D-Day for Clinton: Florida / Michigan

// May 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Dear Daniel,

Millions of voters in Florida and Michigan are depending on you to help make sure they have a voice in this race. Will you stand up for them today?

Thanks to your efforts, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of people who have already spoken out, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting May 31 to make a decision about whether or not the votes in Michigan and Florida will count.

Now I need you to urge the DNC to make the right decision on May 31. I need you to remind them that in the Democratic Party, we count every vote.

Tell the Democratic National Committee to count the votes of Florida and Michigan.

On May 31, the DNC has a chance to make it clear that the people of Florida and Michigan have a voice in our party. The decision is especially critical given the important role these states will play in November.

And your voice could make the difference for the millions of people who went to the polls in those two states to make their choice for president.

- See here’s my problem with the Clinton message, the lesson of 2000 was that every voter should get an equal chance to vote and have their vote counted. And we all can see that in Florida and Michigan many voters did not get an opportunity to participate in a fair and open primary process. To now retrospectively discount the votes of those who could not choose the candidate of their choice is just plain wrong.

Social networking and suicide article in IT today

// May 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // bebo, irish times, social networks, suicide

Have a small contribution in the Irish times today on a piece on social networks and suicide, (subs. reqd.). I must get around to posting the larger, longer and more rambling version of my comments here later. Overall, I think the piece steers a careful path through what are very choppy waters for such a discussion.

As many FF Voters as FG are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty

// May 29th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // brian cowen, Fianna Fail, fine gael, Lisbon Treaty, Red C

From the poll in last weekend’s Business Post a rather basic fact appears to have been overlooked which is that as many FF people as FG people have yet to be convinced of the merits of the Treaty.

Quoting from the Post article. “The intensive campaigning by the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who has risked his political honeymoon on the success of the referendum, is bearing fruit with Fianna Fáil voters who now favour the treaty by a huge margin. For the first time, an absolute majority of Fianna Fáil voters say they will support the treaty.

However, despite an active Fine Gael campaign and the appeal by party leader Enda Kenny to ‘‘put the country first’’, Fine Gael voters are evenly divided between the Yes and No side. This may be explained by many voters identifying the referendum as a proposal from the government and, therefore, something to be opposed.”

The full report as posted by RED C

So FG support is supposedly 28% and FF is on 40%, and we heard that FG is evenly divided on the subject while an “absolute majority” of FFers are supportive of the treaty which I believe we are to take to mean 50%+1 of the FF support meaning 20% of the electorate. Allowing for the same amount of undecided voters within FF and FG and the general electorate which is 25%. So we get

FF 40%, of which 20% Yes, 10% undecided, 10% No.
FG 28% of which 10.5% Yes, 7% undecided, and 10.5% No.

Since this is a poll, and we’re dealing with a margin of error of +/- 3%, I think it is reasonable to suggest that An Taoiseach Brian Cowen has as many of his own supporters to convince to not vote No as does FG. And he actually has more voters in total to win over than does FG.

After all when you go into the polling station a single FG vote is worth no more that a single FF vote.

Brian Cowen is Michael Noonan 2.0

// May 28th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // brian cowen, michael noonan

To paraphrase from Seamus Mallon, “Brian Cowen is Michael Noonan for slow learners”. Noonan had an established talent for marking his opposite spokesperson, a neat turn of phrase (read some of his budget rebuttals) and was very popular with the party stalwarts for his willingness to get stuck into people he was debating with. And yet for those same reasons he was the wrong person to lead Fine Gael when he came to the position. Bertie Ahern was the embodiment of the expression “trying to nail jelly to the wall”, getting in close and making digs and punches did nothing for your side of the argument.

Noonan as a man wasn’t as needlessly aggressive as Cowen can be but his appeal to the party footsoldiers was similar. People in political parties love someone who can take the hits for them and come back out fighting. Yet the floating, middle ground people who pay only superficial attention to politics are completely turned off by what they see as unnecessary antics.

