A handshake of carbon monoxide

Well, the final counts and recounts are still going on in a few constituencies, but its fairly safe to say that a) Enda Kenny will be our next Taoiseach, b) the next Government will be a Fine Gael/Labour coalition, c) Fianna Fail is reduced to a minority party existing only outside of Dublin, d) Dublin is more left-wing than the rest of the country, e) the Greens have been wiped out in response to their decision to extend the life-span of a deeply unpopular government for more than two years past its sell-by date, and f) much of the electorate are deeply cynical about traditional party politics and have thrown their support behind Independents and alternative groups.

All of which we knew before the first vote had even been cast.

Dublin South East saw a turn-out of just 60.5%, 10% less than the national average. FG and Labour comfortably took two seats each though Independents Paul Sommerville, Dylan Haskins, Mannix Flynn and PBP/SWP's Annette Mooney took over 16% of the first preference votes between them. While Mannix was eliminated surprisingly early and young Master Haskins secured less 1st preferences than he had Facebook friends, Sommerville did remarkably well and though never in contention for a seat still arrived home ahead of Green Party Leader John Gormley.

The graphic above is from RTE's excellent election website. Their online coverage, with Twitter streams from each constituency, polling centre webcams and constantly updated graphs and charts has been amazing. Their television coverage, however, has been abysmal. None of this data made it onto the TV screens, we were subjected to hour after hour of meaningless waffle, soundbites from political hacks, and endlessly repetitive shots of overweight and red-faced victors being hoisted onto the shoulders of unfortunate load-bearers to the cacophonous chanting of "Olé, Olé, Olé". Was it too much to ask for one hyperactive presenter standing in front of a blue screen waving their arms like an octopus on red-bull being electrocuted? A brief attempt by Pat Kenny to make a touch-screen display work was just embarrassing for the country as a whole, like watching your parents try and make a Skype video-call. When RTE spent such a huge portion of our licence fees on their election coverage, could they not have found a way to put some of the amassed data up onto the TV screens?

No matter, the good news for me has been the rise of the left, both the centre left in the form of Labour's best ever result, and more significantly, the success of a number of candidates from the hard left, particularly the return of Joe Higgins from the Socialist Party and the election of his colleague Clare Daly, Tipperary's Séamus Healy, Waterford's John Halligan and the SWP/PBP's Joan Collins and Richard Boyd-Barret. While Sinn Féin have made hard-left economic policies part of their campaign rhetoric, I don't believe that these policies have been the major factors in the minds of voters who have propelled them to their greatest success in modern times. Still, it's heart-warming to see a significant portion of the electorate take a stand against the neo-liberal policies of both the outgoing government and its incoming replacement.

Less heart-warming has been the gender composition of the 31st Dáil. By 1:30 pm today, with 136 of 166 seats filled, we, as a nation, have elected 21 women. 21 out of 136, or barely 15%. Not a single female TD has been elected thus far from the parties of the outgoing Government, the majority of those elected have come from the Left and are overwhelmingly from urban areas. In the outgoing Dail there were only 23 female TDs (ironically there's a good article on political gender inequality in Village from March last year by Ivana Bacik, who just lost out to Richard-Boyd Barret in a recount today in Dun Laoghaire), so while once all the results are finally in we may not have gone backwards, we certainly aren't going forwards in a hurry. On a more positive note we have also elected our first openly gay TD, Labour's Dominic Hannigan, in Meath East.

The final word (for now) on the election results thus far goes to the prescient Ciarán Cuffe, former Green TD, and eliminated last night on the 6th count in Dun Laoghaire. Four years ago in the aftermath of a very tight count and with the negotiations for a new government about to begin he wrote "Let's be clear. A deal with Fianna Fáil would be a deal with the devil. We would be spat out after 5 years, and decimated as a Party."

He was wrong about one thing, it only took four years.

Silent Barrage at the Science Gallery

Took some time off on Wednesday from work, the election, and the obsessive photographing of UpStart posters to vist the Science Gallery for the closing days of the Visceral exhibition.

Visceral has been one of the more exotic series the Gallery has hosted, focused on what it calls Living Art. The exhibition has included books made from human skin (both organic and lab grown), portraiture in E.coli, music made through bovine bones, Thunderdome combat with white blood cells and much more.

The one that really stopped me in my tracks though was the Silent Barrage exhibit.

Somewhere in Atlanta there sits a lab, and in that lab there sits a culture dish containing neurons harvested from embryonic rats. These neurons are connected to a number of sensors and activators which themselves are connected to then internet. In the Science Gallery stand an array of columns covered in paper. Attached to each column is a robot that can travel up and down the column and draw on the paper. As people pass through the columns a camera tracks their movement and relays this movement pattern over the internet back to the lab in Atlanta. Depending on the pattern of movement individual neurons are stimulated manually. The neurons react and then organically transmit a signal to other nearby neurons in the same culture.

This communication between neurons is then transmitted back to the Science Gallery, each neuron mapping onto a column and the level of activity in that neuron represented by lines drawn on the paper by the robot. As people move on to investigate the more active robots, their movement triggers yet more activity in the culture dish in Atlanta, more neurons fire and robots on other columns swing into action. By chronicling these actions and reactions the scientists behind the experiment hope to map seemingly random brain activity in greater detail and gain insights into disorders such as epilepsy.

