Painted spokes

Street art on Camden Street this afternoon. Simple but clever, totally representative of an everyday scene in Dublin, city of a thousand stolen bicycle wheels and frames abandoned like desiccated skeletons littering the wastelands of an urban desert.

But in silver.

Represent y'all, represent!!

Ah, the wonder and glory that is the June Bank Holiday weekend. It has always been a source of some consternation that as a nation we could find no better excuse for a national holiday than celebrating a day that the banks are closed not once, but thrice a year. No "Presidents Day" for us, no "Memorial Day" or celebration of the birthday of slain statesmen (of which we have a not inconsiderable amount), not for us even the celebration of tree planting, a pagan festival that still manages to occur in the heart of the most conservatively christian nation on earth.

No, alas, for us there is nothing more worthwhile to celebrate between June and December than the fact that occasionally we might catch a brief glimpse of that fiery orb in the sky that other nations have come to call "The Sun", and as a result our elusive masters in the banking classes have decided to take a break from the illegal transferring of billions of Euro between their own personal accounts and the outright destruction of our economy long enough to nip away to Bermuda or Switzerland to deposit the fruit of their ill-gotten gains.

Perhaps in these dark times when the banking classes have fallen somewhat out of favour, we could push to have our three nameless national holidays renamed in honour of something slightly more appropriate? Taking a look back through the annals of Irish history, we can see that on June 1st 1762 was born Edmund Ignatious Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers; on June 1st 1866 we apparently attacked Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of our comically misplanned invasion of Canada, and finally on June 3rd 1919 proportional representation was introduced into local authority elections.

While I believe that both a Memorial Day to commemorate the heinous acts of the Catholic orders, or a Veterans Day for the perpetrators of poorly thought out and quite frankly embarrassing revolutions (of which, it has to be said, we have also had more than our fair share of), I think that given the weekend that is in it we should spend some time celebrating the introduction of proportional representation into Irish elections, and allowing for the development of one of our favorite national past-times, the traditional election-day game of "How far will my vote go before it ends up discarded on the floor?".

In the latest Irish Times ins/MRBI poll, published in today's Times, there has been some interesting movement in the Dublin Euro constituency. Front runners Prionsias De Rossa of Labour (25%, +4%) and Fine Gael's Gay Mitchell (28%, +2%) have both seen increases since the last poll, but of more significance is the fact that we now appear to have a three horse race for the third and final seat. Sitting MEPs Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein (11%, -3%) and Fianna Fail's Eoin Ryan (9%, -2%) have both seen their vote collapse even further, with the surprise news that Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party is now in striking distance of both (9%, +2) based on first preference votes.

Former Green MEP Patricia McKenna's projection (5%, -3%) has dropped significantly since the last poll, leading credence to the suggestions at the time that her numbers were due to her high media profile in the days immediately prior to the poll over her well-publicized resignation from the Greens. This is good news for official Green candidate Senator Deirdre De Burca, though she herself appears not to have benefited directly from the drop in McKenna's vote and remains unchanged on 6%.

Thus with voting taking place in six days time the game begins of trying to figure out how to allocate your single transferable vote in such a way as to ensure it benefits as many candidates as possible over the course of the count. On one hand you want to support candidates that actually stand a chance of being elected, but on the other hand if everyone only voted for candidates who looked like they would get in then the smaller parties would never stand a chance, defeating the whole concept of our PR electoral system. The decision to make, as always, is whether to allocate your vote first to candidates who are unlikely to get a substantial vote, will be eliminated first, and thus have your second preference allocated to an eventual winner, or whether to cast your vote for someone who looks likely to win on the first or second count with a substantial surplus, and thus your vote goes on to help a smaller candidate battling for the final seat.

At the moment De Rossa looks likely to top the poll, and could be elected on the first count. As the man who took left the Workers' Party over its continued links to the IRA, founded Democratic Left and then brought it into the Labour Party, his left-wing credentials are pretty solid and one would expect a substantial amount of his second preferences to go to Joe Higgins. The converse may not be true, as Higgins is picking up a large working class vote in the north and south inner city that may otherwise go to Sinn Fein's Mary Lou, and help her defeat Eoin Ryan and take the final seat should Joe Higgins be eliminated.

De Burca still looks likely to be eliminated early on; while she may pick up transfers from McKenna and her core vote in Dublin is polling at double the national average for the Greens, its unlikely to be enough to put her into serious contention. Conversations that I had with various Green campaign managers at the start of the campaign suggested that they were targeting Fianna Fail second preferences, or even first preferences from disillusioned traditional Fianna Fail voters who want to punish the party, but can't bring themselves to vote for Sinn Fein. As a government party they are unlikely to pick up too many transfers from outside their core vote, and with McKenna running any De Rossa or Higgins second preferences that may have gone to the Greens are now likely to go McKenna's way. So with an early elimination the most likely result, focus now turns on where her transfers will go. While the Greens have decided not to pursue a vote transfer pact with their government, I would assume that her core vote represents the pro-government faction with the party, and McKenna's vote represents the anti-government faction. While McKenna's transfers are unlikely to go to Fianna Fail, the same cannot be said for De Burca.

So the real question to me seems to be will De Burca's and Eibhlin Byrne's (Fianna Fail's second candidate, currently on 5%) transfers to Eoin Ryan help him beat Mary Lou, or will De Rossa's surplus and McKenna's probable transfers be enough to get Joe Higgins over the line before his own second preferences are allocated out to Mary Lou and propel her into the final seat ahead of Ryan. Not since McKenna's own historic election as the first Irish Green MEP back in 1994 have I been so interested in a European election.

And that, my friends, is why Proportional Representation is worthy of being commemorated with its own national holiday, as much as any tree, dead President or turkey. PR is part of our national psyche and helps define who we are as a nation along with alcoholism, failed revolutions and really crappy weather. Just think how dull life would be without it.

instrumental in happiness (part II)

The Very Understanding Girlfriend has given me the go-ahead to use her photos for an update to my previous post on the instruments she brought back for me from Mozambique. Pictured are the musicians who made the instruments, standing by their wares in a market in Maputo, capital of Mozambique.

She says:

"Ernesto the grandfather is in white and George the grandson in red. The string instrument is made from nyere wood, gazelle skin and coconut, they called it a chivocovocone. The other is a chigovia made from masala fruit."

Once again, such an amazing gift and having these photos to accompany it makes it all the more special.

instrumental in happiness

And so at last The Very Understanding Girlfriend has returned from her African sojourn and the feeling of emptiness has thankfully departed from our house, replaced by a tangible aura of happiness that is two parts bliss and one part cheese. I wrote before about how different everything feels when I know she is out of the country, and now that she is back its as if the summer has arrived and light is streaming into every corner of every room, the place is alive and glowing, though perhaps just a little more disheveled looking.

Bliss.

Of more relevance to this post, however, is the fact that she did not come back empty-handed, bringing with her possibly the best present from any of her trips. What you see in the photo above is a collection of musical instruments from Mozambique; Each globe is a Chigovia, a flute-like wind-instrument made from a hollowed-out gourde and played like an ocarina. The stringed instrument is a Chivoconvoco, single stringed and played with a wooden bow like a violin, though rested against the hip rather than the shoulder. The book was published in 1980 by the Mozambique Ministry of Education and Culture, and is a guide to local instruments, beautifully illustrated with hand drawn sketches of each instrument and its region of origin.

What makes this even more impressive a present is that she bought them directly from the musician who made them, and has photos of him instructing her how to use them. Why is this impressive? Because it is a record of the craftsman responsible for bringing it in to the world.

One of the most depressing things for me while wandering through the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and even more so in the spectacular Musee du Quai Branly in Paris with its glass-encased towering collection of over 8,000 indigenous musical instruments, is the lack of information on display accompanying African art and craftwork. If you look at a European painting in a museum it will display the artist's name, nationality, years of birth and death, title of the work, year painted etc, etc. Glancing at an African mask, instrument or other object in the same museum you will see something along the lines of "ceremonial mask, Ghana, 15th Century to 19th Century", and that's about it. They can't even narrow its origin down to within a hundred years, let alone have any idea who was responsible for its creation.

Similarly, you can be reasonably sure that any European art displayed was bought from its creator and while it has changed hands a number of times since then, each time the owner was fairly (if not outrageously) compensated. In stark contrast the lack of information associated with most works of African and other majority world origin in western museums stems from the fact that these collections are composed mainly of items plundered and stolen from their home countries during colonial rule. Walking through such exhibits, while inspiring, is also always fraught with a strong sense of guilt for the actions of Europeans throughout the last five hundred years.

