I'm Unkie Dave, and I'm a newsaholic

On Stephen's Day TV3 reported that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had been diagnosed with cancer. This report was picked up and commented upon by a number of political blogs, including Irish Election. In a subsequent post on Irish Election a number of commentators speculated upon possible courses of action should the report prove to be true, would the Minister resign, when would he resign, and who would be most likely to take over from him, all while both the Minister and his department refused to comment on the matter to mainstream media.

Surprisingly (or rather, surprising to me) there was considerable backlash in the comments section on the appropriateness of such speculation in the face of what is a personal tragedy, especially at Christmas, and consequently the speculative post was deleted.

This casts an interesting light into the murky area of what is and is not newsworthy, what levels of privacy public representatives are entitled to expect and what exactly are the boundaries of the public's right to information concerning elected officials, especially in our current era of instant access and real-time news.

I have no comment to make on the Minister or the appropriateness of either the original news reports or subsequent speculation. On the public reaction to the timing of these reports and speculation however I will say that those reporting are neither to be blamed or praised, for all they are doing is feeding our unquenchable thirst for immediacy. The same hand that we grasp tight for live-blogging Cop15 or leaking the holder of the Christmas Number 1 an hour before the official results are reported cannot then be slapped away for running with a story on the health of the man in charge of our economy, it is only doing what we have demanded of it.

In his book 'Flat Earth News' Nick Davies documents the pressure the mainstream media is under to report the news first before any of their rivals, with quality and fact-checking frequently sacrificed in the interests of speed. He calls this worship of speed within the media 'churnalism':

"You can see the clash of traditional journalism and the new high-speed churnalism in the official BBC guide which is given to all staff on News Interactive. On the one hand, it urges: 'Your story MUST be accurate, impartial, balanced and uphold the values of BBC News... NEVER publish anything that you do not understand, that is speculation or inadequately sourced.' And then, as if there were no contradiction at all: 'Get the story up as fast as you can... We encourage a sense of urgency - we want to be first.' It then goes on to recite the five-minute target for breaking news."
- 'Flat Earth News', Nick Davies, p70-71

We live in an age where we are information consumers; information is a commodity that is traded, exchanged, bartered, horded and stolen, and our appetite for consumption is insatiable. We demand the instant and immediate, and our suppliers are only too happy to accede to our demands.

But in recent weeks I have been reflecting on the worth, if any, of real-time information; if the information I consume has no direct bearing on my own situation at that exact moment, or if I have no ability to positively affect the situation with which the information is concerned, what value is the immediacy of that information to me? Of what use to me is the instant knowledge of a failed bombing on a plane a thousand miles away? Of what value is the immediate reporting of the death of an actress in California or unresearched speculation on China's role in the failure of Cop15? Why in any of these situations is fast better than slow, when I have no ability to affect these events directly or indirectly, nor do they have any immediate effect on me?

In 1991 at the dawn of the first Gulf War, before embedded reporters and the death of print media sacrificed on the altars of 24-hr rolling news stock, before Twitter and the indexing of real-time results from social-network status updates, before the birth of Google or even the widespread adoption or awareness of the internet itself, Paul Virilio said in interview:

"Immediacy, ubiquity, omnivoyance are the elements of the politics of tomorrow. For the present, nobody controls real time. Nobody seriously poses the questions of its effects... All distances are reduced to zero. This global reduction will have fateful consequences for the social being, for morality. It is time to found an ecology of the media.

...The threat is that of fusion and confusion. No politics is possible at the scale of the speed of light. Politics depends upon having time for reflection. Today, we no longer have time to reflect, the things that we see have already happened. And it is necessary to react immediately. Is a real time democracy possible? An authoritarian politics, yes. But what defines democracy is the sharing of power. When there is not time to share, what will be shared? Emotions.

A change in our relationship to time has recently taken place. Before, we had the past, the present and the future. Today, the choice is nothing more than that between deferred time and real time. Humanity no longer lives in the present, but rather in the tele-presence of the world. On the level of morality, of aesthetics, of ethics, major political questions immediately arise."
- 'Desert Screen', Paul Virilio, p32-33

Beyond the Public Sphere and on a purely personal level, why do I need to know that my friend in New Haven is having a coffee right now, or my sister's cat in London is asleep on the chair? Real-time remarks on Facebook and Twitter give the illusion of intimacy but in reality are a barrier to true dialogue; lulled as I am by the false sense of communication that comes from passively consuming status updates I invariably fail to reach out and have direct and genuine contact with family and friends.

But as Charlton Heston might have said, "Tweets don't kill communication, people kill communication". It is the way in which we use these technologies to feed our information consumption that is destroying true social interaction, eroding cognitive analysis and disrupting the deliberative decision making process. On any given morning before I have even got out of bed I have skimmed through 200-odd posts from RSS feeds and checked Facebook, Twitter and a forum or two that I belong to, all on my iPhone. I am seemingly addicted to information consumption, and judging by the pervasive demand for real-time information from all areas of our society, I am not alone.

Thanks to the combination of the seemingly infinite availability of information and our own inability to self-regulate our individual consumption, we are rapidly approaching what I call 'Peak News', where the level of information that we consume on a daily basis surpasses our ability to process that information to any meaningful degree.