As you walk through the rows of columns the feeling of physically travelling through an active brain is impossible to escape. The electrical activity of thoughts, or at the least of instinctive actions, is made tangible, and, well, visceral.

The exhibit, unfortunately, is now over, but yet again this shows why the Science Gallery is one of the best things the city has to offer.

This message has been brought to you by Unkie Dave's Campaign to Try and Love the City of Dublin, and by the election day moratorium on talking about things to do with the election.

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Visceral, at the Science Gallery
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Vote or shut up

Polls open in eight hours
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Let's start a baby tonight

JACK SAMSON vs THE DEAD FLAGS by JACK SAMSON

The elctrofunkadelic groove machine that is Mr Jack Samson has let slip yet another dog of war. Or rather, Mr Samson has let slip yet another dog of Luuuurve, for in celebration of Valentine's Day (there appears to be one of these each year, who knew?) he has remixed The Dead Flags' "Let's Start a Fire Tonight" with a subtlety Barry White would be proud of.

Just brilliant!

And that happy phat and squelchy sound in the background, that would be Unkie Dave's Moog being played by Mr Samson, as only Mr Samson can.

Seriously, nothing I have ever done on my Moog has ever, and will ever, come close to the way Mr Samson makes it sound. I might as well stop trying. The disadvantage of having such talented friends is that some mornings when I think about how good they actually are I struggle to get out of bed.

Poo.

Harry Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Connemara is an amazing place, the landscape is spectacular, picture-postcard and not always a postcard of Ireland. One of Ireland's only fjords is there, Killary harbour (the others being Lough Swilly and Carlingford Lough) and while we were there the snowcaps on Mweelrea and Ben Lughmore transported the horizon to Norway (without the unfortunate and somewhat barbaric whale barbecues). The other amazing thing about Connemara is what happens when you scratch the surface and realise the many complex layers that lie just beneath the surface.

Tullycross is a tiny village (probably less than a thousand inhabitants in the wider area) in north-western Galway, just outside the Connemara National Park. It has two pubs, a small hotel, a shop and a few holiday homes with thatched cottages built and managed by what is now the furniture college in Letterfrack, part of GMIT. It also has a small church, in which there resides a stained glass triptych by Harry Clarke.

While not quite on par with finding a Old Master in your attic, this blew me away. One of the most iconic Irish artists of his time, Clarke's stained glass and illustrations for works by Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Perrault and, most stunningly, an edition of Goethe's Faust, have captivated me for many years, probably because his style, like that of Aubrey Beardsley, has clearly influenced generations of comic-book artists. Indeed, when I first encountered Clarke as a teenager I immediately though (quite sadly) "wow, this guy is a fan of Sláine or Sandman". Oops.

The Tullycross piece depicts Christ with Saints Bernard and Barbara, and dates from 1927.

St Barbara
Christ with Sacred Heart
St Bernard (not the dog)
Altogether not what one expects to find in a tiny Connemara village.

Don't do the same thing expecting a different result

On the subject of the election (only three days to go now), here is a nice and simple animation from Mannix Flynn. Much better than his rapping. His message is pretty simple, but effective, "Don't do the same thing expecting a different result".

Anyone hoping for a Fine Gael majority should take this to heart.

Ask me no questions...

The latest opinion polls show Fine Gael heading towards that elusive overall majority with 40% of the first preference vote, which (with all apologies to my Grandfather, who is a Blueshirt to his very core) would be a very bad thing.

All our problems have been caused by Fianna Fail's neo-liberal agenda, it is madness to try and fix all our woes by implementing even more neo-liberal policies. Lower taxes, lighter-touch regulation, less onuses on businesses to protect their workers, handing the medical system over to the insurance companies, with the exception of the abolition of the Seanad and reform of the Dáil every single aspect of Fine Gael's five point plan will be a disaster for the country.

No matter, the point of this post is not to bemoan the disaster that will be our incoming government, there will be plenty of time for that later, the point of this post is to comment on the nature of opinion polls.

The Very Understanding Girlfriend took part in one this morning. This was her third phone poll. I have also taken part in three over the last eight weeks. We have been called four times by RedC and twice by MRBI. Our answers have not changed in this time. We have been called once in the evening, and five times during business hours, and only once on the weekend. All in an eight week period.

Now, this cannot be unusual behaviour for the pollsters, we are obviously on some sort "call these folks, they don't hang up on us" list. So if I extrapolate from our own experience I would assume that most polls are composed of homemakers, the unemployed and folks who work from home. Who else is at home during business hours on a weekday? This is, to say the least, not a particularly representative sample of either the populace at large or likely voters.

We've also been polled six times in a very short timescale, and our views haven't changed from week to week. Why have we been called so often? Are they deliberately calling us multiple times so they can track the same sample group to see if their opinions change over time? Poll sample sizes seem to be around 1,000 for the MRBI and RedC, but I always assumed that successive polls sampled different groups, leading to a more representative picture over time. Surely sampling the same group each time means that you are only drawing the opinions of 1,000 people (most of whom made their minds up ages ago) as opposed to the nation as a whole?