In such a context having a provenance such as the musician's name and photos of him playing the Chivoconvoco I now have in my hands is an amazing gift in and of itself, beyond the intrinsic value of the exotic instruments themselves. An incredibly thoughtful present, and proving yet again why she is The Very Understanding Girlfriend; she gets me like no other person on Earth.

On the woad (reprise)

Coverage of the Reel Iraq Festival on Al Jazeera, luckily for me all taken just before I arrived. My CIA file is long enough as it is without needing any footage like this, thank you very much.

Time to finish what Henry VIII started

As we were living in the Have' in 2002, I missed the whole agreement between the Irish Government and the Catholic orders on the compensation of abuse victims.

For some reason still unfathomable to me the Government agreed to limit the maximum amount the orders would have to pay out to victims of clerical abuse to €127 million, with the Government, ie the Irish taxpayer, generously agreeing to pick up the rest of the tag. The total amount owed to victims now is in the region of €1.3 billion. Furthermore, of that €127 million less than €29 million was actually in the form of a cash settlement, the rest was composed of the transfer of physical assets, mostly property, to the State and the creation of a number of educational trusts to provide counseling to victims and the like.

The Government's liability stems from the fact that the cases of abuse in question occurred within the education system, primarily in the Industrial Schools, where orphans and children from deprived backgrounds were sent by the State, and which were run by religious orders. The Government was the ultimate employer in these institutions, and failed to protect those citizens whose care they contracted out to the religious orders. However, the fact remains that the systematic abuse conducted on such a scale that it is impossible not find the whole Catholic Church in Ireland complicit was carried out by priests, brothers, nuns and laity, not by members of the government, and yet almost no members of those orders have been brought to justice.

It is as if we have a perpetratorless crime; a crime was committed, the victims are being compensated, but no single individual has had to come forward and pay for their heinous acts, instead it is we the taxpayers who are having to shoulder the burden for the evil committed by these men and women of the cloth.

I attended a Christian Brothers' secondary school in the mid and late eighties. When I started, age 12, there were still three or four Brothers on the teaching staff, almost all in their early sixties. In first year, after gym/PE class, one particular Brother would always come round to the showers to make sure that "everyone was washing properly". No physical abuse ever occurred, but we all still knew that what he was doing was very, very wrong. Everyone knew that he was getting a thrill out of being there, and that's why he was there, and yet as twelve year-olds we also all knew that there was no point in saying anything to anyone about it; everyone in authority at the school knew it was going on and yet no-one had ever done anything to stop it, the feeling of powerlessness was total. All we could do was start wearing swimming trunks in the showers and ignore him when he walked in to check on us.

At the same time, though unknown to us until many years later, our local Parish Priest had been transferred into our Parish after abusing alter boys and children in a hospital in Cabra. Although the Dublin dioceses knew his history, he was still allowed uncontrolled access to children and continued his abuse in our Parish until finally being convicted in 1998 on thirteen sample charges. The Dublin dioceses knowingly allowed a sexual predator to continue his abuse for a further thirteen years after first being alerted to his crimes. This priest, naturally, sat on the board of our school.

My experience is certainly not unique, and after talking about it with friends who went to other schools with clerical staff (the vast majority of high schools up to the late eighties) it seems that in almost every school there was one Brother or Priest that all the kids knew not to be left alone with, not that any abuse would necessarily take place, just that the individual in question made all the kids very, very uncomfortable. But similarly no-one ever reported it or complained about it, because everyone in authority in the school already knew about this and it was just accepted as the way things were.

What is infuriating is that almost twenty years later the Catholic hierarchy still had such an influence in this country as to force the Government in 2002 into shouldering the burden for compensating the victims of its abuse, and that even today the Taoisach and his Ministers are claiming they are powerless to force the Church to pay any more, and reduced to calling on the orders to do the moral thing and voluntarily pay more, a call that the Church has been slow to respond to. If the Criminal Assets Bureau can seize the bank accounts, houses and other assets of suspected criminals without the necessity of an actual criminal conviction, how can the same mechanisms not be used to against an organization that has been proven to be complicit in hundreds of cases of abuse?

It is also interesting to note that while the revelations in the Examiner last week on illegal contributions to all the main political parties elicited almost no follow-up either in the media or within the Dail, both the press and the opposition can't say enough about the Ryan Report into clerical abuse in industrial schools, and the Government's response to it. As I noted in a previous post, it wasn't the financial scandals that brought down the Fianna Fail/Labour government, it was the mishandling of a clerical abuse case and the undue influence the Catholic Hierarchy exerted on members of that Government that caused Labour to withdraw. I'm sure that this is also very much in the minds of both the Taoiseach and John Gormley right now.

€1.3 Billion is something that the Exchequer cannot afford to pay out at the moment, though morally the victims of clerical abuse must be compensated. If the Church is unwilling to accept its role as the abuser and pay the vast majority of the court assigned compensation, then its assets must be seized and liquidated, and all victims compensated appropriately.

I am often asked how can I as a theologian be an atheist and so distrustuful and condemning of organised religion. My reply is always the same, that as a theologian, how could I not be.

You will not be able to stay home, brother

So here is the official Green Party Political Broadcast, scheduled for broadcast this coming Saturday, around 9:40pm. Looks great.

The theme is interesting, focusing on the green economy as a solution to the current economic crises, with a quick outline of what the green economy actually is. It also carries a very pro-Europe message, bluntly stating, "Lads, we're flat broke, if it weren't for Europe and the Euro we'd all be speaking Icelandic now". All the folks who appear in it are ordinary people, not actors, and many are actually involved in the green economy already. In this way the video does a good job of suggesting that problems in the construction industry can be addressed by focusing on new opportunities in green building methods and higher energy standards, and all in all conveys a very positive tone without being elitist or condescending. Senators Dan Boyle and Deirdre De Burca only appear at the very end, again an interesting move designed to put the focus on green policies and their effects rather than the politicians and their personalities.

Aside from being a little too pro-business, the other element that doesn't work for me personally is the last few minutes with all the kids, mainly because I have a very strong antipathy towards anyone who adopts the "Oh won't someone please think of the children?" refrain. However in this context it is clearly intended to send a message to the viewer encouraging them to think about the longer term when voting, and not just the events of the last few months, a justifiable strategy for the minority party in an unpopular government.

Overall a good effort, very positive and upbeat, a well-produced broadcast that looks great in spite of Dan Boyle's tie.

On the woad (part IV)

And so we come to the last in our current series of posts on Unkie Dave's road trip to Edinburgh, in which our hero puts himself permanently on the CIA's watchlist and forever removes himself from the limited circle of foreigners his friends in the State Department are allowed to associate with.

At the heart of the roadtrip and the basis of its timing were the last few events of the Reel Iraq Festival, a celebration of Iraqi cinema and culture. Following on from last year's successful Reel Afghanistan Festival, the event brought together a large number of Iraqi film-makers, writers, poets, photographers and historians to explore the culture, traditions and history both ancient and contemporary of Iraq through their combined work.

As with most things, the limited knowledge I had of Iraq was just enough to let me realise just how much I didn't know. Almost everything I knew was learned through the lens of the first and second Gulf wars, second hand knowledge gained from non-Iraqi eye-witnesses to the invasions and their terrible aftermaths. Books like Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City", Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and "No War", Loretta Napoleoni's "Insurgent Iraq", Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater" and Charles Ferguson's "No End in Sight" have dominated my bookshelves for the last three years and formed the basis for my rather one-sided view on Iraq, telling a tale of middle-class guilt over the actions carried out by one's governments, of neoliberal ideology run amok and serving as the proof for the superiority of one's own political beliefs. Iraq existed to show how wrong the neocons and religious right were, its role was as a proof to a theorem distant and removed, the suffering of its people a part of a formula that proved I and my comrades on the Left were right, and the Right were wrong, and somewhere in the midst of all this righteous indignation the voices of Iraqis themselves were abstracted into near irrelevancy.

Thus I went to Edinburgh to hear those voices directly and filtered through no lens save that crafted by the Iraqis themselves.

Knowing some of the festival organisers has its advantages, for in addition to attending the exhibitions, films and readings I was also able to hang around with quite a few of the guests, and over lunch and dinner got talk with quite a few folks, including Layth Abdulamir, Director of "Iraq: Song of the Missing Men", and possessor of the finest mustache I have seen outside of India, poet Sinan Antoon and writer and journalist Hussain al-Mozany. All are exiles from Iraq, though have little else in common, and between them managed to portray a sense of deep sadness, regret and anger for what has transpired in their country, during the Ba'athist years and subsequent US occupation.

