Cowen’s Downfall

This is amazing. Well done whoever is responsible. BTW NSFW captions.

Oh and yeah, I have been posting a lot lately…..

Dancing to save the planet?

Hot on the heels of the reported Eco-club in London, with the power needed to run the club generated by the dancefloor, an eco-pledge and free entry for those who walk or cycle, Glastonbury will have a pilot programme for kinetic phone chargers. About the size of a pack of cards, and weighing about the same as the phone itself, these magical boxes of magnets and levels and doohickeys will generate energy to recharge your failing Nokia, provided you are at Jay-Z, or the Beastie Boys, and not Damien Rice.

More info on the eco club here: Club4Climate

And kinetic chargers here: Via Pocket-Lint

Chooo Choooo

Trains are funny things. Having grown used to getting the poverty express to Dublin (i.e. the Citylink Bus) I found myself one Friday evening running late for a pressing engagement (seeing Pam). I had no option but to spend the GDP of a small African country to be transported by the wondrous Iron Horse.

The train presents a great opportunity for people spotting, and with a reduced likelihood of getting stabbed in the eye for looking at a fellow passenger sideways. So today I present to you dear reader,

THE GUIDE TO TRAIN PASSENGERS.

- The OAP
The OAP is a fixture on trains, and may as well be dispatched early on. Usually doddery (but sometimes fleet of foot and savvy) the OAP will barrage you with questions from the get go. ‘Is this the train to Killarney’ they will ask everyone the come across. And everyone will tell them that in a way it is, but in another way, well, it isn’t. You see the concept of changing trains perplexes the OAP, and when the little flashing signs on the doors, very avant garde, say Dublin Heuston they get flashbacks to the 1956 Railway Cup Final, and the Dub who stole their bottle of tae. Wasn’t all bad though, he left the sammidges. The OAP will extoll the virtues of train tea, but then again we all do, and fret constantly about missing the Mallow change.

Not to be messed with, they fiercely guard their seat, and tell stories of a time when Stevensons Rocket ran on the line to Fenit, and the fun they had for thrupence. Long maligned but train commuters and young people, I say we should embrace OAP’s. They are a pleasant distraction when all you have sitting before you is an essay on Law Reform, Malaysian harm reduction figures, and your iPod is dead. They might even buy you a second cup of cha.

- The Businessman
Again here the businessman, or more appropriately the businessperson, can be divided into two categories, the one who shows up exactly on time, strides onto the train, unfolds his FT and wafer thin laptop, connects up a HSDPA modem and conquers the Tokyo market silently, like a shark circling a gazelle in a scuba suit, and the other type, the ed faced, sprinting sweat ball, who pries the moving door open with his fingertips, uncrumples a business report form the Manorhamilton office, and shouts obscenities through his Blackberry to Michelle, his poor PA. The businessman has no time for the trolley, or poor Petra who is driving it today, mostly because she will not make him a soya extra hazelnut half foam triple caf expresso.

Avoid the businessman. It was only result in a feeling of misery as you get an earful of the abuse being fired back to the office, along with a faceful of spittle when he gets excited, or abject disillusionment as you realise you will never, ever make as much money as this guy, or be as cool as him.

- Housewives
It is a fact as old as time, and universally recognised that the second favourite form of transport for the Mammy (after the 96 Escort) is the train. Luxury at its finest, ‘Sure I can stretch out me legs if I get the pains in me varicose veins’, Mammy’s relish in the splendor of the 1300 hours service from Mallow to Portlaoise, where they are going to visit Declan, or Deco, the black sheep who went to college in LIT and ended up a drug dealer. She loves a slice of Finn McCool’s fruit cake does Mammy, although its not as good as her own, but she doesn’t trust the toilets, the ticket machine, or for that case, the doors and the platform, too much technology. On the journey Mammy is guaranteed to make at least two phone calls, one to her daughter who is collecting her from the train, to say she’s on her way, and one to the daughter who dropped her off, to tell her she made it on ok. These calls are never in the order you expect, nor are they necessarily at the time you would either.. My theory is that Mammy is simply testing her phone, to see if it works when she’s moving.

