Doing right by the Next Generation

// March 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

Image via Wikipedia

All too often the default position of our society to young people is to regard them as a problem and burden. We view younger people so much as a problem about which ‘something must be done’, that one would think none of us had ever been young ourselves.

At times it seems like none of us as adults appears to remember times when we had strayed too close to going off the rails, or done things that perhaps we shouldn’t have. In the media, the word “youth” is most often heard proceeded with the definite article followed by the words charged, detained or arrested. Too many children in Ireland are not in a position to avail of the educational opportunities afforded to them, due in large part to a history of disadvantage that spans the generations. We, as a society, must raise both our own expectations of our young people and their expectations of themselves; we need to stop seeing them as a problems and starting seeing them as we once were. Often ignored, under-appreciated, bored and lacking a challenge.

We need to provide accessible low cost venues in which young people can feel safe to simply hang with simple passive adult supervision, far too often the few places that young people have to meet in are available only at a prohibitive cost. Anyone who has travelled beyond these shores will have experienced the greater resources devoted to challenging their young people and which occupy their time, it is almost as if we as a nation had so long gotten used to have so many young people that it matter not what would happen to them.

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Further detail on the Gilmore’s school sale

// November 1st, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Uncategorized

I had a gander at the Galway planning enquiry site* and it would appear from what is there that the land in question had prior conditional planning permission reference no. 03222 granted for a 6 room school back in 2003 long before the actual sale took place. This is different to the more recent application of this year reference 10383 which involved an 8 room school. The 2003 applicant is listed as Ciaran Kitching (who appears to be the Parish Priest for Killimor), and the townload is listed Garrynastillagh as opposed in 2010 when it was the Board of Management Iomair National School, and in Killimor but the GIS places the two applications at the same site.

Which prompts the following questions in my mind, when was the advertising stage that Eamon Gilmore refers to actually done, was before that planning application in 2003 or before the sale in 2006? And who was the owner at the time of the first application, was it Gilmore’s wife or her parents? Was an agreement made in principle prior to 2003 but then revisited (and if so what was the price and why did it fail) before being sold  later on at a higher price? Was the sale stalled after planning was granted in order to obtain a higher price later?

The thing about someone else getting planning permission on your land before you sell to them is that if you back out of the sale, there then exists a precedent granting a development of that size and scale on the land. Hence, you could more easily apply for an equivalent sized development, say a two storey apartment development or offices. The granting of Planning permission raises the price of land. So if the first application caused the price to raise was that considered when making that application? It would seem odd for the applicant and hence the one forking over the cash to act in a manner that would cost them more money. There again it was the state/ taxpayer that appears to be on the hook for the purchase price so did anyone involved really care?

The political problem here is that if you’re the beneficiary of a type of behaviour that you then seek to make hay in your career out by criticising then you’re a hypocrite, pure and simple. That is Gilmore’s problem in a nutshell, he is criticising behaviour in the property boom that he and his own have benefited from. In other countries this would considered a major political problem and would demand a full and frank disclosure.

The other problem is whether Eamon Gilmore erred in not declaring this in his members interests, the interwebs were full of those commenting on Ivor Callely’s failures to declare property that was in his wife’s name. Fact is that to the best of my knowledge community property operates as regards what you should declare to SIPO.

* to use the site, you have to use Internet Explorer and also install the ActiveX autodesk plug-in to view the application details, maps etc.

Of gender, jobs and quotas

// July 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // elections

Over on political reform one of the most commented pieces in recent times concerns the description of the new Fine Gael front bench as ‘Male, stale and pale’. This description is in itself ironic given the complete absence of any women in the self described progressive parties like the current SF line up or even the Green party in the last Dail. Labour do better it’s true as a portion of their Dáil representation but that has as much to do with their small size as anything one or two more TDs less than they have now and their portion drops in double digit percentages.

In the comments and cited in evidence of the experience of female candidates is a survey from the National Women’s Council of Ireland, which to be honest reads like a whine  list or litany of awful things from the campaign trail that anyone who has stood in an election could offer up, whether male or female. I had a canvasser of mine who was hunted from a doorstep in a urban Dublin area by someone brandishing what they thought was a shotgun!

I would contend that an alternative view to the notion of quotas might be that we should have an electoral system that did not serve to penalise political parties for taking chances on candidates, whether male or female, who the parties fear the electorate might potentially decide to be wrong for them. This would allow the parties to be run as many candidates as were interested in offering themselves for consideration and it would be up to the public to decide who they wanted.