I have been debating how best to stave off this Peak on a personal level, starting with a cull in the new year of my online addictions. First on the chopping block are my feeds, if something is worth knowing about it will still be worth knowing about an hour, a day or a week later. Next up are my anti-social networks, Twitter first, then Facebook, they serve no purpose other than as a prop to my delusional belief that I remain in close contact with those outside the 3km radius in which my life revolves. I have yet to decide on the forums, for at least there some semblance of actual dialogue occurs, even if the actual value of that dialogue is somewhat questionable. I've also taken out a number of subscriptions to offline, real-world, dead-tree, peer-reviewed journals, looking for a quality and depth of information rather than quantity and speed.

I have no interest in cutting myself off completely from the flow of global information and live hermit-like on the Skelligs of blissful ignorance, rather I want to move away from my current paradoxical situation of reactionary passivity, where I rage at the immediate and yet do nothing about it, and progress to a measured position of knowledge-based activity and proper communication.

I'll still be pretty grumpy though.

2009 in Music

Well, since everyone else seems to be doing it maybe its time for me to take a moment and reflect on the year in music.

Music release of the year:

The Warp20 Boxset. No longer available but still acquirable in part as three separate CDs (Chosen, Unheard, Recreated), I have waxed lyrical about it already; the most stunning box set I have ever seen.

Find of the Year

Plaid - Tekkonkinkreet, a 2006 Japanese only release, the soundtrack to a manga film and my favourite Plaid album since 2001's 'Double Figure'. Also well worth checking out is Plaid's 2008 Japanese soundtrack, also for Michael Arias for his live-action, non-Manga, Heaven's Door.

Albums of the Year

The xx - xx, dismissed by my sister after she saw them live as "a bunch of moody teenagers", nonetheless I can't seem to stop listening to the album. I may get sick of this soon though as a) it seems to be on everybody's top 10 list and b) I feel slightly dirty listening to music made by kids born in the nineties.

Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue. While most folks think of Clark, Grizzly Bear or Battles when they talk about contemporary Warp sounds, Bibio and Hudson Mohawke are what get me excited. Also check out Vignetting the Compost, Bibio's earlier release this year on Mush.

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport, much more musical than last year's 'Street Horrsing', and by musical I mean 'not as much of a root canal for your brain performed with the Black and Decker drill you just got for Christmas'. Like a more commercial 'Matmos' in parts, but in a good way, full of loverly rich sounding ten-minute tracks.

The Duckworth Lewis Method - The Duckworth Lewis Method, its an album about cricket, by two Irish guys. One of my proudest musical moments is getting Neil Hannon to sing 'My Lovely Horse' in Toad's Place in New Haven. This album is just like that, a guilty pleasure. Did I mention its about cricket?

Tosca - No Hassle. See, I like the downtempo Vienna sound, have done since the subliminal 'K&D Sessions' and this dreamy and slightly sleepy release, while not ground breaking, occupies a happy niche in my listening this year, if admittedly as mostly background music.

Honourable mentions go to Nosaj Thing with 'Drift' and Tim Hecker's 'An Imaginary Country', and my favourite Irish release of the year is Love Rhino's Tumatakuru on Alphabet Set, well worth checking out live around Dublin in the new year.

Interestingly enough according to my aggregated last.fm Scrobbles and iTunes playcounts for 2009 what I listened to most over the year is not necessarily what I consider to be the best releases of the year. Tosca's 'No Hassle' occupied a lot of my time at the start of the year, even though its not the most exciting release in recent years from the Viennese duo. The appearance of Royskopp's 'Junior' on my 'most played' chart surprised me because its really not that good, and I had forgotten all about it until today, and Fuck Buttons and Hudson Mowhawke don't even make it into the top 20!

The most played newbies on Unkie Dave's Jukebox:

1 - Tosca - No Hassle
2 - Plaid - Heaven's Door
3 - Plaid - Tekkonkinkreet
4 - Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
5 - Various - Warp20 Unheard
6 - The xx - xx
7 - Squarepusher - Solo Electric Base
8 - Royskopp - Junior
9 - The Duckworth Lewis Method - The Duckworth Lewis Method
10 - Love Rhino – Tumatakuru

and to all a good night

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind, as is the norm this time of year. Although I am retired/self-employed/chronically-underemployed/a-bit-of-a-grumpy-waster I still seem to be invited to a lot of Christmas parties, despite my lack of a) a company that I work for to sponsor such festivities or b) friends that still find my overwhelming absence of optimism and good cheer about current national political and economic events endearing.

Within the last two days alone I have been to three separate get-togethers which is just about at the limit of my current social skills. All three events surprisingly were a mixture of good friends I see regularly, friends I haven't seen for a while, folks I used to work with and complete strangers that I fear will mistake my unique display of Christmas cheer and goodwill to all humbugs as a plaintive cry for help and attempt to hug me while simultaneously calling social services. These parties make for interesting Venn diagrams.

There also comes the dreaded and inevitable ice-breaking question of "so, what do you do/are you doing/have you been doing for a living?". In the past I have said that I am retired (but not in the replicant sense of the word), taking a career break, working on some exciting new projects that are really just about to take off and my favourite, 5-to-10 for aggravated assault at a Christmas party with a cheese log. You can almost hear the touchtones as they speed-dial social services, can't you?