In the 2009 local and EU elections, the total electorate was 3,259,253, of which 1,880,589 (or 57% of the electorate) voted. Am I really representative of 0.1% of the electorate? Are there really 3,259 folks out there as grumpy as me (1,880 of them grumpy enough to get off their backsides and vote)? And if there are this many, why do I never seem to end up sitting beside them on trains, busses park benches and other locations seemingly populated exclusively by rabid Fianna Failers?

What I'm wondering is, given my own direct experience of recent polling, just how accurate a prediction of actual voter intentions are Irish election polls?

Well, we'll all know on Saturday I suppose.

Down the rushy glen

Returning to the scene of our starry-starry night drive (or lack there-of), The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I went back to Wicklow on Sunday afternoon for a walk through Devil's Glen up to the waterfall and back.

Its a short enough ramble, between ninety minutes and two hours along a river on the way there and back up high along a cliff. Scattered along the walk are various wooden sculptures and poetry by Seamus Heaney and its such a pleasant walk that it really doesn't matter if it's overcast (a good thing really since it's Ireland after all). Its less than an hour's drive from the city centre, an amazing resource at one's doorstep.


This message has been brought to you by Unkie Dave's Campaign to Try and Love the City of Dublin.

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Info about the park and walk

Out looking for astronauts

Taking advantage of a sudden break in the clouds last night, The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I took leave of our senses and decided shortly after midnight to head off in search of the aurora borealis. Intense solar activity this week meant that (in theory) the Northern Lights may be visible as far south as Ireland this weekend, though the cold grey blanket of unforgiving misery that normally hangs over the city, what other nations may laughingly refer to as "cloud cover", normally puts pay to any plans for Hibernian star-gazing.

Off we went up into the Dublin mountains, almost to the Sally Gap and then back down through Glencree and Eniskerry. Though the weather was with us (mostly), we failed to see anything out of the ordinary. However the views of the city were spectacular and I was left with a sense of just how enormous a sprawl Dublin really is.

I was also painfully aware (yet again) of just how much more powerful an instrument the human eye is than a camera lens.

More blue skies over Dublin

I took advantage of the unusually good weather and fantastic light this morning to head out and photograph the latest batch of UpStart posters to hit the streets. I've close to 300 photos in the Flickr set now, after the election I'll post some thoughts about the whole experience of documenting this art project.



In addition to all the posters, UpStart also accepted audio and video submissions, and these submissions are now live. You can listen to the audio content on UpStart's Soundcloud page, and the video content can be found on their YouTube channel.

It would have been interesting, given the ubiquity of mobile wi-fi devices, if these submissions could have been tied to a specific location, for example if a url for the video or audio clip could have been printed on a poster so the viewer/listener could have engaged with the art in situ like they do with the static posters.

My full Flickr set can be found here, and the latest photos begin here.

On the Cheesehead revolution

As a rule I try not to repost anything on this blog, as much as possible I prefer all content to be original. But occasionally, just occasionally, I see something that demands a quick repost.

The picture above comes from @zackfarley via Twitpic, and is of a protestor in Egypt showing his solidarity with union workers and citizens in Wisconsin. That's right, Wisconsin.

While all the media attention, rightly so, is focused today on Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, in a different far flung corner of the world another popular uprising of students, workers, unions and activists is standing firm and defiant against the machinations of a plutocratic government.

Wisconsin's newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker recently went on a tax-slashing spree mainly for the benefit of his billionaire backers the Koch Brothers. Now, in the immediate aftermath of the tax cuts, the State is broke and Walker is trying to lay the blame on Public Sector spending, instituting draconian cuts and attempting to destroy the Unions in the process by removing their right to collective bargaining. In response thousands of protesters took to the streets of Wisconsin's State Capital, Madison, and have occupied the State Capital Building

Mr Tim (of Wisconsin and Inessentials) steered me in the direction of a great summary of what's going on from Mother Jones, and some excellent first-hand accounts from protestors on the ground.

Governor Walker is proposing that state public workers would pay half their pension costs, just under 6% of their pay, and at least 12% of their health care costs. Compare this to our own Universal Service Charge (which replaced, amongst other things, the Health Levy) of 7% on incomes above €16,000, and an average Pension Levy of a further 7% for Public Sector workers. In Wisconsin the Unions have occupied the streets for the last five days. In Ireland they had a nice cup of tea in Croke Park.

One of the saddest realisations for me during this election campaign, with Fine Gael now in shouting distance of an overall majority in the latest polls, is just how right-wing we as a nation are. With all of our current woes being caused by rampant neo-liberal policies over the last decade or so, the populace seems dead set to sign up to a 5-Point Plan that Scott Walker wouldn't have been too unhappy with. Labour's dream of a Left-wing government seems to be fading fast, and I can't help but think that the lack of visible and effective actions by the unions over the last 24 months have left the general populace with the impression that the Left is weak, disorganised, and has no meaningful alternative.

A view I share myself on darker days.

Still, six days to go until polling day and anything can happen. And while I wait, and lamenting our own lack of popular uprising, I shall continue to watch events in Madison with great interest.

And can you imagine what would have happened if the Packers lost the Superbowl?

Down the long path where beauty wends

Well, you go away for a few quiet days to Connemara and as soon as your back is turned Radiohead release a new album.