Mammy may also, at a random point in the journey, pull out her phone and call a friend, who’s house she just passed. She will also watch the road for cars she might know, and may even salute them out of habit. Mammy is not a great companion, as she has the phone mannerisms of the businessman coupled with the quiet but unceasing panic of the OAP.

- College Kids
Yes I have to admit it, student fares on trains rock. So much so that the Friday evening train from any major college town to well anywhere really is usually populated in the main by the youth. Stoned slacker kids, who talk about where they are going to buy weed now Deco is locked up again, sporty types who do wind-sprints along the aisles, Comm Babes talking loudly into phones about last night in Coppers, Feddies, CP’s, Trinity Rooms or any other nameless club and the guy they got a shift off, to friends at home, too stupid to be allowed do a FETAC course, but who live their lives through their college friend in return for doing their nails for free in May’s Beauty Parlour, the entire college existence can be found here. There are also any number of gig goers, drinking exchange students and nerdy types who extract a ring binder and pour over constitutional notes, or really hard sums for the duration.

Students are gems of travel. Constant reassurance means that even if they miss their stop or connection, they know they can ring Daddy, or Mammy if she’s back from Portlaoise, and they’ll drive from Charleville to Limerick to connect them. Sure they are loud and often times can be annoying, but their conversations are more interesting to earwig on than the businessman’s rants about that prick in accounts who won’t authorise the EER for the MPC that is needed for the Qualtrans order like yesterday.

So, adopt a student, or failing that an OAP. And for god sake, if you want to travel with your iPod in and your nose in a book, take the bus.

Ireland’s alive and well…

The Lisbon Treaty. Three words most of us never want to hear again, at least not in that order. Now that Ireland has voted, and my pulse rate has slowed, with my blood returning to a gentle simmer from the raging boil it was on Friday the 13th, I thought I would give you, my avid reader, an insight into my feelings on the vote, why it went the way it did, and what, if anything may come of this.

Firstly, may I preface my comments by saying, yes indeed No voter, it was your prerogative to vote however you wanted. However, if your choice of vote was led by a meaningless soundbyte put forward by either campaign, then you sir or madame are an idiot. I do know one or two no voters who have gotten reasonable grounds for voting no, ones which I might not agree with, but they are reasonable none the less. But just so you know, if you listened to Libertas, and their threats that the EU was going to raise our corporate tax, you are an idiot, there is no such ability in the treaty. In fact this is a claim Libertas themselves moved away from, saying instead it was indirect tax that the EU could interfere with. Again, the EU has as a whole a much more liberal view of indirect tax than we do, that is to say, they don’t like it as much as successive Irish governments have, so probarbly the oly taxation change could have been an elimination of VRT, or a reduction of VAT. But no, don’t let the EU in the back door to do something like that. For a finish taxation was a non-issue in debates, but unfortunately by deceiving the people the punch had been landed. They got you.

Maybe you didn’t vote for tax, maybe you voted to protect our neutrality. You were probably enticed by messages from Sinn Fein, or this new fangled Coir organisation, that the EU was going to raise a standing army, ready to fight evil Iron Monger and The Abomination, when they attacked, as well the shall, to kill our babies and legalise drugs. Well apart from the constitutional protection of our own, which maintains us as a neutral country, the treaty expressly in Article I.49 b of the Treaty stated that the policy of the union in the security and defence field shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain member states. So neutrality was a none issue too. But the People Before Profit alliance told you different? They were conflating the Irish involvement in a peacekeeping task force with standing army participation, and used OH NOES private leaked French government documents, which detailed what they wanted to propose at a meeting of the EU heads of state, which showed the EU FORCING us into spending 6% of our GDP on weapons and not plough-shares. Well, like many commentators said at the time, the French can discuss what they bloody well like, we in Ireland would never support that kind of spending, and neither would many of our EU counterparts. So you bought the scaremongering there too, but to be honest, there were more people touting that line, and it requires you to read two documents, not one.

