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1916 Easter Rising Commemoration

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
1916 Easter Rising Commemoration

The 1916 Easter Rising Commemoration is celebrated at Easter Sunday every year. It doesn’t make sense really, because we all know that Easter is literally a moving feast. The actual Easter Rising in 1916 took place on Easter Monday, which was 24 April 1916. So this year we are quite close to the actual date. Considering how significant the event is in Irish history, you would think the right thing would be to celebrate it on the correct date, no? Imagine you were born at Easter, would you then celebrate your birthday at Easter every year or rather on the correct date?

No matter what you think, this year the commemoration will take place on Easter Sunday again. It is an odd celebration all the important people are involved: The president, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence but apart from the reading of the Proclamation of independence, it is mainly a military parade, that seems totally out of date.

Let’s hope that the 100th anniversary in 2016 (on the random date of 27 March) will be more appropriate to the historical significance of the date.

If you want to attend the spectacle this year, you have to be in position (near the GPO) by 11:15 and then wait until 12:00. Video screens on either side of the GPO will show what is happening.
www.merrionstreet.ie/index.php/2014/04/commemoration-to-mark-98th-anniversary-of-the-1916-rising-this-sunday/?cat=3

Dublin, Odd, Politics, President, , ,

Seanad Eireann – Take it off the road, it has failed the NCT!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Seanad Eireann – Take it off the road, it has failed the NCT!

On Friday a Referendum will take place in Ireland and if you are an Irish citizen you are allowed and definitely should vote. As a foreigner myself and many of you are not allowed to vote. But that doesn’t stop us from having an opinion and having a right to have an opinion. Nobody has to agree, but that is the case with all opinions, isn’t it?

One of the two questions on Friday is if the Seanad should be abolished (YES) or if it should be kept (NO). In the beginning of that discussion there was a strong opinion in favour of closing it, it seemed, but oddly this changed in the last few weeks.

The Seanad is a totally and utterly undemocratic institution. Many many people in Ireland are never allowed to vote for any of the members. It is set up in such a way that always the current government has a majority in the Seanad and it seems to be the political retirement home of Ireland.

The reason why many are never allowed to vote is because a strange system was chosen when it was set up that allows for example people who went to SOME of the Irish Universities to vote and others not and if you didn’t go to university then you most likely are not allowed to vote. The reason why the government always will have a majority is because the Taoiseach is putting 11 unelected (usually failed) party members and friends in as Senators.

If it is not bad enough that the Senate is completely undemocratic, it gets worse if you look at what it has every achieved. It is meant to be a control instance (an Upper House) that controls the Dail (Lower House), but the Senate is not even allowed to veto anything. All they can do is delay a law and if I read that right, they did that only TWICE in their whole history. No surprise if the current government has always the majority in the Senate.

Recently many started saying the Senate should remain but it HAS to be overhauled. And interestingly Fianna Fail, the party that was in government until the last elections and for many years until then is the loudest shouter. The demand correction of the Seanad, but wait, why did they NEVER make an attempt when they were in power? A total joke!

In my opinion it would be good to have a control instance, an Upper House. But that won’t happen with the current Senate and repairing is sometimes not possible. If the foundation of your house is totally useless, then you have to tear down the house and build it new. Getting the paint can out will not make any significant difference.

The Senate is a house that needs to be torn down and re-built or a car that needs to be taken off the road because it failed ALL tests and it has to be newly built! Everything else will not achieve anything and it is not even clear if the politicians in government or in the opposition know how to fix it anyway because no one submitted a comprehensive plan.

So, I would vote YES! Get rid of it and then re-build it again. You say the rebuilding will not happen? Well the parties that think it should be there have to submit a proper proposal and even if the Senate will be gone for 4 or 8 years, it is better to do that than to keep a totally useless organisation in place.

Elections, Politics, , ,

Seanad or no Seanad?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Seanad or no Seanad?

Before they got elected Fine Gael promised that they would abolish the Seanad. At the time most people saw this Upper House of the Parliament as an undemocratic, costly and unnecessary institution that should be removed rather sooner than later. At the time Fine Gael was very popular as they had just won the election. Since then a lot has happened.
Fine Gael is not at all that popular anymore and has less support than Fine Fail, the party that was blamed for the Irish recession and a party that many declared as a “dead man walking”. This turn around happened in such a short time that Fine Gael should be seriously worried.

A consequence of that public change of mind is that people now don’t trust Fine Gael anymore and suddenly think a parliamentary control instance might still be a good idea. They ignore that the elections to the Seanad are COMPLETELY undemocratic as the system of electing Seanad members is a very odd mechanism that was dreamt up by the founders of the Irish democracy who clearly had a somewhat twisted view (from today’s perspective) of democracy. A huge proportion of people in Ireland have absolutely no voting rights.

So Fine Gael has screwed up and now the opinion about the Seanad changes and more people ask for a change or improvement of the Seanad instead of an abolition.