This year I gave up and just went with, "I'm standing on Grafton Street with a giant foam leprechaun head on, waving at tourists. The hours are rough, but I'm my own boss and the pay is all in cash". Again with the speed-dialing. But still easier than the real answer which is "attempting to incite social revolution, albeit somewhat haphazardly".

So, with my real mission in mind I set about planting the seeds of change in the minds of those around me, a process best conducted before you all hit Eddie Rockets at 4am when your elevator pitching skills will be somewhat less than then optimal. Conversations ranged from my cunning plan to revitalize the Irish Sugar Beet industry with a board member of a major agribusiness group (partial success, he nodded at the right moments, asked interesting follow-up questions and will no doubt steal my idea and then claim never to have met me*) to a proposal to establish a crowd-sourced social entrepreneurial fund (mixed success, regional head of US Internet Giant A loved it, we're meeting to discuss it in the new year; regional head of US Internet Giant B couldn't understand why anyone would just give money away, he will be meeting with three ghosts later on this evening). Not bad for a guy who spends his days wearing a foam leprechaun head**.

While none of these ideas are as radical or as potentially effective as sharpening a few sticks on both ends outside the Dail, you need to tailor your message to suit your audience.

Now with my tolerance for dealing with the Other at dangerously low levels, and my communicative and other associated verbal interaction skills operating solely on impulse engines, I am off to spend the next thirty or so hours in the company of my family. While this may seem idyllic to some of you, it must be pointed out that my good grace, enthusiasm for festive cheer and social cohesion abilities are all genetic traits in my family, and dominant ones at that.

Happy Christmas everyone!

* technically this is in fact the Very Understanding Girlfriend's cunning plan, but then again, I have never met this woman before in my life your honour.

** At no time has Unkie Dave ever worn a foam leprechaun head for a living. It is purely an occasional hobby.

Its a two party system, whatcha gonna do?

According to Alain Badiou, philosophy is "first and foremost this: the invention of new problems". When asked why philosophers in general do not comment on contemporary political situations, he replied:

"...in standard parliamentarianism, in its usual functioning, the majority and the opposition are commensurable. There is obviously a common measure between the majority and the opposition, which means you do not have a relation that is not a relation, you do not have the paradoxical relation. You have differences, naturally, but these differences do not amount to a paradoxical relationship; on the contrary, they constitute a law-governed relationship. This is easily grasped: since sooner or later (this is what is referred to as 'democratic alternation') the opposition will replace the majority, or take its place, it is indeed necessary for there to be a common measure between the two. If you don't have a common measure, you will not be able to substitute the one with the other. So the terms are commensurable, and to the extent that they are commensurable you do not have a situation or radical expectation. What's more, you do not have a truly radical choice: the decision is a decision between nuances, between small differences - as you know. Elections are generally decided by the small group of the hesitant, those who do not possess a stable pre-formed opinion. People who have a genuine commitment constitute fixed blocks; then there is a small group of people in what is called the centre, who sometimes go one way, sometimes the other. And you can see why a decision taken by people whose principle characteristic is hesitation is a very particular decision; it is not a decision taken by decisive people, it is a decision of the undecided, or of those who have not decided and who will decide for reasons of opportunity, or last-minute reasons. So the function of choice in its true breadth is absent. There is proximity, rather than distance. The election does not create a gap, it is the rule, it creates the realization of the rule. Finally you do not have the hypothesis of a veritable event, you do not have the feeling of exception, because you are instead in the presence of the feeling of the institution, of the regular functioning of institutions. So the question of elections for the philosopher is a typical matter of opinion, which is to say that it doesn't have to do with the incommensurable, with radical choice, distance or exception. As a phenomenon of opinion, it does not constitute a sign for the creation for problems." - 'Philosophy in the Present', p17-19

which is possibly the most long-winded and convoluted way of saying "meh!" that I have come across in some time. Badiou, incidentally, has not voted since 1968.

à propos de la, I give you this little gem from the ever apt xkcd:

Free, as in beer

In these somewhat gloomy and depressed times, commentators from An Taoiseach down have urged the good citizenry of this country to stop all the complaining and moaning and for once try and focus on the positive and good in our humble society. It is thus rather heartening to be able to report that one plucky young upstart of an Irish company has managed to break through the cycle of begrudgery, doom-mongering and outright cynicism that dogs our fair nation and come up with a solution to the dual global crises of peak oil and climate change, while incidentally violating the fundamental law of conservation of energy.

I am of course referring to Dublin based Steorn, who in 2006 announced to the world that they had identified a process to produce free energy with no emissions, using magnets. Unfortunately their public demonstration failed because, um, the heat produced by lights illuminating the demonstration interfered with Steorn's equipment, and then an independent panel of experts invited by Steorn to examine the process failed to validate their claims. These little hiccups let loose a barrage of abuse from the mainstream scientific community, who poured scorn on the efforts of Steorn to usher in a new era of limitless green power.

Undaunted by all this negative karma, the lads are back, having tweaked the process a bit and now with a new panel of experts to examine their claims, and what's more the whole thing is being livestreamed. Even better, if you are in Dublin and have some time on your hands you can pop along and watch the whole thing in person.

Well coincidentally enough I live in Dublin, and I have an awful lot of time on my hands, so you can probably guess what happened next.