While I learned many things in a short amount of time, the biggest eye-opener was just how secular a society Iraq was before the invasion. While anti-zionist rhetoric had risen dramatically during the rule of Nuri al-Said in the late 40's, up to that point Christians, Jews, Sunni and Shiite had lived side by side in relative harmony. Even during the Ba'athist years the divisions between Sunni and Shiite were not substantial, only rising in the aftermath of the US occupation and its subsequent policy of interacting with groups primarily along religious and ethnic lines, and acts such as the division of the city into ethnic zones and creation of "Peace Walls" to physically divide communities, or the recognition and financial support of religious paramilitary groups and militias. Previously the average Iraqi was as religious as the average Irish Catholic today, identifying themselves as Sunni or Shiite and attending the major festivals, but not really worrying about the details too much (especially the whole ban on alcohol, almost every Iraqi I met at the festival drank like a fish). In fact, it could be argued that for women in Iraq through to the 70's life was considerably more liberated than for their Irish counterparts at the time, with more opportunities for education and careers outside of the role of homemaker and mother, remembering that until 1973 women in Ireland were still legally required to resign from the civil service upon marriage.

It was also evident that this once great culture had been destroyed by the egos of three men, Nuri al-Said (supported by the British for much of his rule as a way of securing access to Iraqi oil), Saddam Hussein (supported by the US for much of his rule as a way of securing access to Iraqi oil), and George W Bush, who decided to bypass the traditional method of accessing Iraqi oil through supporting a local dictator and grab it all for himself directly.

For me the films, writings and photography on display throughout the Reel Iraq festival all merged together to form a keening lament for a once noble culture brought to brink of extinction over the course of fifty years, sacrificed on the altar of the West's insatiable demand for oil. Sadly the most notable thing missing from the Festival was any sense of hope for the future. For some that I talked to Iraq was dead to them, written off as unsalvageable and their only duty to it now was to remember what it once had been as they lived out their ghost lives in foreign cities. For others the hope remained that this death would only last the current generation, and that something new would be reborn in twenty years time, but that this phoenix would have almost no direct connection to its past such was the current level of destruction in Iraq. For all that I spoke to this was to be, and is, a lost generation.

All in all it was a profoundly moving and depressing experience, but I came away from it feeling that it was at least more real to me now than words on a page, and that however saddening their voices were at least I had stood up and heard them.

Links
The Reel Iraq Festival

On the woad (part III)

When Unkie Dave came to the last words of the chapter -'...as a theologian I stayed silent, and ate my naan' - it was morning.

Wednesday was the first full day of my visit to Edinburgh. I had elected to stay in a hotel, lured by the prospect of complimentary mints on my pillow, a turn-down service, and a 42-inch flat-screen TV in my room. My traveling companion Donn was staying with our friends Dan and Yaz, and finding myself awake at an ungodly hour I set off out into the city to explore with only a piece of prose posted by Ken MacLeod on his blog as a guide.

As it turned out this was all I needed.

Edinburgh is an amazingly beautiful city. While other cities may be built around a harbour or a river, Edinburgh spreads in undulating circles around a long-extinct volcanic vent and the impenetrable rock its last eruption cast across the landscape. Unable to drill through or remove this rock, the city has grown around and above these barriers, with the red stone of the Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat dominating the skyline from almost every angle. It is a city of steps and climbs, of hidden courtyards and bridges that rise high over railtracks. It is a city of yellow stone tuned blackened grey in the smokeclouds of the industrial revolution. It is a city of ancient industry and Empiricist thought, and the platonic ideal of every steampunk fantasists' architecture.

It is everything that by rights Dublin, the second city of the British Empire, should have been, but wasn't, and the industrial success and grandeur of the city lends credence to Max Weber's elevation of the Protestant work ethic as the cornerstone of a triumphant capitalism.

It is perhaps because of the all pervasive spirit of industry, commerce and class division that has shaped the history of Edinburgh that the city now boasts such a strong alternative arts and political scene. Low rents and the availability of large spaces in the form of deconsecrated churches, coupled with a profusion of volunteers eager to be a part of something bigger than themselves, have facilitated the creation of a number of community spaces, drop-in centres, and alternative art workshops.

The Forest is arguably the largest and best established of these, and I spent more than a few hours here over the course of two days. Part cafe, part activist enclave and artist workshop, I had heard about it for quite a few years now and will admit that it was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Edinburgh, just to see how such a non-profit collective space could be run. It's what Seomra Spraoi could become if it had more space and resources.

The Forest was just one of the inspirational spaces Edinburgh had to offer. Using MacLeod's prose as a guide I found myself at Word Power Books, possibly the best bookshop in Scotland. I say possibly, for I didn't visit any other bookshops, but what I found there was pretty amazing all the same. A small shop with a friendly dog, it boasts possibly the best political section I have seen off-line, with a wide range of left and far-left books and magazines, along with the occasional bit of neoliberal pro-globalisation propaganda thrown in just to incense the customers in a "know your enemy" sort of way. Never has Freidman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" looked so alone and unloved.

As I sat nextdoor in Susie's Diner, an amazing vegetarian cafe, and showed Dan a sampling of the books I allowed myself to buy, he casually mentioned, "oh, AK Press, they're based here in Edinburgh, would you like to drop in and say hi?". Thus Thursday morning saw us spending time in the tiny European distribution center/office of AK Press, the anarchist publishing company whose works have graced my shelves for many, many years. Dan, who seems to know everyone, introduced us to the amazing Alexis, part of the AK collective, who made us a coffee as we browsed the shelves and talked with her about the left in Dublin and the difficulty alternative bookshops here seem to have in staying in business.

The coffee bit is important, because I had hoped for a herbal tea so that I could use my "Why do socialists drink herbal tea? Because all proper tea is theft" joke, either at the time or at some unspecified dinner event in the future where it was sure to be the jape of the season. But we drank coffee and so the moment passed, somewhat unfulfilled.

The thing that united my visits to these places, and the conversations I had there with Alexis in AK Press and the folks in Word Power and The Forest, was how encouraging and supportive they all were to some of the ideas I had for action here in Dublin, providing advice and suggestions on how to launch and sustain a project or two I have in mind. They had never met me before, but instantly treated my ideas with seriousness and a positivity that actually surprised me.

All in all it was a welcome change from the overwhelming pessimism and negativity that infects the Irish psyche, an ailment I am far from immune to myself.

Links
A few photos from the trip

On the woad (interlude)

While for the most part I have managed to control my rampant consumerism, every now and then I break down and succumb to the sugar-rush high that accompanies the purchase of an overpriced electronic item that I will toy with for a few weeks before boring of it and discarding it to the ever increasing pile of unloved techo-ephemera that at times threatens to collapse and consume the rest of our shared office in the shards of its aluminum encased wake. But for those few brief days after that injection of shiny electronic insulin I am complete, a happy man indeed.

And then, I crash. Shame and remorse overcome me and I curse this cycle of Diabetical Materialism in which I trap myself, and start to fear the moment of discovery, that awful dark minute when The Very Understanding Girlfriend turns to me and says "Oh for the love of Moomin Papa, what piece of crap did you buy now?", before shaking her head and walking off, leaving me alone with nothing to mask the sounds of my own tears.

Ah, The Very Understanding Girlfriend, how she puts up with my consumerist foibles.

And the object of my current sugar rush/crash cycle? Tonium's Pacemaker.

This is a small handheld MP3 player with a touch pad the replicates a basic two deck and mixer set-up. It gives you two channels to mix between, with proper pitch-bending and some interesting CD-deck functionality, including looping and effects like reverb, hi&low pass and a few others. Its tiny, larger than an ipod but still easy to use one-handed, and with 160Gb of storage and the ability to play AIFF, WAV and OGG files in addition to MP3s, is capable of producing a really high-quality sound.

Although my main DJ set-up is still a pair of Pioneer CDJ-1000s, I've been experimenting with smaller and more portable controllers over the last few years, first with Numark's iDJ, little more than a docking station for two iPods, and later with their follow up iDJ2, which ran off a single iPod and worked by ripping tracks from the iPod to an inbuilt hard drive, giving you two separate channels to mix between and a limited pitch-bend, but with no deeper functionality like looping that really is the cornerstone of digital mixing.

While the Pacemaker is certainly no replacement for a good set of decks, it is vastly superior to any mp3-player solution I have encountered before. Its pretty intuitive to use, has a great sound, good effects features and its portability makes it a hands down winner to be packed in the bag when traveling on the road later this summer. DJmag have a pretty extensive video review that's worth seeing if you want to know more.

Mine arrived about three days after The Very Understanding Girlfriend went on her trip. My hope is that it is so small, she won't notice it when she gets back (a lesson I learned the hard way when I got my Moog).