Yes indeed, this week I have mostly been hiking in Connemara, with the wind and the rain and the snow and the landscape strangely reminiscent of Norway in an achingly stunning part of the country around Tullycross, Letterfrack and the Connemara National Park.

Other things have been afoot, and now seemed the best (and possibly only) time to head out, clear the head, and return afresh and renewed for all that lies ahead.

Oh, and The King of Limbs, really rather good I think.

Blue skies over Dublin

Another photo post here today I'm afraid, I don't have the time to write anything caustic about the election. I spent a good few hours yesterday out and about on dublinbikes taking advantage of the unexpectedly sunny weather and a meeting-free gap in my calendar to head out and try and photograph some more UpStart posters, and alas I must make up all that lost time today. Somehow I imagined that a life less corporate would be a life with less deadlines.



This is it for a while now, there's just over 160 images in the Flikr set and I think I may have gone a bit overboard with this whole thing...

Go Pack, Go!

Well this morning sees everyone in the Unkie Dave household functioning at less than peak efficiency, the culprit responsible for this malaise is not, as one might expect, alcohol, but in fact almost quite the opposite, a sporting activity! Not the actual participation in a sporting activity, mind you, just the watching of one.

Given that over 20% of the readership of Booming Back is, if Google Analytics is to be trusted*, located in the US, I do not need to tell everyone here what yesterday was, but for the rest of you it can all be summed up in one single word, Superbowl.

When the Very Understanding Girlfriend and I moved to the US all those years ago we didn't really expect to return home with amazing friendships that would still be going strong almost ten years later. We certainly didn't expect to be returning home as fans of the Green Bay Packers. This is all the fault of Mr Tim, philosopher, cultural commentator and Wisconsin native (and newly minted father), whose writings on media and pop culture at Inessentials are always worth a read.

Given his love of all things televisual, it was odd that when we first met Mr Tim he did not, in fact, possess a television. This was his feeble attempt to focus on his PhD, and lasted about a year. However given his near-religious devotion to Green Bay (I think it is implanted in every Wisconsonian at birth, along with cholesterol and anti-freeze) a solution needed to be found to allow him to have both his pigskin-flavoured cake and eat it, to watch every game and still not have a TV. As we had a TV you can see where this is going, thus by osmosis The Very Understanding Girlfriend and I developed as great a passion for the Packers as any Irish man or woman could safely do.

It is also worth mentioning at this point that, somewhat inexplicably, The Very Understanding Girlfriend has watched every Superbowl for the last twenty years, despite being even less of a sports fan than I. Superbowl night has become something of a tradition in our house, with (veggie) hotdogs, nachos, terrible beer and other accouterments of Americana. For the Packers to be in the Superbowl (as they were last night) was like Christmas in July**.

I'm not going to try and describe the game, if you like American Football then you watched it and you know what an amazing game it was, if you don't like American Football then nothing I can say or do will interest you on the subject. However a thought did occur to me during the game that I though interesting enough to share.

American Football is possibly the most tightly choreographed game in the world. When practicing the team runs through scenario after scenario and develops a wide range of "plays", basically what happens when they have possession of the ball, where each player runs to etc. A good team will know their Plays so well that when the Quarterback tells the team what Play they are going to use, another player can run twenty or thirty yards, hold their hands up in the air and pluck a ball from the sky as if by magic, all without ever looking back at the Quarterback. Everyone knows exactly where they're supposed to be at all times, its like clockwork.

The flip side of this is that, as any armchair general knows, no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, so there are literally hundreds of Plays that have to be memorised, and the team coaches decide which Play to use on a case-by-case basis. They may have a general idea of how they want to get the ball down the filed and across the line but they decide each move based on the results of the last move. Thus rather than having an overarching strategy, they in fact have a series of case-specific reactionary plans, each covering a period in time no more than 30 seconds. The Coaches (for there are several) sitting on the sideline and up in the stands are often the most important members of the team in contributing to a win or loss, and the players are but their drones that carry out their orders. When a team wins, it is the Team Owner and then the Coach who are first given the trophy, the players get to handle it almost as an afterthought.

As I watched this last night the parallels with US military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed overwhelming, not surprising if you consider that most military leaders in the US no doubt got their first taste of strategic thinking in school on the pitch. I have browsed through General Dave Petraeus' US Army Counterinsurgency Manual and the similarities to a football team's playbook is striking, it is effectively a series of "if/then" scenarios, if the bad guys do this, we do this, if they then do this, we do that. Like American Football, US armed conflicts seem to be based on a strategy of short-term scenarios plucked from a Choose Your Own Adventure book, do you throw the ball left (turn to page 24), try to kick a field goal (turn to page 89), install a friendly Oil-executive as the unelected leader of the country you just invaded (turn to page 108). Oh dear, you just bombed a civilian wedding, go back to the beginning and start again***.

Like an American Football team, the US military's strategy never seems to have a more elaborate long-term goal than 'score some points, beat the other guys, win, win, win', its all about a steady succession of short-term reactionary moves.

