A Foreigner in Ireland - A view on Politics and Life.

Bertie Ahern – The end?

Mar22
2012 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

It took a long time, but the Mahon Tribunal, which investigated irregularities regarding planning applications in Dublin has finally released their 3000+ page report and the news is BAD! They have determined that corruption affected “every level of Irish political life and was allowed to continue unabated”.

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was questioned as well over dodgy money transfers and other dubious dealings and the Tribunal decided that he failed to “truthfully” explain the source of money. So in other words, they concluded that he lied!

Not surprisingly Ahern says that he is wronged, but with that damning conclusion, it seems as if Bertie Ahern’s reputation is (deservedly) going down the drain.

Many think that he was corrupt himself, but we will most likely never find out and either way, he was at least tolerating, maybe even condoning the corruption around him.

So, the end of Bertie Ahern is near:

www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/ahern-faces-political-demise-544610.html

Posted in Politics - Tagged , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Mar17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

Irish journalism largely consists of re-printing press releases or even copying from each other and just re-printing what another newspaper already had said. Last week I wrote about the incorrect numbers about parade attendees that every year are spread. 500,000 is the claim, which is actually impossible because the streets of Dublin are not wide enough. And again the same lies were repeated this year: www.rte.ie/news/2012/0317/stpatricksday_ireland.html

www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-enjoy-inclusive-st-patricks-day-parades-543938.html

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0317/breaking3.html

This year, I checked myself and found a few interesting facts:
+ Even if you are tall, you can hardly see any pedestrian parade participants if you are further back than 7 people from the parade route boundary.
+ People at the front arrived at 08:00. That is 4 hours before the parade started!
+ While there are LOTS of people in O’Connell Street, the crowds are not more than 5 deep between Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
+ On average there are significantly less than 30 people (15 on each side of the street) along the parade route. And only about a third of them can see the parade.
And the result? If you can fit a generous 2.5 people per metre and with a depth of 15 people on each side. The 2.7km parade route were lined by a max of 202,500 people and less than half of them (approx. 94500) actually SAW the parade! This is a lot lower than I generously calculated last week: www.joergsteegmueller.com/2012/03/15/st-patricks-parade-lies-and-statistics/
500,000 is impressive, but the realistic 94,500 is not so much!! By the way, there were certainly another thousands of people searching for a suitable viewing position, but they never saw anything, so something should be done! Or is it maybe not a high priority to get people to SEE the parade? Maybe luring thousands into the City Centre and claiming that lots were there is more important?

Posted in Other - Tagged , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics

Mar15
2012 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

Every year the media feeds us a whole pack of incorrect information (you could call it “lies”) about the St. Patrick’s Festival and especially about the St. Patrick’s Parade. Let me start by telling you that I think the parade is in recent years HUGELY successful and the whole St. Patrick’s Festival is a lot of fun, a great attraction for Dublin and the whole team working on it do a really good job. But I have to admit as well that I dislike dishonesty and especially if it is on a ridiculous level. I might be a little (!?) more analytical than most, but have a look at this story:
The St. Patrick’s Festival organisation claims that more than 500,000 people will watch the parade on the streets of Dublin and their website says “550,000 people from all nationalities line the streets & cheer on the performers” on www.stpatricksfestival.ie/index.php/bands And I would expect that after the parade this year, the new claim will be even higher. Watch out for it!
Can that number be correct? Absolutely not! There will be a good few numbers in the next section, but bear with it:
The parade route is 2.7km, which is 2700 metres. If we assume (and it is not totally correct, but let’s be generous), that along the complete route people can stand on both sides of the street, then we have 5400 metres along which people can line the streets. With 550,000 people, this means that per metre, there have to be approx. 100 people! Crowd planning experts say that the absolute maximum of people to squeeze into one square metre is SEVEN. So with 100 people per metre, this means that 100/7=14.29 square metres are required to accommodate the 100 people. As a result at every single point of the parade the massive crowd has to reach from the edge of the parade route to the back of the crowd for more than 14 metres – on EACH side! (That’s about 40 people deep!.) So, 28 metres are needed to accommodate the people! Add a minimum of 4-6 metres of parade route. We now need 32-34 metre wide streets! O’Connell Street is theoretically wide enough for that- Theoretically! But that is only half the route. Dame Street’s width is a fraction.
Now, let’s look at the realistic numbers. 7 per square metres is worse than a London Tube, so 5 is more likely. That means that 20 metres on each side are needed!
Oh and there is another problem! I was in Dame Street for the last few years and have photographic evidence that the crowd was just about metres deep or even less…and Dame Street is less than 20 metres wide in TOTAL. So there was a QUARTER of people of what is needed to reach 550,000!
After all this, what is the more realistic number? If we are GENEROUS, then the max number of people is probably close to 300,000. Still a really good turnout, but FAR from 550,000. Pure lies about the alleged number of attendees!
One last thing: If you are further than 5 or 6 deep from the edge of the route, you will miss half the parade because you can only see the high floats, not the bands or walking performers.

Posted in Other, Society - Tagged , , ,

Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

Nov28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

The budget for 2012 will be announced on 05+06 December and the government is busy drip-feeding us with bits of information. The process is a bit of a joke or a smart-ish ploy. All is meant to be secret until budget day, but people would get outraged an be shocked and in panic if they found out all the bad news on budget day. So instead, we find out bits of news every day so that we can mentally prepare for the bad news. ‘Pre-framing’ in NLP terms!

Unfortunately the news on budget day will be seriously bad no matter how you look at it: VAT increase, household charges, social welfare cuts, increase in duty on petrol, higher motor taxes and many more increases in charges and reductions in services will cost all of us a LOT of money. The 06 Dec will bring a lot of tears!