To be fair though, she never actually expresses any displeasure with my purchases (hence the "Very Understanding" in "the Very Understanding Girlfriend"), it is more a case of me projecting my own consumerist shame onto her interactions with me. She says, "would you like a cup of tea dear?" and I hear, "why did you throw even more money that you don't have down the toilet on another piece of electronic crap that you think will make you happy and solve all your problems and yet within two weeks is guaranteed to be serving no function other than a glorified landing pad for all the moths your pile of abandoned musical dreams seem to attract?".

Harsh, but true. Maybe I should listen to my own projected sub-conscience more often.

In the meantime, Tonium's Pacemaker is amazing, and certain to be the answer to all my musical dreams.

On the woad (part II)

I first met Donn not long after my wife and I split up.

Okay, exactly zero items in this statement are true. a) I have known Donn for at least twelve years now; b) I'm not married, c) the Very Understanding Girlfriend and I have not split up, she is out of the country on a research trip, and we are still blissfully and happily together. However you can't really write about a Road Trip without referencing Kerouac, and I thought it good to get it out of the way nice and early.

Donn was the foolish volunteer who had elected to drive to Edinburgh to see our good friends Dan and Yaz. I met Dan through the Very Understanding Girlfriend many years ago, and he and his partner Yaz are two of those people that I only ever seem to meet for three hours every year or so, most memorably and randomly once almost by accident in Istanbul as they were traveling overland to Syria together. They are both a source of constant inspiration and frustration, a reminder of all the positive things that I could be doing in my life but never manage to actually get off my arse and do. Every time we meet we say that a) we should do this more often and b) we should actually spend a longer amount of time together when we do.

Donn, on the other hand, had probably had more than enough of me, my inane chatter and inability to effectively read a map by the time we reached our last port of call on the island of Ireland, the picturesque and scenic harbour of Larne*, and was thinking that a) we should never do this again and b) we should actually spend a much, much shorter amount of time together in general.

Luckily we only had a two hour ferry crossing and a three hour drive to Edinburgh to go.

The drive through Scotland was amazing, the countryside was like Ireland, only better. In fact, that is a reasonable description of almost everything to do with Scotland, and one they should consider adopting as a new tourism slogan. Thanks to my map reading skills we took a slightly more leisurely route, punctuated by breathtaking glens, inspiring hills and 30 mph speed limits. It was thus with a sense of overwrought anticipation and what I took to be companionable silence that we finally breached Edinburgh's city limits at around 9:30 pm, a mere 11 hours after I had set out from Connolly Station.

However time and tiredness could do nothing to dilute that raw sense of excitement that arises anew each time I step forth into the streets of a new city, walking upon the soil of a new country, eager to reach out with all my senses and experience all that its culture has to offer. I wanted to immerse myself in Scotland, to understand it's psyche, to live and breathe its history and understand why it has touched the lives of all my friends who have lived there so deeply and positively.

And thus not ten minutes after arriving I found myself sitting in Iman's Punjabi restaurant, caught in the crossfire of a heated argument on the inherent worthlessness of Christian apologetics between two exiled Iraqi writers.

As a theologian I stayed silent, and ate my naan.

* disclaimer, Larne is neither picturesque or scenic. It is a transition space that exists purely as an enabler of transit from A to B, the Luton of the ferry world.

On the woad (part I)

And yet another silence has engulfed these hallowed pages, which the more astute of you will have assumed to be the result of yet another exotic excursion on the part of your humble narrator. Oh happy Readers, how wise you all are.

While The Very Understanding Girlfriend continues her field work abroad, I took the opportunity to sneak away myself for a few days to the slightly-less-far-away locale of Edinburgh. While up in Longford last week I heard talk of a planned trip to Scotland by car, and with a spare seat available, though foolishly contingent upon my abilities as a navigator, I threw all caution to the wind and signed myself up for that most quintessentially male of all film genres*, a road trip.

The catalyst for this trip was the Reel Iraq festival, a celebration of Iraqi film, written word and history organised by a few friends of ours. I had never been to Scotland despite having numerous friends that have moved there temporarily or more permanently over the years, and this seemed a good opportunity to visit, explore and learn, while not adding to my carbon crater.

Thus bright and early on Tuesday morning I boarded a train heading north towards Longford to begin the 620 Km journey armed with nothing more than a change of clothes, a bag of macaroons and a sense of my own invulnerability...

* Not having a gun, a badge, or any remaining respect for our current system of law enforcement and criminal "justice", having a go at a cop movie would have been right out. Though I do posses a fine hat, a taste for whiskey and a stiff pare of boots, my lack of horse-riding skills and/or any romantic feelings towards Heath Ledger also preclude me from the cowboy genre.

Hold the presses, newspapers not dead yet!

Prompted by a post on Irishelection.com I went out this morning and picked up a copy of the Irish Examiner, for an amazing piece of real journalism by Conor Ryan.

Using the Freedom of Information Act he was able to uncover records of donations made to political parties in the financial statements of companies submitted to the Companies Registration Office. These donations are not recorded in the published accounts of the main political parties nor were some of the donations, grossly in excess of the maximum allowed by law, submitted to the Standards in Public Office Commission by the political parties involved. The majority of donations published in the Examiner were from companies involved in the property and construction industry and, unsurprisingly Fianna Fail was the main beneficiary, both before and after the last election.

While Fianna Fail was the main beneficiary, it wasn't the sole beneficiary, for Fine Gael, the PDs, and even the Labour Party all received and failed to declare such donations. All the major political parties have been caught breaching either the spirit or the letter of the law; all the major parties that is except for the Greens.

The Greens have a very strict policy of accepting no corporate donations whatsoever, it is one of their USPs as a party, and something that John Gormley has been publicly and passionately vocal about. As Minister for the Environment the area of campaign finance reform comes under his brief, and he has promised to publish extensive measures to overhaul a very faulty system, though to date we have only seen the introduction of spending limits on local election campaigns.

The publication of these donations comes at a time when Green Senator Dan Boyle has called for the renegotiation of the Program for Government, the memorandum of understanding between the Greens, PDs and Fianna Fail on the basis of which the Greens entered into government, though John Gormley has been quick to dismiss talk of the Greens pulling out. However difficult it was for the party to remain in office when the revelations about Bertie Ahern's personal finances were coming out, it surely must be even harder to remain tied to Fianna Fail when that party's apparatus itself has now been exposed as corrupt, and on an issue that is a personal hobby horse of Gormley.

Back in 1994 Dick Spring pulled the plug on Labour's coalition with Fianna Fail over Albert Reynolds' appointment of Harry Whelan as Attorney General. Reports emerged of Whelan's mishandling of the extradition of the Catholic priest Brendan Smith to Norther Ireland to face charges of sexual abuse, and when Reynolds still supported Whelan's appointment as AG, Spring pulled out of government. Reynolds was forced to resign, the government fell and Spring formed a new government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left.

Think about that, the government fell because one party felt the other had committed an error of judgment.

The more cynical amongst you could argue that Spring saw the writing on the wall. Fianna Fail were unpopular with the voters due to a series of financial scandals that had emerged; the electorate had voted for change in the previous election and yet Labour, holding the balance of power, decided to go in with the outgoing government against the wishes of the majority of the electorate and now faced extermination in the next election. Spring's move could be seen as a way of attempting to distance his party from Fianna Fail in the minds of the electorate, take the high moral ground, and give themselves a bit of breathing room to try and win back some of the popular support they had squandered since the 1992 election.

Sound familiar?

The Examiner revelations could prove to be Gormley's 'Harry Whelan moment'. Faced with yet more scandal from his government partners, he could use this as the out that many within the party and beyond have been looking for. It would be a chance to take the high moral ground on an issue that the Greens should emerge spotless from themselves, alone of all the parties. Indeed it is difficult to see how Gormley, who has been unwavering in his condemnation of corporate graft and political greed, could sit back and let these revelations go by, so large and widespread is the corruption.

The counter argument is that with Fianna Fail under so much pressure, there has never been a better time for the Greens to get everything they want. If Fianna Fail were forced to the polls in a national election, they would suffer a defeat the like of which has never been seen in this country, and could take decades to recover from. The Greens should be able to wrangle a long list of concessions from Biffo in return for their continued support. The question is will Gormley be brave enough to press home this advantage and go for real concessions, like the reversal of Education cuts, the Corrib Pipeline, the Ringsend incinerator, what's left of the Tara bypass and the continued use of Shannon by the US military and CIA, or will he waste it on more fluff like CFL Lightbulbs and electric car charging stations, items that are important but that no-one is really opposing.

Only time will tell.