This strategy is equally evident in the corporate world, where everything revolves around quarterly results, the focus is never on three or five years down the road, its all about how the stock market will react to what was done this quarter in comparison to last quarter. If it looks like you didn't make more money in sales this quarter than last, then fire a whole bunch of employees the week before announcing your results to reduce your reported outgoings (turn to page 36). Don't have enough sales staff left to make any money this quarter, hire in some temps on short term contracts to plug the gap (turn to page 99). Don't have any HR staff to hire in the temps because you let them all go two quarters ago to reduce costs before results were announced, outsource the work to another temp agency (turn to page 122). Oh dear, you just pissed off the Chinese government, go back to the beginning and start again***.

What the US has given us in the long Twentieth Century is a focus on the immediate, the just-in-time, the Now. There is no tomorrow, only today, an endless succession of todays.

Perhaps this is why an hour-long American Football game always takes at least three hours, time itself collapses under the weight of this stream of repeated Nows.

In any event, Green Bay won, our cries of jubilation gave our neighbourhood's Algerian football (sock-ah) supporters a run for their money, and all was right with the world.

Huzzah!

* not necessarily a given, I mean look at how much rubbish about Irish politics I write, surely no-one outside of the country can be interested in that? Seriously, most people inside the country aren't interested in that. Its a wonder I have any readers at all.

** or Christmas in December, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, which I suppose really is just like Christmas. Doesn't convey the same sense of joy, does it? *sigh*

*** but wait, I had my finger on the previous page all along, it doesn't count, I never let go.

Upstart redux

Despite the cold and rain of this morning the need to be elsewhere forced me out onto a bicycle (with my camera nestled in the handlebar basket) for a good two hours, and I was richly rewarded by the discovery of a veritable cavalcade of UpStart posters, along Adelaide Road, Fitzwilliam Square, Merrion Square and back up along Stephen's Green.



I'm starting to get a sense of the scale of the project, the volume and quality of submissions, and the challenges the organisers face in getting the completed posters up on the lamp-posts in the seriously miserable conditions we've experienced here these last few days.

nasty, nasty, nasty.

I've updated my Flickr set with about 40 new photos, so if you have a few minutes please do check them out. This is one of the coolest things to happen in Dublin in a long, long time.

Tomorrow, da nort side.

Upstart art on the streets of Dublin

So where was I off to on this cold and blustery morning armed only with a camera and steely look of determination in my eye? As I mentioned yesterday I noticed that UpStart had put the first of their posters up on lamp-posts around the city centre, and so I decided to head in and try and take a few photos before the wind huffed and puffed and blew them all away.

UpStart had an open call for submissions, and were looking for work from designers, writers and artists whose work would be transferred to a standard-sized election poster and secreted in between the rogues gallery of vote-beggars, botoxed-smiles and attempts at witty barbs that we will be subjected to for the next three weeks.

Oh, how I love this all, if only we could have an election every year!

From Stephen's Green to Dawson Street, along Molesworth Street and on to Kildare Street outside the Dáil, I saw about thirteen pieces today, but I suspect there may have been a few more that didn't survive last night's gale-force winds. The majority were written pieces - poems, haikus and non sequiturs, and their placement over, above and around actual campaign posters created a few unfortunate juxtapositions.

The one or two pieces of painted works or photography fared less well I think, due to the difficulty in actually getting close enough to see them properly. Bold text or strong design seemed to work best.

I've uploaded this morning's photos to Flickr (for a change), it seems to be a Flickr type of project. Keep an eye out for more, we've three weeks to go till polling day and UpStart were looking for 500 submissions and hoped to put up 1,000 posters, so there'll be many, many more to see.

Just simply a great idea!

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More photos

The rise of Liberalism in Ireland?

Ask and ye shall receive.

After spending most of the day yesterday complaining to anyone unfortunate enough to come within digital earshot about the lack of canvassers on my doorstep (perhaps the only person in the country voicing such a complaint), who should I meet while on my way into the city centre but young Master Haskins on his way back from an interview with the Evening Herald.

I stopped him and introduced myself, and despite the cold and rain and political fervour in my eyes that most people find off-putting, we had a quick chat about the campaign, Mick Wallace's announcement on Vincent Browne last night, and the good that having a sizable number of genuine Independents in the next Dáil would do.

While I have serious misgivings over the economic policies of his major supporters, believe that he himself is probably a bit too pro-business, and still would argue that a candidate needs a good bit more real-life experience before entering the sordid bubble of the Oireachtas, I was impressed by his drive, sincerity and knowledge. I have heard him criticised for being David McWilliams' sock puppet, but that was not the impression I got during our brief conversation - he is passionate about what he believes in and seems to genuinely want to make a difference, and finding anyone his age that wants to serve their community is a very rare thing indeed.

The thought occurred to me that although McWilliams and John McColgan's proposed 'Democracy Now' platform may have collapsed/been indefinitely postponed before the election even began, there seems to be a definite move towards trying to start some sort of Liberal (in the UK sense of the word) political movement here, being economically-liberal and socially-progressive, as opposed to the neo-liberal Irish Toryism of the old Progressive Democrats. The inclusion of Fintan O'Toole in the mix with the likes of Shane Ross, Eamon Dunphy and McWilliams himself would suggest an attempt to pull the group back towards the centre economically. If this sounds very much like an Irish version of the Liberal Democrats, I don't think you'd be far wrong, and if this were the UK that's exactly who I would imagine young Master Haskins would be running for.