The fact is that PR-STV can work as a form of instant primary but parties do not do so as the issues of the potential of low transfers between party candidates might ultimately cost them seats. If total national seat allocation was based on the portion of the national vote received with the constituency election being a means to choose which specific individuals got the seat we might see more people take a chance along with parties being more willing to take that chance with them. The national seat distribution could be topped with those party or even non-party candidates who had the highest vote without being elected at the constituency level.

The other issues being raised about the nature of politics that is supposedly off putting to women, clubbishness and so on strikes me as missing the point. Convincing people to vote for you and support a course of action you advocate requires things like building alliances,  being somewhat thick skinned about personal comments etc. All of this effort against what is human behaviour is a bit like suggesting that sport X should change its rules so that more people who are currently unsuited to it could play it. But it would cease to be the sport it was. If you think soccer players should be able to catch the ball go play rugby or football, if you think people shouldn’t be able to make such rough tackles in football then play soccer. If you think that people shouldn’t club together to achieve their collective aims then electoral politics isn’t for you.

I hate to be citing Big Brother as empirical evidence of much of anything but the fact that the female contestants picked one another off while the males tended to club together until such time as they absolutely had to fight amongst themselves says something even if it’s hard to be 100% sure what it is.

Those negative comments from the NWCI Survey could be as easy found by asking male candidates of their experiences too, as I was a candidate at one time below are a few responses to the comments I’d add. The ‘quoted’ remarks are from the NCWI post on the survey

‘Negative comments from women [like] ‘politics is no place for a woman’ and ‘isn’t your husband great to be allowing you to do this’, to ‘don’t forget to make time for your children and don’t neglect you family’ really annoyed me. At the first council meeting, I was referred to as the ‘new girl’.

DK – I was in my 30s and even then most members of the party thought of me as a lad barely out of short trousers. Older people in Ireland are incredibly patronising of younger people, it’s not about gender.

‘And one elderly man on the doorstep said he would vote for me because ‘you would be handy for cooking them dinner in the council’ – he didn’t intend to be rude, but that was his truth”

DK – If people are put off by every negative comment and experience on a door step then they’ve no place contesting an election. Ask anyone who has contested an election and they will regale you with horror stories of craziness and abuse they’ve experienced. It will be a minority of people that behaviour like this but out of 100,000 people even 0.1% is a 100 people. The fact that I’d worked in IT lead some voters to think I’d be great for fixing the PCs in the council.

‘As I was on the ticket with a male, I was mostly ignored at the doors, unless I happened to be on my own – even when male party members were canvassing with me, the public tended to speak to them, not me.’

DK – It is your job as the candidate to make an impression on the voters, it is not the voter’s job to single you out. Be pushy, assert yourself. Why would someone choose to vote for someone to speak up for them when they don’t even spoke up for themselves? Remember you’ve come to their home, you have to convince them to chose you above all others.

‘Some women commented that as a young woman, I should be happy to be married and have children, not get into politics’

DK – I recall research from Liam Weeks at UCC on the 2004 local elections that showed that the worst for voting for young women were older women. But it is ironic that, if in part the under representation of women in politics is due to the behaviour of women voters that, the solution is to reward this behaviour by having a quota for those same women! Believe me a quota system won’t be seeing loads of 20 something women getting elected.

‘I stay in it (politics) because I want to continue making a difference in my area and to influence policy within a larger party, but it is frustrating!’

DK – Politics is incredible frustrating, if you can’t cope with frustration then knocking on thousands of doors isn’t for you. This like people complaining that they’d be Olympic distance champions only that they found the hours and hours of training to be really boring. If you can’t do the work involved in the training then don’t expect to get the medals. And political change takes place over decades, not a few months or years.

‘Women found it encouraging seeing a young female candidate seeking re-election’

‘Intimidation and bully tactics are still a very prevalent part of party politics. While existing female councillors are tolerated, obstacles and barriers are put in place to prevent further new female candidates from entering politics’

DK – Bullying or overbearing behaviour is common in lots of jobs, but  let’s face you have to have some sort of ego to stand in front of the public and ask that they vote for you not someone else. If you can’t cope with encountering overbearing egos then representative politics isn’t for you.

‘[There is a] Paternalistic attitude within the political party. Assumptions made that I am in more need of advice because I am a woman. Mostly among older men. Men in their 20s and 30s treat women equally on the whole’

DK – anyone who is on the younger side in any organisation will have any number of older people trying to bend their ear to provide them with the benefit of their advice and experience. Even if much of it is useless and repetitive. You will get the same from the voters. Learn listen and if it’s of any use then great but mostly you’re humouring people.

