Category: Politics

Serious. Or apparently serious.

Categories
Humour Politics

Michael Lowry Is A Corrupt Politician

Esat Digifone logo
"Jesus But Didn't We Make Some Money"

There, it felt good to say that. Of course he is far from alone, it almost seems unfair to single him out, but because of our wealth-favouring libel laws it’s not often you can actually come out and name one of the bastards.

Today I can, because a judicial body, the Moriarty Tribunal, says it is beyond doubt that Michael Lowry, when Fine Gael minister for transport, energy and communications, gave “substantive information to Denis O’Brien, of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence”.

The licence they speak of was for the country’s second GSM mobile phone network in 1996, the biggest contract ever awarded by the State to a private company. Denis O’Brien’s Esat consortium won, even though by proper procedures their bid would have come third. In a transaction which the Tribunal concludes was not unrelated, Minister Lowry was given a huge wad of cash. And when that licence was later sold to British multinational BT, Denis O’Brien made more money than you will ever even be shown a picture of.

Lowry CartoonInterestingly, while the Tribunal’s report calls this “a cynical and venal abuse of office”, it doesn’t actually call the act corrupt. I refuse to be so mealy-mouthed. If he cynically and venally abused office, if he received money in consideration for bending the rules to favour the giver, then Michael Lowry is as crooked as a snake with stomach cramps.

Moriarty does use the word corrupt with reference to an unrelated deal between Lowry and another tycoon, Ben Dunne (most famous for giving an unexplained million or two to former Taoiseach C. J. Haughey). Dunne reacted with outrage, saying that if they wanted to call him corrupt then they should put him in jail.

Denis O’Brien likes to emphasise how much money the State has wasted on trying to catch him. The Irish Times puts the final costs of the Moriarty Tribunal at over €100,000,000, though O’Brien has set up his own site to lie about and exaggerate the figure. It’s even got a picture of the gates of Dublin Castle on it, so it gives the impression of being official. That’s how crap the man is.

He is right though. As is Ben Dunne. The money spent on the Tribunal has been wasted. It will remain wasted until he and his fellow corrupt and corrupting businessmen are safely behind bars, along with the politicians they paid for.

Categories
Politics

When Not Enough Is Too Much (#Libya)

Location of Benghazi within Libya.
Image via Wikipedia

Weird to sit here watching the Allies bombarding from the air and sea in the film The Longest Day, when something very similar is happening in Libya. Except of course that they will be stopping short of actually invading this time. We hope.

The mandate is vague – sufficiently vague to get an agreement – but we’re led to believe that NATO and friends will only do the minimum necessary to thwart Gaddafi’s counter-offensive on rebel strongholds such as Benghazi. After that we must hope that the Libyans can and will handle it themselves. Anything more, and it begins to look like another Western oil-grab. (Remember, Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa.) Already the Arab League has accused the NATO allies of going beyond what was agreed, though one might fairly assume the Arab League would have said that if they’d bombed with flowers and guided kittens.

And they have a point really. NATO may pragmatically accept that they will have to inflict civilian casualties if they are going to prevent Gaddafi inflicting civilian casualties. But on the ground, death inflicted by the domestic enemy will be seen very differently from death dealt by foreign powers. It could all so easily go horribly wrong, turn popular support across the Arab world against the Libyan rebels – perhaps even against all pro-democracy uprisings. Nothing could damage their cause more than being seen as Western proxies, fifth columns preparing their countries for ‘Crusader’ invasion. The hard thing for the allies, with their vastly superior fire-power, will be to stop firing – to know when they’ve done enough but not too much.

Unless of course they actually want to undermine Middle East democracy movements. That’s one Machiavellian possibility we may need to consider.

Categories
Politics Technology

Adding One Word Turns Science Into Bullshit

©William Murphy, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
Met Éireann's headquarters were modelled on the Death Star

I was wondering what Gaddafi was really up to when he declared a ceasefire. Taking a chance to regroup perhaps, or attempting to bargain? In fact it was something a whole lot more audacious: He would continue to kill people, while saying “Stop fighting back, this is a ceasefire”.

Meanwhile for some reason, the Independent thinks it’s clever to publish the headline “Explosion could send contamination to Ireland“, as if there was actually some reason to fear that happening.

The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland said it was “extremely unlikely” that any material being released from the nuclear plant would have health implications here.
But Met Éireann forecaster Pat Clarke warned that if an explosion occurred, Ireland could be affected.
“If there was an explosion of up to 30,000 feet, that (material) would be carried (across the world),” he said.

