Archive for July, 2011

Conceding soft scores – the date of the Presidential election

// July 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011

The announcement that the Irish Presidential election and a pair of referenda are to be held on October 27 isn’t, in the great scheme of things, all that important but in this instance it is a sign that the government is going to be worryingly prone to going native and conceding soft scores to the opposition. See the date of the election is much less significant than the day, a Thursday. Yep we’re back with voting on Thursdays again.

I had a brief exchange with someone on the twitter box and he was defending the government on the following basis that staff would not be available, that the following Monday is a bank holiday so we couldn’t have the count over the weekend and lastly it was the last possible time to have it cos we were bound by the constitution to have someone in place, that delaying another week or 9 days would leave us all devoid of a President and so laid bare to the world as not a real republic. (how it looks when a President dies and we don’t have a Vice-President in place to hold the door for visitors I don’t know. Perhaps, we’re worried the constitution will get all huffy if we don’t have a president sworn in on time and it will just debunk to Aruba)

Now let’s face it, those would be shite reasons if ff were in government & they are still shite now that we are. I happen think that we as a nation and the party that I’m a member of are better than this sort of guff.

Imagine that it is seriously being advanced as a reason to hold it on this specific Thursdays that with months to simply pick a date we ended up running out of time cos we have to invite people to the inauguration and book the Aras (cos that’s a place that is normally booked out with events well into the new year.) Surely, we can let various people know when the inauguration will be in advance without having to know who the winner is, or are we concerned the winner might want to go on a crash diet to look their best for the day?
Or should we consider it plausible that in a country with a huge downturn in tourist numbers there won’t be any suitable hall available in the various towns and cities to count the votes. Now these same halls are empty the Friday night of a bank holiday, but are all apparently committed to events the rest of the weekend. Well except for their commitment to be available on the Saturday morning or later in case the count runs over, but they’ve definitely got plans on Saturday night! Or maybe just on the Sunday.
And let’s all keep in mind these highly specialised staff that we need for the count who are simply not going to be available on the Saturday on a bank holiday weekend but who are apparently footloose and fancy free on the Friday night of a bank holiday! Of course if the 3 counts run a bit late (and with half a dozen candidates that is no impossible) it is entirely possible that they will be expected to make themselves available on the Saturday. And no disrespect meant here but they don’t exactly need to undertake a year of intensive training and backpack across the MackGillicuddy reeks in order to be able to count votes. Sure it is good to have some experienced heads but most of the staff won’t be and need not be that skilled.
Now I am not expecting the date to change cos of the arguments that anyone least of all myself make, but I am expecting that those arguments were considered before picking this date and as a result to hear somewhat better reasons than those outlined so far.

If we want to market ourselves as a knowledge economy it would help to not treat the people living, working and voting in it like they were thick.

Ratting on the raters

// July 20th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

Reading the coverage of the decision by one of the ratings agencies to downgrade Irish soverign debt to junk status, one could be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t an opinion coming from some paragons of impartial virtual who were up to a few years ago rating…oh what is the technical term for them…oh yeah…bags of utter unconscionable shite as triple A investments. Exciting and esoteric financial instruments that allowed loans to be made to people who hadn’t a hope in hell of ever repaying them and for those loans to be all dressed up in the finest of outfits, grouped with other loans of similar stinkitude and then sold across the globe with the stamp of approval of the ratings agencies. A1!

Anyone paying attention to the ratings agency’s downgrading of Ireland is like a family listening to the advice of  restaurant reviewers who gave glowing reviews to establishments that poisoned thousands of people, hundreds of whom died as a result as to where to go for Sunday lunch with granny.

Does this mean that everything in the garden of Ireland’s economy is rosy? Not at all, just that nothing much has changed in the last 6 months and for anyone to base their actions  on what the ratings agencies have to say would be lunacy. There again that pretty much describes how the masters of the universe behaved in the years up to the keel over of the economic system so I wouldn’t bet against some doing just that.

Government to introduce new Voter Gender Quotas

// July 6th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // 2011

As a follow up to the various amendments to the  Electoral Act over thre past 5 years the Irish government is proposing to introduce new Voter Gender Quotas to restrict the % of women that can vote at election time.

With females being confirmed once more as the majority of the population in the preliminary figures of the 2016 Irish Census and with the continuing failure of women to both contest elections even as independents or to vote for their fellow women before taking into account any other considerations, like party affliations, policy platforms, experience and personal competence the time has come for drastic action the minister says.

The government has decided that the % of voters of either gender allowed to vote on polling day will be reflective of the average of the percentage make-up of the previous Dail, local councils and European Elections. With women representatives still just under 25% even after the application of the 40% quota on candidates at the least election, this means that women will not be allowed to make up more than 25% of the electorate.

Lobbying group, WeTheRightSortOfPeople, has welcomed the initative saying that it’s about time that women were reminded that it is the failure of women to contest elections and to vote the right way that has lead to this situation. Let’s face the truth, it’s pretty evident that the women haven’t been voting for the female candidates all along and it’s high time that we respected their influence as a result.

“If women stopped thinking of themselves as free citizens with the right to choose to do or not do things as they please and instead thought of them as women above all else we would all be better off” said a WTRSOP spokesentity  said. “After all what matters most is not whether or not our state is really treating all of our citizens as free and equal people but that we give the impression that we are”

At the next election every woman that seeks to vote will have to wait until 3 men have voted in order to ensure that the percentage of men to women voters does not exceed the target ratio of 75% to 25%. The legislation requires that if an increased percentage of women are elected at this election that the % of women who can vote will similarly be increased.

When it was pointed out that reducing the number of women voters made no logical sense at all and indeed if it was the expectation that men would vote for women more so than women would then why was it men’s fault that women were not contesting elections in the first place, the response was to denounce those who cling to outdated notions about logic and cause and effect declaiming that “This is a wonderfully brave new world that has such lovely fragrant creatures in it.”