time around is a FG and Labour cartel has essentially hijacked the selection committee, so only those who are either Blue-Shirts or socialists will occupy the Mayors office.
Yes, there was a backlash against the government, and due to this FG now have a disproportionate amount of power, especially when accompanied by Labour. But the fact is that many of these FG councillors only received a handful more votes than their opponents and can only be said to have a mandate by the skins of their collective teeth. Ignoring the will of the people like this is hypocritical, distasteful and downright shameful. There are many member of FG Tramore that should be ashamed of their actions. This is local government. There is no great platform for political or social reform. What is most important is that the people of Tramore are best served. And ignoring what they have stated adamantly in their votes (ie. That they liked one candidate so much that they gave them 1 and a half times the quota.) is not the way to effectively help the people of Tramore. They are silencing someone who has done a great service to Tramore for short term personal gain.

I would like to state, I am not a supporter of any political party or involved with any person who ran in the election. This is the views of an outsider to the system, but I would like to think that the public would share these views. I would also like to think that people would remember this in 5 years time and vote accordingly. I know I will.

Leprechaun Gold

2009-06-10T11:54:00.001-07:00

The first poem of my new blog.

Decided to add a picture to it. I think it adds to the overall imagery.