Let’s leave aside the image of 30,000 exploding feet. If we can read even more into his words that has been already, he presumably means an explosion that ejects radioactive debris to a height of 30,000 feet. This would be possible if a Chernobyl-like explosion and fire does occur. Indeed, debris from Chernobyl was carried to the furthest corners of the globe.

Where it did… pretty much nothing.

While it clearly had deadly effect in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and probably killed in Western Europe too, the fallout was gradually dispersed as it spread, eventually becoming so diluted as to be insignificant next to normal background radiation. So the probability that the explosion of a reactor as far away as Japan will actually harm anyone in Ireland? To use a round number, zero.

Which is what the story here is actually saying – if you ignore the spin. See that “but” in the second sentence of the part quoted? It suggests that this statement disagrees with the previous, that one national agency is contradicting another. That’s what turns these two rather anodyne statements into a story. Ask two different questions, “Can debris from Fukushima hurt us?” (answer: No) and “Could debris from Fukushima get here?” (answer: Yes), then put the two together so that what is actually a reassuring agreement between experts sounds like a worrying conflict. Voilà, news.

Categories
Humour Politics

Here Are The News

Artist's Impression of a Queen
Artist's Impression of a Queen

 

While we in Ireland were trying to take a day off, the world elsewhere got on with things. Action on Libya, which apparently is having some effect. This morning the Gaddafi faction claimed they were calling a ceasefire. I trust them about as far as I can throw grenades at them, but it’s a start.

Signs of hope too from Fukushima. Having discussed this with engineers I’m a little more sanguine now that the pool of molten fuel rods isn’t necessarily doomed to burn its way through the Earth’s crust. Still not entirely clear what they can do with it, but at least they don’t consider it to be their most pressing problem.

Er, I think that’s a good thing.

And of course, not unrelated to the day that was in it, President Obama made a date to visit Ireland next year because, like all American Presidents, he is part Irish. In his case, 1/32nd part. It amazes me how successful Ireland has been at creating this image of being a place where people come from. Just about every single US President had some English ancestry, usually a lot, but I’ve yet to see one of them stand outside 10 Downing Street and say “You know, I’m always glad to come here because there’s a little English in me too”.

One perhaps unfortunate element is that the visits by the US President and the Queen of England will be within a week of each other. So if you have any sort of even slight association with a Muslim political organisation, and don’t want searchlights poked up your every orifice, that might be a very good week to take a holiday.

Categories
Politics

Look Behind You

Foreign troops have entered Bahrain to quell the month-long uprising. Some are calling it an invited peacekeeping force from neighbouring Gulf Cooperation Council states. Others are calling it what it looks like – military intervention by Saudi Arabia.

Remember the raving lunatic Gaddafi who seemed to be under the delusion that he was the ruler of Libya? Well he’s winning. He may only have minority support, but it’s the minority with most of the heavy weapons.

There is little the rest of the world can do for Japan now. They have the resources to deal with the disaster; any specialised help needed they will get. The danger is that while we are fixated on the human tragedy and nuclear drama, besieged dictatorships in the Middle East will move to crush their nascent democracy movements.

Categories
Cosmography Politics Technology

The Argument For Nuclear Energy 1

Nuclear CartoonIt was not the best day to argue for nuclear energy.

However Philip Walton, emeritus prof of physics at NUIG¹ and son of Irish Nobel laureate Ernest Walton², appeared on national radio last Friday to do just that. News of Japan’s reactor emergency was just coming in at this point, but the appearance was part of a campaign that he and two other physicists had launched at NUIG on Wednesday, so cancelling was really out of the question.

It all seemed a little surreal.

We should not of course let circumstances carry the debate. There are strong arguments in favour of using nuclear fission to generate electricity. Walton is perfectly right to say that all other methods have their risks and their costs too.

The debate is really over how you quantify those costs, and one person’s convincing argument is another’s canard. Walton for instance says that more people are killed mining coal in China every year than in the whole history of the nuclear industry. This may be true – but should we really take greater risks here just because the Chinese have an appalling safety record?

The argument needs to be broken down further:

  • Does the world need nuclear to avert global warming and/or replace fossil fuels?
  • Assuming the answer is yes, do we need to have a nuclear generator here?

The first part is of course enormously controversial right now, and is going to get more so.

I will try to deal with it tomorrow.

  1. The National University of Ireland, Galway. (My own alma mater, as it happens.)
  2. (As in Cockcroft and)
Categories
Humour Politics

Dame Enda

NYTimes Cartoon

Newspapers, never call yourself a ‘paper of record’. Every silly mistake you make then becomes a silly mistake, of record. It’s extra fun when an institution as grand as the New York Times decides that Enda Kenny’s name is wrong and corrects it. And his gender, while they’re at it. Couldn’t they employ a competent sub-editor from Estonia or somewhere?