I suspect that someone somewhere within FF will take Cowen off and attempt to do what they must have done to the Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue last summer and get him in touch with some Zen master. Otherwise, he is going to blow his top every other week.

Voting on Lisbon – update 1

// May 27th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // brian cowen, Fianna Fail, fine gael, Lisbon Treaty

After the weekend that was in it, the comments from Brian Cowen, and the mood music coming from the IFA, I would judge that the No vote has breached the 40% barrier and then some, I would even put it as high as 43%. Why?

Well, Cowen has probably with a single comment made a percentage of people from an Fine Gael inclined background decide that they can’t be bothered to come out and vote for what they now see as his effing Treaty. It’s not a very sensible attitude but it is entirely understandable. This may back to more difficult to

The IFA seem to be itchy for a fight and could talk themselves into a corner that they could only be got out of by Cowen going 12 rounds with Mandelsohn live on telly.

I would rate the Yes vote at 55% and the remainder spoiled – we’re going to see a quare amount of spoiled votes in my humble opinion, over 2%.

Shifting the blame so early

// May 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // brian cowen, Fianna Fail, Lisbon Treaty, noel whelan

I’ve read some attempts to shift the blame for failure in my time but rarely so far in advance of the end of the contest. Noel Whelan’s column, Irish Times May 24^th, followed so closely by the comments from Brian Cowen that the onus for the success of the Lisbon Treaty was on Fine Gael rather than the government of the day has to take the proverbial biscuit.

Let us recall that the main government party spent much of the time it could have spent addressing concerns about the Treaty conducting a swansong for its outgoing leader, while telling anyone who had concerns that they were lulus who were only interested in making a holy show of us by voting no and just stopped short of sending them to bed without their supper.

If the government were serious from the outset about meeting head on the genuine qualms that many people had expressed they would have selected someone other than a man who would cause Americans to harbour doubts about the loveliness of their mothers and the tastiness of apple pie. The smug condescension from the junior minister with special responsibility for European Affairs can have convinced few floaters to choose the ‘Yes’ side.

In terms the Taoiseach might be more familiar with, his comments are like those of a player who never turns up for training, and upon coming back from suspension for ungentlemanly conduct enters onto the field of play at the county final with ten minutes left. He then demands rather then asks that all those who have been there from the start of the championship must dig deep, give 110% and sweat blood all the while he has yet to kick a ball in anger. With ‘encouragement’ to the Yes side like this, does the No side require any more help?

Irish Rail – let’s sack everyone!

// May 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // irish politics, irish rail

I’ve been personally of the view for many years now that Irish Rail is simply unrecoverable as a company. This from someone who is a big believer in trains and public transport in general. The only sensible solution is to sack everyone from the CEO down and do a complete rehire, with all of them sign up to a clearly stated policy that it is the mission of the company to transport people and goods, safely and reliably within a predictable timetable to and from the destinations of their choice.

Too many people have had too many poor experiences with Irish Rail in terms of how it does business as a company and sadly how many of its customer facing (hate the expression but it seems apt here) employees treat people. Bear in mind that most people when asking for assistance from Irish Rail employees are away from home, and if stranded will have to go to considerable personal expense and suffer a great deal of inconvenience to make it to their destination by other means. Frankly for many of them it is a stressful enough experience and if they had another choice they would have made. The company and many of its employees continue to behave as if the company exists to provide them with a living and not to provide a service to the travelling public. This attitude perpetuates itself by infecting new employees as they learn from the existing staff what it is you can get away with. Hence my idea for the need for a mass clear out.

Sure, some of the trains are nicer now, but remember we the travelling public and taxpayers paid for that nice new shininess by means of Transport 90210 and other PR efforts such as “We’re not there yet, and frankly we’re not sure where there is”. It isn’t like the employees built the new trains as a favour to us crafted out of the goodness of their hearts on their own time while taking breaks from feeding orphans and widows.

Every little change in their work situation they want to be paid for. The time table changes, pay me more, time table changes back to what it was, pay me more again. New trains, pay me to learn how to drive them, and then pay me more to actually drive them. And if you hire someone to drive them but I don’t drive them, pay me more to let them drive them instead.