I’ll be on Newstalk’s Saturday Edition in the morning

// June 18th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

I will be taking part in a discussion re: the week’s events in Fine Gael tomorrow morning between 8.30am and 9.30am. I’m not a main player as it were, merely a phone contributor.  Senator Alex White, Senator Frances Fitzgerald and Padraig Duffy former press for Bertie are the main attraction but I’m aiming to be one of those memorable character actors who runs off with the show. I mean I presume it’s solely going to be about matters Fine Gael cos if we stray into talking about the Lakers win over the Celtics I’m in trouble.

The end of Enda

// June 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // enda kenny

He has been an excellent leader of the party and has the qualities to make a great Taoiseach but the electorate have fixed in their minds a view of him that is inaccurate, not based on his performance and even at times simply unfair. Yet it would seem that a large portion of them are not for shifting in this view.

It would appear that the public has decided that Enda is the soccer guy who clears out the dead wood, sets up the youth academy, brings through new young players and buys well even wins a few cups but having done all that just can’t seem to connect with them and the squad he has assembled in order to win the league. It’s frustrating and undeserved for Enda Kenny but I think that if the government wins the confidence motion next Tuesday that we as a party should immediately make a smooth transition to a new leader in the form of Richard Bruton and look over the course of the summer to iron out a deal with the Greens that transitions them out of government ASAP. Offer them 3 Taoiseach’s nominee seats in the next Seanad for 3 of their TDs that lose their seats to let them recover as a party in opposition (we’re going to win the Seanad elections anyway with a minimal amount of cllr discipline) and we could look at implementing some of the outstanding Green policies from the PfG that aren’t that awful. A properly constituted directly elected Mayor for Dublin isn’t a bad idea, nor is reform of the planning system.

What the poll shows is our problem that FG are obviously not getting the party’s message across well enough. I get quite annoyed at some of our spokespeople for the their inability to get across a cohesive and consistent narrative of what a vote for FG would mean and what the change that would result from a FG win would be like.

Enda Kenny’s leadership isn’t separate from that but nor it is the whole story.

The rise in Labour’s support is quite impressive for what it is but also very interesting for what it isn’t. It’s not an endorsement of Labour’s policies because they don’t have any. They have a series of well expressed if ill defined goals but not detailed policies to achieve them.

I think the truly massive implication from this poll and other recent ones is that the electorate are hugely volatile. FF have lost the faith of the public and neither FG nor Labour or SF have 100% convinced them to date otherwise Labour would have been over 30% much earlier. There are a lot of voters who are open to listening to a new message and it would seem they are taste testing at the moment. And we should take our lucky stars that we don’t have a rabid party of the right looking for scapegoats amongst racial minorities or minority sections of society.

What this poll does prove once and for all is the folly of many left leaning people in their desire to get FG off the pitch so that a real left/right contest could emerge. It has always been the fact that FF were on Labour’s territory that prevented that sort of contest coming about.

Should FG change leader? I don’t believe so but the question is now will FG change leader? I think it is more possible than it was 6 months ago. There won’t be any movement (with that I’ve probably just damned Enda’s chances of staying on) on the FG leadership this side of the no confidence motion. After all it is entirely possible for McDaid and McGuinness to go walk about, for Lowry to decline to support Cowen (anyone miss his Oxegen ticket give-away?) and Jackie to fail to make the train up from Kerry. And were that to happen all bets are off. For now though it looks to me like the End has started.

The rape of Martin Cullen

// January 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

So Martin Cullen felt that the media scrutiny into his affairs was like being raped? Seriously, he said “It was like waking up every morning and being raped” I’m quoting from the people who were quoting him. Is that really how he felt?

Besieged, witch-hunt, being naked in public, being a hare at a coursing meet or a fox at a hunt, violated, even persecuted, all handy enough comparisons he could have used but didn’t. Nope he felt raped every day. Not that he had felt his personal world had been violated and that each morning held the possibility of a revisiting of this, but he was raped every day. Every day.

And why was this media attention directed at him? Because his department awarded a contract paying €800 per day to someone he knew personally who was apparent plucked from a pool of 3 companies. And who it appeared hadn’t handled accounts of this size before. And people were somewhat surprised at this, and one eejit made an inappropriate and untrue comment on air as to what the real reason might have been. I’ll give ya a hint it wasn’t because Martin was incompetent. And the investigation wasn’t able to find anyone who would say any wrongdoing occurred or anything written down that indicated wrongdoing had happened, or that the process was flawed.

You can read more here – http://www.soldiersofdestiny.org/monicaleechsaga.htm

Update: I did a quick search and found this Martin Cullen profile on Bebo but surely that isn’t the one with a million hits. It’s only had under 2,000 profile views to date since 2006.