An Irish LibDems would be, I think, a good thing, though not one I would vote for myself. As many commentators have already said, the problem with Irish politics is that historically there has been very little diversity of thought within the Dáil. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have almost identical political and social platforms, both centre-right, socially conservative and with a tendency towards neo-liberal economics. Labour's time may finally have come, but we all said that in 1992 and after a disastrous spell in government with Fianna Fail the party was all but wiped out, and the country returned to the old reliability of civil war politics. Others on the fringes may have come and gone (PDs, the Greens), but none have survived contact with Fianna Fail and the millstone of civil war dynasticism.

What this election promises to do is forever alter the face of Irish politics, leaving us with no single party capable of achieving a majority for years to come, and creating a need for genuine debate, co-operation and compromise. While my ideal 31st Dáil would see a landslide for the hard-left, a more realistic goal would see the larger representation by parties of the centre-right (Fine Gael and a much reduced Fianna Fail) be met by a healthy centre-left (Labour) and a smaller hard-left (The Socialist Party, PBP/SWP and even Sinn Fein), with the balance maintained by a respectable number of centrist Independents, who would no doubt tend to side with the right on economic matters, and the left on social matters.

I said as much to young Master Haskins this morning, and while he won't be getting my 1st Preference, if you are more a fan of the free-market than I you could do worse than help him on his way to the Dáil come February 25th, it would certainly be a more interesting place with him in it.

Oh, and unfortunately it was both overcast and drizzling, so I can't say if his skin goes all sparkly in the sunlight.

Sorry.

Independents day

In the past complications with my doorbell have prevented the worthy stalwarts of DHL, UPS and other such acronymed services from completing their primary mission, unable to deliver packages entrusted to their care to my doorstep because of their inability to find said doorstep and being unschooled in the ways of the intercom. Since the official commencement of electioneering on Tuesday I have noticed that the Men in Brown are not the only folks unable to find my doorbell, it would seem that those men and women who seek to represent me in the 31st Dáil Éireann, or their agents thereof, are also unable to use an intercom.

How else could you explain the sudden appearance of a post box stuffed to the gills with election literature when none of the happy faces that appear on the papers within have presented themselves on my doorstep to solicit my endorsement in person?

How very remiss of them.

This was not the case for our good friend Mr LoveRhino, who was disturbed early this afternoon at his home by the sudden appearance of one Bertie Ahern Esq canvassing on behalf of Cyprian Brady. Mr Rhino was too startled by this apparition to do anything more than mumble a quick, "Right so", and close the door with a note of incredulity and self-doubt. This was quite understandable all things considered, one would expect to find an ex-Taoiseach and architect of all our current woes in one's kitchen cupboard perhaps, but certainly not out on the street going door-to-door on behalf of his colleague; does he hate the man that much that he feels the need to personally remind every voter in the constituency of their fraternal ties?

Here in Dublin South East, physically the smallest constituency in the country, we haven't been graced by door-stepping Taoisigh since the halcyon days of Garret Fitzgerald, and the heady excitement of lamp-post climbing Greens now seem a distant memory indeed. Ruairi Quinn and Lucinda Creighton are a shoe-in, John Gormley is guaranteed to be handed his p45 and Chris Andrews was seen last week updating his LinkedIn profile, just in case. Sinn Féin are also unlikely to see any significant improvement on their pretty dismal 2007 performance. Thus given the latest opinion polls and the big question mark over where John Gormley's votes will go this time round, and despite both Fine Gael and Labour running two candidates, there is a very strong possibility that at least one Independent candidate will be elected, and boy are there a lot to choose from.

First out of the box with a Nialler9-designed website and a catchy video was twenty-three year old Dylan Haskins, looking positively cherubic in his confirmation suit on posters the length and breadth of ritzy-sixy, many of which sadly were quickly defaced* with the answer "What does, puberty?" to his campaign slogan "It Starts Here". Young Master Haskins has attracted prominent endorsements from David McWilliams and Diarmaid Ferriter, and his understanding of social media saw him trending on Twitter almost immediately in the aftermath of his campaign launch. While the right-wing economics of his backers concerns me, his policies are well thought out with a strong emphasis on transparency and real democracy in Government, and equality in society. However given how difficult it was for me to accept a Dr Who that was younger than me, I find it hard to put my faith in a candidate so young. This is not an issue of age discrimination, anybody of any age can have great ideas, I just believe that a political representative should have more real world experience before becoming enmeshed in the grubby world of politics where it is all to easy to loose touch with reality. Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan were both first elected at roughly the same age as Haskins would be, and we see how well that all turned out. Besides, I'm more of a Team Jacob guy myself**.

Also receiving the endorsements of a few prominent economists is economist Paul Sommerville. Sommerville can often be found gracing the set of Vincent Browne, along with chums Prof Brian Lucey and Ireland's greatest Russian neo-liberal Constantin Gurdgiev. Sommerville has a 15-point plan to put the country right, much of which is difficult to disagree with (abolish NAMA, scrap the HSE, draft a new Constitution, renegotiate the IMF bailout), but I have strong reservations about what he would replace all of these insituations with. He also seems to really dislike the Greens, or any suggestion that the environment be put before business. Oh dear.