Cowen and the real problem with his f$%ckers

// May 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // brian cowen, Fianna Fail, swearing

Naturally, the superficial emphasis has been on the use of the word itself. Those with a tradition at this stage for missing the point by a distance greater than the human mind can encompass have praised him for showing that he is cool and down with the kids. The Evening Herald ran with a headline saying as much.

In point of fact, the issue for Cowen is not actually his swearing at all – which the finest of us do (and with some aplomb I meant add) , but the fact that he appears to be so easily rattled. Enda Kenny wasn’t placing him under any especially harsh pressure, some might even say it was all fairly humdrum stuff. Until Cowen found himself unable to answer a pretty straightforward question and lacking the armoury of evasion natural to his predecessor he went lock, stock and sinker for the “attack is the best form of defense” approach. All of which meant his temperament wasn’t the mae west when he turned to Mary Coughlan to make his now famous remark about” those f$%ckers”. Some of the more ill informed, including as a writer for the Sunday Mirror and a letter writer elsewhere, were more appalled that he should say such things to a delicate flower such as Mary, poor innocent Mary Coughlan. Just as well for all our sakes that he doesn’t carry around a nuclear button.

Fionnan Sheahan catches it perfectly with his piece on “The Touchy and Tetchy Show“, indeed it is hard to see how this works to the advantage of Cowen either Coughlan.

“They don’t like it up ‘em, Mr. Mannering”- as a noted political commentator once said.

Crewe and Nantwich

// May 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // british politics, crewe and nantwich, labour, tasmin dunwoody

As is my wont from time to time, I poke my nose in the politics of other countries. I don’t spend any money on influencing the outcome but I do like to watch. So the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich looks to be quite interesting given the national scene in the UK. Basically, Gordon Brown seems to have been caught completely unpreparedby the British public in bed with a naked recession and he had no protection at all. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg is still learning to lead without his stabilisers on the bicycle of the Lib Dems and David Cameron has suddenly found himself faced with the prospect of being behaving like the leader of a major political party with a decent chance of being in government somewhat ahead of schedule. You can peruse the full line up if you wish but the three main parties are where the real action is as per usual.

Last time out in 2005 the final % results were
Labour 48.8
Conserveratives 32.6
Lib Dems 18.6

A shift or swing as they like to call it over there of 9% from Labour to Tory would mean Labour on 39.8% and Conservative 41.6%. However, many people – core Labour people – are likely to find voting for the Tories a bridge too far, and might either stay home or seek out a temporary safe haven in the Lib Dems. Indeed, with the Labour vote nationally appearing to be in free fall, it is just possible that some Labour voters might even decide that the only way to stop the Tories romping home is to vote LibDems. It is alternately possible that if the battle is seen as a straight choice between supporting the government or giving it a bloody nose then the Lib Dems might be squeezed out completely. With that in mind, I’ve got two outcomes that might result from each of the above scenarios

Scenario (A)

Labour suffer a collapse but as it is a collapse in the core vote many can’t bring themselves to vote Tory so they temporarily jump to the LibDems, in fact the Labour campaign doesn’t get people to vote Labour but it is effective in stopping people from voting Tory

Labour 34.8
Conserveratives 38.6
Lib Dems 26.6

Scenario (B)

Labour suffer a significant drop but the core vote holds and many including some who previously voted Lib Dems see the risk nationally of a Tory win (especially if it means an overall majority for the Conservatives) so they vote Labour. The Labour campaign gets people to vote Labour but it is still not effective in stopping middle ground people from voting Tory.

Labour 39.8
Conservatives 44.6
Lib Dems 15.6

We’ll know tonight. And there is always scenario (C), (D) and so on and so forth.

Voting on Lisbon

// May 20th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Lisbon Treaty

I’m going to give the feelings in my water expression over the next few weeks as we close in judgement day for the Treaty of Lisboa – June 12th.

As of now I would suggest the support levels of

Yes 60% No 38% Spoilt 2%