At the instigation of the inquisitive Mr Rhino, I journeyed down to the Waterways Interpretive Centre on the Grand Canal Basin to join him this very afternoon and as they say, put their manifesto to the testo.

What greets you inside is a perspex stand with three of Steorn's Orbo machines arranged at differing levels, with a number of web cams pointing at them. Each machine consists of a rechargable battery powering a series of electro-magnets. The electro-magnets are situated around a rotating wheel embedded with magnets, the rotation of which is caused by the interaction of the electromagnets and the embedded magnets. Now, here comes the science, for the rotation of the wheel produces electrical power which is then fed back into the rechargable battery, recharging it. So far, so good, but what Steorn then claim is that through their process, which is never fully explained, more energy is produced from the spinning wheel than is used to power the electro-magnets that cause it to spin, so in effect the rechargable battery will never significantly discharge and the wheel will remain in motion, um, perpetually.

We had a chat with some of the Steorn staff, who were in the process of setting up an area for rigorous testing and measuring of effects, all due to start this evening and screened live on their website. CEO Sean McCarthy was pottering about in the background but we didn't get a chance to talk with him directly, however we did get free Steorn t-shirts, which was nice. The demonstration is part of their public launch which opens up their technology to third parties wishing to license it.

While they wouldn't let us into their engineering room, the folks we talked with were keen to push their new Knowledge Development Base, a snip at only €325 for a developer license that will let you find out exactly what the Orbo technology is, and how to use it. Pretty damn cheap for unlimited free zero-emission energy if you ask me.

Now I'm not a physicist, in fact the extent of my understanding of physics allows me to reject the notion that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy us all while simultaneously finding it plausible that the Higgs Boson is reaching back in time and sabotaging the LHC to prevent its own creation. Not bad for an atheist theologian, I say. However when confronted by three spindizzies that purportedly violate a number of laws of thermodynamics created by a company that was previously a webdesign firm and creator of e-commerce sites, you can forgive me for being a little skeptical and calling shenanigans on the whole thing.

The little boy in me really wants Steorn to be something real, that we can bolt on a few of their Orbo machines around the city and lift the whole thing off into space and go exploring the stars, or, equally plausibly, sort out all the planet's energy and environmental problems. Sadly though I'm a 36 year old grown-up and the whole thing smacks of a giant viral marketing campaign for some sort of online business.

Which of course I'm feeding into by posting about this.

Click on the above photos for much larger and higher resolution images. Additional photos galore can be found here. Tinfoil hats are extra.

On TASC and taxes

Continuing with the theme of democracy and debate within Ireland's Public Sphere, I received an interesting email this afternoon from TASC, the progressive think-tank, on their analysis of the budget.

TASC is a fascinating group that definitely is at the forefront of the Irish Public Sphere, bringing together academics, politicians, trade unionists, journalists, activists and even writers such as Colm Tobin, and has been responsible for some of the best publications in recent years on the state of democracy and equality in contemporary Ireland.

In the email and on the subject of the budget they write:

"TASC notes that, in 2010, the savings made by cutting Social Welfare will be almost exactly the same as the spend on tax breaks for landlords (SW saving = €809 million in a full year, landlords tax breaks = €782 million in a full year)"

and that:

"Tax breaks for landlords cannot be justified either on economic efficiency grounds (since Ireland has a surplus of empty housing units, and the rental sector is not a job-creating sector) or on equality grounds (since they disproportionately benefit higher earners).”

This follows on from an excellent piece in yesterday's Irish Times from Fintan O'Toole, who chairs the TASC advisory board. He writes that:

"...if tax breaks on personal income and corporation tax were reduced to average EU levels, their cost to the exchequer would fall from €7.4 billion to €2.2 billion – a saving of €5.2 billion (We are spending three times as much on tax breaks on personal income and seven times as much on corporate income as the EU average.)"

He then counters the Government argument that the top earners in the country are paying the highest rate of tax:

"According to accountants KPMG, the current effective tax rate (including PRSI) for someone earning the equivalent of $100,000 in Ireland is just 34 per cent and for someone on $300,000 it is 44 per cent. The constant citation of rates of 54 or even 57 per cent is simple (but highly effective) propaganda"

Depressing as this analysis is, historically this is just the tip of the tax-avoidance iceberg. Back in August the Revenue Commissioners reported on the results of the 2006 and 2007 Finance Act that removed some of the tax reliefs introduced by successive Fianna Fail governments since 1997, and according to the Irish Times:

"Studies by the Revenue Commissioners in successive years showed that a significant number of the country’s highest 400 earners had used the reliefs to minimise their tax payments to below 10 per cent of the income.

The 2006 and 2007 Finance Act introduced measures which were designed to ensure that all those with an income over €500,00 would pay an effective rate of 20 per cent in tax.

The department analysis shows that the 214 high-income individuals with an income of €500,000 or more who availed of tax reliefs paid an average effective tax rate of 20.8 per cent in 2007.

As a result of the measures, the Exchequer received an additional €34 million in revenue, representing a 129 per cent increase on the tax paid by this cohort.

Some 20 of these people would not have paid any tax at all in 2007 if the new restrictions had not been introduced. The majority of these would have been artists, writers or composers.

For a further 225 people with incomes of between €250,000 and €500,000, the increases in tax-take was tiered up to 20 per cent as the income increased. Their effective tax rate almost doubled from 7.2 per cent of income to 13.6 per cent, resulting in an additional €5.8 million in revenue for the Exchequer."