People Before Profit co-founder Rory Ahern ran here in 2007, but has since resigned from the party and his place on the United Left Alliance ticket*** has been filled by Annette Mooney. I watched her colleague Richard Boyd-Barrett on Vincent Browne the other night and found that I agreed with a lot of what he was saying, which surprised me because I am no fan of the Socialist Workers. Their alliance with Joe Higgins is interesting given the historically fractious nature of the far-left, but the new branding probably won't be enough to see any of their candidates elected beyond Higgins and Seamus Healy in Tipperary South (both of whom have already served as TDs and will be elected on their own merits, not because of any new branding) and possibly Boyd-Barrett himself in a very crowded Dun Laoghaire race. It certainly won't be enough to help Mooney, but I wish her well.

Rounding out the declared Independents thus far is everyone's favourite grumpy curmudgeon, playwright, poet and bane of the Catholic Church, Mannix Flynn. Elected to Dublin City Council during the 2009 local elections, Flynn seems thus far to be running on a platform of "I'm Mannix Flynn", and should stand a reasonable chance if he continues to do just that.

While the safe money would be on Fine Gael and Labour carving up the constituency between them, with Andrews having an outside chance of holding on given the lack of a FF running mate to split the vote, I would welcome the election of any of these four Independents even if I would not support them directly myself.

The best thing that could happen to the 31st Dáil would be the election of a sizable number of true Independents, not the "I can't believe they're not Fianna Fail", "I got caught taking bribes but the gobshites still reelected me, again" or the "put my daughter on a quango and a casino in my back garden and you've got my vote, Taoiseach" type, but real Independents unbeholden to any party, nor running on a single-issue campaign. This would see a need for real debate and negotiation in the Dáil, a bypassing of the Party Whip system, and the creation of a parliament where deputies actually had to do some real work for a change instead of troop in once every few weeks to cast a vote, and then disappear back to their constituencies to take credit for getting the roads fixed.

Current odds from Paddy Power for declared candidates are as follows:

Ruairi Quinn (Lab) - 1/33
Lucinda Creighton (FG) - 1/20
Kevin Humphreys (Lab) - 3/10
Eoghan Murphy (FG) - 8/13
Chris Andrews (FF) - evens
Paul Sommerville (Ind) - 3/1
Mannix Flynn (Ind) - 9/2
John Gormley (Green) - 11/2
Dylan Haskins (Ind) - 12/1
Annette Mooney (PBP) - 18/1
Ruadhan MacAodhain (SF) - 40/1

Oh, and if you are tired of all the election posters already then check out Upstart.ie, a guerilla art project that is printing up submissions from artists, photographers and others and sneaking them onto street-lamps, poles and other real estate nestled amongst the political pollution. The first pieces have started to appear on the streets of Dublin, I caught a few like the one above this afternoon on Dawson Street. Catch them while you can before the wind exercises its right of reply and scatters them all to the heavens above.

* I may have made this bit up. But there are still three weeks to election day, plenty of time yet for this to happen.

** Unkie Dave does not admit to understanding what this means.

*** Although not technically an Independent, the United Left Alliance (or its constituent members the SWP/PBP, Socialist Party and South Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group), still hasn't managed to gain a large enough following to be included in its own right in opinion polls, so I, like the good folks at RedC and MRBI, will lump them in here with the other Lone Rangers.

That's how the light gets in

This morning was supposed to be an opportunity to share some initial thoughts on the election campaign thus far, the highs, the lows, the laughs, the tears, but alas life, being such a fickle anthropomorphism, had other ideas. This morning, you see, I have mostly been talking with the Gardai.

At about 2:30 this morning I was woken up be a commotion in the laneway outside our building. This often happens for our road serves as both outdoor bar and al fresco latrine for a wide selection of the city's most colourful denizens, performing the role of both mountains and the sea in the alcoholic version of the water cycle. Despite the frequency of such impromptu celebrations I have not grown accustomed to their noise, and thus the slightest cough, hiccup or technicolour yawn is enough to rouse me from my slumber.

At first I thought someone was trying to break into the building, but then as my ears tuned into the conversation I realised it was a group of young lads, quite drunk, waiting for their mate and getting a bit board. I stuck my head out of the window in my best grumpy and/or nosey neighbour manner to see what was going on, just to catch them engaged in that timeless game of racing each other up and down the street in a shopping trolley. Ah, the larks of youth! Eventually their mate arrived and joined them on the street, and off they went in search of a kebab.

This morning as I left the building I was struck by the rather large hole that had materialised in the external wall, a perfectly cylindrical hole. As I tried to imagine what sort of object could have made such a perfect hole (lampost, traffic cone, carbon-fibre Pringles tube?) it occurred to me that it was not so much that something had been violently added to the wall, more that something had been violently removed.

In the wall had been set a cylindrical metal box. The door of the box was flush with the wall and had a small lock on it. The purpose of this box has not been ascertained but it was a) self-contained and b) had something to do with the Fire Brigade. It was also empty.

Serving no purpose and containing nothing at all, it was still enough of a shiny trinket that these lads decided, at 2:30am this morning while waiting for their mate, to chisel the box out of the wall using a screwdriver. This was the noise that awoke me.