In my opinion the Seanad COULD be a very helpful instance, but only if a way was found that gives EVERY Irish citizen a voting right AND only if the election to the Seanad is completely different than the election to the Dail. One way could be a nationwide list system that is put together by each party completely constituency independent. It would have to rule out Independent candidates (unless they organise themselves in a list of Independents) and the Universities would have to lose their candidates. Another aspect would have to be that the Taoiseach must not have the right to put his friends on the Seanad by-passing the elections.

Significant changes, but they would make the Seanad to what it should be. Without that? Get rid of this unnecessary forum.

Some people have different agendas though and they are always shouting very loud. David Norris is one of them. He will disappear in a deserved political insignificance if the Seanad is abolished and he is fighting for his “importance”. He is attacking “Enda bloody Kenny” (Norris, sophisticated and polite as always!) for trying to abolish the Seanad and calls anyone who supports the plans to scrap the Seanad a “liar, thief and traitor to the Irish people”. www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/norris-slams-enda-bloody-kenny-for-seanad-abolition-attempt-598691.html

David Norris is a rude bully and people like him make me hope that the Seanad will be gone soon.

Elections, Politics, , , ,

Flying fire around the world?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Flying fire around the world?

About 5800km west from Dublin is a big cemetery and there is a big grave site with an “eternal flame” ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Eternal_Flame ), a gas flame that is not at all eternal but has been built to relight itself whenever the flame gets extinguished. In its history since 1967 the flame has been re-lit by hand at least twice, I guess with a lighter or a match stick.

The man who is buried there was in Ireland in 1963 and visited Dunganstown near New Ross in Co. Wexford, where his ancestors had lived before they emigrated to America. This year is the 50th anniversary of this visit and he is so important to Co Wexford that a big celebration will take place.

No problem with all that! …but who was the genius that came up with the idea so send a plane to the USA to collect a flame that was lit on the “eternal” flame on his graveyard and to bring that to Dublin, then hand it over to the army in a big ceremony who would hand it over to the Navy, who then will bring the flame by Naval ship to Co. Wexford? I hope that genius is also paying for all that and not you and I!

Considering that the “eternal” flame is anything but eternal, could the people in Dunganstown or New Ross not just have used a Zippo lighter or a match stick that was bought in the USA to light a candle here?

What an odd, unnecessary and totally nonsensical procedure! www.thejournal.ie/jfk-eternal-flame-ireland-959642-Jun2013/

You wonder who was the guy? Well, he was kind of famous, but that still doesn’t justify that odd flame transport ( www.irishtimes.com/news/how-do-you-carry-a-flame-on-a-plane-1.1436976 ). It was John F. Kennedy, the former US President who visited Ireland only a few months before he was assassinated in 1963 and who is buried on Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.

UPDATE:
On Thurs 27 June, RTE reports that the JFK Flame in Wexford had to be relit after a technical glitch ( www.rte.ie/news/2013/0627/459259-jfk-wexford-flame-relit-after-technical-glitch/ ). The New Ross town manager Éamonn Hore assures us that the torch has been relit from one of the spare flame sources that was taken from Arlington Cemetery. Would he tell us if it was relit with a lighter? Since the JFK flame in Arlington has been re-lit a number of times and because fire doesn’t have an ancestry, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, but it is hilarious how they keep going on about the originality of the flame.
Hore also said that planned maintenance will see the flames extinguished on a monthly basis but relit always using flames from Arlington, so will they keep these other four flames in miner lamps (Davy Lamps) going for ever too? Mad!

Elsewhere, Odd, , ,

Internet Censorship to hit Ireland

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Internet Censorship to hit Ireland

EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal won a court case against UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G Ltd and Telefonica O2 Ireland Ltd forcing them to block access to PirateBay websites within 30 days (Eircom had already given in years ago). www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0612/456177-pirate-bay-court/ This is the first time – but won’t be the last time – when the Irish SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation that thanks to Junior Minister Sean Sherlock and the current Fine Gael government will bring various forms of Internet censorship to Ireland.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favour of Copyright Infringement and Online Piracy. It is illegal and therefore its status is clear. However, ThePirateBay.org does not provide illegal content, it is just a listing or linking site (not much different than Google in its concept). And blocking access to it, is not much different than blocking access to websites that list organisations that the government of the day does not like.If that was something we heard about from China, we would all be in uproar about the oppressive government.

Find out more about the law that is used to force the Internet block here www.stopsopaireland.com/#3 Worryingly, the same law can be used to block complete access to Facebook, YouTube and all other similar websites if ANYBODY from ANYWHERE in the world ever posted material on these platforms that infringes any copyright. Is the Chinese situation now that far fetched?

What does the ruling mean for you? If you use any of the listed providers for Internet connectivity, you will soon not be able to reach the Pirate Bay website anymore if you are a normal Internet user. However, the decentralised structure of the Internet will mean that a total block is close to impossible for people “in the know”.

And there is another interesting side-effect: The National Broadband Plan in Ireland for which your taxpayer money is used, is TOTALLY overspec’d now. Because 99% of users will never be able to use their super-high-bandwidth Internet connection to the max, if they don’t use it to download illegal material.

Justice, Politics, Society, Taxes, , , , , , , , , ,
 
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