The simple fact of the matter is that the tax legislation in this country is one of the most unequal in Europe, and if the wealthiest 1% paid their fair share of tax, or even paid tax at the same rate as those on the average industrial wage, then the level of cuts in the current budget would be completely unnecessary. While I am a strong proponent of the introduction of a third tax bracket of at least 48% for income of above €100K, there is simply no point in fighting for this proposal until the entire tax system itself is reformed to remove the cornucopia of exemptions and reliefs that would render this higher tax rate mere window dressing.

The above graph compares the value of existing tax breaks with welfare cuts introduced in the most recent budget, and comes from TASC's Post Budget analysis that can be downloaded from here. It's also well worth checking out their website and regularly updated blog.

Its always good to have some actual verifiable data and the occasional bit of peer reviewed analysis to back up one's wrath and ire-filled rants.

More thoughts on Ireland's Public Sphere

Got a really nice book from the Very Understanding Girlfriend yesterday, "Philosophy in the Present", a dialogue between Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek on the tricky little question of whether or not philosophy (and philosophers) should intervene in current affairs and contemporary world events. I'm looking forward to reading it in the coming days not least because both philosophers are ones whose work I have only familiarity with through secondary sources.

Although based on a series of discussions at the Institut Français in Vienna, the concept of philosophers and other intellectuals engaging in the Public Sphere is one that has a long tradition in French society, and in his preface the editor, Peter Engelemann, makes reference to François Mitterrand and his habit of inviting philosophers to meet with him and discuss the events of the day during his extensive Presidency. Regardless of how much an influence these discussions had on Mitterand's policies, they fact that they took place at all signify something very much out of step with contemporary politics.

"The times when what philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir or Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault or Jean-François Lyotard had to say about contemporary events, or the suggestions they would make for the improvement of things, were regarded as important, belonging to the past. Today, even the impersonators of philosophers who displaced philosophers in the 1970s have themselves been replaced by entertainers and models, by footballers and boxers." 'Philosophy in the Present', p viii

The thought of Biffo extending regular invitations to a group of philosophers and writers and drawing upon their ideas and arguments as he shapes public policy is so implausible as to not even merit an attempt at satire, but sadly he is not alone in his anti-intellectualism.

I read with some alarm yesterday of Tory Leader David Cameron's praise for Simon Cowell, saying "There probably is something we can learn in politics [from him]", and the subsequent reports of Cowell's plan for an X-Factor style televised Vox Pop wherein political issues of the day would be discussed and voted on by the British Public, with a hot-line to Number 10 so that the Prime Minister could phone in live on air and explain why he shouldn't be voted off that week.

Not exactly Badiou and Žižek really, is it?

One of the main problems with Irish politics is its dynastic nature, seats are handed down from father to son and husband to wife. An Taoiseach Brian Cowen inherited his father's seat upon his death, the young Biffo was only 24 at the time. An Tánaiste Mary Coughlan inherited her seat from her father upon his death when she was only 22. Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan inherited his seat from his father upon his father's death, and the list goes on. In fact for a sizable portion of our political establishment the only skill they seem to have brought with them to political life was how to be the child of a politician. Very few have any experience or understanding of life outside the political bubble.

Given this dearth of real world experience one would imagine that our political masters would on occasion feel the need to consult with those outside the bubble. Barring Brian Lenihan's disastrously messaged GarlicGate meetings with economist-to-the-people David McWilliams, such reality checks are conspicuous by their absence.

With a Public Sphere that rarely rises above commenting on the hairstyles of asynchronous warbling twins on UK talent shows, a private sphere of oligarchs that systematically destroyed the economy of a nation and yet remain seemingly irreproachable and a sphere of Public Authority so inbred that televised Dail debates are often indistinguishable from the closing page of Animal Farm, as one looks from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again and it is impossible to say which is which, it is little wonder that our country is in the state it is in.

At this stage even following the advice of entertainers and models, footballers and boxers could hardly be more detrimental than the course we are on.

Good news for the Sunday Indo then.

Copenhagen week one

While following the coverage of the Copenhagen Summit this week a few things have annoyed me and a few things have inspired me.

From the "you're not helping" file comes the green aliens photo op used to accompany most mainstream media reports on the Conference's first few days. Media ops like this are a staple of any large conference, essentially the global media keep to themselves in a private media-only room segregated from the rest of the conference with easy access to broadband, coffee, food and beer and where all stories are written and filed. The press do not like to venture forth from this bubble, and so activists normally bring the story to them by staging photo-friendly actions at the entrance to the media room itself. The press dutifully trot out in a scrum, film the protest, then return 60 seconds later to their safe and secure bubble to file their story before hitting the bar. Job done. Its just a pity that the first of the actions is so cringworthy and further propagates the myth that all activists are a slice shy of a full loaf.

It has also been somewhat saddening that so much time has been given to the voices of Opec nations such as Saudi Arabia who are using the recent hacked climategate emails to pour doubt on the necessity for the conference itself. While the media is happy to cover these concerns none seem to feel it worth mentioning that they are being raised by oil producing countries who, you know, might have a vested interest in preventing any further control of greenhouse emissions.