Finally, on social policy. actually lets call a spade a spade and say abortion, which we know was one of the major problems people had. Lisbon could not have forced us to allow abortion on demand, in absolutely no way have or form. We have protocol 19 to the Treaty of Maastricht which is still in force, which protects and reserves our ability to define article 40.3.3 of our constitution. But pro life organisations tried everything under the sun, from “The EU could define abortion as a service, and compel us to do so”, to “The charter of rights isn’t clear enough” to “They can tell us when life beings”. Nonsense. We have our own courts, our own protocol in relation to EU interference and our own ability to tell the EU it is none of their business.

Now, don’t misinterpret this as me saying abortion is an abomination to the one true god of my country, I cannot stand the fact that in some foreign media we are now being painted as this crazy conservative basket case of a country, some ungrateful cousin who takes everything their Eu family gives them, and then when the EU is being reformed to give equality for those other less fortunate members we say no. But we have painted ourselves this way. If there was a clear and active opposition to the Treaty on any reasoned ground, I would have supported it. I admit my threshold would be quite high, I believe in the European experiment, where it has taken us, and the direction it seemed to be going, but if there was a cause to get behind I would have. But even on a macro level, and stuff like losing a commissioner for 5 out of 15 years, well I weighed it up. The commissioner could not act in our interests, is directed by the council of ministers on which we still sit, and you know what, I would not like having to spend money on 27 portfolio for commissioners, to ensure we all have one, and end up with the Irish commissioner having special responsibility for sewage effluent run off. I just didn’t hear a credible argument for voting no.

So, what happens now?

- Re-run; perhaps, after we secure the same protocols on abortion, tax policy and militarisation. But if we go to the EU looking for these, we look like the Irish people are too stupid to understand a treaty, a consolidated treaty, or a treaty explanation document. It also makes it appear as if we don’t trust any of our government and would be better off letting Sinn Fein, Libertas and Youth Defense run our country…

- Re-Negotiation; perhaps, and in 2 years we get the same document handed to the Irish people, or 90% the same, but maybe called the Treaty of Dublin, or of Paris. The Irish, they didn’t trust them dirty Spanish with their treaties and their paella.

- The EU goes ahead without us; doubtful. I would imagine that we hold too much power in the EU for this to happen. Also it would be a disastrous message for the Union to send to other members. But this is the second time we have voted against a treaty for spurious reasons, and it might affect how further reforms are discussed or enacted. The first European lawyer to figure a work around Crotty v An Taoiseach will be able to retire a rich man or woman.

- Nothing happens, the EU goes along like it is already; the favourite of Libertas, and also the most unlikely. The EU will not simply shelve reform it has been working on for the last 7 years.

Even after listening to Sinn Fein and voting no for a better deal, can a better deal be done. Well unless we identify an issue which we can try to get a better deal on, I would have to say no. So even if you think you’re political choice was valid, you were probably misinformed, or misunderstood. Blame must lie with the pro-European parties for this, but the lions share has to be apportioned to the No campaigns, who proved themselves to be the most cunning, the most devious of them all.

So, peacemonger, you voted with military contractors. Liberal thinker, you voted with youth defence. Economic powerhouse, entrepreneur, mother of three, you voted with Sinn Fein. Farmer, worker, student, you voted against the parties which have served you well, to times of boom from bust. Brothers, Sisters, Comrades, you have abandoned your unions. People of Ireland, you have been duped, through your own fault or others. Too keen to scrutinize the government and the EU, you absorbed and accepted half truths and agendas for undemocratic alliances, and voted for people who spat at our elected officials at polling stations. You did put people before profit, but you also put politics before sense, sound bytes before reason, and a no vote before our interaction with the EU. And for what?