Full marks to Conor Ryan on this one, an outstanding piece of investigative journalism. Who said newspapers were obsolete?

Dancing at the Crossroads

Went into the launch party for Prince Kong's new vinyl release "Crossroads" in the Thomas House on Saturday. Promoting another strong release from Alphabet Set, the night saw live performances from Bluefood, t-woc and a thumping set from Prince Kong himself with MC action from Super Extra Bonus Party's Rodrigo.

The night took a decidedly surreal turn due to some interesting double-booking action in the venue, with the Alphabet Set gig in the basement and a Rockabilly night in the main bar upstairs. Over the course of the night a steady stream of rockabilly fans made their way downstairs, lured by the sirens' call of Brazilian rhymes thrown down over skinny-white Irish boy dancehall beats (but seriously, who could resist that). The effort that the Rockabilly folks go to in putting on their party smocks and makeup is impressive, and it lent a twisted 40's ambiance to the whole affair.

Unfortunately I only had my iPhone with me, so the photos all came out pretty lame, as usual, but you can check them out (for what they're worth) here.

Links
Alphabet Set
Prince Kong
Bluefood
t-woc
Super Extra Bonus Party

See into the trees

I decided to get out of Dublin for a little bit, and spent the last three days up visiting a few friends in Longford. It is always good to get away for a few days; much and all as I am unapologetic urbanite the city can get very claustrophobic, especially when the sky reaches down to cover the tops of the buildings with a cold grey blanket of unending misery.

The midlands are not the most scenic part of the country, but my friends live in the middle of nowhere with nothing but undulating hills, trees and the occasional herd of disinterested cows as far as the eye can see. As a place to get away from everything related to the city it can't be more highly recommended - my phone doesn't even work there!

A friend and I drove up on Wednesday (he drove, I provided erroneous directions and facetious commentary) with our bicycles in the back of the car, with every intention of spending a day or two out treating the cows to the sight of scared city boys trying not to get killed by country drivers on roads twistier and narrower than my duodenum. But alas the weather was against us with a torrential downpour that seemed to arrive with us, and leave shortly after we returned to Dublin.

Harumph.

Not to be completely denied the opportunity to commune with nature, or a reasonable approximation thereof, we donned our raincoats and set off for a stroll around Derrycassin Wood, on the shores of Lough Gowna. The light drizzle couldn't dampen our enthusiasm, it was in fact the very definition of "A Grand Soft Day", and we were rewarded by the amazing sight of bluebells as far as the eye could see, just recently come into bloom and carpeting almost every corner of the forest. The contrast between the iridescent blues and the electric greens of the moss and birch leaves was amazing, something I have never witnessed to such a degree before and impossible to describe the magical nature of it all in words.

I took an awful lot of photos, but again these really fail to capture the true beauty as the mechanical lens is no match for the power of the human eye. That, and I still can't figure out the ISO settings on my Canon.

An incredibly revitalizing visit, thanks to everyone who was there for making it great.

Links
Photos of Derrycassin Wood

Musical Chairs

Ahhhh, the sweet smell of intrigue, innuendo, skullduggery, desperation, and defiance in the face of utter doom is once more in the air. Yes, my friends, the political season is most definitely upon us once more, the posters have been attached to every available lamppost (already we have had the first serious mishap of the season), the candidates are pressing the flesh on the doorstep and not even the unreasonably inclement weather can dampen their enthusiasm.

In fact just about the only thing that could dampen a prospective politico's spirits would be the release of an Irish Times TNS/MRBI poll. What's that Lassie? The Irish Times has in fact just released a TNS/MRBI poll? The Green party are stuck down a well and can't get out? Quick, run and fetch help.

While the paper itself focuses on the fact that Fianna Fail, while being slaughtered in national opinion polls, have a coterie of very popular MEP candidates who look likely to retain their seats, I am more interested in what has happened just beyond the reach of the front runners.

In Dublin, which has lost a seat due to the reshuffling of MEP distribution in the EU following the last round of member state accession, a tight contest was always promised as four sitting MEPs fight over three seats in the redefined constituency. The Times focuses on the big four, predicting a return for Fine Gael's Gay Mitchel (26%), Labour's Proinsias De Rossa (21%) with the last seat being a particularly nasty fight between the two other sitting MEPs, Fianna Fail's Eoin Ryan (11%) and Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald (14%). While McDonald has a higher share of 1st preferences, Ryan should get in on the basis of second preference transfers from his partymate Eibhlin Byrne (5%). The biggest news for me, however, has been the arrival of Patricia McKenna into the mix last week as an independent candidate, and is now polling at 8%, higher than the official Green Party candidate Senator Deirdre De Burca, who is trailing at 6%.

Support for the Greens is currently at about 3% nationally, and yet in Dublin the two Green politicians are polling together a combined 14% of the first preference vote, a very positive result. I have met Senator De Burca a number of times and found her to be an intelligent, driven and very capable politician, but as she is closely in step with the Green leadership and onboard with the current Green program for government, it is unlikely that she will pick up too many votes outside of core Green supporters. On the other hand McKenna is a firebrand that alienates as many as she motivates, and her current polling numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt due to the high profile media coverage of her resignation from the party in the days immediately proceeding this poll. However the fact that she is polling higher than the official Green candidate must be attributed to disaffection over the direction the party is taking within the core Green vote as much as to her own previous record as an MEP and her loyal personal following.

It is also interesting to speculate what might have happened if the Greens had run McKenna as its official candidate, with a plausible 1st preference tally of 14%, combined with possible transfers from De Rossa and the Socialist Party's Joe Higgins (7%) that the left-leaning McKenna could have picked up, but that De Burca is unlikely to get. Picking up the last Dublin seat would still have been a long shot, but they would have looked good to finish a close fourth behind Eoin Ryan as opposed to a probable (and very disappointing) sixth or even seventh.

So the good news is that the green vote is still there in Dublin and people remain pretty passionate about green issues even in these gloomy economic times. The bad news is that folks are very, very unhappy with the actions of the government, and the Green Party is going to suffer as a consequence. A disastrous result for the Government parties in these elections will put even more pressure on Biffo to call a national election, as will pressure from within Fianna Fail itself to walk away from the whole mess and leave the further difficult decisions that must be made in the next budget up to the other guys to enforce. The question is will the Greens be able to do enough in the intervening months to go the the nation with a record of success from their time in Government.

A tall order indeed given the punishment that looks set to be meted out to them for entering into coalition in the first place.

Bicycle races are coming your way

Miracle of miracles, it looks like the city is actually on the verge of getting its Velib-like bicycle scheme. This week has seen construction finally begin on the bicycle parking stations, which will eventually number around 40.

I passed by one of these at the top of Camden Street today, and in fact according to a helpful map provided by the AA (though not by Dublin City Council) a disproportionate amount of theses stations will be located in and around Dublin 2, with four rather cleverly located right on the banks of the Grand Canal itself.

This is such an obvious disaster waiting to happen, the canal is a magnet for bike, shopping trollies, traffic cones and dead drug dealers, its a wonder the swans have any room left to breed.

I've already commented on this scheme, and the extraordinary deal JC Deceaux got in comparison to similar schemes in other cities. Now that construction has actually started, I think I will take off my Hat of Cynicism and see how it all plays out.

Its just a pity that this scheme is finally starting here mere weeks after JC Deceaux announced that they can't afford to run the flagship program in Paris anymore, because over half of the 15,000 bicycles there have been vandalized or stolen in less than 18 months since the scheme was launched.

But, as I have removed my Hat of Cynicism and placed it comfortably on the chair beside me, I am sure that it will all be different in Dublin, especially given our long traditions of civic mindedness, personal responsibility and respect for public property.

Completely different.

Links
AA list of Bike Stations and map
Irish Times article
Photos of construction

Now everything's cool and everything's smooth

So while the Very Understanding Girlfriend is away, I have had to begin to face up to the task of amusing myself, keeping myself occupied, and preventing the onset of immense boredom that usually threatens to obliterate all in its path within a matter of days, although in an incredibly unexciting or diverting way.

In the old days I would probably meet up with a few drinking buddies, stay out well past late o'clock and spend the next day or so nursing a very sore head and exploring the thankfully rarely used 'past regretful' tense of the English language*. With great age, however comes great wisdom, not to mention the inability to deal with hangovers in any shape or form, and thus avoiding the sirens calls of my youth I instead went out yesterday and bought a blender.

This week, I will mostly be making... smoothies.