On the other end of the spectrum in the "wow, that gives me some hope" category, comes the actions of the delegation from Tuvalu. As you probably already know Tuvalu is a tiny Pacific island nation with less than 12,000 inhabitants. No part of the country is more than 4.5 meters above sea level, and already the effects of rising sea levels have rendered parts of the country uninhabitable. I saw an interview with the Prime Minister recently who described his sadness at being the only leader in history whose role is to actively prepare for the destruction of his country and the complete resettlement of its people. A significant portion of the population has already emigrated to New Zealand, and like the Maldives the government is actively negotiating with other countries to buy land on foreign soil and migrate their entire country out of harm's way. For Tuvalu climate change is a harsh reality, not a future fear.

With the very existence of their country at threat they have taken a stand in Copenhagen, actively disrupting two days worth of meetings when it looked as if no binding resolutions would result, and countries such as India and China would be completely exempt from any carbon restrictions due to their questionable status under Kyoto as "emerging nations" despite having two of the world's largest industrial economies. With the support of other small island nations also at risk of complete annihilation and a number of African countries, Tuvalu showed that they were desperately serious about the need for actual firm and binding outcomes from Copenhagen, and stood up to the large powers of India and China who normally seek to speak for the developing world, but have radically different agendas from those on whose behalf they claim to speak. A great account of Tuvalu's actions from Ben Jervey can be found at Onearth, well worth reading.

The conference bubble is the reason why we have seen pictures of green aliens on TV and in the mainstream press, but the Tuvalu story has only been covered by bloggers, because the Tuvalu story is occurring inside the conference sessions themselves, and no journalist ever goes in there. That's where the people are, and you have to queue for the food, and you can't bring your beer in, and where's the fun in that?

I know I am slightly biased here because I've blogged from international conferences, but thus far the mainstream media seem to all be churning out the same identikit stories on Copenhagen that could easily have been written without ever stepping foot in the conference itself, while the bloggers all seem to be delivering more of an insight into the events taking place. This is probably because the bloggers are not necessarily neutral in all of this, and have more of a passion for the work taking place, whereas for the mainstream press it is just another story to be covered before moving on to the next job. Today Copenhagen and Climate Change, tomorrow South Africa and the World Cup, its all just so much spectacle and expensed lunches for them.

And as I write this while #cop15 is trending on Twitter, it is five places lower than Tiger Woods. Which explains everything you need to know about why mainstream media covers what it does.

Budget! Budget! Budget!

My thoughts in the last 48 hours have been akin to the scene in 'Being John Malkovich', where the eponymous Mr Malkovich enters his own headspace and all he hears is everyone around him calling out "Malkovich! Malkovich! Malkovich!", only with the word "Budget!" instead.

I watched the whole thing live, and was pleasantly surprised to see #budget10 trend on Twitter, showing that in moaning and complaining online we still continue to punch above our weight. In the past I have recommended a tax on our cynicism and begrudgery as the most sure-fire method to raise the country out of its economic woes, and no doubt even as we speak our political masters are considering the introduction of a Methane Budget to follow on from the successful Carbon Budget launched by the Greens two years ago.

It is a telling sign that so far the only action threatened in response to the cutbacks comes from An Garda Siochana, who can no longer idly stand by as allowance after allowance is threatened. As the guardians of the peace they are prohibited by law from striking, but then again if they did who would actually be around to arrest them? No doubt when and if they do strike it will be in the form of a "Blue Flu", where the entire national police force calls in sick, which coincidentally allows them to claim their "Being Sick" allowance that makes up for the other bonuses they aren't able to claim by not actually being in work that day. Other countries have corrupt police forces that shake down citizens on the street, ours just take their cut at source.

But at least they are standing up and doing something, which is more than can be said for the rest of us. This budget was aimed squarely at the Public Sector, and the media has been very successful over the last few months in driving a wedge between the Public and Private sectors and thus as those outside the Public Sector are relatively untouched by this budget, they remain relatively unconcerned about it, with ample acreage of Me Feinn-ism on display.

The problem with this budget is not what is in it, rather it is what is not in it, with no provision for job creation, no increase in the corporate tax rate, and no introduction of a third tax bracket for those earning grossly above societal norms. Yet again the government has hit the most vulnerable in society (more than 50% of all public sector workers earn below the average industrial wage) while continuing to reward those responsible for our country's dire economic woes.

The nonsensical creation of a car scrappage scheme in the absence of a native car manufacturing industry and the proposed energy-efficiency measures for home-owners that is 'Weatherizing' by any other name are blatant copycatting of Obama programs that will have little impact on the Irish economy, and should have Minister Lenihan expelled from school for such appalling plagiarism. Seriously? The best stimulus packages he can come up with are cogged directly from the popular kid sitting in the next desk over? No wonder the FT rated Brian the worst Finance Minister in Europe, down from second worst last year.

But again the majority of accompanying hot air has been on the subject of what is wrong with the country, rather than offering solutions and suggestions of what could be right. Both Fine Gael and Labour did offer alternative budget plans in the last few weeks (Irish Election had a nice and short summary and comparison) and the unions offered their own suggestions, but I am not content to sit back and wait for others to make everything magically better.