UPDATE:
Surprisingly (or not after all the planted leaks in the weeks before) the budget wasn’t as shocking as initially expected. Yes, cuts and tax increases were part of it as expected, but we were all nicely prepared for bad news. Pre-framing works!!

Posted in Economy, Taxes - Tagged , , ,

Presidential Election – New Nomination Rules

Nov28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

The government will debate and most likely introduce new rules for a presidential election this week. The new rules mean that one additional option is added to the nomination process: In future a candidate can also be nominated by getting 10 000 signatures from supporters.
Not really relevant for another 7 years, but a good idea.
If they now change the rule that you have to be an Irish citizen to apply, I might go for it myself the next time. :-)))

Posted in Elections, Politics, President - Tagged ,

Decentralisation Project terminated

Nov17
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

The government’s decentralisation project is finally being more or less terminated. It never made any sense, was a failed Fianna Fail idea from the start and was only invented to please people outside of Dublin so that they would vote for Fianna Fail.

www.rte.ie/news/2011/1117/publicservice.html

Unfortunately, though, in quite a number of locations buildings or sites have been bought years ago (when they were most expensive) or long term leases have been signed. So this nonsensical idea will be with us and will cost us for quite some time.

Posted in Politics - Tagged ,

The new Irishness??

Nov13
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

Ireland’s new president Michael D Higgins started his new 7 year job last Friday and as it is custom (and protocol), he started with a speech that outlined his approach to the job at a celebration in Dublin Castle.

The full speech is here: www.rte.ie/news/2011/1111/higgins_speech.html

It wasn’t the most momentous speech, but I guess an inauguration speech like that can’t easily be momentous.

However there was one outstanding aspect: Michael D Higgins talked about a rebuilding of Irishness, he mentioned the Irish diaspora and emigration. But with no word he mentioned us ‘New Irish’, who are not Irish citizens, but who nevertheless contribute regularly and consistently to the economy and culture in Ireland. No reference to the multicultural Ireland. No reference to imigration. He totally ignored that Ireland is NOT just filled with Irish citizens anymore.

Sure, we were not allowed to contribute at the presidential election, but that’s not enough of a justification to exclude hundreds of thousand of people in this ‘new’ Ireland.

EXclusion was not what I had expected from Michael D Higgins!

Posted in President - Tagged

Banks vs the Government

Nov10
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

In an unexpected move the European Central Bank (ECB) has reduced the interest rate last week from 1.5% down to 1.25%. (www.independent.ie/business/european/boost-for-mortgage-holders-as-ecb-cuts-interest-rates-2925263.html)

Since most banks in Ireland are now owned by the state, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny has warned the banks that laws could be introduced that would force the banks to pass on interest rate cuts if they don’t do that now. (www.independent.ie/national-news/pass-on-ecb-interest-rate-cut-kenny-warns-banks-2926680.html)
And what did most banks? They ignored the warning! I guess this “game” Bank vs Government resulted in a 1:0.

The AIB and the NIB have declared that they will not pass on the rate cuts, the ESB will pass them on and the Bank of Ireland has not made a statement yet, but there are expectations that they won’t pass on the cuts either. (www.rte.ie/news/2011/1109/mortgage-business.html)

Posted in Economy, Politics - Tagged , , , ,

Retirement Home in Phoenix Park

Oct28
2011 2 Comments Written by joerg

Based on the preliminary indications, Michael D Higgins will be the Irish president for the next 7 years. This was not my preference, but I am not dismayed. In the end the president can’t do much anyway and i am sure Higgins will do an ok job.

However, I was hoping that Aras an Uachterain would not just a retirement home for a has-been politician and unfortunately that’s what it most likely will be.

Higgins might have been a strong and convincing politician in his younger years, but recently he is more known for citing poetry and for speaking in Irish.

The two previous presidents (Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese) had the same limited ability to achieve anything of substance, but they did push the boundaries a little. I expect that Higgins will not push anything.

He won’t screw up anything either, so no progress was made, no step forward and nothing beneficial to expect, but his probably election is no terrible disaster. …just a bit of a disappointment.

Considering that he is already too old for the role, we can be quite certain that he won’t stay longer in it than 7 years.

Posted in Elections, Politics, Uncategorized - Tagged , ,

Dail Holidays again? Or maybe not!

Oct26
2011 Leave a Comment Written by joerg

The Dail (Irish Parliament) is known for its propensity to take time off. The Fianna Fail government was heavily criticised in recent years, that despite serious issues in the country the parliament needed their loooong holidays. That was the OLD government that held on to the many and long holidays. But all has changed since the elections! Or has it??

Breakingnews.ie reports at www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/taoiseach-cancels-mid-term-break-for-dail-525874.html this:

Taoiseach cancels mid-term break for Dáil
26/10/2011 – 12:14:30
The Taoiseach Enda Kenny has cancelled a mid-term break for politicians next week.

The Dáil was due to adjourn tonight until Tuesday week.

But after opposition from Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and People Before Profit, Mr Kenny announced the Dáil will now sit on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

There are two HUGELY interesting aspects in this small article.

1) The party that for decades held steadfastly on to the much too long holidays is now opposing them. Fianna Fail opposed the mid-term break!

2) The party that came to power with the promise that they will change all bad habits and will reform a broken system that the previous government left behind had NO intention to cancel the holidays. If Enda Kenny hadn’t suggested that there should be holidays, the others would not have had to oppose. So Enda Kenny from Fine Gael no better than the previous leaders from Fianna Fail?

You probably are wondering if the people that didn’t oppose really think they are in school, because the mid-term break is for schools only! I wonder too! Odd!!

Posted in Politics - Tagged , , , ,
« Older Entries