I definitely got bitten by the smoothie bug in Brno a few weeks ago, and so have decided to try my hand at this in the comfort and privacy of my own home. While my efforts to date have yet to be approved for external human trials, in true mad scientist fashion I have been testing them all without hesitation on myself. So far, barring any unnoticed or overlooked BrundleFly incidents, the results have been spectacular. My favourite so far is my "interpretation" of a well-known simian-influenced concoction that I am calling a "None-key Business", because it is dairy free.

Nonekey Business
3/4 glass orange juice
2 ice-cream scoops of probiotic soy-yogurt
3/4 ice-cream scoop peanut butter
half a banana
1 tablespoon of honey, or Golden Syrup for a Vegan smoothie

Heaven in a glass.

Of course, the fact that it would probably taste even better with a shot or two of Jim Beam and Butterscotch Schnapps mixed in hasn't gone entirely unnoticed...

With forecasters predicting a glorious summer I am now officially looking forward to a hammocktacular few months.

* as in "Oh jaysus my head, why did I have those sake martini's last night?", followed inevitably by the 'future implausible' tense, "I am never drinking again, ever"

Constructing a Literature of Ideas

I picked up a copy of Hot Press over the weekend purely to read the Patricia McKenna interview*. I haven't read Hot Press since I was in my earliest twenties, as I flicked through the pages I came to the conclusion that I am old, recognizing maybe one in ten of the bands interviewed, reviewed or namechecked. Oh well.

What pleasantly surprised me was an interesting little interview with Neil Gaiman by Tara Brady, which produced the following quote from Gaiman:

"Myself and Michael Chabon have had the peculiarly intercepting careers... My daughter had breakfast with both of us last year and she turned to me and whispered, 'Daddy, he's the American you'. Because Michael came from the mainstream, he was able to win the Pulitzer Prize and then turn around and say, now I get to do comics and science fiction and all the stuff I wanted to do in the first place. Conversely, that's where I come from but every now and then I get a little poke to let me know I've been accepted by the mainstream."

The interview is vaguely on the subject of Coraline, his children's story recently adapted into a 3D animated film, but is more about exploring why someone as versatile as Gaiman still struggles to be accepted outside of the realm of SciFi/Fantasy and comics. Brady touches on this barrier in her introduction, commenting on how difficult it is to find Gaiman's fiction in a bookshop as it is always relegated to the comics or SciFi special interest sections, and asks:

Why can't we just have a Literature of Ideas section with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman sitting beside Orwell and Pynchon?"

As I've mentioned once or twice before the mainstream attitude towards the literary value of genre works, not to mention the ideas and concepts explored within them, is a particular bugbear of mine. On my bookshelf* Chabon's "Kavalier & Clay" sits happily beside Ursula Le Guin's 'Dispossessed' to the left, and Hamilton, Mason and Jay's "Federalist Papers" on the right, all balanced precariously atop Orwell's "Homage to Catelonia" and Goldman's "Living my Life", themselves in turn resting on Flann O'Brien's "At Swim Two Birds" and Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu". Shoulders of giants indeed.

When I eventually get off my backside and get round to opening the book & coffee shop that I have been boring all of my friends about for the last six years I think it will have an amazing Literature of Ideas section. Interesting and provoking ideas are to be cherished, regardless of their source.

Even if its Hot Press.

* Ouch! That's all I have to say about that. You want to know more, read it yourself.

** at this stage not even a shelf, for my books have long since overflowed onto the floor and colonized the wall of the adjoining room, threading their way nimbly through keyboards, synthesizers and very unhappy looking Moog to take defiant possession of an entire side of the office, daring all who gaze upon them to try and impose a sense of order on their categorical chaos.

Words are very unnecessary

And so we have reached another of those moments where I find myself sitting alone in our house, the wind echoing down the dusty corridors reminiscent of the ghostly footsteps of so many fallen soldiers returning home from the Somme, pointing accusatory spectral fingers at the commissioned classes and wordlessly asking "Why?".

Well, maybe not, but once again The Very Understanding Girlfriend has headed off to the Dark Continent, timeless, primordial, lush with a heart of darkness that beats to a tribal drum of a bygone era*, etc, etc, for a few weeks. When I travel by myself I end up in the Czech Republic making smoothies, when she heads off it tends to be for two weeks near the slopes of Kilimanjaro, or somewhere with the warm waters of the Indian Ocean lapping against the shore somewhere less than 100 meters from her bed. While technically her trips are always involve quite intensive research and workshops, her choice of locales has my shopping centre on the outskirts of Brno beaten hands down. I really must do better.

One of most difficult aspects to get used to of being alone at home for these extended durations is the silence. Whole days can go by where the only human interaction I have is a few meaningless words exchanged with my local purveyors of fine coffee. I believe myself to be a solitary creature, a bastion of self-reliance, introspection and quiet contemplation. This myth is mercilessly dispelled by the third day of any such unenforced retreat, as I invariably realise to my chagrin that I am providing a dvd commentary to the most banal aspects of my daily routine ("Interestingly enough the cornflakes Unkie Dave is eating now are sourced from the same shop that provides his vegetarian cocktail sausages. While not as tasty as a mass-market brand, they contain less sugar and are made from organic corn"), and run screaming with arms flailing wildly in search of the company of friends or even, heaven forbid, family.

Both to celebrate this fear of silence, and to ward off its evil presence**, I met up with a few friends last night and wandered into Meeting House Square for "Bumper 2 Bumper", a headphone disco that launched this year's Dublin Dance Festival***. In almost complete silence, a couple hundred hardy souls braved the mockery of their peers to boogie on down with a wide array of headphones and walkmen listening to a 2hr live DJ set broadcast on Phantom FM. To the amusement of onlooking diners in Eden restaurant, the crowd bopped away and occasionally warbled at the top of their lungs in scenes reminiscent of what one friend called "a hundred tuneless people in a shower". The crowd was very mixed, with families and children enjoying themselves side by side with tuxedo-wearing students on their way to the Trinity Ball, and all-in-all a good time was had by all.

All too often I return from a few days spent in another city thinking that Dublin, in comparison, is crap. Nothing fun ever happens, no one has any imagination, and all we ever do as a city is drink too much, eat kebabs and inevitably use the space under other peoples balconies as a public pissoir****. Last night was fun, free, and alcohol free*****, and I am sure there are many more similar events out there if I just got off my backside and looked for them.

But for now I return alone to my metaphorical hermitage with nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat to mark the passage of this quiet time.

oh, and my Tenori-on. Mustn't forget the Tenori-on.

boom-tish, boom-tish, boom-badda-boom-tish.

* These and other descriptive nouns, adjectives and evocative phrases are brought to you today by Binyavanga Wainaina's so-close-to-the-truth-its-painful article, "How To Write About Africa", in Granta 92. Many thanks to the Very Understanding Girlfriend for sharing it with me.

** a practice inspired by the Mexican 'Day of the Dead", where entire villages mourn the loss of their economic integrity to NAFTA and the WTO by sending parcels of bacon to random addresses in New York and Texas.

*** This will be the only event in the Dance Festival that I will attend. My opinion of dance, particularly interpretive dance, is unpublishable. In my world Interpretive Dancers occupy a layer of hell just below actors of experimental theater, and just above the writers of Two and Half Men. What you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business, but don't inflict that sort of pain on other people, its just rude.

**** Seriously, could whoever keeps doing this at three in the morning under my bedroom window every Tuesday night just stop. I mean, come on, its a Tuesday night for chrisake, haven't you got work/school/a court appearance tomorrow?

***** The event, not the people. I will admit to sneaking out to a nearby bar for a quick pint when the music got just a little too cheesy.

Links
Dublin Dance Festival 2009
Photos from the Headphone Disco. Honestly, I don't know why Apple bother putting a camera on their phone, it is the most useless piece of poo ever; unless you are standing in broad daylight on a California summer afternoon, it never manages to pick up anything decent.

The Wisdom of Gorz

Yesterday's post and my expressions of dissatisfaction with current direction of the Green Party elicited quite a few direct responses to me via email and in person (shame on you all for not using the comments field!). Most folks were of the opinion that Patrica McKenna really should have left the party sooner, but were split on whether this was a good or bad thing for the Party as a whole.

I've replied to everyone individually, but thought it worthwhile reposting a paragraph or two from one of my responses below:

"While not a huge fan of Patrica myself, and less so of her occasionally counterproductive argumentative manner, she was one of the few prominent voices in the Party speaking out on issues of social justice, issues that used to be a cornerstone of the Party.