I have received a good number of responses to my last post and already have had quite a few interesting conversations with similarly grumpy but slightly more motivated people. I will take some time next week to summarise some of the main ideas, and plans are already starting to formulate in my mind. Indeed a proto-Bawh-hah-hah! would not be out of place at this stage in the process.

In the meantime please keep your suggestions coming in and I will meet with as many of you as possible in the next few days, then hopefully in the New Year we can all stand tall, rub our hands together in glee and bellow out a hearty Bwah-hah-hah to the world in a collective voice, rather than as a group of isolated individuals.

Answers on a postcard, please.

I haven't sat down to write for a few days, mainly because its been hard to find something to write about that wouldn't cause me an aneurysm in the process.

The farce of the Public Sector Unions/Government negotiations, the results of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission report on clerical abuse, the balloting of the Gardai on illegal strike action and finally the leaking of the Danish Text which as a 'Plan B' for Copenhagen would revoke Kyoto, sideline the UN and make the World Bank the arbitrator of Climate Change action to the determent of those countries most susceptible to the effects of Climate Change, all have sent my blood pressure skyrocketing while simultaneously bringing my feelings of disempowerment and helplessness to new lows.

Blogging about this all seems pointless. If you are reading this, more than likely you are familiar with my blog, or know me in the real world. Thus you are aware of my opinions and beliefs and share them, or you have contrary ideas and read my blog in spite of my bolshy world view. I'm either preaching to the converted, or falling on deaf ears, but in either event my writing about these things is having no real effect other than as a salve for my wrath and ire.

But leaving that aside for a moment, who are you?

I've lived a varied and strange life and the friends that I have collected along the way reflect this, from East Coast Academics to West Coast dot-commers by way of bible-belt auslanders and belt-way insiders in the US, from the top 1% of Celtic Tiger Cubs causing all the nation's problems to the most exploited and marginalised bearing the brunt of the nation's pain here in Ireland. You are teachers and students, scientists and politicians, musicians and artists, business folk and civil servants, engineers and architects, doctors and preachers, crafters and designers, thinkers and do-ers, layabouts and dreamers and many, many more who refuse to be defined by their activities alone.

And yet by and large all of us exist in splendid isolation, focusing on our own issues and problems, never attempting to change the world around us because of the weight of our own concerns. If the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, then the greatest trick the Man(TM) has ever pulled is convincing Society that Society itself doesn't exist.

Contrary to neoliberal belief, we are not all merely isolated individuals, together we are something more than the some of our parts. There is something stronger about society, whether it is a society of hundred or a society of five million, but we have all been conditioned to believe that we are incapable of effecting change, and this is simply not true.

Mainstream politics isn't the answer, I've been down that route and have been severely disillusioned by what I found. Nor is black-bloc radicalism with its stone throwing and Starbucks-burning, that sort of carry-on is for the days when I wore a younger man's clothes, and moreover I'm just plain tired of being negative all the time; Anger may be an energy, but it hasn't produced anything worthwhile in the last twelve months.

But I am at a loss for what the answer is.

So I am putting out an open call to you, my friends, for suggestions on how we can get together and effect change. Between us all we have ample ideas, time, money and willpower, all we need to do is to escape this splendid isolation we have become encased in and start talking to each other about real things, and what to do about them. Post comments, email me, phone me, make me buy you a coffee and assail me with your grand plan for universal harmony; it doesn't matter how you do it, just start talking and we'll see where we go from there.

I'm tired of trivialities, it's time to change.

The Old Age/Conservatism Axis

This is my Old Age/Conservatism Axis.

As I have got older I have noticed a tendency towards slightly less radical behavior and an increase in random outbursts of "get a haircut and a job, you damn dirty hippy", with accompanying fist shaking. I have been known to shout out the window at the kids in the street drinking beer on a school night, I have been known to give out to children for not saying please and thank you, and worst of all I have been known to attempt to alert a member of the Garda Síochána to the presence of a crime in progress.

In an effort to arrest this steady drift towards the right that aging brings I thought I would generate a little chart and measure my future behavior against political ideologies typically embraced by specific age demographics that I shall pass through along the way to senility and incontinence.

In the above chart you will see that the typical Black Bloc anarchist is between eighteen and nineteen, and at the other end of the scale the stereotypical Tory tends to be in their sixties (judging by their annual conference). Had I taken the time to draw up this chart last year, I would have saved myself quite some grief and realised that the Green Party was not the place for me a lot sooner.

As long as I stay above the Red Line at all times I should be ok, though this still gives me considerable leeway once I get into my eighties as I could probably create oil-powered puppy-drowning stations staffed by child slave-workers bought from Nike for a bag of polar bear noses and still be less right-wing than Prince Philip.

Something to look forward to then other than adult nappies and forgetting what my name is.

Yule betcha'

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, you are indeed seeing a brand new copy of "Going Rogue" on Unkie Dave's desk.

No, I did not mistake it for a "30 Rock" tell-all; no, I have not gone way off the old age/conservatism chart despite my 37th birthday approaching faster than a Fianna Fail denial of clerical culpability; no, I have not been pushed to the limits of unbridled and inflamed passion by certain patriotic spandex-clad magazine covers. In fact, this artifact so tainted that my hands were burned simply by touching it comes courtesy of the season of good will to all men and peace on earth (except obviously Afghanistan).