I met the building manager this morning on the street as I stared at the hole. "Its gone", he said. "It is" I replied. "What was it?" I asked. "I've no idea", he replied. "Should we call the Guards?" I asked. "Already have" he said. This was before my morning caffeinated beverage you see, in fact, it was on my way to the caffeinery that I discovered the hole. Language, like the engine of a car, needs to warm up and run for a while on cold days before you set off.

I wasn't present for the call, but I like to imagine it went something like this:

"Hello, is that the Gardai? I'd like to report a missing box"
"Certainly sir, and what was in this box?"
"Um, nothing"
"I see, sir. And was this box of value itself, made of fine metals or lacquered wood, perhaps from the Shang or Zhou dynasties in Jiangsu province?"
"Um, no"
"A keep-sake perhaps, a childhood toy that is all that remains of the only time when you were truly happy?"
"Um, no. Its just a box"
"I see sir, we'll be right over"
*click*

In any event and to their credit the Gardai did arrive some time later, and were very pleasant indeed. They had to be called as part of the insurance process, and the building manager asked that I gave them a statement, and so I did. Not a very exciting statement mind you, but a statement nonetheless. I have already begun to print up a few "Missing Box" flyers to be affixed on lamposts around the vicinity, and I will be tuning in expectantly to 'CrimeCall' this week to follow developments, only slightly disappointed by the fact that its no longer called 'Garda Patrol'. I might even call Joe Duffy.

I will keep you all updated in the coming days on the progression of this most alarming of breakdowns in the fabric of society, but in the meantime if you are wondering how our nation came to fall into such a terrible state of lawlessness I can do no better than offer you this report from The Savage Eye.

Regretful stags on Dublin streets

One of my goals for 2011 is to try and fall in love with this city, and if not actually in love then at least get to the point of holding hands and staring into each other's eyes with that vague tingly excitement that a quick snog might not be entirely out of the question at some point later on in the evening.

I've written before about my apathy/hate relationship with Dublin and the oppressive wet towel of grey pushed down from the heavens above to smother any sparks, let alone fire, of excitement or originality that threaten to erupt up from the streets and consume the city in a blaze of joy and happiness. Other people like to internalise these feelings with helpful labels such as SAD, or the winter blues, whereas I like to lay blame firmly at the feet of those responsible, to point fingers and name names, and thus I can unequivocally call out the narrow-minded short-term thinking of a cynical group of miserable vikings one thousand and twenty three years ago (plus or minus a few weeks) who chose the muddy banks of the river Liffey as a good enough spot to build a trading post.

Stupid vikings.

Given the habitual gloom and doom that hovers over our fair city just far enough out of reach that it can't be escaped by climbing higher but low enough to meld into the streets and sea at the vanishing point on the horizon, creating a bubble of absolute grey above, below and all around, it may come as something of a surprise to hear that January was the brightest and driest January since 2006, with 40% less rain than normal. This follows on from the single coldest day since records began in December, the coldest November in 25 years, and just to be contrary the hotest June in 20 years.

All this goes to show that, as any twelve year-old could tell you, nobody listens to records any more, its all about the mp3s and the ringtones. Our dependable Irish climate is dependable no more; arctic winters, dry springs and scorching summers may now be the norm, not the exception.

And if the external climate can change, perhaps so too can my internal one. I may never write eulogies to the city on its bones and skin or immortalise it with words that are carried from window to window on the voices of those who travel along its veins and arteries, but maybe, just maybe, I can come to view it with something less than hostility and approaching mutual respect and appreciation.

And from that maybe true feelings will develop.

But I can't guarantee that this relationship will be exclusive.

Images: Street Art outside the Bernard Shaw, South Richmond Street. Shame & Regret from 'They Are Us' by Maser, stag by James Earley

For many more (and much, much better) photos of Dublin Street Art check out lusciousblopster's gallery. You can lose yourself in it for hours.

He ain't heavy...

So the man voted most likely to destroy our country in one thousand days by his school chums has succeeded beyond his, and their, wildest expectations, and will today go triumphantly cap in hand for a brief afternoon drive through Phoenix Park for a cup of tea with the President, a quick chat, and a formal request to dissolve the worst Dáil in the history of the State.

A dark chapter in our nation's brief history draws to a close, the repercussions of which will still be felt for generations to come. Not Seán Lemass nor even Éamon de Valera can be said to have had as great an impact on the country when impact per day is considered. Even Bertie had eleven years to wreak his havoc, mighty Biffo destroyed our sovereignty, bankrupted our nation and sold our children into financial slavery all in a period of barely two and a half years.

It must therefore come as a great sadness to the good people of Offaly that their chosen son has decided that with his legacy secure, the time has come for him to stand aside and enter the happy world of retirement content that he has done his duty by god and by country. But where, oh where, shall they ever find a man as capable as Brian to represent them on the national stage? How shall they find someone with as much political skill and acumen, as deep an understanding of the challenges that their Constituency faces and the sheer charisma to be able to defend their rights against all ignominies as was personified in the body of Brian Cowen TD?

Step forward Barry Cowen, Offaly County Councilor and younger brother of the aforementioned Brian Cowen TD, son of the late "Ber" Cowen, TD, whose death in 1984 first placed the aforementioned Brian Cowen TD on the national stage when he inherited his father's seat aged 24.

This is everything that is wrong with this country in a nutshell.