My main concern with our time in Government so far is that publicly we seem to have been pigeonholed into only talking about populist Green (with a capital G) issues - carbon tax, lightbulbs, cycling, etc, and our Ministers seem similarly to be trapped into only discussing areas directly connected to their portfolio, or the value of the Green economy. Issues like the Corrib pipeline, Tara bypass, use of Shannon by US Military and Rendition flights were all important during the election, but seem to have fallen by the wayside during our time in Government. Similarly my own personal opposition to the Lisbon Treaty is not a Eurosceptic one, rather it is based on concerns over its poor and unenforceable implementation of The Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the lack of any significant protection or enforcement of workers' rights contained therein; Ireland belongs at the heart of Europe, but should use/have used its power as the only nation to put the Reform Treaty to a popular vote to push for true reform that protects the rights of every EU citizen, not just those of transnational businesses.

For me the Greens have always been a big tent party, taking in a diverse group of views from the centre-right to the far left, all united by a common belief in the importance of environmental and ecological action above all else. Internal debate is good, and we should be able to continue to support a wide range of opinions. However coming into an election is never the time to hold such a debate, but I hope following a successful election campaign we can as a Party take some time to have further honest, open and frank conversations about how wide a platform we want to have as a party, and how best to use or position and influence in Government."

One could argue that in this time of global crises it is the economy that is first and foremost on everyone's minds, and that other issues will understandably have to moved to the back burner. Hillary Clinton recently signaled this exact sentiment when questioned about putting pressure on China over its Human Rights record.

Accepting that argument for the moment, and as we approach the local and EU elections it is definitely worth looking at the Green New Deal, published by the Greens at this year's conference in Wexford. It offers a fairly comprehensive package of investment and incentives to stimulate the growth of a substantial Green sector in Ireland, creating 10,000 jobs this year alone. This is certainly commendable, but I believe that given the scale of the crises before us, with predictions of 16% unemployment by next year, the Green economy alone can never be the answer to our problems.

Given the fact that the Government's traditional tax and cut methodology has failed to stem the tide of recession, a radical new approach needs to be adopted, and it is here that the Greens could exert a positive influence by extending Green economic theories beyond the bounds of the Green Economy. I am, of course, referring once again to the work of Andre Gorz, the French ecological socialist, economic philosopher, and all round champion of the oppressed working and middle classes.

If one applied a Gorzian approach to our current economic crises, immediate benefits could be realised. Let me start with a basic premise that I think few would disagree with: It is better for the economy to have people employed, than unemployed. An unemployed person currently costs the state around €200/week in dole, excluding medical cards, rent allowance etc. They also cost the state indirectly in unearned taxable income, and loss of capital directly injected into the economy.

Let us examine a hypothetical case of a small business that employees 4 workers each earning the average industrial salary of €33,000. The company needs to make immediate savings of (coincidentally) €33k, and so is faced with one of three options, either make one worker redundant, reduce the hours and salary of all four workers by 25%, or reduce the hours and salary of two workers by 50%. Assuming all four workers are equally productive, the fairest solution would appear to be to spread the cuts between all four. A reduction of 25% in hours would lead to a reduction of €158.75 per week, but still leave an annual taxable income of €24,750*. As all workers are still employed the Government is saved €200/week in Unemployment payments.

However when one examines the breakout of tax and PRSI payments in each of the three scenarios, something unusual starts to appear:

Option a) 3 Full Time, 1 Unemployed
3 x Full Time Salary of €33,000, Total Tax Liability: €5975.84
(Tax €2,940, Health Insurance €1320, Income levy €660, PRSI €1055.84)
Total income to Government: €17,927.52
1 x Unemployment Assistance: €10,608
Net income to Government: €7,319.52
Disposable income available to economy: €91,680

Option b) Four workers all on 75% time
4 x 75% Time Salary of €24,750, Total Tax Liability: €2,510.84
(Tax €1,290, Health Insurance €0, Income levy €495, PRSI €725.84)
Total income to Government: €10,043.36
Disposable income available to economy: €88,956

Option c) 2 Full Time, 2 workers on 50% time
2 x Full Time Salary of €33,000, Total Tax Liability: €5975.84
2 x 50% Time Salary of €16,500, Total Tax Liability: €330
(Tax €0, Health Insurance €0, Income levy €330, PRSI €0)
Total income to Government: €12,611.68
Disposable income available to economy: €87,048

While the Exchequer would loose €7,884.16 in tax over the course of a year if the company put all four workers on 75% time rather than making one worker redundant, given that the current Unemployment Assistance is around €204/week, or €10,608/year, it would actually save €2,723.84 if all four workers stayed in part-time employment, and €5,292.16 if two workers went part-time and two remained full-time.

Obviously this is only considering the direct tax payable by workers; three FT workers and 1 unemployed worker would between them have €91,680 of net income, four workers on 75% time would have €88,956, whilst two FT and two half-time workers would have €87,048 between them. Given the fact in April of this year alone VAT takings were down 60% over last year, the importance of workers having available income and a willingness to spend it cannot be overstated. When tax revenues and available disposable income are both considered, it would appear that the ideal solution is in fact c) reducing two workers to 50% time while keeping two workers on Full Time.

Ideal for everyone that is except the two workers who have suddenly lost 50% of their income, each of whom reckons the other guy deserved to be fired instead.

In the April Supplementary Budget the Government closed the "Back to Work" allowance as of 1st May this year. If you had been unemployed for 2 or more years, the allowance allowed you to continue to claim between 75% and 25% of your unemployment benefit on a descending scale for up to three years after finding employment. This scheme encouraged folks to retrain or upskill, move into different industries, and consider lower-paid or part-time work in these new industries, with the scheme in effect serving as a financial cushion while one served an apprenticeship in a new field.

Learning from the scenario above, why not introduce a fixed Supplementary Income Benefit to those who voluntarily went part-time and/or job shared? This benefit, less than the current Unemployment Assistance, would be an incentive for workers to collectively bargain for the introduction of part-time or job-share programs, rather than risk all-out redundancy. Although their income would drop below Full-time wages, it would still be substantially better than Unemployment assistance alone. Workers that had more leisure time would be healthier and happier (provided a reasonable standard of living was maintained), and this would have the added benefit of workers having more time and inclination to spend money on leisure activities.

Of course introducing such a Benefit would negate some of the savings made to the government by keeping all workers in this scenario employed, so extra revenue would need to be raised to cover its costs. While not as bold a step as the introduction of the Supplementary Income Benefit, new revenue raising measures would have to move away from the current status-quo of everyone pays equally to one stemming from a position that those in society who can afford to pay the most, should pay the most. In addition to the introduction of a third tax bracket (as in the UK) of 50% for incomes over €150,000, the creation of a new Luxury Tax on the purchase of items whose price was judged to be grossly above norms for that product could also help fund this Supplementary Income Benefit. For example, if an average TV, say a 19" Flatscreen, costs €303, and is taxed at 21.5% VAT, then a 40" HD Flatscreen that costs €1,398 should have a luxury rate of VAT, say 30%, applied because it is four times the price of a normal TV. In this way the wealthiest in society who have a disproportionate amount of the total wealth in the country, shoulder a larger burden; for those on above €150,000/year, paying an additional few percent will not affect their lifestyle to the same degree that it would for someone on €33K.

Thus, thanks to the wisdom of Gorz, everybody stays employed, more money comes into the economy, tax revenues rise and the division of income in the nation is spread a little more equitably. All of this and we haven't even had to touch the Corporate Tax rate.

These are the type of bold ideas that the Greens need to be pushing. They need to halt their current slide into a single issue party, and begin to exert influence in Government on a wider range of issues. They should not be looking at the Green Economy in isolation to the wider landscape, rather they should be discussing innovative moves that impact all aspects of the economy. But more than this, and unlike Hilary Clinton, they should not be willing to sacrifice their morals and values on the alter of the all powerful Economy. It is in these dark times that their role as the conscience of the Government is most important, they should be fighting to prevent cuts to overseas aid and Education, take action to stem the tide of racism that the recession is fostering, and speak out as the voice of the worker in this Government.

For if they don't do it, no-one else around the Cabinet table will.

* All tax calculations are approximate, and have been made using the handy Tax calculator (2009 Supplementary Budget Edition) at Hook Head. Take it all with a large grain of salt.

Another one bites the dust

So the Irish Times is reporting that Patricia McKenna is to quit the Green Party. The wonder for me is that the former MEP hasn't left sooner. Always on the left of the Party, her policies whilst once reflective of mainstream Green Party policies have increasingly seen her marginalized as the Party lurches to the right under both the influence of its partners in Government, and of a newer breed of local candidate that sees the Party as an easier route to elected office than the closed shop dynastic institutions of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

A strong opponent of the Lisbon Treaty, she was heavily involved in the People's Movement that campaigned heavily in the referendum against the reintroduction of the failed EU Constitution, and proved to be one of the more rational voices on the disparate "No" side. She has indicated that she will now run as an Independent in the forthcoming EU elections, but I wonder if this will be the first stage in transforming the People's Movement into a viable political party.