Mind you, a certain paper I used to work for (ahem) made a similar mistake with my copy once. Or rather, the opposite mistake. At the time there were rumours about a certain Fianna Fáil politician receiving a payment of over a million from a certain businessman. We all knew who it was, but libel laws prevented us from saying. So I decided to refer to him as ‘Edna’, which I considered the least likely possible name for a TD – especially a male one.

My sub-editor happily ‘corrected’ this to Enda – three times – changing the deliberately strange into the merely confusing, and making it look like I was impugning the reputation of the man who is our Taoiseach now. Ironic, considering his promise yesterday.

But why am I telling you about it? Thanks to the magic of the Internet, here it is. From December 1996.

Knew I should have gone with Ethel.

Speaking of wealthy businesspersons, in the news this morning we learn that there are now five people in Ireland who have made the Forbes list of dollar billionaires. To think, only a few years ago I would have felt quite proud of that fact. Now I just want to see their tax clearance certs.

Categories
Humour Politics

Enda Has A Go

Hibernian CartoonOw. Ow ow ow ow. Look, I wish Enda Kenny well as Taoiseach. He has an unenviable job, I hope he does it well, I have more confidence in his ability to do it than I have in… Ooh, loads of other people. So to be fair I have to say that some really good promises were made today. Particularly, a ban on corporate political donations. I also like single-tier health very much, and a Minister for Children may be a good idea even if it does sound odd.

But he needs to be able to give a speech that doesn’t make me wince like I’m listening to a gas cylinder being whacked with a jack handle. He must get a professional speech writer. I know he doesn’t have one, because no paid writer could be that bad. Please to God.

“The long Hibernian nights on the western edge of Europe” he intoned, alluding to… something, I’m not sure. I was too distracted by the apparent implication that nights get longer the further west you go, by trying to figure out what exactly makes a night Hibernian, and by wondering if I was taking him up wrong entirely and the Long Hibernian Knights were a 70s heavy rock band. Imagery was strewn around the speech like low coffee tables, adding little decorative or useful, mainly just impeding progress.

And then bills or tax demands or something hitting people’s doormats “like stealth bombs”. What the fuck might a stealth bomb be? Enda there are stealth bombers, which are planes that are hard to spot, and there are smart bombs, which can be guided to their targets. Stealth bombs would be bombs that you don’t notice.

No seriously, I’m not listening to five years of this.

Categories
Humour Politics

Thoughts From The 31st Dáil

The first day started by sounding depressingly like a school debating competition, but it warmed up when some of the more left-wing speakers joined in – particularly Shane Ross. We need these people in opposition so they can say all those crazy extremist anti-establishment things that the government parties said when they were running for election.

Seriously, this is dragging democracy into disrepute.

Categories
Humour Politics

Here Comes A Government, Just Like The Other One

It seems the election was just some sort of weird dream we had.

Ireland’s new government will stick to the fiscal targets laid down in an EU/IMF rescue package, a source familiar with the coalition deal agreed between the two main political parties said on Sunday. ~ Reuters

Taoiseach-in-waiting Enda Kenny has conceded that his government is unlikely to burn senior bondholders in the banks, despite Fine Gael’s pre-election promises. ~ Irish Examiner

So the parties decide to drop what most would consider the central planks of their campaigns, not only backing away from making the senior bondholders pay for their mistakes but agreeing to the original timetable rather than Labour’s (minor) blow-softening of an extra year. Two thirds of the fiscal adjustment will still come from cutbacks, rather than the 50/50 split with tax increases Labour wanted. Essentially, Labour are adopting FG’s manifesto – and Fine Gael are adopting Fianna Fáil’s.

Why, when it cannot work?

Because no plan can work – none at least that requires the exchequer to miraculously break even in just a few years. The only way we could make our income balance our expenditure that soon is by burning down the country for the insurance.

“the coalition agreement, clinched after midnight, seems designed to curry favor with the fiscally conservative Germans” ~ Reuters again

Ah. I get it. The CDU won our election.

So it’s a sort of masochism tactic. Look, we’re taking our medicine. Watch us whip ourselves bloody. They hope that by showing a snivelling level of victimhood they will eventually elicit the pity – and the funds – we need to stop the economy smashing into the landscape.

Bjørn Sigurdsøn, SCANPIX
Angela Merkel discusses Enda Kenny's Fiscal Rectitude with her girlfriends

TAOISEACH-in-waiting Enda Kenny has conceded that his government is unlikely to burn senior bondholders in the banks, despite Fine Gael’s pre-election promises.