Then did I receive it as a present by someone who so obviously has never read a single post on this blog, nor conversed with me for longer than a sixty second elevator pitch (so, basically its an online auction site for unwanted children, we're going with 'eBaby' as our launch name. By the way, do you know that neocons feast on the livers of Iraqi Marsh Arabs? Its what keeps their hair so buoyant and glacier-white.)?

Nope, alas, I have no one to blame for this slight increase in Mrs Palin's bank balance but myself.

My grandfather is an anomaly, unlike most human beings he has actually become more socially liberal and progressive as he grew older. I wouldn't suggest that he is excessively liberal, just that he is rather more so than he was twenty years ago. He however still has one major flaw, and its a bit of a big one, Fox News. Why any Irishman living in Ireland should ever choose to watch Fox is beyond me, but thanks to the evils of satellite television he now spends an unhealthy amount of time in the Lair of the White Worm, or Rupert Murdoch as he calls himself in the US.

He claims that he only watches it to laugh at/mock it, saying "why would I want to listen to someone I agree with, where is the fun in that?", but my sisters and I still worry that slowly and surely his brain is being removed and replaced by a mildewing kumquat incapable of telling reality from a poorly weaved narrative of bile and hatred.

Since Fox News entered the house our Christmas presents for him have veered between actively combating this addiction (my sister produced a plethora of Al Franken books, and the 'Out Foxed" documentary one year) and mocking it, and this year I have gone with trying to do both. I figured the easiest way to dissuade my grandfather from any positive notions he may secretly harbour about Palin and her demagoguery is to simply let him read her own ghostwritten story in her own ghostwritten words. Job done.

I emailed my sisters to let them know of my cunning plan, so they don't all independently buy the book as well and further engorge her coffers, and justified my actions by saying that it was either this book, or Glenn Beck's.

My sister wrote back to say that she had already got him Glenn Beck's.

We might just be being too clever here for our own good. If Palin/Beck 2012 flags start to appear in our garden, I think we might only have ourselves to blame.

Half your age plus seven

One of the more endearing features (she would say 'infuriating') of the relationship between The Very Understanding Girlfriend and my good self is our approach to cinema. We both like films, and our cinematic tastes overlap considerably. However I view the actual cinema experience as being best suited to films that would loose some of their impact on the small screen, and thus on those rare occasions that I motivate myself to join with my fellow humanity in such a shared cultural experience it tends to be for big, flashy visual popcorn devoid of all meaning and substance.

I figure that your viewing experience is going to be ruined anyway by the munching, talking, mobile-phone-answering, drink-slurping masses, so why waste your €10 on something where the ambiance of the film is actually important? Thus I have been responsible for dragging The Very Understanding Girlfriend along to a simply horrendous litany of abominations, including 'Transformers', 'Terminator: Salvation', 'The Day After Tomorrow' and, most unforgivably, 'I am Legend', the scars of which are with her to this day.

Thus somewhat understandably she has come to view my movie suggestions with some healthy degree of skepticism, and I was therefore more than a little surprised when she agreed to stop into the video shop on her way home last night and rent 'Twilight' for me.

See, I thought that in my feverish, flu addled state I wouldn't be able to follow anything more complex than a Garfield strip, and given that even Bill Murray is shamed by 'Garfield: the Movie' I settled on something of equal depth but less embarrassing for The Very Understanding Girlfriend to ask for in the video shop.

While not as bad as I was expecting (and yes, I have been known to watch films just so I can give out about them afterwards), there was one major fundamental flaw that made the entire premise nonsensical and completely unbelievable, and the more I thought about it the more I realised that it is a flaw common to most portrayals of vampires in recent years. In Twilight, a broody 100+ year old vampire falls in love with a quirky outsider seventeen year-old girl. In Buffy, a broody 100+ year old vampire falls in love with a quirky outsider seventeen year-old girl. In True Blood, a broody 100+ year old vampire falls in love with a quirky outsider twenty-two year old girl. Notice a pattern?

Herein lies the problem. I am 36, and could no more stand the company of a seventeen-year old for the length of a single conversation than I could watch a full episode of Hollyoaks. When, on public transportation, I am forced to sit in earshot of a herd of youths I wonder how they could use so many words in such a short period of time without saying anything of any substance or meaning. The life of any teenager, male or female, is small, their experiences few and their conversations by necessity revolve around trivialities, though at the time they seem like the heaviest burdens in the world. In know this to be true, for once I too was teenager.

And if I, at only twice their age, would rather gouge out my eyes with a breadstick then endure their unending prattle, what must the torment be like if the age difference was six times or more? Consider the following, slightly more realistic, exchange between our two protagonists:

Him, a broody 100+ year old vampire: "I stuck around St. Petersburg, when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Czar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, in the general's rank, when the Blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. What's puzzling you is the nature of my game."

Her, a quirky outsider seventeen year-old girl: "Yeah but no but yeah but no but, oh my god, I soooo can't believe you just said that, that Becky Morgan in 2C is such a slag, what-eva!"

Him: "On second thoughts, time for dinner"

See, its just not that plausible a relationship, there is simply no common ground on which it could be based.

This is the sociological and philosophical angle I will attempt to pursue with the guy in the video shop as he casts silent scorn on me when I return the dvd this afternoon, my punishment from The Very Understanding Girlfriend for making her rent it in the first place.

I'm not sure he's going to buy it.