At a pre-Ard Feish party meeting in Dublin back in early January I saw a very frustrated McKenna try to raise the issue of the party's position on Lisbon II with the party leadership, only to have her concerns ignored by the assembled TDs and Senators. Her voice was but one of several raised that day in opposition to the rerunning of the referendum, and yet the very next day I heard a senior party official speaking to election workers state that Lisbon was a dead issue because of the economy, and that no-one in the party or electorate cared about it any more. His words, of course, were directly contradicted by those of rank and file party members less than 24 hours previously.

McKenna is just the latest in a list of prominent party members who have resigned this year; Dublin City Councilor Bronwen Maher and Cork City Councilor Chris O’Leary both resigned from the party a week after the Dublin conference, opposed to the Greens' continuing role in government, ongoing support of failed centre-right economic policies and abandonment of key party issues like opposition to the use of Shannon by US military and rendition flights, the Corrib pipeline, the Tara bypass and many others. The fear expressed by many members at the Dublin conference was that the Green Party was fast becoming little more than the environmental wing of Fianna Fail, and both Maher and O'Leary echoed this in their resignation statements. Government with Fianna Fail has corrupted the party, as many feared it would, and with few successes to show for their involvement their Faustian bargain may prove terminal.

As I have mentioned before I am increasingly finding myself at the outer margins of the party philosophically, and while I have not yet resigned my own membership, the loss of McKenna is a big concern for me. While I do not agree with all of her positions, her resignation shows me that the Party is no longer big enough to hold a wide diversity of opinions. What she does next, especially if it involves Maher and O'Leary, will be very interesting to watch.

a false taft of black on green

Whilst walking along George's Street last night The Very Understanding Girlfriend spotted another in the ongoing street art series of site specific faux US Visa Waivers that have cropped up in and around Dublin city center.

This was annoying because I have been photographing them for the last few months and only told her about them last night, about two hours before she spotted one that I had not seen before. To be fair though, her frequent jaunts across the Atlantic have made the long green form of officialdom a very familiar sight indeed.

The handwritten text on each form is both a commentary on Irish life, and the location in which the form has been posted. The printed text of the form is common to all posts, and has been altered to read:

This form is your life and dreams, a false taft of black on green, a waiver of lies and screams. This form is your home and work, a commute, a perk, a time machine of sun and snow. This form is hills and roads, towers and codes, keys and holes. This form is flowers and hopes, the ground, the shoulder and ropes.

Nice.

Keep an eye out for them, they are far more interesting and poetic than the usual "Anto + Jackie" scrawls that grace most Dublin walls.

Links
Visa Waiver photo series

Sunday always seems to move so slow

Went out to Howth yesterday for my grandmother's birthday. A reasonably large multigenerational family gathering ensued, and a remarkably good time was had by all. My family continues to be a source of some amazement for me, growing up we never really went in for big family get-togethers and I still find myself somewhat surprised when I find myself in a room full of similar genes for an extended period and nothing bad happens.

Also somewhat amazingly, the tubes of the information superhighway now extend all the way up to my family house. Once the last bastion of the unwired realm of the luddites, scorning both the internet and mobile phone signals of all denominations and creeds, there now appears to be a rather healthy wireless network and the sky has filled with multiple signs and portents that the older generations of my family have discovered the interweb. I am now faced with a dilemma I never imagined, the possibility of my mother reading my blog, or sending me a Friend request in Facebook.

I am 36, and yet suddenly I'm 16 again and worried about my mum overhearing me on the phone with friends planning a night at the Grove and trying to figure out who's going to buy the naggin of vodka.

It was whilst innocently testing out this new found connectivity that I was rumbled by my sisters as I posted the odd tweet or two, and as penance I was summarily ushered out onto the cliff walk for a five mile trek along the coast and down into Howth village itself. In truth this was the highlight of the day, and amazing few hours spent with both sisters and a future brother-in-law* walking along the cliffs in an ever-changing evening light, arriving in Howth in time for sunset and a few pints. We rarely spend so much time together, cursed both by geography and a genetic predisposition to sloth and apathy**, and I came away from the evening with sore legs and a happy heart, and a resolve to not let so much time pass before we do something similar again.

All-in-all not a bad way to spend a Bank Holiday Sunday.

* in truth he is more an Indefinite Future brother-in-law, for at this stage they seem to have the good sense to be in no rush to actually complete the act of jumping over the broom stick.

** in the interests of full disclosure it might be argued that these traits have manifested themselves greatest in the first born child, your humble narrator.

Links
Photos of the cliff walk and Howth

Debout, les damnés de la terre

I celebrated May Day yesterday by finishing off Jack London's "The Iron Heel".

For some reason our national aversion to having to go to work on Mondays, made famous by the blessed St Geldof and his disciples, means that unlike almost evry other country in the world we do not celebrate the International Workers' holiday on May 1st itself, rather on the 1st Monday afterwards instead. This of course means that most workers actually use the three-day weekend for a bit of an aul break, grab a few extra scoops in the pub of a Sunday night and generally spend most of Monday in a hung-over fugue, disinclined to take to the streets and protest over the erosion of their rights and living standards.

As I watched the pictures from France, Germany and Turkey yesterday I was forced to shake my head somewhat in disbelief, we are sooooooo more screwed than any of those august nations, and yet our general populace are far more engrossed in a rugby game this weekend than in standing shoulder to shoulder with their global comrades or expressing their outrage and anger to the politicians and investing classes that have destroyed our once prosperous society*. Bread and Circuses indeed.

So in the absence of any great uprising or display of national anger on the streets of our fair city, I spent the day ensconced on a Buddha bag and finished off London's tale of a failed American socialist uprising instead. My only experience of London before had been "Call of the Wild" and his other doggy tale, "White Fang" as 6th grader in Northern California. While I do remember the teacher being inordinately proud of London's San Francisco roots I think she rather forgot to mention anything of his fiery socialist rhetoric and rabble rousing polemics.

"Iron Heel" is great**, first published in 1908 and taking the form of a manuscript written by a revolutionary in a (then) near-future failed socialist revolution, annotated by a historian some 700 years later from the glorious Brotherhood of Man, a global Marxist government in power for over 400 years. The "Iron Heel" of the title refers to the Oligarchy, the ruling elite of the capitalist US under whose boot all workers are mercilessly crushed, and the book itself is eerily prescient, charting the rise of fascism, a US/German war in the 1910's, the use of mercenary forces and conscripted militias by the US to augment its normal troops, the politicization of the scientific community and the use of the legal system to overturn the democratic elections of candidates viewed as unfavorable by the investing classes. In fact it is impossible to read it without the lens of the last eight years of the Bush administration sneaking in to obscure London's original targets.

This, I guess, is the scourge of ultra-capitalism, the system itself is the corruption and the politicians, businessmen and the media are just interchangeable pawns that come and go, called into play when useful and discarded when they have run their course.

I am ashamed to say that I did not know of this aspect of London's history, dismissing him as a children's writer, though of course neither 'Call of the Wild" nor "White Fang" were written as children's books, and again I continue to find that the more I read the more I am painfully aware of the depths of my own ignorance. A little knowledge may indeed be a dangerous thing, but a little more knowledge is a surefire path to maddening frustration.

I came across "Iron Heel" in a post by China Miéville, a solid Trot and modern fantasy writer, wherein he outlines fifty scifi/fantasy books that any good socialist should read. It's a great list, good to see a healthy representative sample of my bookshelf already there, and even better to see a lot more that isn't. I'm about half-way through Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", and will probably move onto Bogdanov's "The Red Star" after that. Ursala Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" is also (obviously) on the list, which I coincidentally finished a week or two ago, and Tadhg has posted a good review of it as part of his "Triple Crown" program.

So all-in-all yesterday was a pleasant enough day filled with a suitable amount of revolutionary fervor, but definitely not leaving me with the same sense of smug satisfaction as a good aul march with a bit of slogan-chanting and the odd moment or two of uncomfortable gaze-avoiding while refusing to buy SWP papers from the scruffy-looking gentleman with a dog tied to a wee bit of twine for a leash.

Good times, good times.

* The above photo was taken at the national protest day back in February and is used here because a) the lack of any protests yesterday meant that I needed to find a suitable photo from somewhere else to grace this post, and b) I was just as surprised as the next person to discover that the Communist Party of Ireland still exists. Seriously old school, bless their little red hearts.

** If you can overcome the slight racist overtones. Not as prolific as in some of London's other works, but still quite jarring when you encounter it.